27/01/2023
~The Zen Teaching of Huang Po~
"The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible... It is that which you see before you -- begin to reason about it and you fall into error. It is like a boundless void which can't be fathomed or measured.
Buddhas and all sentient beings are the One Mind and nothing else. This Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all.
The ever existing Buddha is formless. It is only necessary to awake to the One Mind, and there is nothing whatsoever to attain. This is the real Buddha.
If students can only rid themselves of conceptual thought, all will become clear. But if students do not rid themselves of conceptual thought, even though you strive aeon after aeon, confusion will always be present.
Our original buddha-nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objective identification with form. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy - and that is all. Enter deeply into it..
That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is nothing else beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a bodhisattva's progress towards buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will be realizing the buddha-nature which has been with you all the time, and by all the foregoing stages you have added to it nothing at all.
You will see that all those aeons of work and achievement are no better than unreal actions performed in a dream..
This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels, and knows, as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the brilliance of the source-substance.
If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a flash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds..
Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. You should not start reasoning from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma.
Do not keep them nor abandon them nor dwell in them nor cleave to them. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha Mind."
Text source: The Zen Teaching of Huang Po – trans by John Blofeld, 1959
About Huang Po's Teachings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangbo_Xiyun
Artwork: Cosmic Buddha by Mynzah https://fineartamerica.com/featured/cosmic-buddha-mynzah-osiris.html
