Huang Po's Guidance

Q: What guidance does Your Reverence offer to those of us who find this all very difficult to understand?

A: I have NO THING to offer. I have never had anything to offer others. It is because you allow certain people to lead you astray that you are forever SEEKING intuition and SEARCHING for understanding. Isn't this a case of disciples and teachers all falling into the same insoluble muddle? All you need to remember are the following injunctions:

FIRST, learn to be entirely unreceptive to sensations arising from external forms, thereby purging your body of receptivity to externals.

SECOND, learn not to pay any attention to any distinctions between this and that arising from your sensations, thereby purging your bodies of useless discernments between one phenomena and another.

THIRD, take great care to avoid discriminating in terms of pleasant and unpleasant sensations, thereby purging your bodies of vain discriminations.

FOURTH, avoid pondering things in your mind, thereby purging your bodies of discriminatory cognition.

Not directly related, but not unrelated either - in another part of his sermon, Huango Po says:

"If you now set about using your minds to seek Mind, listening to the teachings of others, and hoping to reach the goal through mere learning, when will you ever succeed? Some of the ancients had sharp minds; they no sooner heard the doctrine proclaimed than they hastened to discard all learning. So they were called 'Sages who, abandoning learning, have come to rest in spontaneity.' In these days, people only seek to stuff themselves with knowledge and deductions, seeking everywhere for book-knowledge and calling this 'Dharma-practice.' They do not know that so much knowledge and deduction have just the contrary effect of piling up obstacles. Merely acquiring a lot of knowledge makes you like a child who gives himself indigestion by gobbling too much curds."

• from Zen Teaching of Huang Po, trans. by Blofeld

My thoughts: Huang Po spoke great English :)

Submitted August 05, 2016 at 01:05AM by ludwigvonmises http://ift.tt/2alFUOK