Five Empty Skandhas, Delivered from All Distress and Suffering, Form is Emptiness

These are from Zen Master Hakuin's Poison Words For the Heart (his commentary to the Heart Sutra)

All Five Skandhas Are Empty

The tail on the sacred tortoise sweeps all her tracks clear. But how can the tail avoid leaving traces of its own? Forms are like the towering Iron Hoop Mountains. Sensation and perception like the trenchant Diamond Sword. Conception and consciousness like the gem that fulfills the heart’s desires. But you must realize how far there is to go. Before you know it darkness overtakes you once again.

You see another’s five and you think that’s you,

You cling to them with personal pride or shame;

It’s like the bubbles that form on the surface of waves

Like lightning bolts streaking across the sky.

Note: Skandhas means attachments.

From Wikipedia:

Skandhas (Sanskrit) or khandhas (Pāḷi) means "heaps, aggregates, collections, groupings". In Buddhism, it refers to the five aggregates concept that asserts five factors constitute and completely explain a sentient being’s mental and physical existence. The five aggregates or heaps are: form (or matter or body) (rupa), sensations (or feelings, received from form) (vedana), perceptions (samjna), mental activity or formations (sankhara), and consciousness (vijnana).

The skandhas refute the idea of a "being or individual", and complements the anatta doctrine of Buddhism which asserts that all things and beings are without self.[3][8][9] The anatta and "five aggregates" doctrines are part of the liberating knowledge in Buddhism, wherein one realizes that there is no-self, as the "being" is merely made up of a temporary grouping of five aggregates, each of which are "not I, and not my self", and each of the skandha is empty, without substance

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Is Delivered from All Distress and Suffering

That shadow in the guest’s cup never was a snake. How clear, in a dream, the three worlds are.

When you wake, all is empty, all the myriad worlds are Mu.

The ogre outside shoves the door,

The ogre inside holds it fast.

Dripping sweat from head to tail

Battling for their very lives,

They keep it up throughout the night

Until at last when the dawn appears

Their laughter fills the early light—

They were friends from the first.

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Form Is No Other Than Emptiness, Emptiness No Other Than Form

A nice hot kettle of stew. He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in. It’s no good pushing delicacies at a man with a full belly. Striking aside waves to look for water when the waves are water.

Forms don’t hinder emptiness; emptiness is the tissue of form.

Emptiness isn’t destruction of form; form is the flesh of emptiness.

Inside the Dharma gates where form and emptiness are not-two

A lame turtle with painted eyebrows stands in the evening breeze.

Submitted July 19, 2017 at 11:45PM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2uJk7ud