"If you want to understand the Way directly, the normal mind is the Way.
What I mean by the normal mind is the mind without artificiality, without subjective judgments, without grasping or rejection.”
- Mazu
"If you make subjective, personalistic judgments of past and present events, not having been through the process of refining and purifying your insight, this is like trying to do a sword dance without having learned to handle a sword."
- Fayan
"Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations, worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egoism, and competitiveness; become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization.”
"Many intelligent people understand Zen subjectively and are unable to let go of their subjectivity. They still their minds without experiencing their real nature, and think this is emptiness. They try to abandon existence to cling to emptiness. This is a serious malady."
- Yuanwu
"As soon as you rationalize, it is hard to understand Zen. You will have to stop rationalizing before you will get it.
Some people hear this kind of talk and say there is nothing to say and no reason—they do not realize they are already rationalizing when they do this."
"People these days are just the same as they have been all along, and their capabilities are the same as they have been all along: continuously fluctuating. The reason they are uncertain is because they make up intellectual understandings of the words of ancient Zen teachers, using personalistic approaches."
- Foyan
"Just wash away the dust and dirt of subjective thoughts immediately. When the dust and dirt are washed away, your mind is open, shining brightly, without boundaries, without center or extremes. Completely whole, radiant with light, it shines through the universe, cutting through past, present, and future."
- Hongzhi
"It is only because of a moment of subjectivity in discrimination, grasping and rejecting, that so many horns are suddenly produced on your head and you are turned about by those myriad objects all the time, unable to be free and independent."
- Yuansou
"[D]on't establish a preconceived understanding of Zen, yet don't rationalize Zen as "not understanding" either."
"Many Zennists cling to personalistic views as ultimate realities or final truths, and do not believe there can be anything better. As soon as they are put to a real Zen test, they are lost. This happens when they finally never meet a real Zen master, so their realization is crude. They sit in a nest of "win or lose," fearing to be disturbed by anyone, afraid they'll lose Zen. Some Zennists say their viewpoints are all correct, and when experienced masters tell them it is not so, they say this is just a deliberate ploy to entrap them and pull them around. These paranoid Zennists stop after they have merely managed to hold still. This is a fatal disease, which is of its own nature incurable. Therefore all Zen seekers can do is to be careful to avoid it."
- Ying-an
"Many people study Zen, but encounter Zen teachers without clear perception of truth. They make arbitrary explanations and take their subjective interpretations of Zen sayings for final truths. Their aim is to be recognized as understanding Zen. This is a most serious malady."
- Mi-an
Submitted December 25, 2017 at 02:20AM by exitiumetsapientia http://ift.tt/2C1T26o
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