In my school, there are only two kinds of sickness. One is to go looking for a donkey riding on the donkey. The other is to be unwilling to dismount once having mounted the donkey.
You say it is certainly a tremendous sickness to mount a donkey and then go looking for the donkey. I tell you that one need not find a spiritually sharp person to recognize this right away and get rid of the sickness of seeking, so the mad mind stops.
Once you have recognized the donkey, to mount it and be unwilling to dismount is the sickness that is most difficult to treat. I tell you that you need not mount the donkey; you are the donkey! The whole world is the donkey; how can you mount it? If you mount it, you can be sure the sickness will not leave! If you don’t mount it, the whole universe is wide open!
When the two sicknesses are gone, and there is nothing on your mind, then you are called a wayfarer. What else is there?
This is why when Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the path?” Nanquan replied, “The normal mind is the path.” Now Zhaozhou suddenly stopped his hasty search, recognized the sickness of “Zen Masters” and the sickness of “Buddhas,” and passed through it all. After that, he traveled all over, and had no peer anywhere, because of his recognition of sicknesses.
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One day Zhaozhou went to visit Zhuyou, where he paced back and forth brandishing his staff from east to west and west to east. Zhuyou asked, “What are you doing?” Zhaozhou replied, “Testing the water.” Zhuyou retorted, “I haven’t even one drop here; what will you test?” Zhaozhou left, leaning on his staff. See how he revealed a bit of an example, really quite able to stand out.
Zen followers these days all take sickness for truth. Best not let your mind get sick.
Submitted May 06, 2019 at 03:44PM by UhExistence http://bit.ly/2V328HC
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