Huangbo Xiyun: This is not something which you can accomplish without effort.

Reality is perfect purity; why base a discussion on false terms? To be absolutely without concepts is called the Wisdom of Dispassion. Every day, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down, and in all your speech, remain detached from everything within the sphere of phenomena. Whether you speak or merely blink an eye, let it be done with complete dispassion. Now we are getting towards the end of the third period of five hundred years since the time of the Buddha, and most students of Zen cling to all sorts of sounds and forms. Why do they not copy me by letting each thought go as though it were nothing, or as though it were a piece of rotten wood, a stone, or the cold ashes of a dead fire? Or else, by just making whatever slight response is suited to each occasion?

If you do not act thus, when you reach the end of your days here, you will be tortured by Yama. You must get away from the doctrines of existence and non-existence, for Mind is like the sun, forever in the void, shining spontaneously, shining without intending to shine. This is not something which you can accomplish without effort, but when you reach the point of clinging to nothing whatever, you will be acting as the Buddhas act. This will indeed be acting in accordance with the saying: 'Develop a mind which rests on no thing whatever.'

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Huangbo Xiyun, On the Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1958

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Wandering Ronin commentary and questions: Wake up, all you 'sleeping Zen' false buddhas! Huangbo Xiyun himself has exposed you all as absolute lazy frauds. There is an effort that needs to be made in Zen, and to believe you've accomplished a single thing without effort is to be in total and lasting error. Let your efforts match your expectations. To think otherwise is just your gaining mind ego trying to get out of doing the real work involved. Do you think you know better than Huangbo?

Submitted June 03, 2019 at 03:11AM by WanderingRoninXIII https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/bw2o56/huangbo_xiyun_this_is_not_something_which_you_can/?utm_source=ifttt