Nansen, Huangbo and Foyan: This reality is not susceptible to your intellectual understanding.

The Mumonkan Case 34: Nansen's "Reason Is Not the Way"

Nansen said, "Mind is not the Buddha, reason is not the Way."

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Mumon's Comment

Nansen, growing old, had no shame.

Just opening his stinking mouth, he let slip the family secrets.

Yet there are very few who are grateful for his kindness.

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Mumon's Verse

The sky clears, the sun shines bright,

The rain comes, the earth gets wet.

He opens his heart and expounds the whole secret,

But I fear he is little appreciated.

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The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.

Huangbo Xiyun, On the Transmission of Mind

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Here, I am thus every day, thus all the time. But tell me, what is "thus"? Try to express it outside of discriminatory consciousness, intellectual assessments, and verbal formulations. This reality is not susceptible to your intellectual understanding. ... How can you think of your original mind? How can you see your own eye? ... What can be seen by the eye or heard by the ear can be studied in the scriptures.

Foyan Qingyuan, Instant Zen: Waking Up in the Present

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Wandering Ronin commentary and questions: To the unstudied layperson, Zen is something esoteric and mysterious, and quite impenetrable to cursory attempts at understanding. In part, this is because the core tenets and ways of Zen are diametrically opposed to the average modern life and ways of thinking. From birth onwards, most people are in a constant search for material gains, and some even intellectual acquisition. With these ways of life based on gain and loss, it can be an exhausting Sisyphean battle between self and other. Word is being spread, and some people are slowly but surely coming to the understanding that material gains do not lead to happiness, but Zen points even beyond that. Intellectual gains may help, even dramatically, but even those are not quite adequate towards developing true understanding.

Yet how can one penetrate the great matter without conceptual thought? It's one of the great mysteries of Zen, argued even to this day even in the forum. There seems to be a pattern in Zen; the practitioner studies the teachings for a duration, seeking to understand the Way through the formation of an intellectual framework. Eventually, it may be realized that conceptual thought is only yet another gain in some way, whereas the path of Zen lies more in the direction of loss. Everything that was worked towards must be cast aside, again and again, in order to keep moving forward on the path. Nothing can be held on to or it will only serve to slow the student down, or even worse, hold them in place in their current understanding.

Submitted June 15, 2019 at 08:23PM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2IKD58o