Making offerings to all the Buddhas of the universe is not equal to making offerings to one follower of the Way who has eliminated conceptual thought. Why? Because such a one forms no concepts whatever. The substance of the Absolute is inwardly like wood or stone, in that it is motionless, and outwardly like the void, in that it is without bounds or obstructions. It is neither subjective nor objective, has no specific location, is formless, and cannot vanish.
Those who hasten towards it dare not enter, fearing to hurtle down through the void with nothing to cling to or to stay their fall. So they look to the brink and retreat. This refers to all those who seek such a goal through cognition. Thus, those who seek the goal through cognition are like the fur, or many, while those who obtain intuitive knowledge of the Way are like the horns, or few.
Huangbo Xiyun, On the Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1958
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Commentary: Two years ago when I first chose this username, "WanderingRonin", I didn't realize exactly how prophetic it would be on my path, or how much it would correlate to the teachings of Zen. A ronin is a masterless warrior, and to wander is to travel without direction, with nowhere to reside for very long. In my thirty years of lazy travels on the Way, I've traversed the many roads of Zen and not Zen, looking for patterns and clues to what these teachings could truly point to. I'm still empty handed at this point, but I've seen a few amazing sights and have retained a few good lessons along the way.
So where can so-called advanced practitioners of Zen go wrong on their journey? Here, Huangbo teaches: Making offerings to all the Buddhas of the universe is not equal to making offerings to one follower of the Way who has eliminated conceptual thought. This simple and powerful lesson should literally be everything that someone needs to follow and practice Zen. Make no mistake: this teaching should at once render you masterless and homeless, with nothing but the moon overhead to guide you, and with nowhere for your mind to reside or to build an intellectual foundation upon.
Huangbo continues: Thus, those who seek the goal through cognition are like the fur, or many, while those who obtain intuitive knowledge of the Way are like the horns, or few. Cognition, as defined is this: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Cognition is in direct opposition to the teaching of eliminating conceptual thought. It is not Zen, and has nothing at all to do with the Way.
These 'advanced practitioners' should be able to be easily seen as conceptually masterless and intellectually homeless, yet what do I see mostly instead? Instead of becoming masterless, they find Zen masters among the teachings. They then give up wandering and taking in the myriad sights, and at once find a great stone mountain of concepts to build upon, giving up the Way of freedom and homelessness. Then, they take their unskilllful understanding and use it to build an iron fortress of unassailable intellectual arguments. They'll always 'win' at this point, and in convincing themselves of winning, they lose everything. Finally, within this iron fortress that no one can hope to break through, they construct a perfect room of mirrored walls in which to permanently reside and complete their grand fallacy. Their entire universe has been afflicted with impenetrable, unassailable delusion. None of this is Zen, or has anything whatsoever to do with it.
Submitted November 08, 2019 at 08:50PM by WanderingRoninXIII https://ift.tt/2JXjNOv
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