Huangbo Xiyun: So long as you are concerned with 'by means of', you will always be depending on something false. When will you ever succeed in understanding?

Question: Surely the void stretching out in front of our eyes is objective. Then aren't you pointing to something objective and seeing Mind in it?

Huangbo: What sort of mind could I tell you to see in an objective environment? Even if you could see it, it would only be Mind reflected in an objective sphere. You would be like a man looking at his face in a mirror; though you could distinguish your features in it clearly, you would still be looking at a mere reflection. What bearing has this on the affair that brought you to me?

Question: If we do not see by means of reflections, when shall we see at all?

Huangbo: So long as you are concerned with 'by means of', you will always be depending on something false. When will you ever succeed in understanding? Instead of observing those who tell you to open wide both your hands like one who has nothing to lose, you waste your strength bragging about all sorts of things.

Question: To those who understand, even reflections are nothing?

Huangbo: If solid things do not exist, how much the less can we make use of reflections. Don't go about babbling like a dreamer with his eyes open, like a sleepwalker.

Stepping into the public hall, His Reverence said: Having many sorts of knowledge cannot compare with giving up seeking for anything, which is the best of all things. Mind is not of several kinds and there is no Doctrine which can be put into words. As there is no more to be said, the assembly is dismissed!

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

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Commentary and questions: As Huangbo teaches here, So long as you are concerned with 'by means of', you will always be depending on something false. If we say that mind itself is reflected upon the myriad things, then it still remains a reflection and not mind after all. So what can be done on the path, and where is this mind after all?

If one searches earnestly, there simply is no mind to be found. There is also no permanent thing among any of the perceivable objects to be relied on, including these bodies. Furthermore, if there is no mind to be found, how can there be anything such as enlightenment? It would be like a ghost dreaming of fog in the valley. All in all, it would seem that enlightenment would perhaps be several pleasant temporary concepts to merely assuage the preferences and aversions of the afflicted.

Submitted January 27, 2020 at 08:21PM by _WanderingRonin_ https://ift.tt/3aO26ws