Do you want to attain understanding? The subjective ideas you yourself have been entertaining for measureless eons are so dense and thick that when you hear someone giving an explanation, you immediately conceive doubts and ask about the Buddha, ask about the Teaching, ask about transcendence, ask about accommodation. As you seek understanding, you become further estranged from it.
Yunmen Wenyan [864-949]: The Five Houses of Zen, translated by Thomas Cleary, 1997
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Commentary and questions: When I read this teaching from the venerable Yunmen, it seems to reveal everything about Zen all at once. First, to seek understanding is revealed to be a mistake, but why? I think it may be in part because the nature of the mind is endless, so if a question is asked and even answered sufficiently, another question will always arise and take its place. There will always be something to seek if one is seeking in this way.
If the mind is endless and universal, then seeking elsewhere other than mind becomes endless and self-generating. The mind is the question, and the mind is the answer. Is understanding simply not being attached to thoughts and forms? Is it in floating along the river of the myriad things? Understanding seems to be acceptance of understanding and not understanding, just letting things rest as they are.
Submitted February 02, 2020 at 07:47PM by _WanderingRonin_ https://ift.tt/2RPTRZv
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