All delusions, without exception, are created as a result of self-centeredness. When you're free from self-centeredness, delusions won't be produced.
For example, suppose your neighbors are having a quarrel: if you're not personally involved, you just hear what's going on and don't get angry. Not only do you not get angry, but you can plainly tell the rights and wrongs of the case—it's clear to you as you listen who's right and who's wrong.
But let it be something that concerns you personally, and you find yourself getting involved with what the other party [says or does], attaching to it and obscuring the marvelously illuminating [function of the Buddha Mind].
Before, you could clearly tell wrong from right; but now, led by self-centeredness, you insist that your own idea of what's right is right, whether it is or not. Becoming angry, you thoughtlessly switch your Buddha Mind for a fighting demon, and everyone takes to arguing bitterly with each other.
Because the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, the traces of everything you've done are [spontaneously] reflected. It's when you attach to these reflected traces that you produce delusion.
Thoughts don't actually exist in the place where the traces are reflected, and then arise. We retain the things we saw and heard in the past, and when these come up, they appear as traces and are reflected.
Originally, thoughts have no real substance. So if they're reflected, just let them be reflected; if they arise, just let them arise; if they stop, just let them stop.
As long as you're not attaching to these reflected traces, delusions won't be produced.
So long as you're not attaching to them, you won't be deluded, and then, no matter how many traces are reflected, it will be just as if they weren't reflected at all.
Even if a hundred, or a thousand thoughts spring up, it will be just the same as if they never arose. It won't be any problem for you—no thoughts to 'clear away,' no thoughts to 'cut off.'
Understand this well!
Submitted May 18, 2020 at 12:39AM by ZEROGR33N https://ift.tt/2LHfg2V
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