Q: What is the meaning of the passage: ‘Mañjuśrī stood before Gautama with a drawn sword'?
A: The ‘Five Hundred Bodhisattvas' attained knowledge of their previous lives and discovered how their previous karma had been constructed. This a fable in which the ‘Five Hundred' really refers to your five senses. On account of their knowledge of their previous karma, they SOUGHT the Buddha, Bodhisattvahood and Nirvāna objectively. It was for this reason that Mañjuśrī took up the Sword of Bodhi and used it to destroy the concept of a tangible Buddha; and it is for this that he is known as the destroyer of human virtues!
Q: What does the Sword really signify?
A: It signifies the apprehension of Mind.
Q: So the Sword used to destroy the concept of a tangible Buddha is the apprehension of Mind. Well, then, if we are able to put an end to such concepts by this means, how is their destruction actually accomplished?
A: You must use that wisdom which comes from non-dualism to destroy your concept-forming, dualistic mentality.
Q: Assuming that the concepts of something perceptible and of Enlightenment as something to be sought can be destroyed by drawing the Sword of Non-Discriminatory Wisdom, where precisely is such a sword to be found?
A: Since non-discriminatory wisdom is the destroyer both of perception and of its opposite, it must also belong to the Non-perceptible.
Q: Knowledge cannot be used to destroy knowledge, nor a sword to destroy a sword.
A: Sword DOES destroy sword—they destroy each other—and the no sword remains for you to grasp. Knowledge DOES destroy knowledge—this knowledge invalidates that knowledge—and then no knowledge remains for you to grasp. It is as though mother and son perished together.
Commentary: 'Sword' doesn't mean sword. Just like conceptual knowledge doesn't mean wisdom. Manjusri was a Mahayana bodhisattva. And Mahayana Buddhism isn't Zen. So how did Manjusri have a sword drawn without having to actually draw it out of its sheath? To some, 'become sober' is a sword that kills. That sword breaks another sword. Then, having their sword broken, people begin conceptualizing Zen to support their habit of forging an aluminum sword. An aluminum sword will be destroyed again easily. You would think that person should get a better sword and throw the glass sword away, right?
The sword and knowledge that is superior is the sword Zen Masters wielded. Or else it would be a discriminatory sword. But that's not the case. All their swords came from no sword. Gautama didn't have a sword. The problem is the people who lean toward Gautama but not Manjusri, who destroyed the concepts of a tangible Buddha, have no sword or a sword that keeps getting destroyed and remain in the karmic cycle of life and death of many past-lives for another 10,000 years trying to tangibly and conceptually understand Buddhism (not Zen) which is the non-perceptible!
Get a better sword.
Submitted June 21, 2020 at 12:42AM by bulldogeyes https://ift.tt/2Yizc3f
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