The perfect light, formless form

From Master Yunmen His Life and Essential Sayings...

Master Yunmen cited the words of the Overnight Enlightened One:

The spiritual action of the six senses is empty without being empty; the perfect shine of the singular [mani jewel] is formless form.

The Master held up his fly whisk and said, "This is the perfect light, it is formless form. What do you call form? Come on, try taking that up with me!"

Note:

The radiant shine of the mani jewel barely lives up to the glint off the hairs of a raised fly whisk.

Not only will you find what you call form if you approach Master Yunmen, you may also find yourself meditating on suffering.

Further, some tidbits from Wikipedia:

The Lankavatara Sutra, the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, and the Surangama Sutra all used the Mani Jewel as metaphors for Buddha-nature...

Guifeng Zongmi's work Chart of the Master-Disciple Succession of the Chan Gate That Transmits the Mind Ground in China compares the four contemporary Zen schools: the Northern School, the Ox Head School, the Hongzhou school and the Heze school. He accomplishes this by comparing how each school would interpret the Mani Jewel metaphor used in the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment discussed above. The text also contains the first use of the specific phrase, "one bright jewel" (一顆明珠). According to Guifeng, the Northern School would believe in a fundamentally pure Mani Jewel that must be cleaned to reveal its purity; the Ox Head school would perceive both the color reflections and the Mani Jewel itself as empty; the Hongzhou school would say that the blackness covering the Mani Jewel is the Jewel itself, and that its purity can never be seen; the Heze School (to which Guifeng belonged) would interpret the black color covering the jewel as an illusion that is in fact just a manifestation of its brightness such that the surface defilements and the purity of the Jewel interpenetrate one another.

Submitted June 16, 2020 at 08:20PM by Dillon123 https://ift.tt/3d5DG1t