No Seeing

This section is hard to pin down, possibly because it is difficult to see exactly what Foyan means when he says the word "non-discriminatory". Here are other instances where he says it.

(P. 7) Wisdom cannot emerge from idle imagination and toil over objects. When wisdom emerges this is called the "manifestation of non-discriminatory thought".

(Note: it is interesting that he asks not whether we want to get rid of conventional thinking, but what do we want to do with it? Off topic.)

(P.18-9) Opinions and views, graspings and rejectings, cut off the non-discriminatory mind. Rather, it's just like how we do not discriminate between art and its artists; we know and view the art knowing that the artist made it.

(Note: like in the section on "No Seeing", Foyan emphasizes that this is not cutting off thought.)

(P.33-4) Thusness is "outside of discriminatory consciousness, intellectual assessments, and verbal formulations" because this "reality is not susceptible to your intellectual understanding." From the time you came to practice discriminatory thinking you "have suffered a split between the primal and the temporal."

An example of this is evinced later (P.89) when, reflecting on his own journey, Foyan notes that his leaning towards seeing oneself as good as they are is attachment to concepts born of discriminatory thinking, and is not a proper understanding.

(P.39) There is the assertion that Buddha taught not to discriminate appearances, but what words Foyan is referencing is unclear.

(P.43-4)

One day when Xuansha went into the mountains, he encountered a tiger. His assistant told him there was a tiger there, but Xuansha just said, “It’s your tiger.”

Commenting on this case, Foyan says that with the mind branching off in a million directions with the discriminatory thinking, how can one understand "It's yours."?

In the poem on sitting meditation (P.112), Foyan notes that discriminatory thinking gives the appearance of arising and vanishing, though these are manifestations of the mind.

Altogether now!

1. Discriminatory thinking is idle imagination, toil over objects, opinions, views, grasping/rejecting, appearances of arising/vanishing, intellectual assessment, verbal formulation, good (bad assumed).

2. This cuts off wisdom because it branches the mind into a million directions, one fails to see the art v. the artist, and splits one between the primal and temporal.

3. Wisdom cannot emerge and one cannot experience Thusness.

No Seeing

You must find the nondiscriminatory mind without departing from the discriminating mind; find that which has no seeing or hearing without departing from seeing and hearing.

Foyan may be saying in this section that one must find Thusness by cutting of the million paths of discriminatory thinking without losing the discrimination that takes place in Thusness.

Submitted August 20, 2020 at 04:37PM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/2YhSxS0