This essay is meant to be taken as a whole, but it is comprised of 14 sections, and is rather long. Though the reader can return to the hub at any time to gain access to all other sections of the essay, each and every section is also written to be a standalone essay, should the reader choose to read only that.
Section 5: On Mind
1.01.The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you—begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood.
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1.02.If you are not absolutely convinced that the Mind is the Buddha, and if you are attached to forms, practices and meritorious performances, your way of thinking is false and quite incompatible with the Way. The Mind is the Buddha, nor are there any other Buddhas or any other mind. It is bright and spotless as the void, having no form or appearance whatever...Only awake to the One Mind, and there is nothing whatsoever to be attained. This is the REAL Buddha. The Buddha and all sentient beings are the One Mind and nothing else.
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1.03.Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and, when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and of sentient beings. ..There is only the One Mind and not a particle of anything else on which to lay hold, for this Mind is the Buddha.
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1.06.This Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form.
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1.07.This Dharma is Mind, beyond which there IS no Dharma; and this Mind is the Dharma, beyond which there IS no mind. Mind in itself is not mind, yet neither is it no-mind. To say that Mind is no-mind implies something existent...This Mind is the pure Buddha-Source inherent in all men. All wriggling beings possessed of sentient life and all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are of this one substance and do not differ.
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1.08.Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy—and that is all...There is naught beside...He also said: ‘This Dharma is absolutely without distinctions, neither high nor low, and its name is Bodhi.' It is pure Mind, which is the source of everything and which, whether appearing as sentient beings or as Buddhas, as the rivers and mountains of the world which has form, as that which is formless, or as penetrating the whole universe, is absolutely without distinctions, there being no such entities as selfness and otherness.
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1.09.This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection...Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. You should not start REASONING from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma. Do not keep them nor abandon them nor dwell in them nor cleave to them. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha-Mind.
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1.10.When the people of the world hear it said that the Buddhas transmit the Doctrine of the Mind, they suppose that there is something to be attained or realized apart from Mind, and thereupon they use Mind to seek the Dharma, not knowing that Mind and the object of their search are one.
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1.11.There is only Mind-Source, limitless in extent and of absolute purity.
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1.16.Every single thing is just the One Mind.
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1.18...the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at his birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his Mind and environmental objects as one—if he could really accomplish this, he would receive Enlightenment in a flash.
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1.24.There is nothing which can be said or made evident. There is just the omnipresent voidness of the real self-existent Nature of everything, and no more.
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1.31.Q: From all you have just said, Mind is the Buddha; but it is not clear as to what sort of mind is meant by this ‘Mind which is the Buddha'.
A: How many minds have you got?
Q: But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?
A: Where on earth do you keep your ‘ordinary mind' and your ‘Enlightened mind'?
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1.31.If you hadn't mentioned ordinary and Enlightened, who would have bothered to say such things? Just as those categories have no real existence, so Mind is not really ‘mind'. And, as both Mind and those categories are really illusions, wherever can you hope to find anything?
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1.32.Q: If there is nothing on which to lay hold, how is the Dharma to be transmitted?
A: It is a transmission of Mind with Mind.
Q: If Mind is used for transmission, why do you say that Mind too does not exist?
A: Obtaining no Dharma whatever is called Mind transmission. The understanding of this Mind implies no Mind and no Dharma.
Q: If there is no Mind and no Dharma, what is meant by transmission?
A: You hear people speak of Mind transmission and then you talk of something to be received. So Bodhidharma said:
The nature of the Mind when understood,/No human speech can compass or disclose./Enlightenment is naught to be attained,/And he that gains it does not say he knows.
If I were to make this clear to you, I doubt if you could stand up to it.
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1.33.Q: Surely the void stretching out in front of our eyes is objective. Then aren't you pointing to something objective and seeing Mind in it?
A: What sort of mind could I tell you to see in an objective environment? Even if you could see it, it would only be Mind reflected in an objective sphere. You would be like a man looking at his face in a mirror; though you could distinguish your features in it clearly, you would still be looking at a mere reflection.
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1.33.Mind is not of several kinds and there is no Doctrine which can be put into words.
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2.02.Mind is the Buddha, while the cessation of conceptual thought is the Way. Once you stop arousing concepts and thinking in terms of existence and non-existence, long and short, other and self, active and passive, and suchlike, you will find that your Mind is intrinsically the Buddha, that the Buddha is intrinsically Mind, and that Mind resembles a void...Only come to know the nature of your own Mind, in which there is no self and no other, and you will in fact be a Buddha!
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2.04.Bodhidharma firmly believed in being ONE WITH THE REAL ‘SUBSTANCE' OF THE UNIVERSE IN THIS LIFE! Mind and that ‘substance' do not differ one jot—that ‘substance' is Mind. They cannot possibly be separated. It was for this revelation that he earned the title of Patriarch of our sect, and therefore is it written: ‘The moment of realizing the unity of Mind and the “substance” which constitutes reality may truly be said to baffle description.'
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2.06.Anything possessing ANY signs is illusory. It is by perceiving that all signs are no signs that you perceive the Tathāgata. ‘Buddha' and ‘sentient beings' are both your own false conceptions. It is because you do not know real Mind that you delude yourselves with such objective concepts...Such things are mere conveniences, mere ornaments within the One Mind.
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2.08.Essential substance partakes neither of identity nor difference...if you accept the Buddha-Vehicle, which is the doctrine transmitted by Bodhidharma, you will not speak of such things; you will merely point to the One Mind which is without identity or difference, without cause or effect.
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2.09.Nevertheless, when true understanding and ephemeral knowledge are properly integrated, it will be found that they no longer exist. There is only the One Mind, Mind which is neither Buddha nor sentient beings, for it contains no such dualism...On account of the obstacles created by dualistic reasoning, Bodhidharma merely pointed to the original Mind and substance of us all as being in fact the Buddha. He offered no false means of self-perfecting oneself; he belonged to no school of gradual attainment. His doctrine admits of no such attributes as light and dark.
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2.10.If you suppose there is a Dharma to be preached, you will naturally ask me to expound it, but if you postulate a ‘ME ', that implies a spacial entity! The Dharma is NO Dharma—it is MIND! Therefore Bodhidharma said:
Though I handed down Mind's Dharma,/How can Dharma be a Dharma?/For neither Mind nor Dharma/Can objectively exist./Only thus you'll understand/The Dharma that is passed with Mind to Mind.
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2.10.There's never been a single thing;/Then where's defiling dust to cling?/If you can reach the heart of this,/Why talk of transcendental bliss?
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2.12.Q: What is the Buddha?
A: Your Mind is the Buddha. The Buddha is Mind. Mind and Buddha are indivisible. Therefore it is written: ‘That which is Mind is the Buddha; if it is other than Mind, it is certainly other than Buddha.'
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2.14.When all the Buddhas manifest themselves in the world, they proclaim nothing but the One Mind. Thus, Gautama Buddha silently transmitted to Mahākāṣyapa the doctrine that the One Mind, which is the substance of all things, is co-extensive with the Void and fills the entire world of phenomena.
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2.15.Error has no substance; it is entirely the product of your own thinking. If you know that Mind is the Buddha and that Mind is fundamentally without error, whenever thoughts arise, you will be fully convinced that THEY are responsible for errors.
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2.16.At this moment you are conscious of those erroneous thoughts. Well, your consciousness is the Buddha! Perhaps you can understand that, were you but free of these delusory mental processes, there would then be no ‘Buddha'. Why so? Because when you allow a movement of your mind to result in a concept of the Buddha, you are bringing into existence an objective being capable of being Enlightened.
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2.17. Hills are hills. Water is water. Monks are monks. Laymen are laymen. But these mountains, these rivers, the whole world itself, together with sun, moon and stars—not one of them exists outside your minds! The vast chiliocosm exists only within you, so where else can the various categories of phenomena possibly be found? Outside Mind, there is nothing. The green hills which everywhere meet your gaze and that void sky that you see glistening above the earth—not a hairsbreadth of any of them exists outside the concepts you have formed for yourself! So it is that every single sight and sound is but the Buddha's Eye of Wisdom.
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2.20.The essential Buddha-Substance is a perfect whole, without superfluity or lack. It permeates the six states of existence and yet is everywhere perfectly whole. Thus, every single one of the myriads of phenomena in the universe is the Buddha ( Absolute ).
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2.25.Since Mind is the Buddha ( Absolute ), it embraces all things, from the Buddhas ( Enlightened Beings ) at one extreme to the meanest of belly-crawling reptiles or insects at the other. All these alike share the Buddha-Nature and all are of the substance of the One Mind. So, after his arrival from the West, Bodhidharma transmitted naught but the Dharma of the One Mind. He pointed directly to the truth that all sentient beings have always been of one substance with the Buddha. He did not follow any of those mistaken ‘methods of attainment'. And if YOU could only achieve this comprehension of your own Mind, thereby discovering your real nature, there would assuredly be nothing for you to seek, either.
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2.26.That which asked the question is your own Mind; but if you were to remain quiescent and to refrain from the smallest mental activity, its substance would be seen as a void—you would find it formless, occupying no point in space and falling neither into the category of existence nor into that of non-existence. Because it is imperceptible, Bodhidharma said: ‘Mind, which is our real nature, is the unbegotten and indestructible Womb; in response to circumstances, it transforms itself into phenomena. For the sake of convenience, we speak of Mind as the intelligence; but when it does not respond to circumstances, it cannot be spoken of in such dualistic terms as existence or nonexistence. Besides, even when engaged in creating objects in response to causality, it is still imperceptible...so when thoughts arise, all sorts of dharmas follow, but they vanish with thought's cessation. We can see from this that every sort of dharma is but a creation of Mind.
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2.26.Mind is filled with radiant clarity, so cast away the darkness of your old concepts. Ch‘ing Ming says: ‘Rid yourselves of everything.' The sentence in the Lotus Sūtra concerning a whole twenty years spent in the shovelling away of manure symbolizes the necessity of driving from your minds whatever tends to the formation of concepts. In another passage, the same Sūtra identifies the pile of dung which has to be carted away with metaphysics and sophistry. Thus the ‘Womb of theTathāgatas' is intrinsically a voidness and silence containing no individualized dharmas of any sort or kind. And therefore says the Sūtra: ‘The entire realms of all the Buddhas are equally void.'
Your true nature is something never lost to you even in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of Enlightenment. It is the Nature of the Bhūtatathatā. In it is neither delusion nor right understanding. It fills the Void everywhere and is intrinsically of the substance of the One Mind. How, then, can your mind-created objects exist outside the Void? The Void is fundamentally without spacial dimensions, passions, activities, delusions or right understanding. You must clearly understand that in it there are no things, no men and no Buddhas; for this Void contains not the smallest hairsbreadth of anything that can be viewed spacially; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, spotless beauty; it is the self-existent and uncreated Absolute. Then how can it even be a matter for discussion that the REAL Buddha has no mouth and preaches no Dharma, or that REAL hearing requires no ears, for who could hear it? Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price!
Submitted October 15, 2020 at 10:00PM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/33XzxeK
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