C.1.3.A sermon to Pei Xiu
This [one-]mind is luminous and pure, like empty sky without a single bit of characteristic and appearance. Setting up mind to stir thought is thus deviation from the dharma-basis. It is thus attachment to characteristics. Since beginningless time, there are no Buddhas who are attached to characteristics.
B.1.2.(continued). It is bright and spotless as the void, having no form or appearance whatever. To make use of your minds to think conceptually is to leave the substance and attach yourselves to form. The Ever-Existent Buddha is not a Buddha of form or attachment.
TC. This mind is clear and pure, like space, with no appearance at all. If you excite the mind and stir thoughts, you turn away from its true essence. This is fixation on appearances, and there has never been a Buddha fixated on appearances.
LT. The Mind is transparent, having no shape or form. Giving rise to thought and discrimination is grasping and runs counter to the natural Dharma. Since time without beginning, there never has been a grasping Buddha.
DT. This Mind is pure and like space has no specific forms [whereby it can be distinguished from other objects]. As soon as you raise a thought and begin to form an idea of it, you ruin the reality itself, because you then attach yourself to form. Since the beginningless past, there is no Buddha who has ever had an attachment to form.
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C. Essential Dharma of Mind Transmission. Translated by chintokkong
B. The Zen Teachin of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind. Translated by John Blofeld
TC. Essentials of the Teaching of Communication of Mind. Translated by Thomas Cleary
LT. The Dharma of Mind Transmission: Zen Teachings of Huang-po. Translated by Master Lok To
DT. Treatise on the Essentials of the Transmission of Mind. Translated by D.T. Suzuki
...
This one I would have to say goes somewhere around Suzuki, and Cleary. The issue I have with the other translations is they suggest, especially Blofeld, that thinking is deviation, with Suzuki suggesting that it ruins reality, although Suzuki can be interpreted as it being writing on the void with permanent ink is what ruins it.
With Cleary and Lok To, it can be interpreted as that, while thinking itself without characteristics, it begins a process of moving away from natural functioning, and that when thinking becomes fixated, or attempts to make itself a permanent fixture attached to determined facets of reality, it misses.
So, I imagine Huangbo is saying something more like:
1.Natural function is without fixed characteristics: all say so.
2.That attachments to thought forms is missing the void-nature of reality: Suzuki is the only one that can be interpreted without any possible assumption that thinking itself is a malignant force, but rather attachment to thought.
3.There is no "clear sight of reality" (how I am translating the word "Buddha", which can generally be thought of as one who is not dreaming) if there is attachment to the fruits of thought: Cleary makes this clearest without any philosophically bent terminology that can be misinterpreted, although each translater says the same thing.
Thoughts?
Submitted April 16, 2021 at 03:04PM by samadhi-sheol https://ift.tt/3tolj0L
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