Zen Insight

Reading China Root for a day has taught me more than years lurking this subreddit. Thank you u/golden_eyebrow / u/lin_seed for making me notice it. 🙏

So Zen enlightenment/Original Mind could be described as: immediate experience of the ordinary (existence/life) before conceptual thought (words) separate out your identity

Reflected in pre-Chan Taoist works such as Chuang-Tzu:

Live empty, perfectly empty. Sage masters always employ mind like a pure mirror: welcome nothing, refuse nothing, reflect everything, hold nothing.

Then continued on by Zen Masters:

Whenever a question was posed, Master Million-Million simply raised one finger.

A monk asked Vast-Dragon: This self and this beautiful world of things: they crumble into ruins. What is the strong and enduring dharma-self?” “Mountain flowers opening like brocade,” replied Dragon, “streamwater deep and clear as blue-indigo.”

A monk asked Master Wisdom-Gate: “What is the potency of awakened prajna-wisdom?” “An oyster holding the radiant moon in its mouth,” replied Gate. “And what is the expression of awakened prajna-wisdom?” asked the monk. “A rabbit pregnant and full-bellied."

And the famous poem battle between the head monk and the sixth patriarch:

Body is the Bodhi-awakening tree where mind stands like a brilliant mirror. Polish it clean day after day, never let the least dust gather there

Vs.

Mind is the Bodhi-awakening tree, body where a brilliant mirror stands, original source-tissue mirror such pure-clarity—what could dust stain?

People like the self-appointed guardians of this subreddit want to brickbat your conceptions and thinking down on such a level, (hopefully with the best intentions to bring you to original mind), that they quite literally throw the 👶 out with the 🛁 💧, not realising that sometimes all you need is a bit of conversation.

Enough words now.

Submitted August 09, 2022 at 04:59PM by wdymANKLES https://ift.tt/6AzfqUn