We've had some misuse of Huangpo in the forum lately so I wanted to make this post to presents some arguments about what I think Huangpo is saying, specifically in regards to conceptual thought. To do this I'd like to take a look at two different translations of a specific passage from the Huangpo text:
Making offerings to all the Buddhas of the universe is not equal to making offerings to one follower of the Way who has eliminated conceptual thought.
Blofeld Huangpo
And
It is better to make offerings to a spiritual man who is free from mind-attachment' than to make offerings to all the Buddhas in the ten quarters.
D.T. Suzuki Huangpo
The word Blofeld translates as "conceptual thought" and Suzuki translates as "free from mind-attachment" is Wu-Hsin. Suzuki's translation has this footnote on the the difficulty of translating this word into English:
Wu-hsin , or mu-shin in Japanese. The term literally means "no-mind" or "no-thought". It is very difficult to find an English word corresponding to it. "Unconsciousness" approaches it, but the connotation is too psychological. Mu-shin is decidedly an Oriental idea. "To be free from mind-attachment" is somewhat circumlocutionary, but the idea is briefly to denote that state of consciousness in which there is no hankering, conscious or unconscious ' after an ego-substance, or a soul-entity, or a mind as forming the structural unit of our mental life.
Suzuki's translation of no mind-attachment makes a lot more sense in the context of the rest of the Huangpo text as well as the Zen lineage in general. This is about relinquishment of concepts of Self, not refusing to engage in using the tool of conceptual thought in general.
First Huangpo clearly engages in and uses conceptual thought as a tool in the entirety of the text. This is plain to see. So obviously Zen isn't about not thinking or abandoning concepts.
Second Huangpo in this very same text makes it clear that not thinking isn't what he is talking about:
The matter is thus—by thinking of something you create an entity and by thinking of nothing you create another.
Third when Huangpo denies the usefulness of concepts or discrimination he does so specifically in reference to the One Mind aka the Self.
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.
If there is any type of conceptual thought Huangpo denies it is in reference to the Self. Let go of concepts and thoughts about Buddha Nature and that is when it reveals itself to us. The only exception to this is when he talks about the arbitrary and useless concepts such as "good and evil" or "pure and impure". Our Self isn't revealed by deciding to never use concepts as temporary tools to do things like recognize a chair as something to sit on. The Self is revealed when we stop chasing it or crafting a mental "form" of it to attach to.
Tl, Dr: "No mind-attachment" better translation than "conceptual thought". Relinquish concepts about Buddha Nature/Self, don't refuse to tell the difference between black and white.
Submitted February 21, 2023 at 07:22AM by koancomentator https://ift.tt/uQ5ZLwP
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