Enlightenment is not something produced or attained. It's with us at all times. It's reading these words right now.
Dahui wrote to a student:
You report that since you received my letter, whenever you run into something inescapable amidst the hubbub, you’ve been examining yourself constantly, but without applying effort to meditate. This very inescapability itself is meditation: if you go further and apply effort to examine yourself, you’re even further away. The old version of the Hua Yen says, “The Buddha Dharma is in daily activities, in walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, in eating and drinking, in talking and asking, in actions and conduct.” And yet bestirring the mind isn’t it. Right when you’re in something inescapable, do not bestir your mind and think of examining yourself. The Ancestral Teacher said, “When discrimination doesn’t arise, the light of emptiness shines by itself.”
When discrimination doesn't arise, and the light of emptiness shines by itself, that is meditation. People tend to misrepresent and misunderstand. It's not a trance, and it's not pacification. It's not any kind of numbing the mind or resting in quietude. As Dahui says here, it's the inescapability of reality. But bestirring the mind isn't it. Discrimination repels it.
Of course there are people who make a nest out of meditation, it's very common. But there are also people who make a nest out of not meditating and even worse, opposing meditation. If meditation is not the way, then obviously not meditating is the way, right? Wrong. Just more nest.
Dahui explains:
Haven’t you read Master Yen T’ou’s saying? “As soon as there’s something considered important, it becomes a nest.” All of you people have spent your whole lives in Ch’an communities inquiring after This Matter—without any attainment, needless to say. Among you there are many with gray heads and yellow teeth, sitting in your nests your whole lives without being able to come out, totally unaware of your error. Those who’ve become infatuated with the words and phrases of the ancients take amazing words and subtle phrases as their nest. Those who take delight in the verbal meaning of the scriptures take the scriptures as their nest. Those infatuated with the nature of mind take “The triple world is only mind, the myriad phenomena only consciousness” as their nest. Those who’ve become infatuated with quiescent silence without words or speech take shutting their eyes, “the Other Side of the Primordial Buddha,” sitting motionless under the black mountain, inside the ghost cave, as their nest. All the above have things they consider important where their infatuations lie. Lacking the qualities of great men of power to step back and recognize their error, they think of what they consider important as extraordinary, as wondrous and subtle, as peace and security, as the ultimate, as liberation. For those who entertain such thoughts, even if Buddha appeared in the world, it would be to no avail. In the Teachings they are called deluded, stupid, and confused. Why? Because you are deluded, stupid, and confused. Why? Because you are deluded, you cling to the false as if it were true. Because you are stupid, you fall down into what you consider important, and cannot move or turn. If there’s nothing aroused in the mind and no attachment to phenomena, then there’s nothing considered important. With nothing considered important, naturally you’re full of rawboned power, without desire or dependence, and master of the Dharma.
There has to be nothing aroused in mind, and nothing considered important. Meditation is not important, but neither is opposing it. If you consider either important, Dahui says you're stupid. And it's true. Making effort to quiet the mind is a disease, and thinking that doing it will bring you something is an even worse one. This is a deep misunderstanding of meditation, by both the people who do it and the people who oppose it. It's not pacification, it's harmonization. As Joshu said, it's alive! Dahui used Layman Pang's poem to illustrate it:
In daily activities without discrimination,
I alone naturally harmonize.
Not grasping or rejecting anywhere,
Not going with or going against.
Who considers crimson and purple honorable?
There’s not a speck of dust in the mountains.
Spiritual powers and wondrous functioning:
Hauling water and carrying firewood.
Who is doing this? Not grasping meditation nor rejecting it? Not going with meditation nor against it? When we naturally harmonize, what else could we be doing? Wondrous functioning. Zen, dhyana, meditation. It's tricky to understand, that's why it's not about understanding, it's about direct experience.
Submitted March 05, 2023 at 10:51PM by patchrobe https://ift.tt/yidrbS7
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