Some Huangbo

Introduction

Also known as Xiyun, Huangbo is one of the more chatty Zen Masters, whose “Transmission of Mind” text is one of the most infamous take-downs of philosophy and religion that the Zen lineage produced. The record is itself is a collection of sermons and questions from Preceptors in his community.

Case

A questioner asked Huangbo, "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'."

Huangbo replied, "How many minds have you got?"

The questioner continued, “But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?”

Huangbo replied, “Where on earth do you keep your ‘ordinary mind’ and your ‘Enlightened mind?”

The questioner could not reply.

Remarks

Yuanwu—a Zen Master a few centuries after Huangbo—said, “The wisdom of the character of reality is true knowledge: it is the one great matter where each of you stands, shining across past and present, far beyond knowledge and opinion; it is that which is clean and naked, bare and untrammelled.” The enlightenment in Zen isn’t the attainment of a spiritual state or the belief in some ideology or another. The purpose of Zen’s founder, Bodhidharma, was none other than transmitting the Mind which itself is unsullied and free from any sort of entanglements. How wonderful!

Submitted May 21, 2023 at 11:06PM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/z25gNs0