Huángbò Xīyùn: To eliminate environmental phenomena, just put an end to your conceptual thinking.

Ordinary people all indulge in conceptual thought based on environmental phenomena, hence they feel desire and hatred. To eliminate environmental phenomena, just put an end to your conceptual thinking. When this ceases, environmental phenomena are void; and when these are void, thought ceases. But if you try to eliminate environment without first putting a stop to conceptual thought, you will not succeed, but merely increase its power to disturb you. Thus all things are naught but Mind—intangible Mind; so what can you hope to attain?

Those who are students of Prajna hold that there is nothing tangible whatever, so they cease thinking of the Three Vehicles. There is only the one reality, neither to be realized nor attained. To say 'I am able to realize something' or 'I am able to attain something' is to place yourself among the arrogant. The men who flapped their garments and left the meeting as mentioned in the Lotus Sūtra were just such people. Therefore the Buddha said: 'I truly obtained nothing from Enlightenment.' There is just a mysterious tacit understanding and no more.

Huángbò Xīyùn: On Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1954 [Source: Terebess]

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Wandering Ronin commentary and questions: I have returned to the forum, endlessly fascinated by the dynamic interactions of the people herein. Thank you all kindly for your continued acceptance of this unskillful old thief. What are some of us here after, seeking this 'no-thing' of Zen? Huángbò Xīyùn is one of the best to expound matters of Zen that I have had the benefit of coming across. If we happen to come to an iron wall that is fashioned completely of our own devices, how are we to get through? Time and again, I come back to the supremacy of the mundane; the instant my mind wants to fashion something fanciful, something to do, I try to cut it down and leave it alone. Perhaps that's the whole point.

Submitted December 15, 2018 at 11:08PM by WanderingRoninXIII https://ift.tt/2SKwUV4