Baizhang Huaihai [749-814]: If you realize it in this moment, then you've realized it.

A monk once asked – How can a person gain freedom? Baizhang said – If you realize it in this moment, then you've realized it. If you instantly cut off the emotional clinging of the self, all cravings and attachments, the greed and grasping, the notions of degraded and pure, in other words, all delusive thoughts; then you'll be like the sun or the moon hanging free in space, shining clearly... (you'll be like) a great elephant crossing a raging river – engulfed in the rapids but not loosing your footing. Neither heaven nor hell can pull you in. When you read a scripture or hear a teaching, the words all return to yourself... You'll see that all verbal teachings are only a reflection of the immediacy of self-nature and are just meant to point the way. Letting go of all sound and form, but not dwelling in the notion of detachment, and not holding any intellectual comprehension – this is the true practice of reading scriptures and hearing teachings. If you let everything be as it is, always acting with clarity according to the situation, this is truly dropping off all fetters.

When a person of the Way encounters all kinds of painful or pleasant, agreeable or disagreeable situations, their mind is not pushed around. Not thinking of fame or profit, clothes or food, and not seeking for any merit or blessing, they are no longer obstructed by anything in the world. With nothing to cling to, free from craving, they equally accept pain and pleasure. A coarse robe provides protection from the clod, simple food is all that's necessary to support the body. Letting go, they might appear like a fool, or like a deaf and mute person – but it is only then that one gains some understanding. If you extensively pursue intellectual understanding, seeking merit and wisdom, this is all just birth-and-death; it is useless for apprehending reality. Blown around by the wind of conceptual knowledge, such a person is drowned in the ocean of birth-and-death.

Encounter Dialogues and Discourses of Baizhang Huaihai [749-814], compiled by Satyavayu of Touching Earth Sangha

[Source: Terebess]

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Wandering Ronin commentary and questions: In my continued investigation into the question of 'what is mind?', I feel that I'm starting to see something more of the point of the investigation in the first place. If at a certain point in our practice and study we can become "like the sun or the moon hanging free in space, shining clearly", then we can say that nothing else truly needs to be done once we realize this completeness. Yet, could this also be a critical moment where real change and action upon this 'mind' be enabled?

If we are no longer tossed about or unaffected conceptually by the myriad things, doesn't this give us the chance to better control our actions and reactions towards them? Doesn't that put more power into our hands? For example, I may want to cause less problems and consternation for others around me in regular life, and learn better to "go with the flow" so to speak. Doesn't realization or a better understanding of mind make control of the self easier, enabling more skillful actions within the world, or is this not Zen?

Submitted February 06, 2019 at 09:04PM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2Ss3S09