Huangbo Xiyun: If you understand that these eighteen realms have no objective existence, you will bind the six harmoniously blended 'elements' into a single spiritual brilliance—a single spiritual brilliance which is the One Mind.

The term unity refers to a homogeneous spiritual brilliance which separates into six harmoniously blended 'elements'. The homogeneous spiritual brilliance is the One Mind, while the six harmoniously blended 'elements' are the six sense organs. These six sense organs become severally united with objects that defile them—the eyes with form, the ear with sound, the nose with smell, the tongue with taste, the body with touch, and the thinking mind with entities. Between these organs and their objects arise the six sensory perceptions, making eighteen sense-realms in all.

If you understand that these eighteen realms have no objective existence, you will bind the six harmoniously blended 'elements' into a single spiritual brilliance—a single spiritual brilliance which is the One Mind. All students of the Way know this, but cannot avoid forming concepts of 'a single spiritual brilliance' and 'the six harmoniously blended elements'. Accordingly they are chained to entities and fail to achieve a tacit understanding of original Mind.

Huangbo Xiyun [died 850?], On the Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1958

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Wandering Ronin commentary and questions: First, there is the ceaseless questioning: what is this Zen, and what does it all mean? Then for those that see it, there is the answer: all of the teachings point directly to mind. Then there is doubt: I still don't understand, but it can't be that simple; I must have misunderstood in some way. Then, there is more study and the development of a practice: I don't understand this Zen or what it points to, so I must do something in order to grasp it fully. Then, the potential of acceptance: I assume the responsibility of all things as from my own mind. Then, the settling: I realize now that I create my very own suffering through thought and separation of self and other, and now I realize that there is nothing to do here.

I wrote these potential situations of the student of Zen in order to elucidate a few overall points; as you can see, every single position from beginning to end involves and pertains to mind. No matter where one turns, whether they understand or not, it's all a situation of varying degrees of freedom and vantage points regarding mind again and again. It can take people so long to come to an understanding of Zen because of the very nature of the subject-object split: it is a huge and potentially unacceptable responsibility to realize that we are responsible for actualizing all things and our reactions to those things. The myriad things of the world are without flaw or fault until we make it so. We generate our own views and reactions to these meaningless things, and it is not easy to simply accept that phenomena have no inherent meanings until we apply them. Whether learning to accept responsibility for our own applied concepts about our entire worlds, or realizing that we are already within and of the Void itself, as Foyan teaches, this is a matter for strong people. Void is Void and we are already undone; the essence of Zen is to accept and realize this at once.

Submitted October 05, 2019 at 09:40PM by WanderingRoninXIII https://ift.tt/2LP2bWj