Commentary on an Excerpt from Zen Master Linchi - Who would escape this Threefold World?

"Followers of the Way, you who are carrying out your activities before my eyes are no different from the Buddha and the patriarchs.¹ But you don't believe that and go searching for something outside. Make no mistake. There's no Dharma outside, and even what is on the inside can't be grasped.² You get taken up with the words from my mouth, but it would be better if you stopped all that and did nothing. Things already under way, don't go on with them. Things not yet under way, don't let them get under way. That's better for you than ten years traveling around on pilgrimages.

"The way I see it, there's no call for anything special. Just act ordinary, put on your clothes, eat your rice, pass the time doing nothing.³ You who come from here and there, you all have a mind to do something. You search for Buddha, search for the Dharma, search for emancipation, search for a way to get out of the threefold world. Idiots, trying to get out of the threefold world!⁴ Where will you go?

"Buddha, patriarchs—these are just laudatory words and phrases. Do you want to know what the threefold world is? It is nothing other than the mind-ground that you who are now listening to the Dharma are standing on.⁵ When you have a moment of greed in your mind, that is the world of desire. When you have a moment of anger in your mind, that is the world of form. When you have a moment of ignorance in your mind, that is the world of formlessness. These are the pieces of furniture in your house.

"The threefold world does not announce, 'I am the threefold world.' Rather it's you, followers of the Way, who do so, this person here in front of my eyes who in marvelous fashion shines his torch on the ten thousand things and sizes up the world—it's he who assigns names to the threefold world.⁶

NOTES FROM AN 🦉

1. If you could only see it as so, what need would there be for Buddha’s and Dharmas?

2. The family treasure exits the gates, what enters the gates isn’t it. So it is said that it isn’t found in words.

3. There is nothing to do, simply accord with the ordinary.

4. The Deva rings the bell tower.

5. The threefold world is the mindground, and the mindground is Buddha, Buddha is god, god is I, I am you and you are the threefold world, the mindground itself, Buddha manifested.

6. Ah, To know yourself!

FURTHER COMMENTARY

For those of us who examine the lexicon of the ancients, a few things become readily apparent.

First, they really didn’t hold distinctions between the ordinary and the extraordinary. When they looked at you they saw the truth, You are Buddha and Buddha is I.

Second, They don’t consider things outside yourself to be worth pursuing, fantasizing and lusting after, nor do they consider things inside yourself to be worthy of the attention, consideration and zeal with which we cling to them. The true mindset of a Tathagata is one of exceeding clarity, one without obstructions, lacking the mental constructions that we invariably form through our lives, that predetermine our actions in accord with our beliefs, ideas and inclinations. In every moment they act directly from the place of origination, without hesitation or concern.

Third, they don’t seek out extraordinary states of mind and being, neither yearning nor abhorring. They accord with the simple flow of ordinary things. They conserve nothing and progress nothing, content to simply be as such.

Fourth, they existed here, and never sought another place. They didn’t fantasize about heavenly realms, or fear the hell realms, they didn’t seek to ascend to the heavens or to avoid their mortality. There are few things Zen monks are more renowned for than their ability to be present as such at all times.

Fifth, Zen Monks did not have to seek elsewhere, for they found that everything was right here, at this very moment. They found the extraordinary within the ordinary, they found the supernatural within the natural. When they went seekling for Buddha in the world around them, Buddha stared back, and when they looked within for Buddha, Buddha was there, and when they opened their eyes, they realized Buddha had opened his. This interpenetration of the ordinary and extraordinary splits the concepts in twain, the supernatural sublimating within the natural and destroying itself in the process.

Sixth, Things do not come from the world, which before you blink is dead and gone. All things come from the one who sits atop sound and form, the one who is right here, reading this. The one who speaks before saying, who names before naming, who gives rise to form before substantiation.

Submitted March 11, 2022 at 09:11PM by Owlsdoom https://ift.tt/WFC1nQN