Inherent Buddha, water buffalo, and seeking.

These excerpts are from case 595 of the Dahui Shobogenzo. I've taken these passages to discuss because the caught my interest.

Master Laian said to an assembly, What are you people all coming to me looking for? If you want to become Buddhas, you are inherently Buddhas, yet you run elsewhere in haste, like thirsty deer chasing a mirage. When will you ever succeed? Oh, if you want to be Buddhas, just don’t have an impure mundane mentality with so much perverted clinging to objects, false thought, wrong consciousness and defiling desire; then you are truly enlightened Buddhas as beginners. Where else would you seek?

The first part is pretty simple and a common message from Zen masters. We seek Buddha even though we are inherently a Buddha. The doctrine of inherent enlightenment. It's the next part that gets me. We are inherently Buddha, but oh if we want to be Buddhas we have to not have "impure mundane mentality"? What is clinging to objects? What are false thoughts? Are there true thoughts too? What happened to the compulsive passions are Buddha?

I’ve just watched over a water buffalo: if it went off the path into the weeds, then I pulled it out; if it invaded people’s plantings, then I disciplined it with a whip. Eventually it came to accept human speech nicely. Now it has turned into a white ox on open ground, always present, standing out all day long, not going away even if chased.

Huangbo makes it clear Zen requires no practice, method, or advancement by stages. Yet we have an image of a buffalo requiring discipline. I think we could definitely fit the idea of following the precepts into that. The white ox is obviously after enlightenment.

If you seek in the slightest you won’t see. Therefore Mr. Zhi said “Pursuing a search inside and out, it is not there at all; applied in action objectively, it’s all very much there.”

If you seek you deviate. Like Nanquan said. The last line to me suggests the Self is an object to be pursued as if outside of us or even inside us. It instead is recognized as function. Light and lamp are one.

Submitted April 03, 2023 at 07:52PM by koancomentator https://ift.tt/Q4pHnsj