Thursday, August 20, 2015

Outside Mind There is Nothing

Hills are hills. Water is water. Monks are monks. Laymen are laymen. But these mountains, these rivers, the whole world itself, together with sun, moon and stars -- not one of them exists outside your minds! The vast chiliocosm exists only within you, so where else can the various categories of phenomena possibly be found? Outside Mind, there is nothing. The green hills which everywhere meet your gaze and that void sky that you see glistening above the earth -- not a hairsbreadth of any of them exists outside the concepts you have formed for yourself! So it is that every single sight and sound is but the Buddha's Eye of Wisdom. 

-Great Zen Master Huang-Po

Friday, August 14, 2015

Pass Through Fire Without Being Burnt


If you set out in quest of words and sentences, cudgeling your brains with their logical meanings, working over a thousand possibilities and ten thousand subtle distinctions, and creating endless questions and debates, all you will gain is a glib tongue, while all the time getting farther and farther away from Tao, with no rest for your wandering. If It could be found in the Sutras why should there be "a special transmission outside the scriptures"? But if you have really found your True Self, then you can pass through fire without being burnt. The important thing is your experiential realization of this state.

-Yunmen

The Time I Saw My True Self


Zhaozhou entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, "A metal buddha does not withstand the furnace. A wooden buddha does not withstand the fire. A mud buddha does not withstand water. The genuine buddha sits within you. "Bodhi" and "nirvana," "true thusness" and "buddha nature" -- these things are just clothes stuck to the body and they are known as "afflictions." Where is the actual ground-truth revealed?

Big mind is unborn. The myriad dharmas are flawless. Try sitting for twenty or thirty years, and if you still don't understand then cut off my head! The empty flowers of delusion and dreams -- disciples work so hard to grab them!

When nothing deviates from big mind, then the myriad dharmas are but one thusness. Since it can't be attained from outside, what will you try to grasp?

This nature existed before the appearance of the world. If the world ends, this will not end. From the time I saw my True Self, there hasn't been anyone else. There's just the One In Charge.