Onibaba Zen: Former Worthies Gather at the Mount Shuang-feng and Each Talks of the Dark Principle

Friday, December 19, 2014

Former Worthies Gather at the Mount Shuang-feng and Each Talks of the Dark Principle

Monk Parsva says: "The teachings of the canon are to be taken as commentary on the mind ground. Sit silently in empty fusion."

Asvaghosa Bodhisattva says: "Mind is the same as space. Space is no mind. This mind is also that way."

Dhyana Master Ch'ao says: "The correct and the incorrect are equally usable."

Dhyana Master Buddha says: "The extreme principle is wordless. The sagely mind is unimpeded."

Reverend K'o says: "Correct mindfulness is uninterrupted and intrinsically pure."

Superior Man Yu says: "Realize the real and lose objects. Quiet anxieties and have no thought."

Master Min says: "When mind is pure without anxieties, Dharma will spontaneously appear."

Dhyana Master Neng says: "The mind range is sameness, uniformity, and without admixture."

Dhyana Master Hsien says: "Correct thoughts so that they do not arise. Concentration and insight are to be used equally."

Master Tao says: "Stimulating thoughts is bondage. No thought is release."

Dhyana Master Tang says: "Empty deception does not exist, yet it is real. But it is still not the locus in which to rest mind." Also: "When one enters meditation, one corrects thoughts and objects. When one exits from meditation, one examines illusions and reflections."

Dhyana Master Hsiu says: "In the pure locus gaze at purity."

(translated by Jeffrey Broughton, The Bodhidharma Anthology)

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"Put Strength Into It, Abandon Conceit"

This page is a direct, yet still veiled, transmission of the Way. Zen is just the "ordinary" and straightfoward mind of no-thought, not the calculating mind that refuses to put forth effort, shies from heartbreak, and resists all transformation.

If you've landed on this page and you are reading this note, you are probably interested in Zen's moon-clear Realization (Kensho, Wu/Satori -- maybe if you're lucky even Daigo).

How can I help you? Maybe I can't! That won't stop me from doing my best. How can I help it? There is nothing willful about the instantaneousness of the moon shining everywhere, getting reflected everywhere. Cup water in your hands and there it is! Wonderful. "Intoxicated by moonlight." "A hammer striking the Void -- before and after, the mysterious sounds going everywhere."

What do you want Zen Realization for anyway? Don't you know that Master Yunmen compared the Buddha to a "dried shit stick?" In any case, it's so simple nobody will ever recognize that you "have" it, and they won't be able to envy you any more than you envy a dusty tramp sitting by the road eating a raw turnip.

Still, there are some who want to penetrate right through to the Mind-Essence. Maybe you've already had a small glimpse of your essential nature, like the moon gliding out briefly from behind clustering dark clouds. That would be extremely helpful.

"Satori" in the Japanese kanji breaks down into the radicals "I" and "Mind." It is the direct experience of the true mind. You ask, How will I know when I've had it? I answer: You'll know. Is the hair standing up on the back of your neck yet?

The "Mind-to-Mind" transmission of Zen is always eccentric, idiosyncratic. It can even be hazardous to your social relationships by making you seem crazy. Do you still want the Mind-Seal?

For more Great Zen see: DSZ.

"Being is what is visible, and Non-Being is the vessel. That which manifests Being is Non-Being. A crystal, for example, is clear and transparent in essence, and though its essential voidness has nothing to do with either colors or patterns it can give birth to both fire and water. How is it that both fire and water, which have different natures, can be produced from a colorless, empty essence?" -Yugaku shudo fukensho, Zeami.