by Sengstan (Third Zen Patriarch)
The great way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the Truth
Then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
Is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the Mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The way is perfect; like vast space
where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in inner feelings of emptiness.
Be serene in the oneness of things
and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
your effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness.
(cont...)
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Zen and the Art of Non-Duality
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(...from previous)
Those who do not live in the single way
fail in both activity and passivity,
assertion and denial.
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality;
to assert the emptiness of things
is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find the meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
Do not search for the truth;
only cease to cherish options.
Do not remain in the dualistic state
avoid such pursuits carefully.
If there is even a trace
of this and that, of right and wrong,
the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend,
and when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.
When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.
When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes,
as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.
Things are objects because of the subject (mind);
the mind (subject) is such because of things (objects).
Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.
In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine
you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.
To live in the Great Way
is neither easy nor difficult,
but those with limited views
are fearful and irresolute:
the faster they hurry, the slower they go,
and the clinging (attachment) cannot be limited:
even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment
is to go astray.
Just let things be in their own way
and there will be neither coming or going.
Obey the nature of things (your own nature),
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
When thought is bondage the truth is hidden,
for everything is murky and unclear,
and the burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from distinctions and separations?
If you wish to move in the One Way
do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to accept them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise man strives to no goals
but the foolish man fetters himself.
There is one Dharma, not many;
distinctions arise
from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind
is the greatest of all mistakes.
Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams or flowers in air:
foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong:
such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.
If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things
are as they are, of single essence.
To understand the mystery of this one-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen equally
the timeless Self-essence is reached.
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in the causeless, relationless state.
Consider movement stationary
and the stationary in motion,
both movement and rest disappear.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate finality
no law or description applies.
For the unified mind in accord with the Way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and life in true faith is possible.
With a single stroke we are freed from bondage;
nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.
All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no exertion of the mind's power.
Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination
are of no value.
In this world of Suchness
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality
just simply say when doubt arises, "Not two."
In this "Not two" nothing is separate,
nothing is excluded.
No matter when or where,
enlightenment means entering this truth.
And this truth is beyond extension or
diminution in time or space;
in it a single thought is ten thousand years.
Emptiness here, Emptiness there,
but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small;
no difference, for definitions have vanished
and no boundaries are seen.
So too with Being and non-Being.
Don't waste time in doubts and arguments
that have nothing to do with this.
One thing, all things:
move among and intermingle,
without distinction.
To live in this realization
is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.
To live in this faith is the road to non-duality,
because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is
no yesterday
no tomorrow
no today.
Words, indeed. I'm not sure whether lengthy quotations really fulfill the criterion of "honest and positive dialogue"?
Others may take a different view, Kapila, but speaking for myself, I would rather hear what YOU have to say.
Do you know, I rather think this is what Kapila wishes to say?
Kapila?
Kevin, I appreciate this is not, on the surface of things, the purpose of this blog. This is why I posted the bulk of the quote off of the main page.
What I wish to say is:
I wanted to share something that moved me deeply with anyone who might appreciate it. This is not a 'blind' theoretical posting. I found it beautiful and illuminating and it reminded me of something...the essence of the search. So much other 'stuff' gets in the way.
Kevin, I think you have a tendency in many of your exchanges here to misinterpret the intentions of people. You seem to hear hostility in many places where there doesn't seem to be any to me...? If you wished to discourage this kind of thing, you would probably have been better off ignoring it. Instead you choose to respond with what sounds to me like antagonism. i.e, your opening comment "words indeed" comes from dismissal and sarcasm.
Kapila,
I didn't perceive any hostility, and you read hostility into my response, not the other way round. Whether I tend to do that is another matter - you could be right.
I was sure that this passage had inspired you, but I'm still not sure in what way. Do you think that quoting it could be a way of not expressing yourself?
Laura, in these ecological days I think oil is no longer recommended for supposedly troubled waters ...
Hi Kevin
We're still at least partially 'missing' one another but never mind.
You said:
"Do you think that quoting it could be a way of not expressing yourself?"
No. Interestingly, what has accurately expressed the inner situation most recently has been a couple of artworks that I have seen. They describe what is being experienced better than I could put it myself.
On this subject, I believe there is a question going round the school at the moment, "what is spiritual authority?". An answer that arises here to that question:
- when someone/something can describe my situation better than I can describe it myself; and this is recognised.
eg, this is true for quotes, artworks, penetrating comments by tutors etc when they reveal something that was previously 'closed' to me or re-awaken memory of what has become 'closed'. There has to be a certain potency in the source to have the power to do this, though clearly the receptivity of the recipient is a factor, hence perhaps difficult to 'measure'.
Kapila,
I am not at all saying that the words you have quoted are without value; nor that you may have had a powerful insight connected with them; but all of that is opaque to everyone else until you express exactly what they mean to you.
As the exception to prove the rule, here is something Emerson said:
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
There was a young man so inclined
To severe and inflinching right mind,
Of sweetness and light he had plenty alright,
But popped at the wonky aligned.
Que?
A handclap in Zen, so it's said,
May be single but heard in the head.
To bring down to heaven,
One may have to leaven,
The head with the heart so it's said.
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