Posts Tagged → awakening

wind up unburdened, as you were before

josef kote

 

The essence of awareness,

complete and clear, is a formless body.

Don’t mistake far and near based on intellectual opinion.

When thoughts differ, you’re blind to the substance

of the mysteries. When mind diverges,

you’re not neighbor to

the Way.

 

When subjectively

discriminating myriad things,

you get submerged in the objects before you.

When conscious awareness is fragmented,

you lose the basic reality.

 

If you understand

such expressions with complete

clarity, you’ll wind up unburdened,

as you were before.

 

Caoshan

 

how can it be taken by force?

one robe, one bowl

 
Having left the Fifth Ancestral Teacher’s place, Hui Neng traveled south for two months, and had reached the Ta Yu Range. He was pursued by the monk Hui Ming, who was originally a general, accompanied by several hundred men, who wanted to seize the robe and bowl (emblematic of succession to the ancestral teachers).

Ming was the first to overtake him. The Sixth Ancestral Teacher threw down the robe and bowl on a rock and said, “This robe signifies faith: how can it be taken by force?” Ming tried to pick up the robe and bowl, but was unable to move them. At that point he said, “I have come for the Dharma, not for the robe.”

The Ancestral Teacher said, “Since you’ve come for the Dharma, you should put to rest all your motivations, and don’t give rise to a single thought, and I will explain for you.” After a silence, he said, “Without thinking of good, and without thinking of evil, at just such a time, which is your original face?”

At these words, Hui Ming was greatly enlightened. He also asked, “Besides the intimate words and meaning that struck home a moment ago, is there any further intimate message?”

The ancestral teacher said, “If it were said to you, it wouldn’t be intimate. If you turn around and reflect, what’s intimate is in you.”

 

Dahui

i don’t know

🪷

 

like phrases written on water

After offering a convincing response when Kaso later challenged the validity of his awakening, Ikkyu went on to admit that he had practiced for a decade “seething with anger” only to find that as the raucous cawing of a crow shattered the evening’s silence “an enlightened disciple of the Buddha suddenly surfaced” from within the mud of his emotional torment.

Ikkyu continued practicing under Kaso for another four years, earning the deep respect of his master as well as a reputation for eccentricity. According to a biography completed by Ikkyu’s disciples not long after his death, when Kaso offered Ikkyu a “seal” of his enlightenment (inka) — a document essential for anyone seeking advancement in the Rinzai hierarchy — Ikkyu refused to accept it. Later discovering that Kaso had given the document to a laywoman for safekeeping, Ikkyu took possession of the inka, tore it to shreds, and asked his disciples to burn it. 

On another occasion, when Kaso was hosting a memorial ceremony for his own master, Ikkyu spurned the custom of wearing ceremonial raiment and showed up in patched robes and grass sandals, drawing the considerable ire of the rest of the community. Questioned by Kaso about his behavior, Ikkyu said that he was dressed simply, as a monk should be, while everyone else was prancing about in sumptuous “shit covers”. At the end of the service, when Kaso who was asked who would be his Dharma successor, he reportedly surveyed the gathering and said, perhaps with some reluctance, “the crazy one”.

…Ikkyu had devoted himself to Kaso precisely because he carried the torch of Daito’s personification of a “true person of no rank” — a rigorously ascetic approach to Zen exemplified by Daito having tempered his own enlightenment by living under a bridge with beggars and other outcasts for five years.

 

Peter Hershock

 

Having

realized understanding

kindness and the excellent nature

of opportunities and dangers, one ably

breaks through the net of doubts snaring all

sentient beings. Departing from ‘is’ and ‘is not’,

and other such bondages…leaping over quantity and

calculation, one is without obstruction in whatever

one does. With penetrating understanding of the

present situation and its informing patterns,

one’s actions are like the sky giving rise

to clouds: suddenly they exist, and

then they don’t. Not leaving

behind any obstructing

traces, they are like

phrases written

on water.

 

Ikkyu

 

a priceless jewel in your own body

caris reid

 

Each of you has a

priceless jewel in your own body.

It radiates light through your eyes, shining

through the mountains, river, and earth. It radiates light

through your ears, taking in all sounds, good and bad.

It radiates light through your six senses day

and night. This is also called

absorption in light.

 

You yourself do not

recognize it, but it is in your

physical body, supporting it inside

and out, not letting it tip over. Even if you

are carrying a double load of rocks

over a single-log bridge,

it still doesn’t let

you fall over.

 

What is it?

If you seek in the slightest,

it cannot be seen.

 

Ta-an

like the moon reflected in water

koho shoda

 

My teaching

which has come down

from the ancient Buddhas

is not dependent on meditation

(dhyana) or on diligent application

of any kind. When you attain the insight as

attained by the Buddha, you realize that Mind is

Buddha and Buddha is Mind, that Mind, Buddha,

sentient beings, Bodhi (enlightenment),

and Klesa (passions)  are of one and

the same substance while

they vary in names.

 

You should know that

your own mind−essence is neither subject

to annihilation nor eternally subsisting, is neither

pure nor defiled, that it remains perfectly undisturbed and

self−sufficient and the same with the wise and the ignorant, that it

is not limited in its working, and that it is not included in the

category of mind (citta), consciousness (manas), or

thought (vijnana). The three worlds of desire,

form, and no−form, and the six paths

of existence are no more than

manifestations of your

mind itself.

 

They are all like the moon

reflected in water or images in the

mirror. How can we speak of them as being

born or as passing away? When you come

to this understanding, you will be

furnished with all the things

you are in need of.

 
Shih−t’ou