The essence of mind is tranquil, spacious, illumined by joy,
unattached to thoughts or the thoughtless.
When it appears you may fill with a gratitude that slowly turns to bliss.
If a thought of others emerges there may be love.
Love is embracing all and being embraced by all.
Love passes: tranquillity resumes: the spaciousness sustains itself.
The thought of 'me' is absent.
Self-concern is no longer there.
'I' is and is not.
Desireless, one rests in that which is wherever it is.
Everything is as it is.
Time becomes continuous presence.
This may occur anywhere.
There are no conditions.
It is not dependent on meditation.
It is not dependent on "kensho".
It arises in its own time.
All this is to be tested.
1/ A glimpse of the essence of mind is to know the mind uncovered by Buddha. It's clouding over is the return to Samsara. In spite of vexations, those who can 'turn it on' are baby Buddhas. Those who cannot have yet to start. Good intentions, casual practice and dharma gossip are not enough.
To find this innate basis of being it is necessary to uncover the essence of mind, the primordial root of experience. This is the "insight" or prajna that ships us to the other shore.
Mahaprajnaparamita
This shore is the world of Samsara dominated by self concern; the worries of self concern; fame; gain; rank; credentials; pain; sickness; fear of ill health and death; the omnipresence of lack, suspecting this self is not what it seems and the dread that brings. Maybe I am not! When such thoughts and the emotions that sustain them are dropped or weaken then the essence of mind has a chance to reappear. At once we cross the river, we attain the other shore.
This that we call 'essence' has never gone away for it is the innate basis of experience. Yet most have never found it, never even suspected its existence. Others have stumbled across it, wondered at it, lost it. For them the sense of lacking something is more intense. They may make the error of developing spiritual desire and lose the path in projected wanderings among the fantasies of cultures as if there was something to be found outside themselves. So of course there is fear, sense of loss, spiritual wanderlust and futile practising.
Some people have even uncovered the essence of mind fully, "seen its nature" but, failing in subsequent comprehension, they may have made it into something to desire. They risk becoming despirited through effort after something elsewhere. They become like wandering ghosts having known but now not knowing. Pitiful.
The essence of mind underlies the mind of thinking and feeling, it is it's basis. With the essence clearly bright everything comes and goes without attachment. It is likewise the womb of thoughts activated by memory, set going by fear. It is as it is. Like the sky sometimes clouded, sometimes clear.
Tathagatagarbha
The womb of that which comes and goes - Buddha.
Birth happens but the "unborn", the pre-born, is not lost.
Retain the contact and the essence is seen.
But how?
Practice is the start. What to practise?
Paying attention is the start.
2/ Paying attention means turning the gaze around to look within. Looking within is to see the mind's activity exactly as it is without judgement, saying "Yes" to everything that appears. Know that if judgement arises you will be lost in some cul de sac of your imagination. At first one sees thoughts, hears thoughts, thinks thoughts. Become aware of their nature, their focus moving and changing. Thoughts are like a screen hiding your innate basis of mind. Without engaging with them look through the screen, and penetrate to the realm where the emotions that generate the thoughts lie. Here again become aware of their nature, moving and changing. And these too are a screen. Look through this screen, penetrate to the realm below feeling where silence reigns.
All this is like diving into the sea. First there are the wave crests moving as thought, then there is the surge of the water below the waves, emotions. But deeper down the ocean is still. If you are watchful you will fine huge movements, a diapason, also surging here. There lies the true dragon, the root of life.
This practice is not easy. If successful you will begin to know who you are. You are these waves, these surging waters, but you also are an unfathomable depth, the silent deeps, the abyss. As you become familiar with the patterns so disclosed you get to know your complexes, neuroses, attachments, problems, samskaras, but you also will discover the deeps that lie beyond them. Do not get fixated by any pictures on the screen.
If you dive too fast you may have the joy of touching the tranquil essence but you will not fully comprehend it for you must needs return to the surface engaging the other layers. Yet such a dive gives us insight, courage. Here you may 'taste the chocolate'. Full comprehension develops later as the practice and the fruit become established and their meaning clearer.
Here are two ways to dive.
a/ Slow the breath and take a deep one. On slow exhalation follow the breath out and "watch" it disappear. 'Look' into the place where it has gone. Pause long enough to see clearly into that place where nothing moves. Then breathe again. Repeat. But do not set up a breathing exercise. Do this alternating with periods of normal breathing. With some practice the normal breathing also discloses silences. Later on the silence extends. It is there at the beginning as well as the end of a breath. It is around the breath. Soon you are breathing within the silence which now remains. You are in the doorway of the essence of mind.
b/ Contemplate the question "Who is repeating Buddha's name?" To find out start repeating Buddhas name. "Amitobha Amitobha Amitobha." Once you have established a rhythm, suddenly stop and 'look' into the place where the word would have arisen had you said it. There is 'nothing' there. This nothing needs to be entered. You will find the nothing expands until it too surrounds the repetition. When you stop the practice, the silence of that emptiness remains. Later on you may develop the practice of holding other hua t'ou in this fashion, just as Master Hsu yun has taught.
3/ For many of us, attention never leaves the surging wave crests of our obsessive thoughts. It becomes impossible to penetrate deeper. It becomes essential to calm the waves. Once we know this to be true, we take up a practice of calming the mind - samatha. A sound method which we have developed at the Maenllwyd is the preliminary practice of 'The Circle of the Arms' 1. This can be used to establish the Total Body Awareness that is stage one of Silent illumination 2. It can also be a preliminary move in developing Mahamudra 3 or used simply as a calming practice in itself.
4/ Once a degree of tranquillity has been established we may enquire into the meaning of that tranquillity. This is a shift vital to the practice of both Silent Illumination and Mahamudra. Such enquiry is however not an intellectual matter. It is simply a close looking. It is as if a goldfish bowl containing two fishes were placed before you. You are asked "What is in the Goldfish bowl?" To find out you simply look. At first you will see only two fish. Later you will also be aware of the water. Seeing the "water" is a metaphor here for an intensification of silence. The tranquillity deepens and begins to 'shine', it stabilises. One feels as if "flying like an eagle" as the Tibetan lamas say. The essence of mind is appearing.
The onset of the uncovering may be known by a shift in conscious awareness. Sensory experience suddenly becomes more vivid, time appears to stop. One may find the eyes fixated on some object that 'glows' in a way not seen before. What is happening is that the evaluative mind that projects into the past and future and maintains thinking has withdrawn, has 'let go'. This withdrawal removes a filter from experience. Instead of everything being subject to an almost invisible but continuous evaluation fired by desire, filled by the needs of self, there is just an openness to that which lies before the senses. Objects thus appear clean-clear, precise, within a lucidity of awareness that does not judge. Intentionality, that is "going on about something", has ceased. One can say one's attention is completely given over to the awareness of what is - in all its singularity. If you feel the onset of such a condition, do nothing. Whatever arises needs to take its own course without "you" getting in the way. One move - and its gone.
5/ The main methods of Chan, hua t'ou, gong an (koans) and Silent Illumination all develop from this point and you should learn them from a teacher. You need to find out which practice is best suited to your karmic condition.
6/ All these methods are simply means to an end - the uncovering of the essence of mind, the basis of experiencing. Remember it is not found only at the end of a search for it has always been present beneath all your striving. The striving itself precludes its recognition. This is the paradox of Chan meditative practice. To know the paradox one has to recognise that the form of things, thoughts, feelings, neuroses are all empty and that the basic emptiness of the basis of mind takes up these forms as it adopts its functions. Form and emptiness are in a state of continual co-emergence.
At this point you can understand no further without practice. For most of us only through practice will the meaning, the reference, of these words, become clear. This then is Dharma knowledge, a matter of heart much more than mind. And yet there are those for whom one word at the right moment, one bird call or a tile falling off the roof will do it. Suddenly you are there. This may perhaps take the form of what is called "kensho" 'seeing the nature'. Those with loose minds may find it surprisingly suddenly. Others, bearing heavy karma, complex emotional stress or fixated opinions will take a longer time, realising experiential truth more slowly. It is necessary to accept who one is in patience. To want to be someone else is mere foolishness. The sceptic, the depressed or the disoriented may well say. Why bother? Are we not all going to die anyway? Perhaps these worries will never go away. What has the fate of the Universe got to do with us? Would we not be happier in the less sophisticated, non-yogic, belief system of some pre-modern Western religion?4
The answer to these questions lies within the experience only truly found by practice. In this Westernised 21st century world of spiritual alienation, distress, lack of identification with roots, cynicism and cultural relativity, no merely wordy answer can satisfy. Everyone has a clever argument. Most dharma talk is mere chatter because the speakers have no acquaintance with the essential. Yet one can perhaps respond as follows: in uncovering the essence of mind one discovers the root of personal being which in turn becomes the root of value, of a sense of worthwhileness. Why is this? Because in the laying aside of ego concerns one discovers that all things and all people are in a relationship that is at root the nature of the cosmos itself in universal interconnectivity. And such intuitive discovery parallels those of many scientific investigators today5. Here then loneliness disappears, love arises, the dualism of self and other is transcended, the full potential of human being can be realised. This then is realisation. At its full extent we call it 'enlightenment'. But these are all matters to be tested. Why not have a go?
Ch'uang-teng Chien-ti
Aug 13th 2000. Maenllwyd.
- Details of this method may be given in a later presentation. The best way to know it is to come on retreat and practise.
- See New Chan Forum 15: Illuminating Silence. Summer 1997.
- See Crook J. H. and J. Low 1997 The Yogins of Ladakh. Motilal Banarsidass. Delhi. Chapter 17.
- For example following Professor Paul Williams, intellectually expert in Madhyamaka, back into the easy simplicities of the Catholic faith. See The Tablet. Summer 2000
- See David Brown, Science and Chan - Is there a Conflict?, in New Chan Forum 23, pages 38-44, Winter 2000
