A mysterious light

An awakened teacher spiritually radiates the teaching which is not dependent on words or physical signs.  Invisibly, it penetrates through all conditioned things even our day to day life.  We can't desire it nor can we grasp it.  It comes to us having surpassed our darkness; only when we are thoroughly empty of the desire for the conditioned.  This explains why many can start Zen but few if any will complete its demanding journey.

When Zen is transmitted from one culture to another the only thing that is transmitted is the culture which is reshaped by the new culture but nothing is spiritually transmitted.  The unconditioned light of Mahayana (mahāyana-prabhāsa) embraces the world but the world does not know or recognize it.  Those empowered by it are its worthy teachers.

Almost all traditions of Zen do not teach this although it is fundamental to the the Lanka School 楞伽宗 from which Zen arose.  This is at the core of Zen’s great mystery and why it is so easy to misunderstand Zen.  This light explains how the Buddha actually taught but it also explains a Buddha’s compassion.

It should be obvious that deluded beings only follow conditioned reality as it unfolds and reveals itself in their day to day life.  But Zen is always pointing beyond it to what cannot be grasped by the senses.  It is not about this world but points directly to what transcends it.  And Zen fails miserably when it tries to minister to the needs of its parishioners who are trying to repair their broken lives and misdeeds brought about by their desires for the conditioned.

https://zennist.typepad.com/zenfiles/2021/10/a-mysterious-light.html

Daowu asked, "What is the great meaning of the Buddhadharma?"
Shitou said, "Not attaining. Not knowing."
Daowu asked, "Is there anything beyond this?"
Shitou said, "The sky does not obstruct the white clouds flight."

Leonard Cohen photographed at Mount Baldy Monastery, Calif. in 1995.

Love Itself

"The light came through the window

Straight from the sun above

And so inside my little room

There plunged the rays of love

In streams of light I clearly saw

The dust you seldom see,

Out of which the nameless makes

A name for one like me

I'll try to say a little more

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door

Then love itself

Love itself was gone

All busy in the sunlight

The flecks did float and dance

And I was tumbled up with them

In formless circumstance

I'll try to say a little more

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door

Then love itself

Love itself was gone

Then I came back from where I'd been

My room, it looked the same

But there was nothing left between

The nameless and the name

All busy in the sunlight

The flecks did float and dance

And I was tumbled up with them

In formless circumstance

I'll try to say a little more

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door

Then love itself

Love itself was gone

Love itself

Love itself was gone"

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen / Sharon Robinson

Official video

https://youtu.be/DngaLm5fAvk

Yuanwu (1063-1135)  Entering the Path

The Tao is originally without words, but we use words to reveal the Tao. People who truly embody the Tao penetrate it in the mind and clarify it at its very basis. They strip off thousands and thousands of layers of sweaty shirts sticking to their skin and open through to awaken to the real, true, immutable essence, which is just as it is: originally real and pure and luminous and wondrous, wholly empty and utterly silent.

When you reach the point where not a single thought is born and before and after are cut off, you walk upon the scenery of the fundamental ground. All the wrong perceptions and wrong views of self and others and "is" and "is not" that make up the defiled mind of birth and death are no longer there. You are completely cleansed and purified, and you have complete certainty. Then you are no different from all the other enlightened people since time immemorial.

You are at peace, not fabricating anything, not clinging to anything, freely pervading everything by being empty, perfectly fused with everything, without boundaries. You eat and dress according to the time and season and have the integral realization of true normality. This is what it means to be a true non-doing, unaffected Wayfarer.

In sum, it depends on the fundamental basis being illuminated and the six sense faculties being pure and still. Knowledge and truth merge, and mind and objects join. There is no profundity to be considered deep and no marvel to be considered wondrous. When it comes to practical application, you naturally know how to harmonize with everything. This is called "finding the seat and putting on the robe."

After this you see on your own. You never consent to bury yourself at the verbal level in the public cases of the ancients or to make your living in the ghost cave or under the black mountain. The only thing you consider essential is enlightenment and deep realization. You naturally arrive at the stage of unaffected ordinariness, which is the ultimate in simplicity and ease. But you never agree to sit there as though dead, falling into the realm of nothingness and unconcern.

This is why, in all the teaching methods they employed, the enlightened adepts since antiquity thought the only important thing was for the people being taught to stand out alive and independent, so that ten thousand people couldn't trap them, and to realize that the vehicle of the school of transcendence does actually exist.

The enlightened adepts never ever made rigid dogmatic definitions, thereby digging pitfalls to bury people in. Anyone who does anything like this is certainly playing with mud pies - he is not someone who has passed boldly through to freedom, not someone who truly has the enlightened eye.

Therefore, we do not eat other people's leftovers by accepting stale formulas and worn-out clichés, for to do so would mean being tied up to a hitching post for donkeys. Not only would this bury the Zen style, it would also mean being unable to penetrate through birth and death oneself. Even worse would be to hand on slogans and clichés and subjective interpretations to future students and to become one blind person leading a crowd of blind people and proceeding together into a fiery pit.

Do you think this would only be a minor calamity? It would cause the true religion to weaken and fade, and make the comprehensive teaching design of the enlightened ancestors collapse. How painful that would be!

Therefore, in studying the Tao, the first requirement is to select a teacher with true knowledge and correct insight. After that, you put down your baggage and, without any question of how long it will take, you work continuously and carefully on this task. Don't be afraid that it is painful and difficult and hard to get into. Just keep boring in - you must penetrate through completely.

Haven't you seen Muzhou's saying? "If you haven't gained entry, you must gain entry. Once you have gained entry, don't turn your back on your old teacher."

When you manage to work sincerely and preserve your wholeness for a long time, and you go through a tremendous process of smelting and forging and refining and polishing in the furnace of a true teacher, you grow nearer and more familiar day by day, and your state becomes secure and continuous.

Keep working like this, maintaining your focus for a long time still, to make your realization of enlightenment unbroken from beginning to end. The things of the world and the buddhadharma are fused into one whole. Everywhere in everything you have a way out - you do not fall into objects or states or get turned around by anything.

At a bustling crossroads in the marketplace, amid the endless waves of life - this is exactly the right place to exert effort.

Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu, trans. by J.C. Cleary and Thomas Cleary,  pgs. 72-74

 Ramana Maharshi

 Be still. Apart from this the mind has no task to do or thought to think.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 773

 

If you remain still, without paying attention to this, without paying attention to that, and without paying attention to anything at all, you will, simply through your powerful attention to being, become the reality, the vast eye, the unbounded space of consciousness.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 647

 

Because that state is taught by silence, and also because it is attained by remaining in silence, it is called silence. The sage is in silence always, even when he speaks.

Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, verse 539

 

Silence is the most potent form of work. However vast and emphatic the scriptures may be, they fail in their effect. The Guru is quiet and peace prevails in all. His silence is more vast and emphatic than all the scriptures put together.

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 398

 

There is no reaching the Self. If the Self were to be reached, it would mean that the Self is not now and here, but that it should be got anew. What is got afresh will also be lost. So it will be impermanent. What is not permanent is not worth striving for. So, I say, the Self is not reached. You are the Self; you are already That.

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 251

 

When one remains without thinking one understands another by means of the universal language of silence.

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 243

 

There is a state when words cease and silence prevails

Maharshi’s Gospel, page 14

 

O foolish mind who is suffering due to the desire for the petty pleasures of this world and of the next, if you remain quiet [i.e. without desire] you will certainly attain that State of Bliss which surely transcends the pleasures of these two.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 379

 

None can confront and overcome the mind. Ignore it, then, as something false and unreal. Know the Self-Awareness as the real ground and stand firm rooted in it. Then the mind’s movements will gradually subside. If the noise of thoughts rising incessantly within does not subside, the ineffable state of silence will not be revealed.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 921

 

When one refrains from looking out and noting outward objects, and instead abides within the Heart in Self-Awareness, the ego disappears. The pure silence that then shines forth is the goal of Knowledge.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 1194

 

The end of pain, the bliss of peace results from egoless awareness, and not at all from verbal wisdom.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 532

 

Having become free from concepts, which are afflicting thoughts, and with the ‘I am the body’ idea completely extinguished, one ends up as the mere eye of grace, the non-dual expanse of consciousness. This is the supremely fulfilling vision of God

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 348

 

Having restrained the deceitful senses, and having abandoned mental concepts, you should stand aloof in your real nature. In that state of Self-Abidance in which you remain firmly established in the consciousness of the Heart, Sivam will reveal itself.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 349

 

The true vision of reality that is free from veiling ignorance is the state in which one shines in the Heart as the ocean of bliss, the inundation of grace. In the mauna experience that surges there as wholly Self, and which is impossible to think about, not a trace of grief or discontent exists for the jiva.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 350

 

Though that state of being the real Self is called the state of knowledge, it is one in which there is none of the three: the knower, the object known, and the act of knowing. That being the case, what does one know there, by what means, and who is there to know? It must be understood that knowledge is just a name for the state of being the Self.

Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, verse 40

 

Except for the one who has completely cut the tie of desires, the false appearance [that he is a suffering jiva] will not cease. Therefore, without any hesitation, one should cut even the desire for the great Divine Happiness.

Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 378

 

There is a two-fold ignorance, named as knowledge and ignorance, which is experienced by those not aware of the real Self. This pair is unreal just like all else.

Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, verse 276

 

“In that state doubts do not arise since the sage is ever firm in his awareness of the true Self. There he remains without affirmations and vacillations, immersed in the depths of peace, the mind having become extinct.”

Sri Ramana Paravidyopanishad, verse 569

https://tomdas.com/2020/05/22/ramana-maharshi-summa-irru-be-still/

 

千崎如幻 Senzaki Nyogen (1876–1958)

Dharma name: 朝露如幻 Chōro Nyogen

Choro Nyogen, Dai Osho Choro Nyogen (1876-1958) is most usually referenced under the name Nyogen Senzaki Sensei. Choro means “morning dew” and Nyogen means “like a phantasm”. He himself commented many times on his pilgrimage as a nameless and homeless monk, remembering that he began life as an abandoned baby in Siberia, the son of a Japanese mother and a Russian father. A brilliant young student, he finished the Chinese Tripitaka by age 18, and became a monk. He loved his teacher, but came to reject what he called “Cathedral Zen” with its rather worldly hierarchy of titles and authority. He loved his years in Japan as priest of a little temple where he was a “hands-on” director of its kindergarten. When he set up a Zen center in San Francisco, he called it a “mentorgarden”. Strout McCandless reports that he once said “I want to be an American Hotei, a happy Jap in the streets”. (Ironically, he was interred in a camp during WWII). Senzaki actively searched for and encouraged Japanese Zen masters willing to come to the United States, and as Aitken Roshi comments “the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, the Zen Center of Los Angeles, the Zen Studies Society in New York, and the Rochester Zen Center – all can trace their lineage through the gentle train of karma that Senzaki began.

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/senzaki.html

 

 

 

The Mirror of Simple Souls

Margaret Porette 1250 - 1310

Chapter 7. Of how this Soul is noble, and how she takes heed of nothing.

Love: This Soul, says Love, takes no heed of shame or honour, of poverty or of riches, of comfort or of hardship, of love or of hate, of Hell or of Paradise.

Reason: For God’s sake, Love, says Reason, what is the meaning of what you say?

Love: What does it mean? says Love. The one whom God has given understanding of it knows that, and no-one else, for no book contains it, nor can man’s intelligence comprehend it, nor can any creature’s labouring be rewarded by understanding or comprehending it. Rather this is a gift given by the Most High, into whom this creature is ravished through fullness of knowledge, and in her understanding she remains nothing. And such a Soul, having become nothing, at once has everything and has nothing, wishes for everything and wishes for nothing, knows everything and knows nothing.

Reason: And how is it possible, Lady Love, says Reason, that this Soul can wish for what this book says, when it has already said before that she has no will at all? 

Love: Reason, says Love, it is not at all her will which wishes this, but rather it is the will of God which wishes it in her; for this Soul does not dwell in Love, for Love would make her wish for this through any longing; rather it is Love who dwells in her, who has taken her will from her, and so Love works her own will in the Soul, and Love performs her works in her without her help, as a result of which no anxiety can remain in her. This Soul, says Love, is no longer able to speak of God, for she has been brought to nothing in all her external longings and inward feelings and all affections of the spirit, so that whatever this Soul does she does because it is some accustomed commendable practice, or because Holy Church commands it, but not through any longing of her own, for the will which prompted longing in her is dead.

 

Chapter 8. How Reason is astounded that this Soul has abandoned the Virtues, and how Love praises them.

Reason: Ah, Love, says Reason, who understands only the obvious and fails to grasp what is subtle, what strange thing is this? This Soul experiences no grace, she feels no longings of the spirit, since she has taken leave of the Virtues, which give to every pious soul a form of good life, and without these Virtues no-one can be saved or attain to perfect living, and with them no-one can be deceived; and none the less this Soul takes leave of them. Is she not out of her mind, this Soul who talks like that?

Love: No, not at all, says Love, for souls such as she possess the Virtues better than any other creature, but they do not make use of them,2 for they are not in their service as they once were; and, too, they have now served them long enough, so that henceforth they may become free.

Reason: And when, Love, says Reason, did they serve them?

Love: When they remained bound in love and obedience to you, Lady Reason, and also to the other Virtues; and they have stayed in that service so long that now they have become free.

Reason: And when did such souls become free? says Reason.

Love: Once Love dwells in them, and the Virtues serve them with no demur and with no effort3 from such souls.

Love: Ah, truly, Reason, says Love, such souls who have become so free have known for long the bondage which Lordship is wont to exact. If anyone were to ask them what is the greatest torment which any creature can suffer, they would say that it is to dwell in Love, and yet to be subject to the Virtues. For one must yield everything they ask to the Virtues, at whatever cost to Nature. And so it is that the Virtues ask honour and possessions, heart and body and life. That is that such souls should give up everything, and still the Virtues say to this Soul, which has given all this to them and has held back nothing with which to comfort Nature, that only with great suffering is the just man saved. And therefore this wretched Soul,5 still subject to the Virtues, says that she would be willing to be hounded by Dread and suffer torment in Hell until the day of judgment, if after that she was to be saved. And it is true, says Love, that the Soul over whom the Virtues have power lives in such subjection. But the souls of whom we speak have brought the Virtues to heel, for such souls do nothing for them: but rather the Virtues do all that such souls wish, humbly and with no demur, for such souls are their mistresses.

 

Chapter 9. How such Souls have no will at all.

 Love: If anyone were to ask such free souls, untroubled and at peace, if they would want to be in Purgatory, they would answer No: if they would want here in this life to be assured of their salvation, they would answer No: if they would want to be in Paradise, they would answer No. Why would they wish for such things? They have no will at all; and if they wished for anything, they would separate themselves from Love; for he who has their will knows what is good for them, without their knowing or being assured of it. Such Souls live by knowing and loving and praising; that is the settled practice of such Souls, without any impulse of their own, for Knowledge and Love and Praise dwell within them. Such Souls cannot assess whether they are good or bad, and they have no knowledge of themselves, and would be unable to judge whether they are converted or perverted.

 Love: Or, to speak more briefly, let us take one Soul to represent them all, says Love. This Soul neither longs for nor despises4 poverty or tribulation, Mass or sermon, fasting or prayer; and gives to Nature all that it requires, with no qualm of conscience; but this Nature is so well ordered through having been transformed in the union with Love, to whom this Soul’s will is joined, that it never asks anything which is forbidden. Such a Soul is not concerned about what it lacks, except at the needful time; and none but the innocent can be without this concern.

Reason: For God’s sake, what does this mean?

Love: I tell you in reply, Reason, says Love, as I have told you before, and yet again I tell you that every teacher of natural wisdom, every teacher of book-learning, everyone who persists in loving his obedience to the Virtues does not and will not understand this as it should be understood. Be sure of this, Reason, says Love, for only those understand it who should seek after Perfect Love. But if by chance one found such Souls, they would tell the truth if they wanted to; yet I do not think that anyone could understand them, except only him who seeks after Perfect Love and Charity. Sometimes, says Love, this gift is given in the twinkling of an eye; and let him who is given it hold fast to it, for it is the most perfect gift which God gives to a creature. This Soul is learning in the school of Divine Knowledge, and is seated in the valley of Humility, and upon the plain of Truth, and is at rest upon the mountain of Love.

 

Porette, Margaret. The Mirror of Simple Souls (Notre Dame Texts in Medieval Culture) University of Notre Dame Press.

 

    Mine is

    a homeless home and

    a selfless self.

    - Soen Nakagawa. 1907 - 1984

 I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.

- Dogen