Zen (Chan):
The Essentials of Mind
Nowhere is the philosophical and spiritual brilliance of the Chinese Song Dynasty evidenced more than in this reply of the national teacher of Qingliang to the imperial crown prince’s inquiry about the essentials of mind:
Dahui (as translated by Thomas Cleary), Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching, Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boulder, CO 2022.
1 The ultimate way is rooted in the mind; the reality of mind is rooted in nondwelling.
2 The awareness of the nondwelling substance of mind is not obscured; essence and characteristics peaceful, it contains qualities and functions.
3 Comprehending both inside and outside, it is deep and it is broad.
4 Neither existent nor void, it is not produced and does not pass away.
5 It has no end and no beginning.
6 When you seek it, you cannot get it; reject it, and it still doesn’t leave.
7 If you miss the immediate experience, then the pains of confusion are jumbled; if you realize true essence, then the light of openness is thoroughly clear.
8 Although mind itself is Buddha, only those who experience it actually know.
9 But if there is “realization” and “knowledge,” then the sun of wisdom sets in the land of existence.
10 Yet if there is no illumination and no awakening, then dark clouds cover the gate of emptiness.
11 If a thought is not produced, then before and after are cut off, and the luminous essence stands alone; others and self are one suchness.
12 Go directly to the source of mind, and there is no knowledge, no attainment; you neither grasp nor reject, so there is no opposition and no cultivation.
13 Nonetheless, confusion and enlightenment are interdependent; truth and illusion are relative.
14 If you seek reality trying to get rid of illusion, that is like wearing out your body to get rid of your shadow; if you realize how illusion is truth, that is like staying in the shade so your shadow disappears.
15 If you forget perception, not minding, then myriad cogitations disappear; if you spontaneously know dispassionately, here is where all practices come from.
16 Freed and allowed to go or stay, the quiet mind is aware of the source and stream.
17 Not losing the mystic subtlety whether speaking or silent, action and repose never leave the realm of reality.
18 In terms of “cessation,” it is silent knowing forgetting both; in terms of “observation,” it is silent knowing perceiving both.
19 Speaking of experience, it cannot be pointed out to another; speaking of principle it cannot be understood without experience.
20 Therefore when you realize silence, there is no silence; true knowledge has no knowledge.
21 With the unified mind in which knowing and silence are not two, harmonize with the centered course in which emptiness and existence merge together.
22 Not dwelling, having no fixation, do not absorb, do not take in; affirmation and negation gone, subject and object are both obliterated.
23 When this obliteration also ceases, then insight appears.
24 Insight is not produced outside the mind; the nature of wisdom is originally inherent, but it is basically quiescent and cannot manifest itself.
25 In actuality it depends on achievement of wisdom.
26 Insight and wisdom complete each other; the basic wisdom and the applied cultivation are really not two entities.
27 When both disappear and you penetrate experientially, then subtle awareness is round and clear.
28 As beginning and end merge, cause and effect interpenetrate.
29 Being a Buddha in every state of mind, no mind is not the mind of Buddha; realizing enlightenment in every place, there is not a single atom that is not a buddha-land.
30 So whether truth and falsehood or others and self, when you bring up one, the totality is included.
31 Mind, Buddha, and living beings are as a whole ultimately equal; so we know that when they are deluded, people follow things, and since things have myriad differences people are not the same.
32 But when people are enlightened, things follow people, everyone has one wisdom that clarifies myriad objects.
33 When words are exhausted and thought is ended, what is effect, what is cause?
34 The essence is fundamentally silent—what is the same, what is different?
35 Just forget what’s on your mind, be empty and clear, and your comings and goings will be peaceful and harmonious, like moonbeams penetrating water, immaterial yet visible, unmindingly mirroring images, reflective yet always empty.