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. 



          Now we reach the end of my commentary on the Hsin Hsin Ming.  I hope you - those few who read my blog - have enjoyed the commentary and have found it helpful in your practice and understanding.
          This simple truth, this realization of non-duality, is the heart of Zen.  All that hard work comes down to something so simple.  It is not magic,  It doesn't imbue one with any special powers.  But, it is a life changer.  Even to have the smallest inkling of this truth and to begin Zen practice has changed our life.  To fully experience the non-dual and live in this understanding is liberation from anxiety and confusion.  Not that this makes us live up to any ideal of perfection, only that we no longer worry about perfection. There is neither perfection nor non-perfection because in this seamless Universe everything is just what it is and could not be anything else and yet was and will be something else.
          I know, I know.  Us practitioners from the Soto School are saying that practice is the heart of Zen.  Well, I am not going to quibble, practice is also the heart of Zen. There is much more practice then deep realization and then even after you have had a realization you realize that both practice and realization work together.  But then true practice is to practice the truth of non-duality.  Real practice is to forget the individual self whether on the cushion or out in daily life.
          Oh, some of you are thinking the Bodhisattva spirit is the heart of Zen, well of course it is.  Again I am not going to argue because the Bodhisattva spirit is a manifestation of the non-dual.  It arises in each of us when we forget our selves.  It is just the other side of our realization.  It is actually what we practice both on the cushion and off the cushion. But I think you should be careful about any ideas you have about what it is to be a Bodhisattva until you have realized non-duality.  It may not be what you think.
          Thinking about the Bodhisattva brings me to the idea of faith.

To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, 
because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.


I gave a talk about faith recently and I found a lot of resistance.  How can we have faith when we see so much wrong in the world?  We should not have faith is something so irrational.  This way of seeing the world comes from a narrow dualiistic, selfish, perspective on the world.  We see such a small slice of things. We are filled with self centered desires. And we see so much suffering.  But, think, how all this has comes into being from the chaos of original creation.  Think how we have all been give this gift of conscious life and the joy of this life.  It has arisen out of seeming chaos, lots of suffering but also lots of joy.  It is a gift. But whose gift is it, and who was it given to? Think of this gift from the perspective of the Non-Dual.  It is the Non-Dual's gift to itself.  It is all quite amazing, miraculous.
          The other day a friend who is a poet conveyed to me his resistance to the current scientific idea that the Universe started with a Big Bang.  He does not like the idea of a beginning.  He also does not like the idea of an impersonal Universe ruled by impersonal laws of cause and effect.  I don't have any problem with the current scientific point of view.  I studied physics in college. But still it is miraculous that from an impersonal Universe self conscious beings have arisen.  And then going a step further these beings even have the potential to experience Universal Self consciousness (enlightenment), identifying with the Universal Self the Non-Dual.  But from the perspective of this Universal Self awareness all of THIS is not exactly a miracle, there is no outside agent like a god causing the miracle.  There is just THIS but it is in the nature/structure of THIS that the gift of self conscious life is evolving.  From this perspective it is possible to perceive the benevolence of the Non-Dual.  It is possible to perceive the functioning of the Non-Dual as the activity of the Universal Bodhisattva moving us towards complete Self aware liberation.  And then we understand that we as individuals partake of the Universal Bodhisattva's activities as individual Bodhisattvas working for the liberation of others and the betterment of society. 
          Whether of not we perceive the Non-Dual nature of THIS, whether of not we function with selfish intentions, we and our functioning are still within the Non-Dual.  But if we perceive non-duality then everything changes.  It changes because we now understand that our individual self is a sort of illusion.  It changes because we see that our true self is the Universal Self.  It changes because understanding this we are no longer bound by our individual desires and we are no longer bound by fear of death.  It changes because now we can free our natural compassion to function as the benevolence of the Universal Bodhisattva
           

          I love the word suchness.  It seems to have no meaning but it perfectly describes the perception of the world when one is deep in samadhi.  I have a friend who translates Buddhist texts and he is convinced that the ultimate understanding is that everything we experience is a creation of our own mind.  My response is, "What about suchness?"  Suchness expresses that experience of things when we add or subtract nothing from raw experience.  Our mind becomes like a mirror.  That is why it is called Mirror Like Samadhi.  Of course even in this state the brain functions to assemble the reflected image from the light entering the eye but in Mirror Like Samadhi there are no  thoughts and it is hard to say that there is even a  person with a mind present.  We might even say that it is just mechanical.  Of course this is not a state of mind we want to exist in for very long but it is a very important experience for the Zen practitioner.  The experience of suchness demonstrates to the Zen practitioner that there is something out there that is not the creation of our individual mind.  But it also demonstrates that our individuality and consequently the individuality of all things is a sort of fiction created by our thoughts.  This experience and this understanding I have again and again expressed in this blog in dozens of differents ways.  Seng Tsan has also expressed this experience and understanding in many many ways in his poem.
          Even though we may have experienced Mirror Like Samadhi and have had a deep realization of Non-Duality we humans have to function in this world which takes thought and may lead to confusion so Seng Tsan gives us a simple practice to remind us of the clarity and understanding we have experienced.  Say not two and with this reminder we can bring our thoughts and actions into harmony with this understanding.  This is a simple practice which I have found useful in situations which could otherwise be tense and emotionally confusing.
          It takes year of practice to learn to bring with consistency the experience and understanding of deep samadhi off the cushion and into our daily lives.  And first we have to experience deep samadhi and the resulting experience which also can take years.  As I was told by one of my teachers life is too short to completely polish the mind, but really it doesn't matter this is the nature of being a human.  We just keep on practicing.  It is possible with lots of time and effort that we may experience a harmony between thought action and understanding in most of our lives.  It is possible to function without ego and to see the world through the eyes of non-duality.
        

 


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. 

           
           When I was quite young I was on the philosophers quest to understand the deep nature of reality and our relationship as humans to that reality.  I read much of Western Philosophy and though it is filled with brilliant insight I found it over all to not be deeply satisfying.  Often  Western Philosophy skirts the really big questions and singularly examines aspects of life and the world around us  such as knowledge, behavior,  how science works,  perception of time and space, logic, language, etc..  It seemed the really big questions were left to religion for the most part and religion is based on faith not reason and not experience.  When philosophers examined religion they usually bog down in the idea of God.  Everything hinges on the existence of God.  I spent a whole semester in an undergraduate philosophy of religion class examining various proofs of God and not one in my view was irrefutable.  I was attracted to Existentialism because this philosophy accepted what seemed to be obvious, that there is no inherent meaning to our lives, and that meaning is something we have to create for ourselves.  (Maybe essence is a better word then meaning in this context.)
          But then I read a book on Zen by Alan Watts which described how through the practice of meditation it was possible to have an experience which would resolve the bigger questions.  Also this experience was described as  completely life changing. I decided this was a direction I needed to explore.  In Zen the bigger questions are called the "question of life and death."  The answer to this question resolves our fears and provides a meaning to our lives.
          I can tell you the answer to the question of life and death but the answer I give you is purely intellectual unless rooted in experience.  As purely intellectual it will not be fully understood nor be fully powerful.  It may not be believed and it may even be rejected as unattractive.  Yet I was attracted, maybe because of the joy I felt in the many days in my youth I spent canoeing the silent waters of Maine.  The answer to the question of life and death as Alan Watts described it is to be found in an experience of profound intimacy with the natural world.  This experience is of an intimacy which breaks down all barriers of self and other and opens one to the profound vision of Non-Duality.  This explanation and answer has a touch which is very much Chinese.  We see this intimacy of man and nature in the wonderful classic Chinese landscape paintings.  This Chinese touch has given Zen a bit of a different feeling from the classic Buddhism that came out of India though all Buddhism is rooted in the same experience and basic understanding.  Ultimately though this experience is not just about intimacy with nature as we normally understand it, the world unaffected by human intervention, but also intimacy with  the very human world of cities and slums with all the problems of human suffering.  Nothing is beyond this intimacy.
          And this profound vision of Non-Duality, that is nothing more then the recognition that all, everything we experience and beyond, is part of a single body which includes ourselves and all our attributes.  Imagine that when we looked at a human all we could see was feet and hands and head, blood, bone, and bile, thoughts feelings and consciousness,and not see the human, that is the sum of all these parts and some how more.  Then imagine we are one of these parts say a white blood cell running around in the veins and arteries gobbling things up thinking I am an independent being and nothing more.  We humans are something like this running around this planet thinking we are just independent entities and not recognizing the larger body of the Universe, not recognizing the deep interconnectedness of everything in this body including ourselves.  And then imagine experiencing this deep interconnectdness and recognizing the whole Universe as a single body that we are part of and more.  Imagine how that might change you.
          Sometimes Zen students confuse the activity of Zen practice with this deeper truth and think Zen is only about how to properly practice.   We practice concentration, we practice, mindfulness, we practice being in the moment and yet somehow we never deeply develop in the practice and recognize the truth of Non- Duality we never experience liberation.  We are still attached to all sorts of ideas, such as ideas about practice, or self centered ideas, or maybe even compassionate ideas which cloud our mind and prevent this recognition.  But then if we can only drop all our ideas and clear our mind the Non- Dual is there to be recognized and and liberation to be experienced.