Hsin Shin Ming: “24. When a mind doesn’t come into being, everything is without fault.”
‘A mind’ here means a thought, and a thought is a discrimination. ‘A mind doesn’t come into being’ means ‘you don’t make a discrimination’. So, the scripture says that everything is without fault when you don’t make discrimination. This means that everything is faulty because you make discrimination.
As mentioned earlier, to make discrimination is to create labels like ‘a cup’, ‘good’ or ‘poor’. The moment the thought ‘This is a cup’ comes into being upon seeing something, the thought ‘a cup’ gives birth to subsequent thoughts such as a plastic cup or a ceramic cup, a white cup or a red cup, a small cup or a large cup and so on. These thoughts produce their subsequent thoughts. Each of these thoughts always has subsequent thoughts that are contrary to each other: ‘A cup is good for drinking water but bad for knocking in a nail’, or ‘A plastic cup is good for a picnic but poor for entertaining an important guest’. In this way, everything becomes faulty when you make discrimination.
In fact, the cup is not a cup before the thought ‘a cup’ comes into being, or you label it a cup. It is not ‘plastic’ not ‘poor’, but perfect just as it is until a thought comes into being. It becomes faulty, like being ‘poor’, only because you make such a discrimination. It is not due to the imperfection of a thing but due to your discrimination that things look faulty. Accordingly, everything is without fault when a mind (i.e. a thought) doesn’t come into being.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
#zen #meditation #zenfools http://ow.ly/i/D5tFa
Zen Fools 