Q. If I try not to discriminate, isn’t that still making discrimination?
A. It is true that trying not to discriminate is still making discrimination. You are advised to focus all your attention on the given questions in order to stop you from discriminating. Your discriminations reduce noticeably when you are involved in your question. In other words, all your thinking can stop whilst you are lost in your question. However, this doesn’t mean to stop discriminating in Zen meditation, although it is regarded as non-discrimination by many people. If this stopping of thinking were non-discrimination, how could we live our lives without thinking?
In fact, to stop discriminating is not to stop thinking but simply to realise that everything including our thoughts is empty. When everything is empty, our discriminations are also empty. When we have realised that our discriminations are empty, we are not deluded by them anymore, whatever discriminations you may make. What would it matter to make discriminations if we were not deluded by them? This is true non-discrimination.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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