Venerable ones, do not use your minds wrongly! You, wandering around with your burden just as the great ocean keeps moving corpses around, obstruct your minds by raising obstacles. When there is no cloud across the sun, the serene heaven is radiant with light. Without a mote in the eye, there are no illusionary flowers in the empty sky.
Followers of the Way, if you want to conform to the Dharma, just keep yourselves from doubting. If expanded, it fills the universe; if contracted, it has no room for even a single hair to stand on. It shines solitary and bright, and has never lacked anything. The eye does not see it, the ear does not hear it. What can we call it? An old master said, “To say it is a thing is to miss the point.” Just see it in person! What more is there? One would never finish speaking of it. Each of you should work diligently! And take good care of yourselves.
Commentary:
‘Do not use your minds wrongly’ means that you should stop leaving your mind to look for the true-Self, because the mind which is busy in search of the true-Self is no other than the true-Self. ‘Wandering around with your burden just as the great ocean keeps moving corpses around’ implies endless discrimination through knowledge. This prevents you from realising the true-Self by raising more illusions, obstacles. ‘Without a mote in the eye, there are no illusionary flowers in the empty sky’ means that the reason why you cannot see the true-Self is not that there is any obstacle between you and it but that your eyes and ears are deluded by illusions, imaginary labels and forms.
‘Just keep yourselves from doubting’ means that we should just recognise the true-Self, without wandering in vain looking for it, since it is revealing itself both by filling the universe and by having no room for even a single hair to stand on. ‘The eye does not see it, the ear does not hear it’ means that we can neither see nor hear it through discriminating. In fact, we cannot stop seeing and hearing it even for a moment once we are not deluded by illusions because there is nothing else but it. Strictly speaking, seeing and hearing are incorrect expressions since seeing and hearing imply duality; subject and object, while the true-Self is non-duality, Oneness. This is why an old master said, “To say it is a thing is to miss the point.”
Student: “How is it when all clouds disappear and the sun appears?”
Master: “All the clouds are the sun.”
Student: “How is it when the eye does not see it, the ear does not hear it?”
Master: “The eye and the ear are also it.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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