9.4.15

Neither Walking Nor Sitting

After reading this thread I was again a bit amazed how watered down and useless what people imagine Zen is. Of the four samadhis taught in Tiantai/Tendai, the fourth is neither walking nor sitting, and that is the one recommended for householders busy with everyday matters. That's because it does not require a retreat environment but can be used everywhere. The same is true for the essential practice of Zen that is often called non-thought. No matter what goes on, if there is no grasping of any experience as substantial, as oneself or as one's own, but because it is clear that everything that occurs necessarily passes away, the mind is naturally open and aware.

What often goes for Zen is nothing more than the Zen of humans and gods, while the Zen of the Tathagata is something unimaginable for such people. When there are so called practitioners and teachers who can only advise others to sit fixed in a certain posture for a while, they not only don't know anything about what Shakyamuni and Bodhidharma taught, they cannot even understand such simple methods devised for ordinary people as investigating a phrase.

This is not an issue because of some sort of doctrinal purity, but because when there is a way that can help people it is a shame if not used. The whole point of Zen is to be simple and direct, nothing complicated or difficult. But either it is taken as some sort of mystical puzzle (koans), or oversimplified as a physical training (zazen). So seeing the nature of mind as the primary directive of Zen is totally lost.

[I will now] elaborate on [this teaching]. Because for numerous kalpas we have not encountered the true teaching, we have not known how to turn back and find the [true] origin of our bodily existence but have just clung to illusory phenomenal appearances, heedlessly recognizing [only] our unenlightened nature, being born sometimes as an animal and sometimes as a human. When we now seek our origin in terms of the consummate teaching, we will immediately realize that from the very outset we are the Buddha. Therefore, we should base our actions on the Buddha's action and identify our minds with Buddha's mind, return to the origin and revert to the source, and cut off our residue of ignorance, reducing it and further reducing it until we have reached the [state of being] unconditioned. Then our activity in response [to other beings] will naturally be [as manifold as] the sands of the Ganges— that is called Buddhahood. You should realize that delusion and enlightenment alike are [manifestations of] the one true mind. How great the marvelous gate! Our inquiry into the origin of humanity has here come to an end.

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