motionless, and outwardly like the void, in that it is without bounds or obstructions. It is neither subjective nor objective, has no specific location, is formless, and cannot vanish. Those who hasten towards it dare not enter, fearing to hurtle down through the void with nothing to cling to or to stay their fall. So they look to the brink and retreat. This refers to all those who seek such a goal through cognition. Thus, those who seek the goal through cognition are like the fur (many), while those who obtain intuitive knowledge of the Way are like the horns (few)3
- Mañjuśrī represents fundamental law and. Samanta-bhadra, activity. By the former is meant the law of the real and unbounded void, and by the latter the inexhaustible activities beyond the sphere of form. Avalokitegvara represents boundless compassion; Mahasthama, great wisdom, and Vimalakirti, spotless name.? Spotless refers to the real nature of things, while name means form; yet form is really one with real nature, hence the combined term ‘spotless name’. All the qualities typified by the great Bodhisattvas are inherent in men and are not to be separated from the One Mind. Awake to it, and it is there. You students of the Way who do not awake to this in your own minds, and who are attached to appearances or who seek for something objective outside your own minds, have all turned your backs on the Way. The sands of the Ganges! The Buddha said of these sands: ‘If all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with Indra and all the gods walk across them, the sands do not rejoice; and, if oxen, sheep, reptiles and insects tread upon them, the sands are not angered. For jewels and perfumes they have no longing, and for the stinking filth of manure and urine they have no loathing.
- This Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all. If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for aeon after acon, you will never accomplish it. Enmeshed in the meritorious practices of the Three Vehicles, you will be unable to attain Enlightenment. Nevertheless, the realization of the One Mind may come after a shorter or a longer period. There are those who, upon hearing this teaching, rid themselves of conceptual thought in a flash. There are others who do this after following through the Ten Beliefs, the Ten Stages, the Ten Activities and the Ten Bestowals of Merit. Yet others accomplish it after passing through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva’s Progress. But
i i ‘ine as taught Fe ari ee cg Bo wishes © make it clear that, though these may be useful in preparing the ground, the mind must in any case
take a sudden leap, and that having passed through these stages in nowise constitutes partial Enlightenment.
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1 Compare this with Professor Suzuki’s: ‘That which is known as mind in discursive reasoning is no-mind, though without this Mind cannot be reached.’
? This abstract notion of the Bodhisattvas, regarded by some sects as individual spiritual entities, is shared by some Buddhists outside the Zen Sect.
- Zen teaches that, though the phenomenal world based on sensory experience has only relative existence, it is wrong to regard it as some- thing separate from the One Mind. It is the One Mind wrongly appre- hended. As the Hridaya Sitra says: ‘Form is noi different from void, void from form; form is void and void is form.’
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THE CHUN CHOU RECORD