for John Blofeld
Table of Contents
Title Page INTRODUCTION Outline of Practice Bloodstream Sermon Wake-up Sermon Breakthrough Sermon NOTES Copyright Page INTRODUCTION
Buddhism came to China 2,000 years ago. As early as A.D. 65, a community of Buddhist monks was reported living under royal patronage in the northern part of Kiangsu Province, not far from the birthplace of Confucius, and the first monks had probably arrived a hundred years earlier. Since then, tens of thousands of Indian and Central Asian monks have journeyed to China by land and sea, but among those who brought the teachings of the Buddha to China, none has had an impact comparable to that of Bodhidharma. Unknown to all but a few disciples during his lifetime, Bodhidharma is the patriarch of millions of Zen Buddhists and students of kung-fu. He is the subject of many legends as well. Along with zen and kung-fu, Bodhidharma reportedly also brought tea to China. To keep from falling asleep while meditating, he cut off his eyelids, and where they fell, tea bushes grew. Since then, tea has become the beverage of not only monks but everyone in the Orient. Faithful to this tradition, artists invariably depict Bodhidharma with bulging, lidless eyes. As often happens with legends, it’s become impossible to separate fact from fiction. His dates are uncertain; in fact, I know at least one Buddhist scholar who doubts that Bodhidharma ever existed. But at the risk of writing about a man who never lived, I’ve sketched a likely biography, based on the earliest records and a few of my own surmises, to provide a backdrop for the sermons attributed to him. Bodhidharma was born around the year 440 in Kanchi, the capital of the Southern Indian kingdom of Pallava. He was a Brahman by birth and the third son of King Simhavarman. When he was young, he was converted to Buddhism, and later he received instruction in the Dharma from Prajnatara, whom his father had invited from the ancient Buddhist heartland of Magadha. It was Prajnatara who also told Bodhidharma to go to China. Since the traditional overland route was blocked by the Huns, and since Pallava had commercial ties throughout Southeast Asia, Bodhidharma left by ship from the nearby port of Mahaballipuram. After skirting the Indian coast and the Malay Peninsula for three years, he finally arrived in Southern China around 475. At that time the country was divided into the Northern Wei and Liu Sung dynasties. This division of China into a series of northern and southern dynasties had begun in the early third century and continued until the country was reunited under the Sui dynasty in the late sixth century. It was during this period of division and strife that Indian Buddhism developed into Chinese Buddhism, with the more military-minded northerners emphasizing meditation and magic and the more intellectual southerners preferring philosophical discussion and the intuitive grasp of principles. When Bodhidharma arrived in China, in the latter part of the fifth century, there were approximately 2,000 Buddhist temples and 36,000 clergy in the South. In the North, a census in 477 counted 6,500 temples and nearly 80,000 clergy. Less than fifty years later, another census conducted in the North raised these figures to 30,000 temples and 2,000,000 clergy, or about 5 percent of the population. This undoubtedly included many people who were trying to avoid taxes and conscription or who sought the protection of the Church for other, nonreligious, reasons, but clearly Buddhism was spreading among the common people north of the Yangtze. In the South, it remained largely confined to the educated elite until well into the sixth century.
Following his arrival in the port of Nanhai, Bodhidharma probably visited Buddhist centers in the South and began learning Chinese, if he hadn’t done so already on his way from India. According to Tao-yuan’s Transmission of the Lamp, finished in 1002, Bodhidharma arrived in the South as late as 520 and was invited to the capital in Chienkang for an audience with Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, successor to the Liu Sung. During this meeting the emperor asked about the merit of performing religious works, and Bodhidharma responded with the doctrine of emptiness. The emperor didn’t understand, and Bodhidharma left. The earliest records, however, mention no such meeting. In any case, Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze—according to legend, on a hollow reed—and settled in the North. At first he stayed near the Northern Wei capital of Pingcheng. In 494, when Emperor Hsiao-wen moved his capital south to Loyang on the northern bank of the Lo River, most of the monks living in the Pingcheng area moved too, and Bodhidharma was probably among them. According to Tao-hsuan’s Further Lives of Exemplary Monks, the first draft of which was written in 645, Bodhidharma ordained a monk by the name of Sheng-fu. When the capital was moved to Loyang, Sheng-fu moved to the South. Since ordination normally requires a three-year apprenticeship, Bodhidharma must have already been in the North by 490 and must have been reasonably conversant in Chinese by then. A few years later, in 496, the emperor ordered the construction of Shaolin Temple on Mount Sung, in Honan Province southeast of Loyang. The temple, which still exists (although largely as a tourist attraction), was built for another meditation master from India, not for Bodhidharma. But while zen masters have come and gone at the temple for the past 1,500 years, Bodhidharma is the only monk anyone but a Buddhist historian associates with Shaolin. It was here, on Mount Sung’s western Shaoshih Peak, that Bodhidharma is said to have spent nine years in meditation, facing the rock wall of a cave about a mile from the temple. Shaolin later became famous for training monks in kung-fu, and Bodhidharma is honored as the founder of this art as well. Coming from India, he undoubtedly instructed his disciples in some form of yoga, but no early records mention him teaching any exercise or martial art. By the year 500, Loyang was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of over half a million. When Emperor Hsuan-wu died in 516 and the Empress Dowager Ling assumed control of the government, one of her first acts was to order the construction of Yung-ning Temple. The construction of this temple and its 400-foot-high pagoda nearly exhausted the imperial treasury. According to a record of Loyang’s temples written in 547 by Yang Hsuan-chih, the golden wind-chimes that hung along the temple’s eaves could be heard for three miles and the spire of the temple’s pagoda could be seen over thirty miles away. Yang’s account includes the comments of a monk from the West named Bodhidharma, who called it the most imposing structure he had ever seen. Since the temple wasn’t built until 516 and was destroyed by fire in 534, Bodhidharma must have been in the capital around 520. Early records say he traveled throughout the Loyang area, coming and going with the seasons. In the capital, though, he must have stayed at Yung-ming Temple. Not to be confused with Yung-ning Temple, Yung-ming had been built a few years earlier, at the beginning of the sixth century, by Emperor Hsuan-wu as a headquarters for foreign monks. Before the mass evacuation of the city during the collapse of the Northern Wei in 534, the temple reportedly housed over 3,000 monks from countries as far away as Syria. Despite the sudden popularity of Buddhism in China, Bodhidharma found few disciples. Besides Sheng-fu, who moved to the South soon after his ordination, the only other disciples mentioned are Tao-yu and Hui-k‘o, both of whom are said to have studied with Bodhidharma for five to six years. Tao-yu, we’re told, understood the Way but never taught. It was to Hui-k’o that Bodhidharma entrusted the robe and bowl of his lineage and, according to Tao-hsuan, a copy of Gunabhadra’s translation of the Lankavatara Sutra. In the sermons translated here, though, Bodhidharma quotes mostly from the Nirvana, Avatamsaka, and Vimilakirti sutras and uses none of the terminology characteristic of the Lankavatara. Perhaps it was Huik’ o, not Bodhidharma, who thought so highly of this sutra. In his Transmission of the Lamp, Tao-yuan says that soon after he had transmitted the patriarchship of his lineage to Hui-k’o, Bodhidharma died in 528 on the fifth day of the tenth month, poisoned by a jealous monk. Tao-hsuan’s much earlier biography of Bodhidharma says only that he died on the banks of the Lo River and doesn’t mention the date or cause of death. According to Tao-yuan, Bodhidharma’s remains were interred near Loyang at Tinglin Temple on Bear Ear Mountain. Tao-yuan adds that three years later an official met Bodhidharma walking in the mountains of Central Asia. He was carrying a staff from which hung a single sandal, and he told the official he was going back to India. Reports of this meeting aroused the curiosity of other monks, who finally agreed to open Bodhidharma’s tomb. But inside all they found was a single sandal, and ever since then Bodhidharma has been pictured carrying a staff from which hangs the missing sandal. With the assassination of Emperor Hsiao-wu in 534, the Northern Wei split into the Western and Eastern Wei dynasties, and Loyang came under attack. Since the powerful Kao family of the Eastern Wei was renowned for its patronage of Buddhism, many of the monks living in Loyang, including Hui-k‘o, moved to the Eastern Wei capital of Yeh. There Hui-k’o eventually met T‘an-lin. T’an-lin worked first in Loyang and later in Yeh writing prefaces and commentaries to new translations of Buddhist sutras. After meeting Hui-k‘o, he became interested in Bodhidharma’s approach to Buddhism and added a brief preface to the Outline of Practice. In this preface he says that Bodhidharma came from Southern India and that following his arrival in China, he found only two worthy disciples, Hui-k’o and Tao-yu. He also says that Bodhidharma taught wall meditation and the four practices described in the Outline. If this is all we know about Bodhidharma, why, then, is he the most famous of all the millions of monks who have studied and taught the Dharma in China? The reason is that he alone is credited with bringing zen to China. Of course, zen, as meditation, had been taught and practiced for several hundred years before Bodhidharma arrived. And much of what he had to say concerning doctrine had been said before—by Tao-sheng, for example, a hundred years earlier. But Bodhidharma’s approach to zen was unique. As he says in these sermons, “Seeing your nature is zen … . Not thinking about anything is zen … . Everything you do is zen.” While others viewed zen as purification of the mind or as a stage on the way to buddhahood, Bodhidharma equated zen with buddhahood—and buddhahood with the mind, the everyday mind. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze, to a single sandal. Bodhidharma’s zen was Mahayana Zen, not Hinayana Zen—the sword of wisdom, not the meditation cushion. As did other masters, he undoubtedly instructed his disciples in Buddhist discipline, meditation, and doctrine, but he used the sword that Prajnatara had given him to cut their minds free from rules, trances, and scriptures. Such a sword, though, is hard to grasp and hard to use. Small wonder that his sole successor, Hui-k’o, was a one-armed man. But such a radical understanding of zen didn’t originate with Bodhidharma or with Prajnatara. It’s said that one day Brahma, lord of creation, offered the Buddha a flower and asked him to preach the Dharma. When the Buddha held up the flower, his audience was puzzled, except for Kashyapa, who smiled. This is how zen began. And this is how it was transmitted: with a flower, with a rock wall, with a shout. This approach, once it was made known by Bodhidharma and his successors, revolutionized the understanding and practice of Buddhism in China. Such an approach doesn’t come across very well in books. But in his Further Lives of Exemplary Monks, Tao-hsuan says that Bodhidharma’s teachings were written down. Most scholars agree that the Outline of Practice is one such record, but opinion is divided concerning the other three sermons translated here. All three have long been attributed to Bodhidharma, but in recent years a number of scholars have suggested that these sermons are the work of later disciples. Yanagida, for example, attributes the Bloodstream Sermon to a member of the Oxhead Zen School, which flourished in the seventh and eighth centuries, and he thinks that the Wake-up Sermon was an eighth-century work of the Northern Zen School and the Breakthrough Sermon was by Shen-hsiu, the seventh-century patriarch of the Northern Zen School. Unfortunately, evidence that would conclusively prove or disprove the traditional attribution is lacking. Until the present century, the earliest known copies of these sermons were fourteenth-century versions of T‘ang dynasty (618-907) originals in the collection of Japan’s Kanazawa Bunko. But with the discovery of thousands of T’ang dynasty Buddhist manuscripts earlier this century in China’s Tunhuang Caves, we now have seventh- and eighth-century copies. Clearly these sermons were compiled at a very early date by monks who traced their ancestry to Bodhidharma. If it wasn’t Hui-k‘o or one of his disciples, perhaps it was T’an-lin who wrote them down. In any case, in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be accepted as the sermons of the man to whom they’ve been attributed for more than 1,200 years. Bodhidharma’s disciples were few, and the Zen tradition that traced its ancestry to him didn’t begin its full flowering until nearly two hundred years after his death. Given the spontaneity and detachment fostered by Bodhidharma’s approach to zen, it’s easy to see why these sermons were eventually neglected in favor of those by native Chinese zen masters. By comparison Bodhidharma’s sermons seem somewhat alien and bare. I only found them myself by accident, in an edition of Huang-po’s Essentials on the Transmission of Mind. That was twelve years ago. Since then I’ve grown quite fond of their bare-bones zen, and I’ve often wondered why they aren’t more popular. But popular or not, here they are again. Before they fade once more into the dust of some crypt or library, read them through once or twice and look for the one thing that Bodhidharma brought to China: look for the print of the mind. Red Pine Bamboo Lake, Taiwan Big Cold, Year of the Tiger
Outline of Practice
MANY roads lead to the Path,1 but basically there are only two: reason and practice. To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion. Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls,2 the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason. Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by reason. To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices:3 suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma. First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the Path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I’ve turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I’m punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.” The sutras say, “When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.” With such understanding you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.
Second, adapting to conditions. As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions. If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past. When conditions change, it ends. Why delight in its existence? But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path. Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something—always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with Prosperity.4 To dwell in the three realms5 is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer.
To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path. Fourth, practicing the Dharma.6 The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “The Dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being, and the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand this truth are bound to practice according to the Dharma. And since that which is real includes nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life, and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift, or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And to eliminate impurity they teach others, but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice they’re able to help others and glorify the Way of Enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues7 to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all. This is what’s meant by practicing the Dharma.
Bloodstream Sermon
EVERYTHING that appears in the three realms comes from the mind.8 Hence buddhas9 of the past and future teach mind to mind without bothering about definitions.10 But if they don’t define it, what do they mean by mind? You ask. That’s your mind. I answer. That’s my mind. If I had no mind, how could I answer? If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind. Through endless kalpas11 without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that’s your real mind, that’s your real buddha. This mind is the buddha12 says the same thing. Beyond this mind you’ll never find another buddha. To search for enlightenment13 or nirvana14 beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature,15 the absence of cause and effect, is what’s meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond the mind, but such a place doesn’t exist. Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It’s not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can’t grab it. Beyond this mind you’ll never see a buddha. The buddha is a product of your mind. Why look for a buddha beyond this mind?
Buddhas of the past and future only talk about this mind. The mind is the buddha, and the buddha is the mind. Beyond the mind there’s no buddha, and beyond the buddha there’s no mind. If you think there’s a buddha beyond the mind, where is he? There’s no buddha beyond the mind, so why envision one? You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself. As long as you’re enthralled by a lifeless form, you’re not free. If you don’t believe me, deceiving yourself won’t help. It’s not the buddha’s fault. People, though, are deluded. They’re unaware that their own mind is the buddha. Otherwise they wouldn’t look for a buddha outside the mind. Buddhas don’t save buddhas. If you use your mind to look for a buddha, you won’t see the buddha. As long as you look for a buddha somewhere else, you’ll never see that your own mind is the buddha. Don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha. And don’t use the mind to invoke a buddha.16 Buddhas don’t recite sutras.17 Buddhas don’t keep precepts.18 And buddhas don’t break precepts. Buddhas don’t keep or break anything. Buddhas don’t do good or evil. To find a buddha, you have to see your nature.19 Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory; keeping precepts results in a good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings—but no buddha.
If you don’t understand by yourself, you’ll have to find a teacher to get to the bottom of life and death.20 But unless he sees his nature, such a person isn’t a teacher. Even if he can recite the Twelvefold Canon,21 he can’t escape the Wheel of Birth and Death.22 He suffers in the three realms without hope of release. Long ago, the monk Good Star23 was able to recite the entire Canon. But he didn’t escape the Wheel, because he didn’t see his nature. If this was the case with Good Star, then people nowadays who recite a few sutras or shastras24 and think it’s the Dharma are fools. Unless you see your mind, reciting so much prose is useless. To find a buddha all you have to do is see your nature. Your nature is the buddha. And the buddha is the person who’s free: free of plans, free of cares. If you don’t see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you’ll never find a buddha. The truth is, there’s nothing to find. But to reach such an understanding you need a teacher and you need to struggle to make yourself understand. Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain. There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself. Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as there are grains of sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut? You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream or illusion.
If you don’t find a teacher soon, you’ll live this life in vain. It’s true, you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a teacher you’ll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help. If, though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the Buddha meant, that person doesn’t need a teacher. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you’re so blessed, study hard, and by means of instruction you’ll understand. People who don’t understand and think they can do so without study are no different from those deluded souls who can’t tell white from black.25 Falsely proclaiming the Buddhadharma, such persons in fact blaspheme the Buddha and subvert the Dharma. They preach as if they were bringing rain. But theirs is the preaching of devils,26 not of buddhas. Their teacher is the King of Devils and their disciples are the Devil’s minions. Deluded people who follow such instruction unwittingly sink deeper in the Sea of Birth and Death. Unless they see their nature, how can people call themselves buddhas? They’re liars who deceive others into entering the realm of devils. Unless they see their nature, their preaching of the Twelvefold Canon is nothing but the preaching of devils. Their allegiance is to Mara, not to the Buddha. Unable to distinguish white from black, how can they escape birth and death? Whoever sees his nature is a buddha; whoever doesn’t is a mortal. But if you can find your buddha-nature apart from your mortal nature, where is it? Our mortal nature is our buddha-nature. Beyond this nature there’s no buddha. The buddha is our nature. There’s no buddha besides this nature. And there’s no nature besides the buddha.
But suppose I don’t see my nature, can’t I still attain enlightenment by invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, observing precepts, practicing devotions, or doing good works? No, you can’t. Why not? If you attain anything at all, it’s conditional, it’s karmic. It results in retribution. It turns the Wheel. And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment. To attain enlightenment you have to see your nature. Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause and effect is nonsense. Buddhas don’t practice nonsense. A buddha is free of karma,27 free of cause and effect. To say he attains anything at all is to slander a buddha. What could he possibly attain? Even focusing on a mind, a power, an understanding, or a view is impossible for a buddha. A buddha isn’t one-sided. The nature of his mind is basically empty, neither pure nor impure. He’s free of practice and realization. He’s free of cause and effect. A buddha doesn’t observe precepts. A buddha doesn’t do good or evil. A buddha isn’t energetic or lazy. A buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can’t even focus his mind on a buddha. A buddha isn’t a buddha. Don’t think about buddhas. If you don’t see what I’m talking about, you’ll never know your own mind.
People who don’t see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools. They fall into endless space. They’re like drunks. They can’t tell good from evil. If you intend to cultivate such a practice, you have to see your nature before you can put an end to rational thought. To attain enlightenment without seeing your nature is impossible. Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception. But if our every movement or state, whenever it occurs, is the mind, why don’t we see this mind when a person’s body dies? The mind is always present. You just don’t see it. But if the mind is present, why don’t I see it? Do you ever dream? Of course. When you dream, is that you? Yes, it’s me.
And is what you’re doing and saying different from you? No, it isn’t. But if it isn’t, then this body is your real body. And this real body is your mind. And this mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It’s not true or false. It’s not male or female. It doesn’t appear as a monk or a layman, an elder or a novice, a sage or a fool, a buddha or a mortal. It strives for no realization and suffers no karma. It has no strength or form. It’s like space. You can’t possess it and you can’t lose it. Its movements can’t be blocked by mountains, rivers, or rock walls. Its unstoppable powers penetrate the Mountain of Five Skandhas28 and cross the River of Samsara.29 No karma can restrain this real body. But this mind is subtle and hard to see. It’s not the same as the sensual mind. Everyone wants to see this mind, and those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of sand along the Ganges, but when you ask them, they can’t explain it. They’re like puppets. It’s theirs to use. Why don’t they see it? The Buddha said people are deluded. This is why when they act they fall into the River of Endless Rebirth. And when they try to get out, they only sink deeper. And all because they don’t see their nature. If people weren’t deluded, why would they ask about something right in front of them? Not one of them understands the movement of his own hands and feet. The Buddha wasn’t mistaken. Deluded people don’t know who they are. Something so hard to fathom is known by a buddha and no one else. Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. It’s also called the Unstoppable Tathagata,30 the Incomprehensible, the Sacred Self, the Immortal, the Great Sage. Its names vary but not its essence. Buddhas vary too, but none leaves his own mind.
The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind. At every moment, where language can’t go, that’s your mind. The sutras say, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.” The endless variety of forms is due to the mind. Its ability to distinguish things, whatever their movement or state, is the mind’s awareness. But the mind has no form and its awareness no limit. Hence it’s said, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.”
A material body of the four elements31 is trouble. A material body is subject to birth and death. But the real body exists without existing, because a tathagata’s real body never changes. The sutras say, “People should realize that the buddha-nature is something they have always had.” Kashyapa32 only realized his own nature. Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature. This nature is the same as the mind of all buddhas. Buddhas of the past and future only transmit this mind. Beyond this mind there’s no buddha anywhere. But deluded people don’t realize that their own mind is the buddha. They keep searching outside. They never stop invoking buddhas or worshipping buddhas and wondering Where is the buddha? Don’t indulge in such illusions. Just know your mind. Beyond your mind there’s no other buddha. The sutras say, “Everything that has form is an illusion.” They also say, “Wherever you are, there’s a buddha.” Your mind is the buddha. Don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha. Even if a buddha or bodhisattva33 should suddenly appear before you, there’s no need for reverence. This mind of ours is empty and contains no such form. Those who hold onto appearances are devils. They fall from the Path. Why worship illusions born of the mind? Those who worship don’t know, and those who know don’t worship. By worshipping you come under the spell of devils. I point this out because I’m afraid you’re unaware of it. The basic nature of a buddha has no such form. Keep this in mind, even if something unusual should appear. Don’t embrace it, and don’t fear it, and don’t doubt that your mind is basically pure. Where could there be room for any such form? Also, at the appearance of spirits, demons, or divine beings,34 conceive neither respect nor fear. Your mind is basically empty. All appearances are illusions. Don’t hold on to appearances.
If you envision a buddha, a dharma, or a bodhisattva...
Sharmik