07/27/2024
Rinzai said that in this five-foot lump of red flesh there is a True Person of No Rank who is always coming and going in and out of the orifices. If you have not seen this True Person yet, see it now. Within this physical body that bleeds when it's cut, that True Person of No Rank encounters the eyes and becomes seeing; it encounters the ears and becomes hearing; through the hands, it becomes making something; through the feet, it becomes carrying our body. That True Person of No Rank, without any smell or shadow of a small self: if you have not realized that True Person, that true life energy, do it now. We all have the exact same eyes and ears and body and awareness. If you do not become fixed and hardened on some idea of a small self, you can always know this place which is fresh and new.
"But it is no different for each and every one of the six senses." Buddha Nature is the name that is given, but our true nature is not something that is made up or held on to in our heads. It's not just a name. It's alive; it's present; it's real. As Bodhidharma said in his rules for doing zazen, you need to let go of all connections to the external world and let go of all concerns within and, not holding on to anything in your head, sit with your entire body. Zen is not something we have to be able to hold on to some idea about. It's not about holding on to an idea of thinking nothing at all either, or an idea of not being moved around by anything--if we approach it in that way we are still beginners. It's not to sit as if paralyzed either. Rather, as it's said in the phrase in the Diamond Sutra that the Sixth Patriarch heard and was awakened by, "residing in no place, the awakened mind arises." Zen is not to think that we should not see, hear, or speak, but while seeing, hearing, and speaking to let everything go after we have perceived it. If we become caught by and attached to anything, our mind stops. Rather than thinking and becoming caught by various thoughts, we can be always new, always fresh. We must know this beyond any preconceived notion or idea or past experience; we must know only that flow of life energy.
-Harada Shodo Roshi
