May we with all beings realize the emptiness of the three wheels, giver, receiver and gift.
Language helps us understand but it does not take us beyond the material realm. Those who want to go beyond words, must abandon them. Language is a scheme that creates the illusory world. To rely fully on the material realm leads to bondage and suffering. Our work is to go beyond it. Language is used to point the Way but language in itself is not the Way. Language mimics form, name, quality and utility, but language, at some point, is abandoned.
Abandon desires that come from intention. All of them. Rest in the Self. Not in the thoughts of the self-centered self. To look a certain way, To be called a certain name, To exhibit a certain quality or To do a useful act. Bhagavad Gita
Language creates the appearance of the movie that plays and covers the face of our original nature. When this false appearance occurs, we call it me, mine, my form, my name, my qualities and my acts.
Language, however, also helps us to unravel our self-centered insistence to create the illusion through practice instructions. We practice until we no longer create the appearance and rest in our Beloved Divine Self.
We use language to STOP the chatter of self-identification in order to see through the illusion and see who and what we really are.
Let me offer a simple teaching from Dōgen, a 13th century Zen Master of the Soto School of Zen.
You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Fukazazengi
Dogen offers an instruction that zazen is not merely sitting on a cushion, but a practice that asks us to give up our desire to understand, pursuing words…it is much more difficult than learning meditation.
The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.
And finally, this practice is not limited to the practice of sitting alone.
What we use of language and intellectual thought is our inquiring mind. We inquire into the thoughts and hindrances in order to let them go; to recognize the Truth and then, realize IT. Our thoughts and inquiry are, at some point, finally seen through for what they are. We use language to see through the delusion as in a Hua T‘ou or the repetition of a mantra.
We study, ask questions and seek until the inquiring reaches a point that we transcend the material minded point-of-view and experience our true original nature. We no longer are bound by anything.
May all beings be free of suffering.
OM NAMO GURU DEV NAMO
Author: Fashi Lao Yue
ZATMA is not a blog.
If you are interested in doing a silent retreat or for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching, please contact editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com
