Studying oneself is the Buddha way

[deci belle]

To study the Buddha way is to study oneself. To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be enlightened by the myriad dharmas. To be enlightened by the myriad dharmas is to bring about the dropping away of body and mind of both oneself and others. The traces of enlightenment come to an end, and this traceless enlightenment is continued endlessly.

 

 

The Buddha said to refer everything to the self.

 

Most people consider this to mean conceptual consideration by intellectualism, holding the self mentioned in the Buddha's powerful statement as the self propped up and perpetuated by this same intellectual reasoning being the seat of karmic bondage.

 

If it were what the Buddha meant, how could that have any power? Any ignoramus refers everything to himself from birth to death. Who has ventured to ponder what the Buddha meant by this revelatory pronouncement into the nature of one's true being in terms of correct study of the self?

 

Taoism states that it is necessary to work with what is the same. Sameness is essence. Essence is the self. Life is other. One already has this immaterial essence. That is why buddhism says to see essence on your own, then see a teacher.

 

Taoism says to use essence to call life back from another's house. Essence is one's own aware nature. Life is real potential, real knowledge. This is why it is necessary to deal effectively with ordinary situations impersonally by activating impersonal nonpsychological essential awareness to see through situations and gather the unrefined potential inherent in situations by unminding, forgetting one's intellectual and emotional consciousness in the midst of ordinary affairs.

 

To study the Buddha way is to study oneself means that activating one's own unborn awareness, empty of relative cause, is the basis to conduct oneself in the midst of affairs by subtle observation, subtle concentration that does not use intellectual interpretations to rationalize self and other. This is true study resulting in forgetting oneself.

 

 

To study oneself is to forget oneself does not refer to an instance of sudden enlightenment. Forgetting oneself is activation of the unborn mind that sees without calling habitual perspectives relative to the personality of the false conditioned karmic identity. True study of the real self is activation of the selfless self. This is the authentic practice of forgetting oneself. The effect of authentic practice in the midst of ordinary affairs is studying the real self without removing the world. This is enlightening activity.

 

When Dogen says, "To forget oneself is to be enlightened by the myriad dharmas.", it means effective practice is carried out by seeing the world as oneself. In one heightened experience during a preliminary 1000 day cycle, I awoke to the awareness being such that the overwhelming perspective was one of "it (the entire worldly situation) is just me". In other words, there was no me to speak of constituting an existence separate from all the elements and timing aggregating to define the evolution of a great cycle. The situational evolution was such that its pressure-cooker reality was just what it was with no reflective perspective on others struggling as others separate from myself. Its inconceivably psychological and emotional brutality was simply the conditions under which I found myself, and each cycle within this cycle resulted in the same open-ended basis of times alternating successively without a break.

 

The myriad dharmas are simply conditional phenomenal unreality, but they are all there is to work with. It is by virtue of the karmic matrix that there is the context for self-refining enlightening activity. One's sense, being real knowledge of true reality, nurtured by essential aware purity of impersonal open sincerity permeates myriad dharmas. Though it is oneself, it is not one's own. This is because the nature of the universal is itself aware nonbeing. The totality of reality is thus.

 

This is how enlightenment by the myriad dharmas is forgetting oneself. In forgetting, the myriad dharmas become oneself.

 

 

"To be enlightened by the myriad dharmas is to bring about the dropping away of body and mind of both oneself and others", is arrival of cessation, the absolute, seeing one's naturre, seeing one's original face.

 

Upon culmination of the great cycle, experience of nonorigination, the empty kalpa, where no buddha can reach you is attained. Nothing further can be said. This is where the matter of life and death is finally finished, and one has completely thrown away all knowledge: this is the absolute of the homeland of nothing whatsoever.

 

In his last line Dogen states that, "The traces of enlightenment come to an end, and this traceless enlightenment is continued endlessly."

 

In the aftermath of the sudden, one reeks of enlightenment. This must be worn off, washed off, rinsed completely away. This is why I say that the "vertical must be dissolved before one can make use of it". Alchemic manuals say that once one has used the true lead (real knowledge), one must then get rid of it. "Having used lead to refine mercury into the gold pill of immortality, one then gets rid of the lead".

 

Dogen's "Traces of enlightenment" is identification with the experience of the foregoing achievement clinging to essential aware nature in the aftermath of complete perfect enlightenment. Taoist alchemical manuals state that "openness must then be emptied".

 

"One overturns the polar mountain, shatters space, sublimates oneself physically and spiritually and enters the tao in reality, planting lotuses in fire, going through endless transformations".

 

This is the meaning of "and this traceless enlightenment is continued endlessly."

 

Hakuun Yasutani states in his commentary of Dogen's Genjokoan on this section, "…that since one has with great effort become the original buddha [in selfless sudden illumination], from here the work of the buddha begins."

 

Attaining further enlightenment upon enlightenment in terms of endless transformations of subtle operation within Suchness, one becomes a person deluded within delusion: enlightenment being no different than delusion. This is the expression of the activation of one's selfless enlightening being where there is a body outside the body. It is just nonbeing within being.

 

This is the significance of the taoist term, Complete Reality, and also the source of the ancient taoist teaching tradition that has endeavored to keep this knowledge alive.

 

 

[doc benway]

Wonderful post, deci.

 

I'd like to add a much more mundane aspect of this approach that I think is extraordinarily valuable.

To study oneself in the more literal sense is also of great benefit on the path, especially for those to whom the more subtle levels of awareness and insight are elusive.

 

I would advocate that we look at ourselves unflinchingly - our thoughts, our moods, our sensory experience, our motivation - all of it. Just watch, no need to even change anything or interfere. Develop familiarity with what is going on rather than simply riding the thought/emotion train day in day out, reacting in unawareness and living as an automaton. Live in awareness, no matter where we are on our path.

 

As we being to really take stock of all of this and free ourselves of our conditioned responses and patterns, we are naturally guided to look at the looker as well. That is when investigation and insight begin to reveal the more subtle and profound aspects of our true nature to which your refer.

 

So while I do not disagree with anything you wrote and appreciate your ability to express deep insight, I believe those same words and teachings can be applied at multiple levels to guide us at different stages along the way.

[deci belle]

haha~ *c'est vrai* That's great, Steve!!❤︎

 

And thank you for the likes, you guys!!

[deci belle]

Steve has a point that should encourage those who struggle with doubts…

 

But though it is possible for those having penetrated a practical experiential basis in the real such as Steve can see how it is possible to apply Dogen's elevated living words on multiple levels of understanding, there is only one mind which all levels of experience have in reference to recognition of one's being that is nonoriginated. Therefore, in terms of this mind, and in terms of effective and immediate wordless insight by those whose practical work of self-refinement is real, there are no levels.

 

What is the mind of the nonoriginated self the Buddha says to refer everything to? It is the mind that does not think. One's own awareness not construed by the thinking mentality is immediate wordless insight. Just this mind is the Unborn.

 

When wordless insight is present, don't think about it— in developing a subtle continuity of unminding concentration in the midst of everyday ordinary situations by open-minded wordless stable insight one enters into the only kind of practice worthy of the name. The Unborn is truly all there is. When you get this, just don't let it turn into other states.

 

After a long, long time of stability in resting in the Unborn, eventually there is awakening to reality as is which finally obliterates one's uncertainty and doubt.

 

This mind is the same in all sentient beings be they buddhas or ordinary deluded people. But "only those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence can direct the course of nature and not be caused to wax and wane by nature".

 

It is all well and good that all sentient beings have this and are this enlightenment already, but even for those who have seen essence, their original face, if they cannot avail themselves of this knowledge, it is the same as if they had no knowledge.

 

Bankei never wore out his unborn mind. He just told ordinary folk the same thing over and over without ever changing his story until the day he died that one simply must apply one's own everyday ordinary unborn mind by not turning it into anything else by compulsions following thoughts based on selfish perspectives relative to the personality that thinks.

 

The galloping mind is the scourge of human being. Just don't let the unborn awareness perpetually present without beginning turn into other states by thinking unawares. It is thinking unawares that carries one away from the perpetually pristine unborn mind.

 

Don't stop this thinking mind— just don't follow it unawares. When you let the human mentality go on without you, the unborn is already just your true self activated in terms of the capacity of impersonal objective observation. That's your mind.

 

As for those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence— it is just resting in the Unborn as all things act in concert. This is the place where one sees Return. Return is just the celestial arising from within the mundane. Those who see the spontaneous arising of the celestial see the source of Change, and therefore do not go along with change.

 

It is not a matter of mundane or elevated aspects differentiating people. Those who can rest in the Unborn for an instant are buddhas for an instant. Those who rest in the Unborn for a lifetime are buddhas for a lifetime. It's only just now.

 

This mind is the same in all sentient beings be they buddhas or ordinary deluded people. But "only those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence can direct the course of nature and not be caused to wax and wane by nature".

 

This should help those who wonder why understanding reality matters.

 

 

 

 

ed note: typos

Edited September 11, 2014 by deci belle

[doc benway]

Beautiful exposition - those claiming interest in Dzogchen practice would do themselves a service to study this post.

The primary pith instructions that are repeated over and over by the masters who are said to have achieved rainbow body is exactly the same thing - leave it as it is.

 

Steve has a point that should encourage those who struggle with doubts…

 

But though it is possible for those having penetrated a practical experiential basis in the real such as Steve can see how it is possible to apply Dogen's elevated living words on multiple levels of understanding, there is only one mind which all levels of experience have in reference to recognition of one's being that is nonoriginated. Therefore, in terms of this mind, and in terms of effective and immediate wordless insight by those whose practical work of self-refinement is real, there are no levels.

 

What is the mind of the nonoriginated self the Buddha says to refer everything to? It is the mind that does not think. One's own awareness not construed by the thinking mentality is immediate wordless insight. Just this mind is the Unborn.

 

When wordless insight is present, don't think about it— in developing a subtle continuity of unminding concentration in the midst of everyday ordinary situations by open-minded wordless stable insight one enters into the only kind of practice worthy of the name. The Unborn is truly all there is.

 

 

When you get this, just don't let it turn into other states.

 

Ahhh, yes, therein lies the rub....

 

 

 

After a long, long time of stability in resting in the Unborn, eventually there is awakening to reality as is which finally obliterates one's uncertainty and doubt.

And the awakening sometimes comes first, then it remains necessary to develop that stability otherwise it's easily wasted!

 

 

This mind is the same in all sentient beings be they buddhas or ordinary deluded people. But "only those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence can direct the course of nature and not be caused to wax and wane by nature".

 

It is all well and good that all sentient beings have this and are this enlightenment already, but even for those who have seen essence, their original face, if they cannot avail themselves of this knowledge, it is the same as if they had no knowledge.

So frustratingly so!

 

Bankei never wore out his unborn mind. He just told ordinary folk the same thing over and over without ever changing his story until the day he died that one simply must apply one's own everyday ordinary unborn mind by not turning it into anything else by compulsions following thoughts based on selfish perspectives relative to the personality that thinks.

 

The galloping mind is the scourge of human being. Just don't let the unborn awareness perpetually present without beginning turn into other states by thinking unawares. It is thinking unawares that carries one away from the perpetually pristine unborn mind.

 

Don't stop this thinking mind— just don't follow it unawares. When you let the human mentality go on without you, the unborn is already just your true self activated in terms of the capacity of impersonal objective observation. That's your mind.

The thinking mind IS the nature of mind - it is not other, to try and stop it is to fight against nature.

To allow it without over-identifying with it is to liberate.

 

 

As for those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence— it is just resting in the Unborn as all things act in concert. This is the place where one sees Return. Return is just the celestial arising from within the mundane. Those who see the spontaneous arising of the celestial see the source of Change, and therefore do not go along with change.

 

It is not a matter of mundane or elevated aspects differentiating people. Those who can rest in the Unborn for an instant are buddhas for an instant. Those who rest in the Unborn for a lifetime are buddhas for a lifetime. It's only just now.

 

This mind is the same in all sentient beings be they buddhas or ordinary deluded people. But "only those who cultivate themselves to conform to essence can direct the course of nature and not be caused to wax and wane by nature".

 

This should help those who wonder why understanding reality matters.

 

 

 

 

ed note: typos