profisee 19 - this person will self-destruct_

never underestimate

the suction of samsara

even the silence of space

gets personal

in the blink of an i

the world is what

one makes of it

mission indivisible:

project love

profisee 18 - i.0

hate likes hate and

like likes like

hate hates like and

like hates hate

but love

loves them all—

the world is only

the memory of love

love is now

the new me is

i point oh—

what is thought

to be me is

the curtain behind which is

the reality i am

but in truth there's never a curtain

and nothing behind to be

profisee 17 - wake up reel

it is advisable

that before you die

(at any given moment)

you take this most opportune

limited lifespan

to realize

you are

actually

unborn

****

rather than fiddle

while rome is burning

see that you imagine

yourself as confines

of this world

and that is why

you burn

****

watch your light

that makes this loud

and epic picture

and know

you are its

dark and silent

mother

Concerning the Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition or the Ceasing of Notions [Jueguan lun]

"Buddhist scholar, John McRae, attributes this text to the Ox-head School of early Chan. McRae explains that research of the Ox-head School (named after the mountain Mount Niu-t'ou, Ox-head Mountain), has, until recently, been almost entirely devoted to the study of this text, the Chüeh-kuan lun (Jue-guan lun) which was rediscovered through the publication in 1935 of D. T. Suzuki's Shōshitsu issho (Lost Works from Bodhidharma's Cave). In all, there are six extant Dunhuang manuscripts of this text, all of which were published by Suzuki in 1945 and then by the eminent Japanese scholar Yanagida Seizan in 1970. The authorship of the text is in dispute.  McRae notes that the text, which he dates as sometime after 750, has been variously attributed to Shen-hi, Bodhidharma, Niu-t'ou Fa-jung, the legendary figurehead of the Ox-head School or perhaps by someone else later in the Bodhidharma tradition…

The text is an early example of the creativity of early Chan writing. It is structured as a dialogue between master and pupil but is obviously a fictional encounter. Highly structured as it is, it may be, as McRae notes in his essay, The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Chinese Ch'an Buddhism , “intended to model ideal teacher/student interactions and may in fact have resembled to some degree actual exchanges that took place between living meditation masters and practitioners.”  McRae translates the title as Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition and the two individuals...as ‘Professor Enlightenment' and ‘Conditionality'…The Ceasing of Notions…is [the title] translated by Venerable Myokyo-ni (Irmgard Schloegl, 1921–2007) and Michelle Bromley from earlier versions in German, English and Japanese (but notably, not Chinese).

The master in the text tries to lead the student from his notions of delusions and clinging, seeing everything in a dual way, to a true understanding of Chan. Master Nyuri constantly points to the student's errors in seeing things as a duality and not recognizing the emptiness in all things, including his questions. Throughout the dialogue, the student fails to understand the master's teaching until the very end when he becomes ‘enlightened', “finally breaking through to the pure, non-discriminating illumination of śūnyatā”."

[1]

Professor Enlightenment was silent and said nothing. Conditionality then arose suddenly and asked Professor Enlightenment: "What is the mind? What is it to pacify the mind (anxin)?"

[The master] answered: "You should not posit a mind, nor should you attempt to pacify it-this is called 'pacified.'"

Question: "If there is no mind, how can one cultivate enlightenment (tao)?"

Answer: "Enlightenment is not a thought of the mind, so how could it occur in the mind?"

Question: "If it is not thought of by the mind, how should it be thought of?"

Answer: "If there are thoughts then there is mind, and for there to be mind is contrary to enlightenment. If there is no thought (wunian) then there is no mind(wuxin), and for there to be no mind is true enlightenment." ...

Question: "What 'things' are there in no-mind?"

Answer: "No-mind is without 'things.' The absence of things is the Naturally True. The Naturally True is the Great Enlightenment (ta-tao)."...

Question: "What should I do?"

Answer: "You should do nothing."

Question: "I understand this teaching now even less than before."

Answer: "There truly is no understanding of the Dharma. Do not seek to understand it." ...

Question: "Who teaches these words?"

Answer: "It is as I have been asked."

Question: "What does it mean to say that it is as you have been asked?"

Answer: "If you contemplate [your own] questions, the answers will be understood [thereby] as well."

At this Conditionality was silent and he thought everything through once again.

Professor Enlightenment asked: "Why do you not say anything?"

Conditionality answered: "I do not perceive even the most minute bit of anything that can be explained."

At this point Professor Enlightenment said to Conditionality: "You would appear to have now perceived the True Principle."

Conditionality asked: "Why [do you say] 'would appear to have perceived' and not that I 'correctly perceived' [the True Principle]?"

Enlightenment answered: "What you have now perceived is the nonexistence of all dharmas. This is like the non-Buddhists who study how to make themselves invisible, but cannot destroy their shadow and footprints."

Conditionality asked: "How can one destroy both form and shadow?"

Enlightenment answered: "Being fundamentally without mind and its sensory realms, you must not willfully generate the ascriptive view (or, "perception") of impermanence."

[The following is from the end of the text.]

Question: "If one becomes [a Tathaagata] without transformation and in one's own body, how could it be called difficult?"

Answer: Willfully activating (ch'i ÑÃ) the mind is easy; extinguishing the mind is difficult. It is easy to affirm the body, but difficult to negate it. It is easy to act, but difficult to be without action. Therefore, understand that the mysterious achievement is difficult to attain, it is difficult to gain union with the Wondrous Principle. Motionless is the True, which the three [lesser vehicles] only rarely attain."

At this Conditionality gave a long sigh, his voice filling the ten directions. Suddenly, soundlessly, he experienced a great expansive enlightenment. The mysterious brilliance of his pure wisdom [revealed] no doubt in its counter illumination. For the first time he realized the extreme difficulty of spiritual training and that he had been uselessly beset with illusory worries.

He then sighed aloud: "Excellent! Just as you have taught without teaching, so have I heard without hearing...

[2]

"Here there is a threefold pattern of beginning questions, intermediate hesitation, and final achievement…which resembles Zhiyi's scheme of the three truths of absolute, relative, and middle. It is also structurally similar to Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern, but in this case the second element achieves its impact by the application of the fundamental Mahāyāna concept of Sūnyatā, or emptiness. Indeed, the same tripartite structure is apparent in the thought of at least one important Indian Mādhyamika philosopher. That is, an expression of Buddhism is made in the first element, the terms of this expression are erased in the second element, and the understanding of Buddhism is thereby elevated to a new level of profundity in the third element."

[3]

from:

[1] Jue guan lun [Zen Irodalom Zen Literature]

http://terebess.hu/zen/jueguanlun.html

[2] The Antecedents of Encounter Dialogue in Chinese Ch'an Buddhism by John R. McRae

http://kr.buddhism.org/zen/koan/John_McRae.htm

[3] Seeing through Zen Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism by John R. McRae [University of California Press]

profisee 16 - the diamond contra

they say there’s a diamond in your pocket—

the affluence of consciousness

the wealth of pure awareness

the flourishing power of now

it’s not that material wealth is something wicked—

it’s just superfluous and

possibly an encumbrance to

seeing that being is all and everything

now is the power and the wisdom and the wealth—

there's no knowledge of

the now in the now for the now

itself is the only actual knowledge

and there’s not even a diamond in your pocket

when you see the now, you're not in the now

when you're in the now, you don't see the now

when you are the now, there's not a you or now

for you aren’t even you but actually the diamond

The Bodhidharma Documents and Brief Selections

There are two books that deal exclusively with ‘Bodhidharma’ texts: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine & The Bodhidharma Anthology translated by Jeffrey L. Broughton. There is another book which contains two ‘Bodhidharma’ texts also included in the Red Pine volume: Zen Dawn, translated by J. C. Cleary. For all intents and purposes, this is the Bodhidharma canon in English.

Before going any further, it might be useful to say who Bodhidharma is. Scholars can get intense about the details and chant the word ‘hagiographical’ or ‘epistemology” as some learned mantra. I prefer Red Pine’s simple summary:

Unknown to all but a few disciples during his lifetime, Bodhidharma is the patriarch of millions of Zen Buddhists…. He is the subject of many legends as well… 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.

If the man never existed, the texts do, relatively speaking. They are bright expositions of early Chan (in Japanese, Zen). And it is my intent to list all of them here along with some information about each, including, most importantly, a brief but substantial selected quote. I find the texts to be refreshingly spare as well as skillful pointers to nondual truth.

The Red Pine is a small volume of what may, for the most part, be apocryphal works, but also mostly quick and insightful. In the end notes, he describes his sources:

The Chinese text used for this translation is a Ch’ing dynasty woodblock edition that incorporates corrections of obvious copyist errors in the standard edition of the continuation to the Ming dynasty Tripitaka. I’ve added several corrections of my own, based mostly on textual variants found in Tunhuang versions, for which see D.T. Suzuki’s Shoshitsu isho oyobi kaisetsu (Lost Works of Bodhidharma).

The Broughton may be more academic, but the translations are luminous and the commentary, brilliant. He describes their importance:

Of the ten texts we now have attributed to Bodhidharma or claiming to present his teaching, the one generally held to contain material that is authentic in some sense is the Bodhidharma Anthology, which itself is composed of seven texts…The Bodhidharma Anthology as a continuum was discovered only in the early part of this century, and it is fair to describe it as one of the most important finds among the Tun-huang manuscripts, a small portion of which constitute the “Dead Sea Scrolls” of Zen…[D.T.] Suzuki was able to find and reproduce a number of Zen texts, including an anthology that came to be called the Long Scroll of the Treatise on the Two Entrances and Four Practices (Ninyu shigydron chokansu); he subsequently published the reproductions in Japan. The Long Scroll is the work I have dubbed the Bodhidharma Anthology…For decades discussion of the Long Scroll or Bodhidharma Anthology, both Japanese and Western, has concentrated on the second section, the Two Entrances, and has come to the consensus that only this text can be attributed to Bodhidharma…A purpose of this book is to give the Records, particularly Record II and Record III, their due as the real beginnings of Zen literature, the true ancestors of the Zen genre known as recorded sayings…

The Cleary is as the Clearys are: clean and thorough.

1.         Two Entrances and Four Practices

-Red Pine: Outline of Practice

-Broughton: Two Entrances (section 2 of Bodhidharma Anthology)

Bodhidharma Anthology is called by D. T. Suzuki: The Long Scroll of the Treatise on The Two Entrances and Four Practices, and includes a Biography, 2 letters, and 3 records (in Suzuki, 2) [see 5-9 below] in addition to the Two Entrances

-J. C. Cleary: Section Two of Records of Teachers and the Students of the Lanka: Tripitaka Dharma Teacher Bodhidharma

compiled by Tanlin (per Broughton)

Excerpt:

Now, in entering the path there are many roads. To summarize them, they reduce to two types. The first is entrance by principle and the second entrance by practice. Entering by principle means that one awakens to the thesis by means of the teachings, and one deeply believes that all living beings, common and sagely, are identical to the True Nature; that it is merely because of the unreal covering of adventitious dust that the True Nature is not revealed. If one rejects the false and reverts to the real and in a coagulated state abides in wall-examining, then self and other, common man and sage, are identical; firmly abiding without shifting, in no way following after the written teachings-this is mysteriously tallying with principle. It is nondiscriminative, quiescent, and inactive; we call it entrance by principle.

~trans Broughton

2.            Bloodstream Sermon

-Red Pine: Bloodstream Sermon

Yanagida attributes authorship to a member of Oxhead Zen School (per Red Pine, although “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.”)

Excerpt:

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. Buddhas don’t recite sutras. Buddhas don’t keep precepts. 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. 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.

~trans Red Pine

3.         Wake-up Sermon

                       

-Red Pine: Wake-up Sermon

Yanagida attributes as an eight-century work of the Northern Zen School (per Red Pine)

Excerpt:

Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation. Remaining unblemished by the dust of sensation is guarding the Dharma. Transcending life and death is leaving home. Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way. Not creating delusions is enlightenment. Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom. No affliction is nirvana. And no appearance of the mind is the other shore.

When you’re deluded, this shore exists. When you wake up, it doesn’t exist. Mortals stay on this shore. But those who discover the greatest of all vehicles stay on neither this shore nor the other shore. They’re able to leave both shores. Those who see the other shore as different from this shore don’t understand zen.

Delusion means mortality. And awareness means buddhahood. They’re not the same. And they’re not different. It’s just that people distinguish delusion from awareness. When we’re deluded there’s a world to escape. When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape.

~trans Red Pine

4.            Contemplation of Mind Treatise

-J.C. Cleary: Treatise on Contemplating Mind

-Red Pine: Breakthrough Sermon

Excerpt:

This mind is the source of all virtues. And this mind is the chief of all powers. The eternal bliss of nirvana comes from the mind at rest. Rebirth in the three realms also comes from the mind. The mind is the door to every world and the mind is the ford to the other shore. Those who know where the door is don’t worry about reaching it. Those who know where the ford is don’t worry about crossing it.

The people I meet nowadays are superficial. They think of merit as something that has form. They squander their wealth and butcher creatures of land and sea. They foolishly concern themselves with erecting statues and stupas, telling people to pile up lumber and bricks, to paint this blue and that green. They strain body and mind, injure themselves and mislead others. And they don’t know enough to be ashamed. How will they ever become enlightened? They see something tangible and instantly become attached. If you talk to them about formlessness, they sit there dumb and confused. Greedy for the small mercies of this world, they remain blind to the great suffering to come. Such disciples wear themselves out in vain. Turning from the true to the false, they talk about nothing but future blessings.

If you can simply concentrate your mind’s inner light and behold its outer illumination, you’ll dispel the three poisons and drive away the six thieves once and for all. And without effort you’ll gain possession of an infinite number of virtues, perfections, and doors to the truth. Seeing through the mundane and witnessing the sublime is less than an eye-blink away. Realization is now. Why worry about gray hair? But the true door is hidden and can’t be revealed. I have only touched upon beholding the mind.

~trans Red Pine

5.         First Letter

Broughton: section 3 of Bodhidharma Anthology

written by Tanlin or Huike? (per Broughton)

Excerpt:

I have always admired the former wise ones. I have broadly cultivated all the practices. I have always esteemed the Pure Lands of the Buddhas and looked up to the teachings that have come down to us as a thirsty man longs for water. Those who have been able to meet Sakyamuni Buddha and realize the great path are in the millions; those who have obtained the four fruits are numberless. I really thought that the heavenly mansions were another country and the hells another place, that if one were to attain the path and get the fruit, one's bodily form would change. I unrolled sutra scrolls to seek blessings; through pure practice I [tried to produce karmic] causes. In confusion I went around in circles, chaSing my mind and creating karma; thus I passed many years without the leisure to take a rest. Then for the first time I dwelled upright in dark quiescence and settled external objects in the kingdom of mind. However, I had been cultivating false thought for such a long time that my feelings led me to continue to see characteristics. I came to the point where I wanted to probe the difficulties inherent in these illusionary transformations. In the end I clearly apprehended the Dharma Nature and engaged in a coarse practice of Thusness. For the first time I realized that within the square inch of my own mind there is nothing that does not exist. The bright pearl comprehends clearly and darkly penetrates the deep tendency of things. From the Buddhas above to the wriggling insects below there is nothing that is not another name for false thought. They are the calculations of thought.

~trans Broughton

6.         Second Letter

Broughton: section 4 of Bodhidharma Anthology

written by Layman Hsiang incorporated in Hui-ko-B (Huike) of Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks by Tao-Hsuan (per Broughton)

Excerpt:

Shadows arise from bodily forms; echoes follow upon voices. Some play with their shadows to the point of tiring their bodies, not realizing that their bodies are the shadows. Some raise their voices to stop the echoes, not realizing that the voice is the source of the echo. Searching for nirvana by eliminating the defilements is like searching for the shadow by getting rid of the body. Seeking for Buddhahood by rejecting sentient beings is like seeking for the echo by silencing the voice. Therefore, we know that delusion and awakening are one road, that stupidity and wisdom are not different. In a place of namelessness they mistakenly think of erecting names, and because of these names, is and is-not are born. In a place without principles they mistakenly think of creating principles, and because of these principles, disputations flourish therein. Illusionary transformations are not real, so who is right and who wrong? Falsity is unreal, so what exists and what does not exist? One should know that obtaining is having nothing to obtain and losing is having nothing to lose. Having not yet been able to talk with you, I have composed these lines, but how can one discuss the dark purport?

~trans Broughton

7.         Record I

                                   

Broughton: section 5 of Bodhidharma Anthology

Broughton: “Record I, the Method for Quieting Mind, consists of forty-five sections. The format is both lecture and dialogue. Some sections are fairly lengthy, some only a few lines. One characteristic separates Record I from the Two Entrances, the First Letter, and the Second Letter. The latter are in literary style, and Record I contains quite a few colloquial elements… These colloquial forms should alert us. They are the beginnings of a tendency that culminates in Sung Dynasty Ch'an literature, the most conspicuous characteristic of which is the use of colloquial language. Of course, in that literature the colloquial once again solidifies into a literary language… Record I takes the first big step toward breaking into the colloquial range of the recorded-sayings (yu-lu) genre of Ch'an literature; Record II is on the verge of breaking into that range. The vibrancy, the resonance with the spoken word, tells us more about original Ch'an than Tan-lin's elegant, balanced Two Entrances. These texts tell us of the deepening Sinification of Buddhism, in the sense of a move toward a spoken Chinese form of expression and away from the venerable, but artificial, style of the translation and commentarial traditions…”

Yen-shou calls it Bodhidharmatara’s The Method for Quieting Mind (per Broughton)

Excerpt:

Question: "Why does the common man fall into evil rebirths?" Answer: "Because he has an ego, is stupid, and therefore says: 'I drink wine.' The wise one says: 'When you have no wine, why don't you drink winelessness?' Even if [the stupid person] were to say 'I do drink winelessness,' the wise one would say: 'Where is your I?' The stupid person also says: 'I commit a sin.' The wise one says: 'What sort of thing is your sin?' All of this is conditioned arising, lacking an essence. When it arises, you already know there is no ego, so who commits the sin and who receives punishment? The sutra says: 'Common men insist on discriminating: "I crave; I am angry." Such ignorant people will then fall into the three evil rebirths.' The sutra says: 'Sin is intrinsically neither internal nor external, nor is it between the two.' This illustrates that sin is unlocalized. The unlocalized is the locus of quiescence. When human beings fall into a hell, from mind they calculate an ego. They remember and discriminate, saying: 'I commit evils, and I receive punishments. I do good deeds, and I receive rewards.' This is the evil karma. From the outset no such things have existed, but they arbitrarily remember and discriminate, saying that they exist. This is the evil karma."

Question: "Who can cross over the ego to nirvana?" Answer: "Dharma can cross over the ego. How can this be known? By seizing characteristics, one falls into a hell. By examining Dharma, one is liberated. If you see characteristics, remember, and discriminate, then you will suffer from a scalding cauldron, a blazing furnace, the ox-headed [guards of hell], the Hell of the Sound of Cold, and so forth. You will see manifested before you the characteristics of birth-and-death. If you see that the Dharma-Realm nature is the nirvana nature and you are without memory and discrimination, then it is the substance of the Dharma Realm."

~trans Broughton

8.         Record II

Broughton: section 6 of Bodhidharma Anthology

Broughton: “Record II truly constitutes the beginnings of the recorded­sayings genre of Ch' an literature. There is a direct line from this work to the vast literature of Ch' an recorded sayings, and neglect of Record II has led us to place the beginnings of the recorded-sayings genre much too late in the history of Ch'an literature-usually in the ninth century. Record II’s eighteen sections seem to break naturally into three parts. Sections 50-56 center on Master Yuan; sections 57-62 center on Hui-k'o; and sections 63-67 provide miscellaneous dialogues. We could dub Record II the Recorded Sayings of Yuan and Hui-k'o…”

Excerpt:

Another question: "What is the path?" Answer: "When you desire to produce the thought of moving toward the path, crafty ingenuity will arise, and you will fall into having mind. If you desire to give rise to the path, ingenious artifice will arise. If you have devices in your mind, crafty artifice will always arise." Another question: "What is crafty artifice?" Answer: "If you use intellectual understanding to seek a name, a hundred ingenious schemes arise. If you desire to cut off crafty artifice, don't produce the thought of enlightenment and don't use knowledge of the sutras and treatises. If you can accomplish this, then for the first time you will have bodily energy. If you have spirit, do not esteem understanding, do not seek Dharma, and do not love knowledge, then you will find a little quietude." Further: "If you do not seek wonderful understanding, do not serve as a teacher for people, and also do not take Dharma as your teacher, you will walk alone spontaneously." Further: "If you do not give rise to a demon mind, I can lead you."

~trans Broughton

9.         Record III

Broughton: section 7 of Bodhidharma Anthology (most not in Suzuki’s The Long Scroll of the Treatise on The Two Entrances and Four Practices)

Broughton: “Record III is a collection of sayings, not dialogues. Eschewing the question-and-answer mold, it consists of sayings of numerous masters, many with the title Dhyana Master. Some sayings seem to be followed by commentary, often including one or more sutra quotations.”

Excerpt:

The nun Yuan-chu says: "All dharmas are nonreacting. They are intrinsically liberated. Why? When the eye sees forms, there are none that it does not see. Even when the mind consciousness knows, there is nothing that it does not know and nothing that it knows. At the time of delusion there is no understanding; at the time of understanding there is no delusion. During a dream there is no awakening; at the time of awakening there is no dream. Therefore, the sutra says: 'The great assembly, having seen Aksobhya Buddha, no longer saw that Buddha. Ananda! No dharma associates with the eye and ear organs to create a reaction. Why? Dharmas do not see dharmas. Dharmas do not know dharmas.' Also, the sutra says: 'The nonproduction of consciousness due to forms is called not seeing forms.' "

~trans Broughton

Chan Master Yuan, Bodhidharma Disciple, On Bodily Energy (t'i-ch'i) and Spirit (ching-shen)

Record II [of the Bodhidharma Anthology] truly constitutes the beginnings of the recorded­ sayings genre of Ch' an literature… Sections 50-56 center on Master Yuan…

Who is this Yuan? We do not know, and we will never know, but below I will list him as one of Bodhidharma's disciples. We might call him a forgotten Bodhidharma disciple, or at the very least a forgotten member of the Bodhidharma circle…

His name is a Buddhist technical term. The Sanskrit would be pratyaya (condition). Related expressions include idampratyayata (this­conditionality) and pratitya-samutpada (dependent origination). Perhaps we could call him "Master Conditioned," his name suggesting the profound teaching of conditionality, which must be seen and understood or one remains in samsara…

The Master Yuan sections of Record II are true Ch'an question-and­answer encounters (wen-ta) between practitioners. Later Ch'an literature is filled with such encounters, but it is startling to see them in such an early text and in such a developed form…

Yuan (section 50) speaks of escaping karma-the force of the effects of intentional actions in this and past lives that binds one to the wheel of the rebirth process-through a Singularity, an act of will: "When you are on the verge of seizing a lofty sense of willpower [jo yu-ch'u yuan-i shih], bondage and habit energy will surely melt away." He is iconoclastic, consistently criticizing reliance on the Dharma, reliance on teachers, reliance on meditative practice, reliance on canonical texts. Faith in Buddhist teachings and teachers, praxis according to the traditional rules, and learning in scripture lead to nothing but self-deception and confusion. From this stance Master Yuan never budges. His relentless boldness prefigures much in the stance of the full-blown Ch' an tradition.

He does speak positively of one thing. He calls it "bodily energy" (t'i-ch'i) or "spirit" (ching-shen). The first is a general term for physical strength, and the latter is found in classical Taoist texts, the Chuang Tzu and the Lieh Tzu, where it means the spirit or mind associated with Heaven, and in medical works, where it means vim, vigor, or stamina. This is not the only classical Taoist terminology he employs, for he says that if one evinces even the slightest desire to advance in religious training, "ingenious artifice" (ch'iao-wei) gains the upper hand. This term also comes from the Chuang Tzu. Energy and spirit are all a practitioner needs (sections 51 and 55-56):

If you have bodily energy, you will avoid the deceptive delusions of people and Dharma, and your spirit will be all right. Why? Because when you esteem knowledge, you are deceived by men and Dharma. If you value one person as correct, then you will not avoid the deceptive confusions of this person .... If you desire to cut off crafty artifice, don't produce the thought of enlightenment and don't use knowledge of the sutras and treatises. If you can accomplish this, then for the first time you will have bodily energy. If you have spirit, do not esteem understanding, do not seek Dharma, and do not love knowledge, then you will find a little quietude .... If you can understand that intrinsically there is neither quiescence nor disturbance, then you will be able to exist of yourself. The one who is not drawn into quiescence and disturbance is the man of spirit.

edited from The Bodhidharma Anthology, Jeremy L. Broughton (bold characters not in original)

riverisimilitude 2: the reach

riverisimilitude 1: reeding the end

Robert Adams & Last Words of Ramana Maharshi

When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn’t have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid them on his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back.

I have been to many teachers, many saints, many sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Ananda Mayi Ma, Papa Ramdas, Neem Karoli Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss as Ramana Maharshi. There were about thirty people in the room. He looked at me and asked me if I’d eaten breakfast. I said, ‘No’. He spoke some Tamil to the attendant and the attendant came back with two giant leaves, one with fruit and one with some porridge with pepper. After I had consumed the food, I just lay down on the floor. I was very tired.

It was time for his usual walk. He had arthritis in the legs and could hardly walk at that time. After his attendants had helped him to get up, he walked out the door. When he was outside he said something to his attendants, and his attendants motioned for me to come. He guided me to a little shack that I was going to use while I stayed there. He came inside with me, and I bet you think we spoke about profound subjects. On the contrary, he was a natural man. He was the Self of the universe. He asked me how my trip was, where I was from, what made me come here. Then he said I should rest, so I lay down on the cot and he left.

I was awakened about 5 o’clock. It was Ramana again. He came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly; I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast, and everybody sat around just watching Ramana as he went through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees. I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love.

  

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Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ramdas. While I was there, I was informed that he [Bhagavan] had left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. The crowds had already started to come, thousands and thousands of people. So, I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. I stayed there for five days. When I came down, the crowds had dispersed. Ramana had already been interred.

I enquired of the devotee who saw him last, ‘What were the last words he spoke?’

The devotee said, ‘While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching. Ramana remarked to his devotee, ‘Has anyone fed the peacock yet?’ Those were the last words he spoke.

Now, let’s talk about you. Think of the problems you believe you have. Think of the nonsense that you go on with everyday. Think how furious you become, how you always want to stick up for your rights, as if you had any. The problem is, you think. If you would only stop thinking.

You say, ‘How can I function if I stop thinking?’

Very well, thank you! As a matter of fact you will function much better than you do now, for you will always be taken care of. The universe loves you. It will always supply you with your needs. Forget about other people, what they do, what they don’t do. Do not listen to malicious gossip. Be yourself. Understand who you really are. You are the absolute reality, unconditioned consciousness. Work from that standpoint. Do not work from your problems. Do not get lost in meaningless gossip. Understand your true reality. Be yourself.

What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. ‘Who am I?’ has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you he has something new to teach you, be careful, because there’s nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the ‘Who am I’ philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself. Simply ask yourself, ‘To whom does this problem come?’ And of course the answer will be, ‘The problem comes to me’. Hold onto the ‘me’. Follow the ‘me’ to the source, the substratum of all existence.

How do you do that? How do you hold onto ‘me’? How do you hold onto ‘I’? By simply asking yourself, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ It’s the same thing. Ask yourself again and again, ‘Who am I?’

Forget about time. Forget about space. Forget everything. Keep yourself from thinking. When the thoughts come, ask yourself, ‘To whom comes the thoughts?’

Again, ‘They come to me.’ Hold onto the ‘me’. ‘I think these thoughts. Well then, Who am I? Who thinks these thoughts? Who am I?’

An easier way to do this I have found is to simply say to yourself, ‘I-I, I-I,’ and you will notice as you do this, the I-I goes deeper, deeper, deeper within you into your Heart centre, right to the source. For westerners I have found that saying ‘I-I’ seems to be more helpful than ‘Who am I?’ Again, do not look at time. Do not ask yourself, ‘When is something going to happen?’

A devotee went to Ramana and said, ‘I’ve been with you for twenty-five years, doing “Who am I?” and nothing has happened yet,’ so Ramana said, ‘Try it another twenty-five and see what happens’.

~Robert Adams (edited) via David Godman post on Arunachala and Sri Ramana Maharshi