Dharma Rain - Manzan Dohaku

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Manzan Dohaku

Practice and realization are not nonexistent; you should start right away. Just sitting is called real practice, the freedom and ease of body and mind is called true realization. Once practice and realization are actually fulfilled, after that you must attain to the meaning of the completeness, without lack or excess, of this way, this mind. [1]

Great perfect awareness is the ocean of ultimate peace; still and silent, myriad forms and images reflect therein. Yet suddenly when the wind of objects arises it turns into an ocean of birth and death, with waves of consciousnesses and feelings billowing day and night, where all sentient beings appear and disappear, with no end in sight. Although the two oceans seem different, really they come from the same source, mind. Originally there is no sign of distinction in the mind source; life and death and nirvana all revert to the essential nature of the source.

Therefore, when you realize the mind-source, the whole universe is a great round perfect ocean. But how to realize the mind source? You must liberate body and mind on the sitting cushion before you can do so. [2]

Like training, satori must be true. If one holds that there is something to practice and realize, one is a follower of the false religion of entity based on affirmation. If, on the other hand, one asserts that there is nothing to practice or realize, one is still not above the four types of differentiation and the one hundred forms of negation: one is an adherent of the equally false religion of nothingness, founded on negation. And this is the shadowy product of the dichotomous intellect, holding no truth. [3]

Master Bassui says, “When at wits’ end and unable to think another thought, you are applying yourself properly.” Thus do not look around, but devote yourself utterly to doubting self-examination until you forget where you are or even that you live. This may lead you to feel completely at sea. Yet you must persist in the search for the hearer, sweating, like a dead man, until you are unconscious, a lump of great doubt. But look! That lump will suddenly break up and out of it will leap the angel of the awakening, the great satori consciousness. It is as if one awoke from the deepest dream, literally returned to life. [4]

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