Buddhism:

A Mahayana Perspective

David Bradley
 2

Buddhism: A Mahayana Perspective

Author, David Bradley.
First edition, December 2020.
doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.13443092

This book is distributed free of charge.

Available in pdf format at Figshare:
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13443092

About the Author

David Bradley studied Philosophy at the Universities of London (1972-5) and Cambridge (1975-9). He
was a student of the Venerable Myokyo-ni (posthumous title - Daiyu Myokyo) from 1981 to her death in
2007.

Other Works
Buddhism: Teachings and Practice https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13443500
Buddhism: The Heart of the Matter https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25059785

Dedication
This book is dedicated in reverent gratitude to the late Ven. Myokyo-ni (Daiyu Myokyo).
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Table of Contents
Buddhism: A Mahayana Perspective .......................................................................................................... 2
About the Author .................................................................................................................................... 2
Other Works ............................................................................................................................................ 2
Dedication ............................................................................................................................................... 2
Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... 3
Preface .................................................................................................................................................... 5
Note on the text ....................................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 6
The First Noble Truth ............................................................................................................................. 7
The Second Noble Truth ......................................................................................................................... 8
Manas (Divisive Consciousness) ........................................................................................................ 8
Clinging ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Anātman (Not-self) ........................................................................................................................... 11
The Five Skandhas (Aggregates) ...................................................................................................... 12
Pratītyasamutpāda (Conditioned Arising) ........................................................................................ 15
Overview ....................................................................................................................................... 15
11. Jāti (Birth), 12. Jarāmaraṇa (Decline and Death) ................................................................. 15
1. Avidyā /Avijjā (Ignorance) ...................................................................................................... 16
2. Saṃskāra / Saṅkhāra (Wilful Formations) ................................................................................ 17
3. Vijñaṇa / Viññāṇa (Consciousness) .......................................................................................... 17
4. Nāmarūpa (Name & Form) ....................................................................................................... 18
5. Șaḍāyatana / Saḷāyatana (The Six Bases of Perception) ........................................................... 18
6. Sparśa / Phassa (Contact) .......................................................................................................... 19
7. Vedanā (Feeling)....................................................................................................................... 20
8. Tṛ́ṣṇā / Taṇhā (Craving) ............................................................................................................ 20
9. Upādāna (Clinging)................................................................................................................... 21
10. Bhava (Becoming) .................................................................................................................. 21
The Third Noble Truth.......................................................................................................................... 22
The Trikāya ....................................................................................................................................... 22
Dharmakāya ...................................................................................................................................... 23
Buddha .......................................................................................................................................... 23
Buddha-Nature .............................................................................................................................. 24
Tathāgatagarbha ............................................................................................................................ 25
Saṃbhogakāya .................................................................................................................................. 28
Nirmāṇakāya ..................................................................................................................................... 29
The Fourth Noble Truth ........................................................................................................................ 30
The Way and the Wayfarer ............................................................................................................... 30
The Five Incenses of the Dharmakāya .............................................................................................. 32
1 Śīla (Discipline) ......................................................................................................................... 33
2 Samādhi (Concentration) ........................................................................................................... 35
Non-Abiding ............................................................................................................................. 35
No Thought ............................................................................................................................... 35
Tathātā: Suchness ..................................................................................................................... 36
Two aspects of Samādhi ........................................................................................................... 38
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The Mirror................................................................................................................................. 38
One Practice Samādhi ............................................................................................................... 39
3 Prajñā (Wisdom) ........................................................................................................................ 43
Maha – The Great ..................................................................................................................... 43
Prajñā - Wisdom ....................................................................................................................... 44
Pāramitā – Gone Beyond .......................................................................................................... 48
4 Liberation -The Dharmakāya Buddha ....................................................................................... 58
The Dharmakāya Buddha ......................................................................................................... 58
The Eternal in the Present ......................................................................................................... 60
The Inconceivable ..................................................................................................................... 60
5 Knowledge of Emancipation -The Man of the Way .................................................................. 63
Works Cited .......................................................................................................................................... 64
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Preface
The companion volume to this work, ‘Buddhism: Teachings and Practice’, attempted a presentation of
the teachings and practice of Buddhism in the spirit of the teachings of Daiyu Myokyo, but structured
around the basic formulae of the early teachings found in the Nikaya. The aim was to provide a map for
practitioners who find themselves confused when trying to match what they have heard during the free-
flowing exposition of their teacher (always adapted to the circumstances of time, place and audience) to
what they find in the old texts.
Here the teachings are presented from a Mahayana perspective: not the Mahayana perspective, because
the term ‘Mahayana’ covers many diverse schools of thought. The later Mahayana was the fruit of an
interaction between different cultures, principally Indian, Chinese and Tibetan, and spawned a wide
diversity of interpretations and practices. But if there is one characteristic they can all be said to share, in
spite of their differences, it is their inclusiveness.
If this were a work of academic philosophy, it would include a critique of those alternative
interpretations of the main topics covered which are currently fashionable in the literature. If it were a work
in the history of ideas, it would follow the development and evolution, over the centuries, of the key
concepts expounded. If it were a sectarian polemical tract, it would treat other interpretations of the
teachings as rivals to be defeated. But it is none of these things, being no more than another attempt to
provide a coherent framework within which dedicated wayfarers with the appropriate affinity links may find
support for their practice.

Note on the text

For the sake of consistency, Sanskrit has been given preference over Pali throughout. Although the
incorporation and Anglicisation of technical terms in Sanskrit and Pali is generally to be applauded, here
diacritical marks have been retained in order to facilitate searches in on-line dictionaries by those who would
like to further explore a term’s associations.
Where there is broad agreement among translators, past and present, English terms have been used: for
example, ‘craving’ is preferred to ‘tṛ́ṣṇā’. But where many English terms have been used, or even the same
term in many senses, to translate a particular Sanskrit technical term, then the Sanskrit has been preferred,
because in such cases the term will have a rich background of associations which no English term can ever
match, and it is therefore preferable to regard an anglicised version of the Sanskrit as introducing a new
concept. ‘Pratītyasamutpāda’ is a case in point.
The practice, adopted by certain translators, of omitting any indication of which technical terms in
Sanskrit or Pali are being translated, with the aim of making the text more ‘accessible’, is considered ill-
advised. The unsuspecting reader is given the illusion of transparency and coherence but is hostage to the
perspective the translator has chosen on his behalf. If and when he moves on to related texts translated from
another perspective, he will be confused and discouraged. Hence the importance of indicating which
technical terms are in play in key passages.
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Introduction
A special transmission outside the teachings
Not standing on written words or letters
Direct pointing to the human heart
Seeing into its nature and becoming Buddha. 1
This verse is frequently taken to mean that the scriptures are of little importance to the Zen school, yet
all the masters have been very familiar with them. What the verse was actually trying to do was to
distinguish the Zen school from those of its rivals who took one particular scripture as their sort of bible,
claiming that it gave the last word on how to interpret what the Buddha taught: the Hua-yen (Kegon) school
with the Avatamsaka Sutra; the T'ien-t'ai (Tendai) school with the Lotus Sutra. In contrast the Zen school
put its emphasis on the lived experience and did not restrict itself to interpreting that experience within the
framework of ideas of any particular scripture.
The Zen teachings point directly to the human heart, and we are advised to look where they are
pointing, rather than at the finger. But if there is no teacher available to point with his finger, we need a sign.
And if it is to be helpful, the sign must be intelligible. So due importance should be given to the language
and conceptual framework we use to interpret and integrate our experience into our lives, and to
communicate the significance of that experience to others in a way which will be helpful to them.
Buddhism is in the process of taking root in the West, but anyone who thinks we can simply drop all our
familiar ideas and substitute a shiny new set is sadly mistaken. If it is to thrive, Buddhism must be fully
integrated into our culture. It took the Chinese centuries of dedicated effort to evolve a form of Buddhism
with which they felt completely comfortable. It remains to be seen how long it will take us. Clearly, we
would be foolish to ignore the millennia of accumulated practical wisdom of our own religious history. For
example, the words of the Occidental mystics are deeply embedded in our cultural conditioning, our poetry
and literature, and must strike a chord, even with those of us who may feel little empathy with the theology
and institutions in the background. So they can serve as enzymes helping us digest the words of others who
talk of related matters in terms which lack the emotional associations of the language of our own traditions.
Some might be inclined to question the relevance of philosophy to this endeavour. But the whole
Abhidharma edifice is a philosophical construction. The root text of the Theravada tradition, the
Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purity), was Buddhaghosa’s attempt at a philosophical synthesis. Nagarjuna’s
Mulamadhyamakakarika is his exposition of the philosophy of the Middle Way as an answer to the excesses
of the Abhidharma schools. The Yogacara school flourished on the philosophical foundations laid in
Asanga’s ‘Summary of the Great Vehicle’. The ‘Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana’, attributed to
Aśvaghoṣa, is a comprehensive synthesis and summary of the essentials of the philosophy of Mahayana
Buddhism. The list goes on.
That said, it is important to recognize that Buddhaghosa, Nagarjuna, Asanga and the rest, were people
who had dedicated their lives to the practice of the Way: as were Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and St.
John of the Cross in the Christian tradition. They were all far removed from the sterility of much of modern
academic philosophy, being men of profound religious experience. And the conceptual frameworks they
constructed in an attempt to interpret that experience should always be viewed with that backdrop in mind.
Of course, there are profound experiences which we cannot find the words to express adequately. But
we can at least try to understand and explain their transformative impact on the lives of those who have
them, and hence come to appreciate their importance and relevance.

1
Schloegl, The Wisdom of the Zen Masters, Intro.
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The First Noble Truth

The schema of The Four Noble Truths is employed by all schools of Buddhism in their expositions of
the teachings. The First Noble Truth concerns duḥkha, often translated as suffering, but better understood, in
the context of the Mahayana, as unease: the unease of the heart which is not at peace. Are we truly at peace
with ourselves and the world we live in, whatever the circumstances? This is not a question about the
happiness we may enjoy which is contingent upon circumstances being favourable to us. It refers to
something much deeper, that which the Buddha called ‘unshakeable liberation of mind’.
‘... this spiritual life, monks, does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the
attainment of moral discipline for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or
knowledge and vision for its benefit.
But it is this unshakable liberation of mind that is the goal of this spiritual life, its heartwood and
its end.’
That is what the Blessed One said. The monks were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One’s
words.
The Buddha 2
If we have the courage to look closely and be honest with ourselves, we find that we always have
nagging worries in the background which are obstacles to that peace. We feel somehow unfulfilled, that
something is lacking in our lives, however much we achieve or possess. We feel trapped in the pursuit of
externals which never turn out to remedy the lack we feel. We feel isolated, vulnerable, and are haunted by
insecurity and fears of all types.
The Master sat silent and said nothing.
Emmon suddenly rose and asked,
‘What is called heart? And how is the heart pacified?’
The Master answered,
‘You should not assume a heart, then there is no need to pacify it.
That is called pacifying the heart.’ 3
It is not that there is no heart, but rather that it is does not correspond to Emmon’s notion of something
which is his, is uneasy and needs to be pacified. It is precisely the felt conviction that we each have a
separate individual heart which is the root of our unease. But, of course, what is in question here is not the
physical organ.
…from his first question it is already obvious that he tries to somehow fit into his world of
discrimination and phenomena the heart, the absolute which, however, does not allow itself to be
arranged into any system.
Soko Roshi 4
Of course, there are times of joy and fulfilment, usually associated with our wholehearted participation
in something we enjoy. We value and treasure such times and may wonder why life can’t always be like
that. The answer to that question is the theme of the second Noble Truth.

2
Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, ‘Mahāsāropama Sutta’, VII:2.
3
Morinaga, A Treatise on the Ceasing of Notions, ch. I :1b.
4
Morinaga, ch.I:1b comment.
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The Second Noble Truth

The suffering referred to in the First Noble Truth has a cause. It is contingent upon certain conditions
being fulfilled. Therefore, it is not inevitable. The Second Noble Truth explains the conditions which give
rise to suffering, thereby providing the key to liberation.

Manas (Divisive Consciousness)

At a certain point in the evolution of a living beings they develop what the Yogacara school drew
attention to, and named Manas: the capacity for conscious, divisive reflection. However, although a step
forward in evolution, Manas seems rather perverse, because it is said to be responsible for the development
of that notion of a self-divided off from the world, which causes so much suffering. Why, it may well be
asked, would we develop a capacity for something which causes us suffering?
Perhaps it will help to consider the natural development of the fortunate child born into the microcosm
of a happy family. As a young child he identifies completely with the family. Of course, he fights to get his
own way, but it is a fight waged within the safe confines of the family. He might question the justice of his
parents’ ruling about the time to go to bed, but he never questions his parents’ right to rule.
Then, as he grows into adolescence, he becomes exceedingly self-conscious and self-assertive. He
wants nothing more than to be identified as an individual in his own right. He rebels against authority. He is
convinced of the rightness of his passionately held convictions and the astonishing ignorance of his parents.
He becomes ungrateful, convinced that he has arrived at where he is by some miracle of his own efforts in
spite of the attempts of his family to suffocate his splendid individuality. At the same time, he is now
plagued with deep fears and insecurity, but this he finds it difficult to admit, even to himself.
Hopefully, he then gradually matures into an adult. One day, reflecting, he suddenly comes to see his
parents’ behaviour in a new light. He understands their motives and can identify with them. He rediscovers
his love for his family and reunites with them. Once again, he is one with them, but unlike the young child,
he now has a well-differentiated sense of who he is and the contribution he can make.
The passage from unconscious unity, through division, was a necessary step towards conscious unity in
differentiation. This is the moral of the serpent in the Garden of Paradise.
As it is in relation to the microcosm of the family, so it is in relation to the macrocosm of the universe.
As new-born babies we are united in blind identification with the active principle of Mother Nature which
induces us to issue a full-throated cry of precisely the tone and frequency which will arouse the protective
and nurturing instincts of those around us.
Then reflective consciousness soon kicks in and begins to fabricate a sense of a self which is separated
from others through its identification with, and commitment to, the gratification of its desires:
The baby soon learns to associate the yell with instant attention and restoration of comfort, still
later attention and satisfaction (already differentiated from well-being), and finally ‘my will’ and its
gratification. The expectation of this carries over from the survival aspect the total intensity, and if
thwarted, there is genuine terror in the experience, for ‘I need or die’.
Daiyu Myokyo 5
Of course, we are soon educated out of behaving as if it were the end of the world just because our rattle
has fallen out of reach, but not entirely out of the conviction that the feeling that the world is coming to an
end is to some extent justified.
Our panicky fear of not getting our own way commits us, in principle, to being in opposition to, and
competition with, anyone and anything which might obstruct such gratification. Consequently, we feel

5
Schloegl, Introducing Buddhism, ‘Desire/Want’.
 9

ourselves to be separate, divided from others and the world we inhabit. And with that feeling comes fear,
vulnerability, and sense that something is lacking.
On the basis of this concept of a separate self we become self-assertive, self-centred and self-conscious.
And, like the adolescent who thinks of himself as quite independent from his family, we are consequently
prey to feelings of isolation, vulnerability and pointlessness. This is where most of us find ourselves when
we come into contact with the teachings and get a first glimpse of the path forward.
The Zen path, the Zen Buddhist path, the Buddha path, the Way the Buddha pointed out, leads out
of suffering. What kind of suffering? What do we mostly suffer from? From feeling somehow excluded,
separate, alienated. In other words, feeling ‘I-only’ – separated out from what is, and so insecure, easily
frightened, alone, self-conscious.
Daiyu Myokyo 6
Being convinced that we are independent, separated off from the world, we feel that something is
lacking. This feeling drives us to drape our hopes of fulfilment over externals, only to be disappointed time
and again. What is lacking is not to be found outside.
But if you can stop your heart from its ceaseless running after wisps of the will, you will not be
different from the Buddhas and patriarchs. Do you want to know the Buddha? None other than he who
here in your presence is now listening to the Dharma.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 7

6
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:3.
7
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Pt.I, 11a.
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Clinging
Our pursuit of externals in the hope of fulfilment inevitably brings insecurity and disappointment. Our
awareness of impermanence, the ever-present possibility of losing what we value – be it possessions,
privileges, status, respect, relationships, abilities, youth, health, life - makes us uneasy. But why should it be
a problem? Why don’t we just enjoy to the full what we have, while it lasts, and then just let it go? Our
inability or refusal to do so is what is referred to in the Buddhist teachings as ‘clinging’.
Clinging gives rise to suffering, unease of heart. But why do we cling? To say that we cling to
something because we value it for some reason begs the question, which is precisely, ‘Why do we find it so
difficult to enjoy the things we value without clinging to them?’
According to the teaching of Pratītyasamutpāda (Conditioned Arising), clinging arises from craving.
Not that craving necessarily gives rise to clinging. But when there is clinging, there is craving behind it.
So, what is the factor which decides whether craving will or will not give rise to clinging? The deciding
factor is whether ignorance or wisdom prevail when craving has arisen. Which, in itself, doesn’t tell us
much. We need to know what counts as ignorance and wisdom in this context.
There is nothing wrong with craving as such. It is merely intense desire. And it serves a useful purpose
in that it carries a charge of potential energy which moves us to action when we suppose our survival, or at
least our well-being, to be at stake. The cravings to eat when starving, to drink when dying of thirst, to
breathe fresh air when a room fills with smoke are all perfectly natural and proper functions of the survival
instinct, and we do well to act on them.
But craving which arises as a legitimate expression of the survival instinct is one thing, and craving
which masquerades as such an expression, but which is in fact no more than an insistence on self-
gratification for its own sake, is quite another. If we are unable, or unwilling, to recognise the distinction,
then ignorance prevails, and we are driven blindly to action by craving. If, on the other hand, we do
recognise a capricious craving for what it is and can find the strength to contain it sufficiently in order to be
able to evaluate it in terms of its wholesomeness, and then act accordingly, then wisdom has prevailed on
this occasion. But how and where is that strength to be found?
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Anātman (Not-self)
Emmon asks,
‘What is the obstruction when speaking of ‘I’’?
Answer.
‘There is no obstruction in just using the name, but I fear that the heart will get involved all too soon.’ 8

The Buddhist teaching of anātman is often said to mark the difference between Buddhism and the
religion of the Upanishads which preceded it by denying the existence of a ‘self’, portrayed as an eternal,
unchanging essence in individual sentient beings. But since the serious practitioners of different religions
usually end up nodding in agreement when they come together, we may suppose, with some confidence, that
heated arguments about points of doctrine arise from the misunderstandings of their followers.
All the major religions, including the Upanishads, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, hold
selflessness to be the way to peace of heart. But selflessness is a matter of attitude, not ontology. In the early
teachings of the Nikayas, the Buddha insists, time and again, that Nirvana is attained through the
abandonment of clinging to anything whatsoever in the name of ‘I, me, mine’. And clinging is abandoned
through a change of attitude. Therefore, the term ‘not-self’, suggesting the attitude that whatever we might
feel inclined to cling to is not to be regarded as defining us, is preferred to ‘no-self’, which suggests an
opinion one might hold about the constitution of the world.
But, it may be objected, is not our attitude conditioned by our beliefs about what exists? Does not our
clinging arise from our conviction that we have an eternal, unchanging essence?
Well, if we were really convinced that we had an essence which was unchanging and eternal, what
would we have to fear in the face of impermanence? Why should we feel the need to cling to anything?
Whatever we perceived to be impermanent, we could happily let go, since it could not belong to our eternal
essence.
But the point is, says the objector, that the conviction that we have such an essence impels us to an
endless search for content to fill that notion of an essence which has us in its grip. Yet whatever we grasp at
for content in the name of ‘I, me, mine’ is impermanent, hence, our suffering.
To which the answer is that here the problem lies not so much in the supposition that we have an
essence, as in the idea that we can give ‘content’ to the notion of essence using categories derived from
sense experience. As the saying goes, the treasures of the house do not come in through the front door. The
essence of the individual cannot be conceived of as a ‘thing’, set apart from other ‘things’. It is the principle
which acts through him, as it does through everyone else.
The Buddha’s teaching of anātman, then, points to the suffering arising from the delusion that we can
discover an eternal essence for ourselves in the world of sense experience, which, for the Buddha, includes
ideas and opinions, the mind being considered a sixth organ of sense. We suffer in the face of impermanence
when we cling to aspects of ourselves such as youth, beauty, talent, opinions, as if they defined us.
The teaching of anātman does not imply that we are deluded in thinking and talking about ourselves as
individual sentient beings, and as the origin and owners of our experience. Nor do such ways of speaking
and talking express merely ‘conventional’ truths. All use of language is based on convention, and different
conventions frame different perspectives, none of which have any claim to ontological priority.
If we were deluded in simply thinking of ourselves as individuals who are subject to suffering, then
there would be no point to the training.

8
Morinaga, A Treatise on the Ceasing of Notions, ch.X:6.
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The Five Skandhas (Aggregates)

And what, bhikkhus, is the burden? It should be said: the five aggregates subject to clinging…
And what, bhikkhus, is the carrier of the burden? It should be said: the person, this venerable one of
such a name and clan. This is called the carrier of the burden.
The Buddha 9
The legitimacy of our normal way of thinking of the ‘person’ as a subject of experience can be upheld
without committing ourselves to any theories about the composition or nature of that person, such as those
propounded by the Pudgalavādin sects. But we should at least clarify that here ‘person’ refers to the
individual sentient being, and not to any particular ‘personality’ he might have acquired.
The problem though, is that in thinking of ourselves as the origin and owner of experience, and
specifically of craving, we are inclined to identify with it. This identification with craving leaves us at its
mercy; driven to behave as though mere preference had the existential significance of the survival instinct;
pursuing the gratification of desire for its own sake.
So, the Buddha suggests, as a meditative device which can help us dissociate from desire, a change of
perspective, from seeing ourselves as the origin and owner of experience, to the contemplation of ourselves
as its vehicle. In saying that, he is not implying that our habitual perspective on ourselves is in any way
deluded or superficial. He is only suggesting a device which may help us escape from one of the traps which
come with that way of seeing ourselves.
Concentrating on a certain aspect of something, a change of perspective, was often suggested by the
Buddha as a useful technique. Though it seems that there has always been the danger of such suggestions
being mistakenly taken to reflect metaphysical dogmas or absolute value judgements. For example, after one
discourse to his monks in which he recommended them to contemplate the foulness in all things, he went
into seclusion, only to find upon his return that a large number of them had put an end to their lives in
disgust. They had taken the Buddha to be judging all to be foul and had let themselves be carried away by
their feelings. He reacted by giving a discourse on the peace and sublimity of the state of detachment
towards feelings which is to be attained through concentration on the mindfulness of breathing. 10
To help us see ourselves as the vehicles of experience the Buddha devised the schema of the five
aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.
The five aggregates are so called because they each unite under one label a multiplicity of
phenomena that share the same defining characteristic. Thus, whatever form there is, ‘past, future, or
present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near,’ is incorporated into the
form aggregate, and so for each of the other aggregates.
Bhikku Bodhi 11
This schema is meant to serve on the one hand, as an analysis of the field of experience of a sentient
being, and on the other, as an analysis of sentient beings themselves, who are to be contemplated as a
composite of these five categories of phenomena.
The Abhidharma schools are said to have taken the idea of the sentient being as a composite of the five
skandhas to be a metaphysical dogma about the composition of the world. To see the sentient being as a
composite rather than as one individual of many of a kind would be to see it as it ‘really’ is. The analogy of
the chariot was used to illustrate this with the argument that there is no entity corresponding to ‘chariot’

9
Bodhi, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, ‘Khandhasaṃyutta’, Pt.III, 22:22.
10
Bodhi, ‘Ᾱnāpānasaṃsutta’, Pt.V, 54:9.
11
Bodhi, Pt.III, Intro (22).
 13

above and beyond its components such as wheels, axle, platform and so on, and the relationships between
them.
But as a metaphysical theory about the nature of reality this argument gets us nowhere. Why should we
give priority to the reality of the wheel, which itself can be seen as a composite of rim, hubs and so on? In
response to this, the Abhidharma schools posited that we would eventually arrive at the ultimate irreducible
components of reality (dharmas) which are non-composite. So to see things ‘as they really are’ would come
down to seeing them in terms of all their ultimate components and the relations holding between them.
But any analysis is only of interest in relation to the purpose it is meant to serve, and that purpose
determines the nature of the schema, and of the entities it recognised within it. An architect, a builder, an
electrician, a plumber, an interior designer, an estate agent, a potential buyer, will all have different interests
in regard to a house, and each will give an analysis of its components and the relationship between them
which reflects those interests. Each analysis presupposes a certain perspective, but none has any ontological
priority over the others. There is no analysis which captures the ‘reality’ of the house, the way it ‘really’ is.
It is just as legitimate for the estate agent to consider the house as a unit, one of many houses in the area,
when he puts a price on it, as it is for the builder to consider it is a composite, as so many thousands of
bricks and tons of mortar, when calculating his costs. The components of something are no more or less real
than the thing itself. A brick is no more ‘real’ than a house, a wheel no more 'real’ than a chariot, a
phenomenon of one of the five aggregates no more ‘real’ than a sentient being.
The point of the analysis of the sentient being in terms of the schema of the Five Skandhas is that it
allows us to adopt a perspective from which experiences may be contemplated as passing phenomena: they
are to be observed as arising, enduring and disappearing, as objectively as possible. And the point of
adopting that perspective is that it gives us the opportunity to begin to develop the strength required to
disassociate from craving. Dissociation from craving allows us to evaluate it in terms of its wholesomeness
and make a considered decision as to whether to pursue its gratification, rather than being blindly driven
towards grasping and clinging.
However, in order to make such an evaluation we need to understand the dynamics of Saṃsāra, the
conditions which give rise to craving, and where the blind pursuit of its gratification may lead. To this end,
the Buddha suggested yet another perspective on the sentient being, now to be viewed as a stream of
experiences, each of which is to be considered as a node in a matrix of conditioning factors. This is the
teaching of Pratītyasamutpāda (Conditioned Arising).
The Madhyamaka school, reacting against the Abhidharma doctrine of dharmas as the indivisible
ultimate components of reality, interpreted the Pratītyasamutpāda as a superior ontological argument which
revealed the ‘dharma’ to be a node in a matrix of conditions. This node, like the chariot before it, was
supposed to have no legitimate status as a real entity in its own right. Just as the chariot was supposed to be
a fiction constructed on the basis of the underlying reality of its components, so the node was supposed to be
a fiction constructed on the basis of the underlying reality of the conditioning factors which converged on it.
But the ‘node’ of a matrix of conditions is as much an ‘entity’ as anything else, when considered as one
node among many: and in the right context it can quite legitimately be considered as such.
The Pratītyasamutpāda is a meditation device, not a metaphysical dogma. It gives us a perspective on
sentient beings such as ourselves which enables us to focus on the dynamics of the system which gives rise
to and prolongs our suffering.
According to the ontological interpretation of the Pratītyasamutpāda, a shift in perspective which brings
the impermanence of things into focus is helpful in provoking disenchantment with them. But
disenchantment with one object of desire usually leads to its replacement by another. And although
disenchantment with all possible objects of desire in the world, on the grounds of their impermanence or
 14

their unreality, might be helpful in that would leave us face to face with bare desire itself, it could not, of
itself, show us how to come to terms with that desire.
The root of our suffering is not that we hold a mistaken opinion about the ontological status, or other
properties, of the things to which we cling. It is, rather, that we identify blindly with the desire which arises
within us. We are blind, often wilfully so, to the distinction between desire which is natural to a given
situation, such as the desire to drink when thirsty, and that which is nothing more than an infantile insistence
on having our own way. This blind identification with desire confers existential significance on its
gratification. And the existential significance of the gratification of our desire is then projected onto the
world, as in ‘If I don’t get my cup of tea soon, I’ll die’, said in jest, but not wholly.
But a mere change of perspective is not going to deal with the potential energy that craving carries. That
is why it is a matter of starting with tiny cravings and taking it step by step in order to gradually increase our
capacity to contain any reactions which may arise when gratification is not pursued. We must make friends
with this energy, overcome our fear of it, acknowledge and contain it, neither allowing it to discharge of its
own accord, nor denying and repressing it. Containing it, we let it our reactions ‘burn’, suffering through
them as through a purifying flame. Each time we do this, the strength to contain increases, and the
compulsion to act blindly on every impulse desire throws up is weakened.
 15

Pratītyasamutpāda (Conditioned Arising)

Overview
The Pratītyasamutpāda is an analysis of the dynamics of Saṃsāra, explaining the chain of conditions
which give rise to and perpetuate that suffering which is the concern of the First Noble Truth. Seeing this
process from the perspective of the Pratītyasamutpāda enables us to stand back, evaluate what is happening
and, little by little, work towards our liberation.
In our ignorance, we are wilful, blindly driven towards the pursuit of the gratification of whatever desire
happens to arise. Our wilfulness conditions our whole mind-set, the way we interpret our experience and our
habitual behaviour in thought, word and speech.
It is not that we are blind to the nature of that which we crave, but rather to the nature of craving itself.
We have come to identify with it, supposing the gratification of any desire to be a matter of existential
import. If the gratification of our desires is not always felt to be literally a matter of life or death, their
frustration is at least felt to imply a reduction and belittling, which therefore inspires a degree of fear. Our
awareness of the inherent impermanence of the things we crave and cling to inevitably condemns us to
suffering.
The key to liberation from such suffering is the ability to stand back and dissociate from craving, when
it arises, in order to be able to evaluate it and act accordingly. This is difficult to achieve from the
perspective of ourselves as the individuals who are the origin and owner of our cravings. So the Buddha
offers the helpful device of regarding ourselves from a perspective where our cravings are seen as passing
phenomena, and ourselves as merely the vehicle for them. This is the purpose the teaching of the
Pratītyasamutpāda is meant to serve.
11. Jāti (Birth), 12. Jarāmaraṇa (Decline and Death)
According to the teachings, sentient beings dwell in one of two states. If ignorant of the Four Noble
truths, they dwell in Saṃsāra. If enlightened, they dwell in Nirvana.
Furthermore, depending on their predominant characteristics, the states of those who dwell in Saṃsāra
are differentiated into six types: human, animal, hungry ghost, fighting demon, miserable being, and
heavenly being.
Since the Pratītyasamutpāda explains the dynamics of our progression through the six states of Saṃsāra,
it would seem logical to interpret the last two elements of the series, ‘Birth’ and ‘Decline and Death’, as
concerning our passage through one of these states, ‘Birth’ being the entry and ‘Death’ the exit.
But then the question arises as to whether the time we spend in a given state is necessarily a whole
lifetime. And since we are always quick to take sides, some may claim that the Pratītyasamutpāda explains
the dynamics of rebirth from life to life, others that is should be interpreted as explaining transitions between
psychological states in one lifetime.
So, first, let us note that the traditional threefold division of the twelve elements of the series of the
Pratītyasamutpāda into past (1, 2), present (3-10), future (11, 12) could be adopted on either interpretation,
since ‘past’ may be interpreted as ‘previous state of Saṃsāra’, and ‘future’ as ‘succeeding state of Saṃsāra’,
without committing ourselves on the question of the duration of a state
Second, these interpretations are not mutually exclusive. According to the teachings, it is only possible
to attain liberation from Samara as a human being. But we have been born as human beings because, on
balance, over the span of our previous life the process of Becoming (Bhava) resulted in a karmic mix which
was, on the whole, more human than anything else. However, we cannot sit on our laurels. In order to attain
liberation, it is not sufficient to have been born human, which is only the fruit of past karma. We must also
attain and maintain the human state in this life.
 16

Most of us are capable of dwelling in any of the six realms of Saṃsāra for shorter or longer periods:
behaving like fighting demons when overcome by a fit of anger; like miserable beings when suffering the
pangs of unrequited love; in heaven when we have won the lottery; resigned to our fate like animals, when
we feel condemned to the daily round; like hungry ghosts when consumed with envy at the success of
others; and even, at times, like decent human beings, as when we show some kindness to someone in
distress. To remain in the human state in all circumstances requires dedicated training.
So the Pratītyasamutpāda can be understood to apply both to a succession of lives, each of which is
lived with the predominant characteristics of a given realm, and to the course of a single lifetime during
which we are habitually driven blindly from one state of Saṃsāra to another.
If this life is being lived as a human being, then the Pratītyasamutpāda explains the dynamics of
Saṃsāra in such a way as to offer us the option of training ourselves in order to break out of the round of
suffering to which our ignorance has confined us. Even if we do not attain liberation from Saṃsāra in this
life, we are assured that the training will influence the process of Becoming, the karmic mix, so as to
guarantee a better platform from which to continue in the next life.
1. Avidyā /Avijjā (Ignorance)
The root of the suffering which is the topic of the First Noble Truth is what is known as ‘The Three
Fires’ (also ‘The Three Poisons’): Moha (ignorance, delusion), Raga (greed, lust) and Dvesha (aversion,
hate).
Greed, hatred, and delusion. These are the three things which, when they arise within a person,
arise for his harm, suffering, and discomfort.
The Buddha 12
Friend Sariputta. Who are practising well in the world?
…Those who are practising for the abandonment of lust, for the abandonment of hatred, for the
abandonment of delusion: they are practising well in the world…
Śāriputra 13
Mythologically, fire is often associated with the serpent-the flash of lightening, the danger of it, but
also the brilliance that lights the dark. Hence attempts at awakening or arousing, and at taming
(correctly, transforming) the power of this serpent that stands for fundamental energy; it lives in the
earth, unseen, suddenly to rear and strike from the unknown. So does that ‘inner energy’ which we call
the passions or the emotions, and which we ‘suffer’ because they invade us by a sudden onslaught,
which are stronger than us, and if unaware of their existence, we mistakenly take that inrush of energy
as ‘mine’. They can carry us away; in this lies the danger. However, in the Bible already there is
reference to the Wisdom of the Serpent, and to have this wisdom available, the blind compulsiveness of
the emotions needs to be sloughed off…
The Three Fires of Buddhism are aspects of this energy, what we may call emotional energy, or
simply life energy, and in its undeveloped, primitive, irrational aspect or phase. That such a force has
nothing in common with my mind, which I associate with reason, is obvious. If my mind is invaded by
the passions, as happens more often than I am willing to acknowledge, reason is temporarily absent, and
fact is either magnified and embellished out of all proportion or overlain and blinded by the intensity of
the aroused energy.

12
Bodhi, ‘Kosalasaṃyutta’, Pt.I, 3:2.
13
Bodhi, ‘Jambukhādakasaṃyutta’, Pt.IV, 38:3.
 17

And since this energy has its own structure, too, as the myths of all ages, and our dreams, show, the
lesson we may learn at the outset is that we are subject to such invasions (our house is often on fire),
that they are dangerous because they are misleading, not only in thought, but in speech and action. But
also, that there is a way of coming to grips with it, and which is a transformation of the energy itself,
rather than futile attempts at dealing with its symptoms.
Daiyu Myokyo 14
Lust and hate are two faces of the same phenomenon, desire: lust, the desire to have; hate, the desire to
be rid of. And though what keeps us trapped in the realm of Saṃsāra from life to life is, in general terms,
ignorance of the Four Noble Truths, for practical purposes, when trying to train ourselves in a given life to
remain in the human state, the specific aspect of our ignorance which needs to be focussed on is our
tendency to identify with desire.
This identification does not merely manifest as unbridled demand. The new-born’s first priority is to
achieve and maintain a close bond with an adult who will protect and succour him or her. To this end the
baby is sensitive and responsive to the state of the chosen adult. If the mother, say, is perceived to be under a
great deal of stress, then the baby will repress its emotions in order to avoid an overload on the mother
which could break the bond. This unconscious habit of repressing our emotions to appear ‘good’, for fear of
rejection and abandonment, can persist into adulthood, with serious consequences for our health due to the
chronic stress it puts on our autoimmune system.
So, the basic desire arising from the survival instinct can give rise either to the unbridled release, or to
the repression, of emotion.
2. Saṃskāra / Saṅkhāra (Wilful Formations)
‘My’ way or the Buddha’s Way? The motive force which moves us through the round of the six states
of Saṃsāra is the wilfulness which arises due to our ignorance. The term ‘wilful’ can be used to mean
simply ‘done on purpose’, i.e. intentional action, or ‘done with insistence on having one's own way’. Here it
will be used in the second sense. So not all willed (intentional) actions are ‘wilful’ actions.
Intentional actions have consequences which unfold according to the natural law of karma. But it is only
a subset of intentional actions, those which are unwholesome in that they are rooted in lust, hatred and
ignorance, which contribute to our continuing entrapment in Saṃsāra.
Mere intention is not necessarily unwholesome. Therefore, it is a mistake to suppose that an enlightened
person can only act spontaneously, without deliberation.
So, the term ‘Wilful Formations’, the second factor in the schema of the Pratītyasamutpāda, refers to the
potentiality of past wilfulness in thought, word and deed, to condition our present state of mind.
And it should be stressed that even the wilfulness to ‘do good’ is karma producing, and that includes
wilfulness in the training. The difficulty for us is to come to terms with the fact that the abandoning of lust,
hatred and delusion is not something which can come about through a process which we can control directly
by an act of will. Effort is required, of course. But just as the gardener cannot simply will his plants to grow
but can only direct his efforts towards creating the best conditions for their development, so too, the
practitioner can only dedicate himself to the removal of obstacles to the unfolding of what is, in fact, a
natural process.
3. Vijñaṇa / Viññāṇa (Consciousness)
In this context the term ‘consciousness’ refers to the general mind-set of the individual. In the case of
those trapped in Saṃsāra, six general mind-sets are distinguished:

14
Schloegl, Introducing Buddhism, ‘The Three Fires’.
 18

Insofar as we are lost in the pleasure of having what we crave, we have the mind-set of an
inhabitant of the Heavenly Realm;
Insofar as we are lost in the misery of not having what we crave, we have the mind-set of an
inhabitant of the Miserable Realm;
Insofar as we are lost in the craving for what we do not have, we have the mind-set of an
inhabitant of the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts;
Insofar as we are lost in grasping and fighting for what we crave, we have the mind-set of an
inhabitant of the Realm of the Fighting Demons;
Insofar as we are lost in a state of dumb resignation to our ‘fate’, we have the mind-set of an
inhabitant of the Animal Realm;
Insofar as we are not lost or carried away in any of these ways, yet are still deluded, we are
said to have the mind-set of an inhabitant of the Human Realm.
A mind-set includes factors such as the sort of things we are conditioned to be aware of; the sort of
interpretations we are likely to give to our experiences; accumulated habits of thought, speech and deed; and
so on.
For a clear example of the deliberate creation of a specific mind-set, we need only watch a video of the
military training which, over the course of a few months, transforms young people with the mentality of
civilians into marines whose basic mentality is that of the ‘fighting demon’.
Considered as the dominant characteristic which led to our being born this time round as an inhabitant
of one of the six realms of samara, our dominant mind-set will start out being that which typifies the
inhabitants of that state. So, if we have been born a human being, we start out with a natural tendency
towards the human state.
However, due to our ignorance, throughout our life, we are driven blindly through the other states
according to circumstance, accumulating the karmic load which will ultimately determine the samsaric
realm in which we are to be born in the next life, unless we undergo the training necessary to open our eyes
and free ourselves.
Since our present mind-set is heavily conditioned by our past wilfulness, liberation from suffering
cannot be achieved by simply giving our intellectual consent to a new opinion. Serious training which
involves a transformation on all levels is required.
4. Nāmarūpa (Name & Form)
When considering the passage from one life to another, ‘Name’ is usually taken to refer to the mental
characteristics of the being to be born, and ‘Form’ to refer to the physical body. The idea is that the mental
and physical characteristics of the being to be born will correspond to the general mind-set (Consciousness)
which is the fruit of the accumulated karma of past lives.
However, when we are considering the Pratītyasamutpāda as a schema explaining the dynamics of our
transition from state to state within the span of a single life, another interpretation of nāmarūpa becomes
relevant. The combination of name and form, the named form, marks out the individual, so nāmarūpa can
refer to individuality.
Our sense of our individuality is conditioned by Consciousness, our general mind-set. And setting aside
the variations in the mind-sets of the inhabitants of the six realms of Saṃsāra, the most important difference
is that which holds between the sense of individuality of one who is trapped in Saṃsāra and one who is
liberated. The former sees himself as independent and divided from others, whereas the latter does not.
5. Șaḍāyatana / Saḷāyatana (The Six Bases of Perception)
When considering the Pratītyasamutpāda in the context of rebirth from life to life, the Șaḍāyatana are
understood to refer to the six sense organs (the mind being the sixth), which, like name and form, are
 19

understood to develop as appropriate to an inhabitant of the particular realm which is to be the destination of
the new-born.
On the other hand, when once again considering the Pratītyasamutpāda as a schema explaining the
dynamics of our transition from state to state within the span of a single life, Șaḍāyatana is understood to
refer to both the internal and external bases of perception, namely the six sense organ-object pairings: ear
and sounds; eye and sights; nose and smells; body and tactile phenomena; tongue and tastes; mind and
mental phenomena such as thought.
Surely, one might be forgiven for thinking, here at least we are dealing with purely objective factors of
experience. There is the organ of hearing and the sounds which it perceives. If two people are standing side
by side, and both have unimpaired organs of hearing, they will hear the same sounds. In what sense is this
conditioned?
First, it is an established scientific fact that the major function of the organs of perception is not to
receive all the phenomena available to them in their environment, but rather to filter out the vast majority
which are considered irrelevant to the individual’s survival and well-being. The ears of an experienced
hunter moving through the jungle at night will pick out and identify sounds which for another are lost in the
background noise.
Second, our perceptions involve interpretation, and our interpretations are highly conditioned by our
expectations.
At the clapping of hands,
The carp come swimming for food;
The birds fly away in fright, and
A maiden comes carrying tea— 15
We see our neighbour, who we know to be a good swimmer, waving from far out in the water, and
respond with a friendly wave, rather than calling the lifeguard he needs. With great difficulty he makes it
back to shore and later protests at our failure to help. We will probably respond defensively that we know
him to be an excellent swimmer, but the fact is that this opinion of him blinded us. It was a windy day; the
sea was rough and the current strong. If we had been truly open to the situation, we would have been alert to
the possibility that he was in difficulty.
Our perception, like that of the carp, the birds and the maiden, involves a good degree of heavily
conditioned interpretation.
6. Sparśa / Phassa (Contact)
A man strolls down a crowded street recording a video of himself. He is big, hearty fellow with a
friendly smile and greeting for everyone he passes, even though he cannot speak the language. He is moving
through a huge street market and stops for a moment to joke with a man who has offered him a good time.
He is in Tepito, the neighbourhood of Mexico City which has had the worst reputation for crime since pre-
Hispanic times. On the way there, everyone he asked warned him that Tepito is dangerous: ‘Especially for a
tourist with a camera’, said a policeman. Yet he came away charmed with the people, unharmed and happy.
If another tourist had entered the same street at the same time, clutching his camera to his side and
looking fearfully over his shoulder, he would surely have been relieved of his possessions within a few
minutes.
Clearly, our general mind-set, the sense of who and what we are as an individual, and the interpretation
we put on our perception of our surroundings, all condition the experience of contact.

15
Shun’ei and Muller, Living Yogacara, ch.1.
 20

The newly enlightened Buddha, after resting for some time, set out on the road to the Deer Park at
Isapatana in Benares where his five old companions were staying. As he was going along he met the Ājīva
Upaka who was so impressed by his bearing and radiant appearance that he inquired who his teacher was
and what Dhamma he followed. But on being informed that he was talking to the ‘Fully Enlightened One’
he said, “May it be so friend.” Then shaking his head, took a bypath and departed. 16
The Ājīva Upaka was a serious seeker and yet was incapable of profiting from direct personal contact
with the Buddha himself. Real contact with a teacher requires more than mere physical proximity: there
must be affinity links, a karmic connection.
7. Vedanā (Feeling)
Feeling can be classified in many ways, but in this context the most relevant distinction to be made is
that between feeling which is pleasant, painful or neither pleasant nor painful.
The uninstructed worlding becomes attached to the pleasure of pleasant feelings, or the peacefulness of
feeling which is neither pleasant nor painful, and so comes to crave them. He becomes averse to the pain of
painful feelings and so comes to crave their absence.
The instructed noble disciple enjoys the pleasure of pleasant feeling and the peacefulness of feeling
which is neither pleasant nor painful, but, being aware of the danger of attachment to something
impermanent, he remains detached in his enjoyment. He suffers the pain of painful feeling when necessary,
without adding to it by refusing to accept it. He is not a masochist, but he knows it to be impermanent and so
remains detached in his suffering.
As Master Rinzai says: ‘To laugh, but not to be carried away by laughter. To cry, but not to be
carried away by tears.’
Daiyu Myokyo 17
8. Tṛ́ṣṇā / Taṇhā (Craving)
Naturally, we prefer and desire that which gives pleasure over that which we find painful. But our
identification with desire infuses natural likes and dislikes with the urgency of instinct, converting them into
lust and hate. That which I find pleasurable, I want and must have. If I don’t have it, I grasp for it. If I do
have it, I cling to it. That which I find painful, I don’t want, and must be rid of. If I have it, I reject it. If I
don’t have it, I avoid it. That which I find neither pleasurable nor painful, seduces me by its quietude, which
I cling to in the mistaken belief that it is a safe haven. A danger to which meditators, in particular, are
exposed.
Allowing ourselves to be defined by our likes and dislikes, we the notion that our wholeness, integrity,
even survival, is dependent upon the satisfaction of any desire we might have.
Craving gives rise to clinging, but only when ignorance prevails. So for the practitioner it is of key
importance to appreciate the nature of the ignorance which sustains the link between craving and clinging,
because the exercise of wisdom at this point in the chain is the way out of the vicious circle of Saṃsāra.
The key to liberation is the abandoning of grasping and clinging. And the key to the abandonment of
grasping and clinging is dissociation from craving. If we can find the strength to dissociate from craving for
a moment, we have the opportunity to evaluate it in terms of its wholesomeness and choose how to deal with
it. The unwholesome is that which is associated with the Three Fires of ignorance, lust and hatred.

16
Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, ‘Ariyapariyesanā Sutta’, 26:25.
17
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 35:2.
 21

Having evaluated craving in terms of wholesomeness, we must choose whether to follow it or not. If the
craving is judged wholesome, obviously, we should pursue its gratification. If the craving is judged
unwholesome, we may follow it, against our better judgement; or repress it; or contain it.
If we follow it against our better judgement, it will be all the harder to resist next time. If we repress it,
we will pay the price later in some form or another. Craving carries energy, which must find expression
somehow.
In containing the energy, the follower of the Buddha should adopt a specific attitude towards any
reactions, welcoming the churning and burning as if it were a purifying fire. With this attitude, wisdom
prevails, and restraint leads to transformation of the energy and the gradual wearing down of those
compulsive attachments which compose ‘I’.
9. Upādāna (Clinging)
In clinging to something we refuse to accept the impermanence of it, and of our relation to it. We cling
to hopes, beliefs, opinions, habits, attitudes, people, places, things and more. We prefer the pain and expense
of plastic surgery to an honest reflection of our ageing in the mirror. We cling to the mannerisms of our
youth, refusing to age with dignity. We cling to our children, fearing the void their independence will bring.
We cling to relationships which are well past their expiry date. We cling to the known, however
uncomfortable it might be, for fear of the unknown. The list is endless.
Since clinging involves a wilful refusal to let go, it is karma producing, generating or reinforcing habits
of thought, speech and action which together contribute to the creation of the dominant mind-set which will
determine our next destination in Saṃsāra.
10. Bhava (Becoming)
One cigarette does not make a smoker. One drink does not make an alcoholic. One outburst of anger
does not make a ‘fighting demon’. The process of transition from the general mind-set of an inhabitant of
one state of Saṃsāra to that of another is gradual, but by no means inevitable.
To break the cycle, we need to swim against the current. Even in situations and circumstances where we
can’t help but be driven in one direction, the effort expended in resisting urges which are at present
overwhelming is not wasted. But we need to be realistic about our current capabilities, start small and take it
slowly. A novice runner aiming for a marathon needs to build up his strength and endurance. Any attempt at
forcing progress, will almost certainly be counterproductive. So the training is gradual, and best pursued
under the watchful eye of a fully qualified teacher who knows the path to be taken, from his or her own
experience; who is aware of the obstacles and knows how best to overcome them.
 22

The Third Noble Truth

The Third Noble truth is that suffering is not our natural condition, is not inevitable, and therefore can
be brought to an end. The suffering in question, however, is not that which is inherent in the life of any
living being: old age, sickness and death beset the Buddha as they will us all. What is under consideration
here is suffering in the sense of the First Noble Truth, which is due to our clinging to the attachments which
are the obstacles to the realisation of the inherent strength and wisdom of the Tathagata within us.
In the early teachings of the Nikayas, suffering was explained in terms of being driven by craving and
clinging from one state of Saṃsāra to another. The Mahayana schools developed the teaching of the Trikāya
as an aid to understanding suffering in terms of discordance: liberation from suffering is explained as the
fruit of the attainment of harmony with the scheme of things, the Way, the Tao, the Dharma.

The Trikāya
The scholars of the Sutras and Treatises take the Three Bodies as absolute. As I see it, this is not so.
These Three Bodies are merely names, or props.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 18
‘Trikāya’ means literally ‘triple-body’: ‘kaya’ means ‘body’; ‘triple’ refers to the three aspects of
dharma (the principle), sambogha (enjoyment of union), and nirmana (transformation)...
Daiyu Myokyo suggested understanding ‘kaya’ as ‘body’ in the sense in which we say that wine has
body. The body of a wine is not a ‘thing’, it is more like a collection of properties which characterise it. This
sense of Dharmakāya is brought out by Asanga 19 when he lists the six factors and twenty virtues which
characterize one who has attained the Dharmakāya, namely, a Buddha. Considered together they give us, in
a sense, the ‘taste’ of what it is to be a Buddha.
The basic schema has been interpreted over time in various ways, according to the needs of the
followers of the Buddha at specific times, in specific places and cultural contexts.
For some, such as Asaṅga, it has been interpreted as three aspects of a Buddha:
The excellence of wisdom is to be understood as the three bodies of the Buddha, which are the
essence body (Dharmakāya), the enjoyment body (Saṃbhogakāya), and the transformation body
(Nirmāṇakāya).
Asaṅga 20
For others, such as Asvaghosa, as the three ways in which the Absolute appears to sentient beings
according to their condition as deluded being, Bodhisattva or Buddha. 21
Here the focus will be on the individual sentient being and his relation to Buddha-Nature.

18
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Pt. I, 11b.
19
Asaṅga, The Summary of the Great Vehicle, ch.X:7.
20
Asaṅga, ch.X:1.
21
Aśvaghoṣa, The Awakening of Faith, ch 1, II C.
 23

Dharmakāya
Buddha
All the great religions agree that the root of suffering is the attitude of selfishness, and so all have
developed practices aimed towards the reduction and final elimination of that selfishness. And all have
elaborated pictures of that which acts freely when unhindered by that selfishness: for the Hindu, it is
Brahman; for the Christian, the Godhead; for the Buddhist, the Dharmakāya.
And why have these pictures been elaborated? Because having something to look up to, and revere as
greater, inspires us to make the effort to go beyond the suffocating little selfish attitude in which we are
trapped, into the freedom of total selflessness. However, the fact that all such pictures serve the same
purpose of helping us cross to the other shore of selflessness does not mean that they themselves are
identical. We can cross a river on a raft or in a rowing boat, but that does not mean that a raft is a rowing
boat. The really important thing is the getting across and the effort we put in achieve it. Once on the other
shore, the means of getting there may be laid down with gratitude.
But in order to be able to look up and revere something, we must be able to conceive of ourselves as
standing in some sort of personal relationship to it. Though we can postulate an impersonal Absolute, if it is
to have any significance for us in our lives, we have no choice but to personify it. But what does that mean?
Personification is the adoption of a certain attitude towards something. It implies a commitment to a
certain way of interpreting the other. It is not black and white and may be done with degrees of seriousness.
When we meet a surgeon in his office, we hope we will be treated with kindness and consideration. But
when we are in the surgery under the knife, we hope that he will exercise his skills without being disturbed
by waves of sentiment concerning us. We expect the surgeon to personify or objectify us according to the
needs of the moment. The question is not whether we are ‘really’ a person or an object, but rather what this
person’s attitude towards us is. We might disagree about whether his attitude was appropriate to the
circumstances, but not about whether it was ‘accurate’. However much a neurosurgeon thinks he can map
our emotional reactions to electrical patterns in the brain, we are still right to demand that he treat us as
persons rather than computers when he is giving us his diagnosis. The language of love cannot be reduced to
that of electronic engineering, or, for that matter, of quantum physics.
So, the major religions have devised the means by which we can either personify or objectify the
absolute. For example, for the Advaita Vedantin, the absolute objectified is Brahman; personified it is
Ishwara. For the Catholic, the absolute objectified is the Godhead; personified it is the three persons of the
Trinity. For the Buddhist, the absolute objectified is the Dharmakāya; personified it is the Buddha, the
Tathagata.
Discussing the Advaita Vedantin position Swami Vivekenanda said:
Are there then two Gods — the ‘Not this, not this,’ the Sat-chit-ânanda, the Existence- Knowledge-
Bliss of the philosopher, and this God of Love of the Bhakta? No, it is the same Sat-chit-ananda who is
also the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one.
It has always to be understood that the Personal God worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or
different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or
absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the Bhakta chooses the relative
aspect of Brahman, that is, Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler.
Swami Vivekananda 22

22
Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, ‘Bhakti Yoga’, ch. 2.
 24

The Christian abandons the love of worldly things for the love of God. The Buddhist abandons the love
of worldly things for the love of precisely those qualities which the Christian loves in God: wisdom,
compassion, love, justice. For some Buddhists at least those qualities lie within us as our ‘Buddha-nature’,
for the Christian as the ‘image of God’. As D.T. Suzuki said, there is only a difference of terminology.
As human beings our way of relating to the world is basically dualistic: either we personify, which
brings in the emotions, morality, aesthetics; or we objectify, which rules out those aspects. But it is not that
we make an absolute classification dividing the world into two camps. We are describing two possible
attitudes, either of which may be adopted towards the same thing according to the circumstances.
The values of wisdom and compassion are inseparable from personification. The other shore must have
some value for us as persons, otherwise we would never make the effort to get there. The Buddha described
it as the end of suffering, and is not suffering a personal matter?
Buddha-Nature
‘Nature’, as we usually understand the term, includes the realm of form: grass and trees, birds and bees.
It also includes the ‘laws’ of nature, in the sense of there being a natural way for each form to behave and
develop. ‘Buddha-Nature’ has the added sense that all beings naturally incline towards Buddhahood.
The Dharmakāya is Buddha-Nature as such: the source of form; of the active power of transformation;
of the law according to which that power acts; and of the wisdom inherent in each form to act in conformity
with that law, thereby promoting the optimal state of health, physical or spiritual, which is natural for that
form.
In sentient beings the Dharmakāya is the inherent strength and wisdom of the Buddha-Nature adapted to
the particular form. Hidden and distorted by our attachments, it is called the Tathāgatagarbha. Revealed and
unobstructed, it is called the Dharmakāya Buddha.
But how can Buddha-Nature be pure, if both enlightened and ignorant states of mind can exist? Buddha-
Nature in a given form is the active principle which turns the flower to face the sun; urges the baby turtle to
crack out of its egg, race towards the ocean and plunge in to avoid predators; opens the new-born baby’s
mouth and emits the cry which will activate a parental response. Living things develop and behave, each
according to their own original nature. Circumstances permitting, the acorn grows into an oak, the kitten into
a cat, the caterpillar into a butterfly. However, although Buddha-Nature is wise, it is not a dictator. The
natural course of things is not deterministic: it can be hindered, interfered with, ignored or gone against.
The concept of the physical health of a human being is that of an optimal state which all that being’s
systems are oriented towards achieving and maintaining. If a virus enters the human body, the temperature
rises in order to make life difficult for the invader, and once it has been vanquished, the temperature returns
to the ideal, around 37º C. When this happens, in recognition and appreciation of the nurturing aspect of
Nature, we call it Mother Nature and applaud its wisdom
Since Nature, in the Buddhist context, is understood to be Buddha-Nature, the optimal state for any
living being is taken to be Buddhahood: in the very long run, over innumerable lives, all beings develop into
Buddhas. And since this is the original nature of all beings, all beings are quite naturally inclined to develop
in that direction. But this, of course, is the ideal final state at the end of countless lives. The optimal state for
a living being at any particular stage of his or her evolution is that which is free from any hindrance to
development towards Buddhahood.
Any deviation from the optimal state, the natural state of good health which corresponds to each stage in
the development of the being, being unnatural, is experienced as suffering. The organism will naturally
incline towards the elimination of such suffering and the restoration of the state which is optimal for its
actual form: the optimal state for a larva is not the same as that for a caterpillar. In the case of human beings,
our optimal state from moment to moment is that of not clinging to attachments. Clinging puts us out of step
 25

with the inherent wisdom and strength of the Tathagata which is our birth right. The Dharmakāya in us is
that inherent wisdom.
You should know that the buddha-nature of the ignorant is intrinsically no different from that of the
wise.
However, the ignorant one is deluded, and the wise one is enlightened.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 23
The enlightened one so intimately finds buddha-nature in himself that there is no one anymore. You
realize that buddha-nature exists only in yourself. This is so clear to you that from morning to evening
you are always buddha-nature.
Of course, there is much dust in it, but you clean it day by day. You find the gold, and see it clearly,
for there is much impurity in it. You must put the gold into the fire, refine it, and beat it with a hammer
to make it pure. Buddha-nature is like that. When you find buddha-nature in yourself, it is crude. It must
be shaped and refined.
A good teacher is a harsh teacher who takes off all pride and selfishness. There will be turmoil for
five or six years. It is hard to find such a teacher. He does not care whether the disciples come or go, or
whether they will starve tomorrow. He snarls at them, and many go away. I do not blame the teacher. I
blame the disciples. I wish I could be a teacher like that!
Sokei-An 24
Tathāgatagarbha
The term ‘Tathāgatagarbha’ is ambiguous. In one sense it corresponds to ‘Ālaya-Vijñāna’, in another to
‘Buddha-Nature’. But the Ālaya-Vijñāna is not the Buddha-Nature.
The Yogacara school developed a schema of the mind as being composed of eight types of
consciousness. The concept of the eighth consciousness, the Ālaya-Vijñāna, was developed to account for
where the samskaras of the Pratītyasamutpāda were stored, and also where the so-called ‘seeds’ deposited by
past intentional acts were deposited, awaiting their moment to bear the fruits of karma. In itself, as container,
the Ālaya-Vijñāna was considered morally neutral.
There is no contradiction between the morally neutral nature [of the container consciousness] and
the simultaneity of good and evil states. It is rather the good and evil that are in mutual opposition. If
maturation itself were good or evil, then there would be no way to attain liberation from passion.
Asaṅga 25
So the Ālaya-Vijñāna is conceived to be the support for, and container of, all those factors which
condition our consciousness for better or worse.
The Tathāgatagarbha is the Buddha-Nature considered as hidden or obstructed by ignorance and
defilements. The idea is that the Buddha-Nature is already fully present in all sentient beings, but they are
unaware of it because their ignorance obstructs and hides it. Buddha-Nature is the ‘womb’ of the Tathagata
in the sense that it is the principle of evolution towards Buddhahood which gives us our natural inclination
in that direction. However, as is explained in the teaching of the Pratītyasamutpāda, our present condition
and future prospects for evolutionary progress are heavily conditioned. Clearly, if we are to develop our
potential, our external circumstances must be favourable. It is no help at all to be born into conditions of war
and famine, or when the teachings have been lost and forgotten. But another vital factor is how our heart and

23
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Prajnaparamita’.
24
Sasaki, ‘Prajnaparamita’.
25
Asaṅga, The Summary of the Great Vehicle, ch.1:4.
 26

mind are conditioned, not only by how we have been marked by our personal thought, speech and action in
the past, but also by the accumulated experience we share with those of our species.
In the sense that it contains the seeds of our potentiality for development towards Buddhahood, the
Ālaya-Vijñāna could be said to be the ‘womb’ of the Tathagata. But this is quite different from the sense in
which the Buddha-Nature is the Tathāgatagarbha. We should not confuse the obstructed Buddha-Nature
with that which contains the conditions for the removal of the obstructions.
It (the Tathāgatagarbha) is like a store of treasure
Inside the house of an impoverished man.
The owner is not aware of it,
Nor can the treasure speak.
For a very long time it is buried in darkness,
As there is no one who can tell of its presence.
When you have treasure but do not know of it,
This causes poverty and suffering.
When the Buddha eye observes sentient beings,
It sees that, although they transmigrate
Through the five realms of reincarnation,
There is a great treasure in their bodies
That is eternal and unchanging.
When he sees this, the Buddha
Teaches on behalf of all beings,
Enabling them to attain the treasure-store of wisdom,
And the great wealth of widely caring for one another.
The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra 26
‘The great wealth of widely caring for one another’ refers to the perspective of the Bodhisattva.
On the eighth day of the tenth moon, the master said: ‘That which is called the city of illusion
contains the Two Vehicles, the ten stages of a bodhisattva’s progress, and the two forms of full
enlightenment. All of them are powerful teachings for arousing people’s interest; but they still belong to
the city of illusion.
That which is called the place of precious things is the real heart, the original Buddha-essence, the
treasure of our own real nature. These jewels cannot be measured or accumulated; yet since there are
neither Buddha nor sentient beings, neither subject nor object, where can be the city of precious things?
If you ask, well so much for the city of illusion, where is the place of precious things? It is a place
to which no directions can be given. For if it could be pointed out, it would be a place existing in space;
hence it could not be the real place of precious things. All we can say is that it is close by. It cannot be
exactly described. But when you have a tacit understanding of its substance, it is there.’
Huang-po (Ōbaku Kiun) 27
‘The treasure store’, ‘the place of precious things’, or ‘the hidden treasury’ is the term the Chinese
chose for the translation of the Sanskrit term ‘Tathāgatagarbha’.28 The Tathāgatagarbha, our inherent
capacity for the full realisation of the Buddha Nature cannot be grasped through concepts derived from
the six senses (the sixth being mind in the Buddhist schema of things), but it is there.

26
Grosnick, ‘The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra’.
27
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Obaku - Commentary’, Vol. 42:2.
28
Blum, The Nirvana Sutra.
 27

Whatever we occupy ourselves with, that gains power over us. If we occupy ourselves with
thoughts of ‘I only’, ‘I’ becomes all powerful.
If we occupy ourselves with the scriptures only, then they become real to us, but only in the head.
When it really comes down to it, or a calamity hits, or whatever it might be, then they fall down; they do
not carry, because they were in the head only. They were not complete; they were not whole. For that,
training is necessary.
But here even training is denied. And what does that point to? The next sentence is: ‘That which is
called the place of precious things is the real heart, the original Buddha-essence, the treasure of our own
real nature’. And so we have that place of precious things vis-à-vis the city of delusion…
There is no necessity for all these powerful teachings; because as the Buddha said on his own
awakening: ‘How wonderful, how miraculous! All beings are fully endowed with the Tathagata’s
wisdom and power. Sadly, in the case of human beings, because of their attachments, they are not aware
of it.’….
And yet that is not quite correct either. Because without having been touched by those powerful
teachings, without doing some training, it is not possible for us, because we are too deluded, and we are
also frightened of letting go. So we have to train, not in understanding, but in familiarity with the
teaching. But always to match against the teaching rather than cramming the head full of ideas and then
taking them for real.…
So much now for the city of illusion. And that which is called the place of precious things is the
real heart, the empty heart, the original Buddha-nature, inherent in all of us. That is the one thing that
we need to be really clear about. And it’s not only inherent in human beings; it’s inherent in all sentient
beings.
That is why the cat knows how to swim out, though it dislikes water intensely. And that is in us too.
But with regard to other things - the cat knows how to swim out, but a cat cannot draw or paint a
picture, etc. – so we have to distinguish between the inherent and the learned skill and then become
settled in it. This is where the training comes in for us.
Without the training, the teachings remain outside, or we mistake them. With the training, and
matched against the training, the skill of letting go becomes more and more established. And that is the
skill we learn. We do not train to get something: it’s there in any case. We need to train to let go of all
those fancy things, of all the furniture of our house, to use that analogy, until we can see the building
itself...
That is something that it is almost impossible for us to admit: that there is this place of precious
things, in Master Obaku’s language, where I will never be able to go, which I will never be able to
understand. Though it is actually there, it is I who obscure it. And in order to be perceptible, I have to
get out of the way… I am the creator of my own suffering.
The place of precious things is exactly the discovery that when there is no I, it shines of itself.
Daiyu Myokyo 29

29
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Obaku - Commentary’ Vol. 42:2.
 28

Saṃbhogakāya
Do not think of what is past, for it is over and cannot be grasped, nor think of what lies ahead. If
your mind is clear from one moment of thought to the next, you will see your original nature.
Evil and virtue differ, but original nature is non-dual, and this non-dual nature is called reality.
That in your original nature which is not stained by evil, or virtue
is called the Buddha of Perfect Saṃbhogakāya.
When you see [the nature of your mind] from one moment of thought to the next, never losing sight
of your original mind that is called Saṃbhogakāya.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 30
‘Saṃbhoga’ in the ancient texts refers to the gods’ enjoyment of loving union in the carnal sense. This
was later refined to refer to the enjoyment of loving union in the spiritual sense, which mirrors the
development of the language of love in the West towards its use by the Christian mystics.
Saṃbhogakāya is the realisation of the state of accord between the individual and the Dharma. It is
manifest while, and to the extent that, we are not discriminating or clinging, either to past and future, or to
one or other side of a dualism such as good and bad. But this is something which needs work and practice. It
needs to be cultivated. As expressed in a different translation:
To realize our own Essence of Mind from moment to moment without intermission until we attain
Supreme Enlightenment, so that we are perpetually in a state of Right Mindfulness, is the
Saṃbhogakāya.
To see face to face from moment to moment our own Essence of Mind is the Saṃbhogakāya of
Buddha.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 31
Training ourselves in restraint from discrimination and clinging we weaken the conditioning, the deeply
rooted habits of thought, speech and action which trap us in the six realms of Saṃsāra, as explained in the
Pratītyasamutpāda.
The Saṃbhogakāya Buddha is the optimal state for the wayfarer on the Path. It is the samādhi of ‘one-
mode’, non-attachment.

30
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Confession’.
31
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
 29

Nirmāṇakāya
Now, what is the Myriad Nirmāṇakāya? When we subject ourselves to the least discrimination of
particularization, transformation takes place; otherwise, all things remain as empty as space, as they
inherently are.
By dwelling our mind on evil things, hell arises. By dwelling our mind on good acts, paradise
appears. Dragons and snakes are the transformation of venomous hatred, while Bodhisattvas are mercy
personified. The upper regions are Prajñā crystallized, while the underworld is only another form
assumed by ignorance and infatuation. Numerous indeed are the transformations of the Essence of
Mind!
People under delusion awake not and understand not; always they bend their minds on evil, and as a
rule practice evil. But should they turn their minds from evil to righteousness, even for a moment,
Prajñā would instantly arise. This is what is called the Nirmāṇakāya of the Buddha of the Essence of
Mind.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 32
The optimal state of Right Mindfulness from moment to moment is the Saṃbhogakāya. If we fall away
from, or have not yet reached this optimal state, then our experience is conditioned by a mind-set which
discriminates, seeing ourselves as one of a multiplicity of isolated, independent entities. This condemns us to
the round of the six states of Saṃsāra
Hui-Neng distinguishes between two aspects of the Nirmāṇakāya, the ‘Myriad Nirmāṇakāya’ and the
‘Nirmāṇakāya of the Buddha of the Essence of Mind’.
The ‘Myriad Nirmāṇakāya’ refers to the transformations we are subject to as we are driven from one to
another of the six states of Saṃsāra by our craving and clinging.
The ‘Nirmāṇakāya of the Buddha of the Essence of Mind’ refers to the transformations the Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas undergo in order to appear in forms which sentient beings can relate to and understand, and
therefore be helped. It also includes the transformations which the wayfarer who dwells in the
Saṃbhogakāya can perform for the same purpose.

32
Hui-Neng, ‘On Repentance’.
 30

The Fourth Noble Truth

The Way and the Wayfarer
The Fourth Noble Truth concerns the Path from suffering to liberation. Since the root of our suffering is
ignorance, the way to liberation from suffering is the reduction and eventual elimination of ignorance
through the cultivation of its opposite, wisdom.
But the cultivation of wisdom (prajñā) requires concentration; and the development of concentration
(samādhi) requires the strength acquired through the practice of moral restraint (śīla). All three aspects of the
Way – Śīla, Samādhi and Prajñā - support each other as they grow together.
According to the teachings of the Yogacara school, the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom results from the
transformation of the Ālaya-Vijñāna, which is the storehouse of all the inner factors which condition our
mind. It contains the potential to condition the mind in a wholesome fashion or in an unwholesome fashion.
Past behaviour in thought, word, and speech, sows the seeds of future conditioning, wholesome or
unwholesome. Basically, a wholesome seed is one which is conducive to the transformation of the Three
Fires of lust, hatred and ignorance; whereas an unwholesome seed is conducive to stoking those fires.
The training involves the transformation of the energy of the Three Fires which we experience initially
as the passions.
…, want/desire is the primal Fire, and approaching it we meet fear and terror. Without practice we
would have no chance to draw near. Hence the necessity and purpose of long and patient training. It is a
continuation of up-bringing, voluntarily undertaken, and results, not in fulfilment of my wishes, for
which I naively mistake it, but in the clear differentiation of I, the container, and the energy which,
though it arises in me, is not mine. Hence my suffering the emotional onslaughts, and my containing
their energy willingly, but neutrally as not mine, effects transformation of the energy itself, not just a
change of its direction or sublimation. I, the container, am thus equally changed in this process, from I
to No-I.
Daiyu Myokyo 33
In the practice we voluntarily adopt a moral discipline, Śīla, in order to sow wholesome seeds, and to
avoid sowing any more unwholesome seeds. We endeavour to remove any hindrances to the growth of
wholesome seeds already present, and to inhibit the growth of any unwholesome seeds which are already
present.
Since we have been sowing seeds in the Alaya-Vijnana during innumerable past lives, and the habits
which have become established there are extremely deep-rooted, the complete transformation to the point
where there are no remaining unwholesome seeds is going to be a very long process. According to the
Yogacara tradition it will take three asaṃkhya kalpas. And how long is that?
In the metaphor of the mustard seed, tiny mustard seeds are dropped into the courtyard of a castle
that is eight hundred miles across, one seed every hundred years. The time it takes to fill the castle
courtyard via this process is called a mustard-seed kalpa.
Tagawa Shun’ei 34
And since ‘asaṃkhya’ means innumerable, we are clearly not talking about quick-fix solutions. On the
other hand, the pertinent question is not so much ‘How long is the path?’, but rather ‘How far remains to be

33
Schloegl, Introducing Buddhism, ‘Desire/Want’.
34
Shun’ei and Muller, Living Yogacara, ch.X.
 31

walked?’ The Buddha had very little left to walk when he was born; the great Bodhisattva’s had a little
more; and, for the rest of us, the distance remaining is there to be discovered by each one in the walking.
And there is another side to the story. The Yogacarins tell us of the long way home and the work to be
done along the way, which is all to the good. But the Zen school focuses on the condition of the wayfarer as
such. Specifically, it concentrates on the quality of the living moment. What really matters is not so much
how much karmic debt remains to be worked out, but rather how that karmic debt is dealt with as it arises.
The True Man of the Way… goes with the concurrent causes to wipe out his old Karma, and lets
things follow their own course…
Not even for a fraction of a moment does he aspire to Buddhahood. And why? An old master said:
‘If you seek the Buddha by karmic (volitional) actions, the Buddha will become the great symbol of
birth and death’.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 35
The wilful pursuit of any goal, even Buddhahood, only creates karma which keeps us trapped in
Saṃsāra. Giving ourselves wholeheartedly into whatever is being done is an act of renunciation, not an
exercise of the will. If we know the Path and at this moment are making a wholehearted effort to follow it,
then nothing is lacking, the Saṃbhogakāya is manifest.
Followers of the Way, as I see it, you are not different from Shaka (the Buddha). Today in your
manifold activities, what is it that you lack? The flow of the six senses never ceases. Who can see it like
this is all his life a man who has nothing further to seek.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 36

35
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Pt. I, 11d.
36
Rinzai, Pt. I, 11a.
 32

The Five Incenses of the Dharmakāya

The Sixth Patriarch gives an overview of the Path using the incense metaphor to help us understand the
process of transformation we undergo by following it. The training is not something ‘I’ do. Walking the Path
we become permeated by the Dharma, just as we get soaked while walking through a cloud or become
completely impregnated with the smell of the smoke by sitting in a room full of burning incense.
At all times let us purify our own mind from one thought-moment to another, tread the Path by our
own efforts, realize our own Dharmakāya, realize the Buddha in our own mind, and deliver ourselves by
a personal observance of Śīla; then your visit will not have been in vain.
Since all of you have come from afar, the fact of our meeting here shows that there is a good
affinity between us. Now let us sit down in the Indian fashion, and I will give you the five kinds of
Incense of the Dharmakāya.
When they had sat down, the Patriarch continued:
The first is the Śīla Incense, which means that our mind is free from taints of misdeeds, evil
jealousy, avarice, anger, spoliation, and hatred.
The second is the Samādhi Incense, which means that our mind is unperturbed in all circumstances,
favourable or unfavourable.
The third is the Prajñā Incense, which means that our mind is free from all impediments, that we
constantly introspect our Essence of Mind with wisdom, that we refrain from doing all kinds of evil
deeds, that although we do all kinds of good acts, yet we do not let our mind become attached to (the
fruits) of such actions, and that we are respectful towards our superiors, considerate to our inferiors, and
sympathetic to the destitute and the poor.
The fourth is the Incense of Liberation, this means that our mind is in such an absolutely free state
that it clings to nothing and concerns itself neither with good nor evil. 37
The fifth is the incense of the knowledge of emancipation
(vimuktijnana). Though your mind no longer attaches to the outside, you must not hold to quiescence or
submerge yourself in emptiness but must realize your own intrinsic mind by broadening your learning
and acquiring further knowledge. To attain the enlightenment of all the Buddhas, meeting
things peacefully with the light [of wisdom], making no distinction between self and others, and coming
directly to enlightenment, the true unchanging nature of things—this is called the incense of the wisdom
of emancipation.
Good friends, these incenses perfume your mind within. Do not seek them without. 38
At all times let us purify our own mind from one thought-moment to another… let us …,
realize our own Dharmakāya, realize the Buddha in our own mind… let us…tread the Path by our own
efforts. 39
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan)
This puts the focus on the quality of the present moment, which, after all, is the only one we will ever
have. Our true nature is the Buddha-Nature. Therefore, it is not something to be sought outside. Hui-Neng
reminds us that although Buddha-Nature is innate in us and naturally inclines towards Buddhahood, in
practice we find ourselves sunk in ignorance and confusion which cloud the Path. So we must exert
ourselves if we want relief from suffering. On the other hand, ‘I’ cannot do it.

37
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
38
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Confession’.
39
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
 33

1 Śīla (Discipline)
...let us… deliver ourselves by a personal observance of Śīla… which means that our mind is free
from taints of misdeeds, evil jealousy, avarice, anger, spoliation, and hatred.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 40
There are two aspects to the practice of Śīla. Firstly, in the realm of morality, the worse our behaviour,
the more disturbed our mind and heart. But a disturbed mind and heart is a hindrance to concentration.
Therefore, the practice of Śīla helps us cultivate concentration by reducing the habitual turbulence in our
hearts and minds to manageable levels.
Secondly, in addition to moral discipline, we voluntarily adopt a gentle discipline which gives a
wholesome form to our lives: for example, with a timetable which determines when we rise, meditate, and
go to bed, each day. But here we must be careful. For while the discipline of morality is pretty universal -
don’t lie, steal, kill etc., a personal discipline, such as a timetable, is a field of temptation for the interfering
‘I’. So, we need to be clear about the purpose of the exercise.
The point of it is not to punish ourselves for wanting to enjoy the pleasures of life, or to turn ourselves
into some form of spiritual athlete capable of enduring self-torture. It is meant to enable us to get to know
our sticking points, our resistances, our personal refuges, and the subterfuges we habitually use to get our
own way, even in what we classify as the most ‘insignificant’ matters – such a classification being in itself a
subterfuge to justify doing what we want. In a word, it is to help us discover the extent and profundity of our
attachments, which amounts to getting to know ourselves, for, as Daiyu Myokyo was fond of saying, ‘I’ am
my attachments.
But we should be warned that this is something we are actually rather reluctant to do, because we
suspect it might turn up some uncomfortable truths. So, from the start, if we are really going to commit to
the practice, we are going to need a certain amount of courage – the courage to be honest with ourselves
about ourselves. As a consolation, we may bear in mind that every ‘I’ without exception is petty and self-
centred, so we are all in the same boat; but also, that this is not our true nature.
The subtleties of self-exploration through discipline are well known in all religions:
Often it is more necessary for you freely to renounce that, than if you were to give up all food. And
sometimes it is harder for you to keep silence about a single word than to cease speaking altogether.
And sometimes, too, it is harder for a man to endure a single word of reproach, which means nothing,
than a fierce blow that he was prepared for; or it is much harder for him to be alone in a crowd than in
the desert; or he finds it harder to abandon a small thing than a great, or to do a small task than one
which is considered much greater...
Meister Eckhart 41
But let us be clear. Śīla is not an optional extra. It’s no use at all being lax in matters of discipline
and hoping that an extra effort in meditation will compensate for it. No genuine spiritual teacher ever
suggested such a thing. In fact, if anyone does suggest such a thing, we can be sure that whatever they
are selling, it is not serious religion.
But it’s not that we are required to be fanatical puritans. It is a practical matter. Discipline in daily
life is our training ground. It is where we discover ourselves and develop the strength to go beyond
ourselves. If we come to the practice with the notion of denying, nullifying and destroying a ‘self’

40
Hui-Neng, ‘On Repentance’.
41
Eckhart, ‘The Talks of Instruction’, 2009, Talk 17.
 34

which we dislike for some reason, we are way off the mark. Attitude is all-important, and the right
attitude needs to be cultivated. Self-sacrifice is not self-torture.
The training requires not a destructive attitude, but rather one of willing renunciation. But this is a
positive attitude, because we are willing to let go of the notion of ‘self’ we have been clinging to for the
sake of the full and free manifestation, in and through ourselves, of something greater. For this reason,
we employ the phrase ‘precious energy arising, please burn me away’ when containing emotional
reactions. The action of the Fires is willingly suffered through and accepted as a process of purification
and transformation.
 35

2 Samādhi (Concentration)
Non-Abiding
Good friends, in this teaching of mine, from ancient times up to the present, all have set up no-
thought as the main doctrine, non-form as the substance, and non-abiding as the basis.
Non-form is to be separated from form even when associated with form. No-thought is not to think
even when involved in thought. Non-abiding is the original nature of man.
Successive thoughts do not stop; prior thoughts, present thoughts, and future thoughts follow one
after the other without cessation. If one instant of thought is cut off, the Dharma body separates from the
physical body, and in the midst of successive thoughts there will be no place for attachment to anything.
If one instant of thought clings, then successive thoughts cling; this is known as being fettered.
If in all things successive thoughts do not cling, then you are unfettered. Therefore, non-abiding is
made the basis.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 42
It is not a matter of cutting ourselves off from experience and suppressing thought. Experiences may be
allowed to come and go, thoughts to arise and disappear, quite naturally. The basis of the practice is non-
abiding, by which is meant not getting stuck in attachments.
The Tao or Dharma is the principle that is inherent in all of us. As the Buddha said, ‘How
wondrous, how miraculous, all beings are fully endowed with all the Tathagata’s Wisdom and Power.’
But he then continues, ‘Sadly, because of their attachments, human beings cannot realize it’, do not
realize it as long as they have attachments.
My immediate reaction is likely to be, ‘But surely, I have no attachments at all! I am, after all,
going the Buddha’s Way. I am cool! I have no attachments whatsoever!’ Which is just as much of an
attachment as anything else is! Somehow ‘I’ hang on it. As long as ‘I’ am there, as long as the feeling of
‘I’ is there, there is attachment.
Without attachment there can be no ‘I’…If we look carefully, it is not that ‘I’ have attachments, it is
not even that attachments have me! Rather I AM the attachments, and so it is no good for me to try and
get rid of my attachments! Which I cannot, of course. I cannot pull myself up by my own boot strings.
Training, therefore, is little by little to whittle away a tiny attachment here, a bit of ‘I’ there. What
am I really most attached to? Myself! My convictions! My opinions! My rights! My this! My that!
Daiyu Myokyo 43

No Thought
We feel, do we not, that once the Way is truly realized, fanciful thoughts will not come up
anymore, that I shall be beyond everything and nothing will stir me anymore! I could not be more
mistaken! Fortunately, all my assumptions are worn away in the course of training.
As long as there is a body, there will be preferences; certainly, there will also be thoughts, and all
kinds of memories will occasionally arise; but there is no need to be carried away or to be perturbed by
them. Let them come up – if not attached to, they go back again. Let them come up – and go back again.
Daiyu Myokyo 44

42
Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, section 17.
43
Myokyo-ni, ‘Yoka Daishi’s Song on the Realisation of the Way - Commentary’, Vol. 17:1.
44
Myokyo-ni, Vol. 17:1.
 36

Not-I or Empty Heart (lit. ‘no-heart’ or ‘mu-shin’) does not mean that thought is inhibited, or being
unaware of, or unreceptive to what is. On the contrary, it means the natural reaction in response to all
that appears without any selective value judgements. But it is beyond Emmon to realize that it is
impossible for an I to understand Not-I (no-self).
45
Soko Roshi
‘No thought’ does not mean the complete absence of thinking. Or are we to suppose that in 40 years of
teaching after his enlightenment not a single thought ever passed through the Buddha’s mind? That is
absurd. It refers to the absence of conceptual discrimination. As with the senses, and we should bear in mind
that in the Buddhist scheme of things thoughts are classified as a kind of sense data, there is nothing wrong
with thinking per se. The problem comes with our attachment to thoughts.
For example, suppose someone gets the notion that we are hostile to them in some way. Now our smile
is seen as a sneer, a joke is taken to be a jibe, and so on. It is easy to think of such cases of entrenched
judgements: the boss who gets the idea that someone is lazy; the wife who suspects her husband is betraying
her; the stalker who is convinced his victim is sending him secret messages; the followers of a religious or
political sectarian leader who have come to think that their hero is infallible. Once we are in the grip of an
idea about something, that idea conditions us to interpret everything as support for the idea.
Body and heart will come to rest at ease if there are no distractions, no thought-streams to pull you
about. If these are gone, and it has become really quiet and you are now used to it, then the heart will
come to rest at ease, and you will have some direction in the path. That is what the Sixth Patriarch
emphasized when he said, ‘Before thinking’, or ‘without thinking’. In that ‘without thinking, or before
thinking, is what the Buddha said on his awakening, ‘the wisdom and power of the Tathagata’. That is
all that the heart needs. Then it can come to rest at ease. While it is continuously blown about by the
storms of passions like the sea in a hurricane, this coming to ease is not possible. And then there can be
no direction in the path.
I start to practise believing that I should come to that state of ‘without thought’, not knowing that
this is impossible because I am the thought. And therefore, what being ‘without thought’ really comes
down to is that the thought of ‘I’ has dropped off, and this is what I am terrified of – I might suddenly
vanish and no longer be. You scratch the surface a little and underneath you find fear of losing control,
fear of losing myself. Fear is the other side of I and basically it is lack of strength.
Yet underneath is the whole ‘wisdom and power of the Tathagata’.
Daiyu Myokyo 46
It is not that ‘I’ can free myself from conceptual discrimination and think ‘objectively’. ‘I think’ is
always ‘I opinionate’ and is an instance of conceptual discrimination. All thought originates from the
Buddha-Nature, but some of those thoughts are deluded. These deluded thoughts are themselves what ‘I’ is.
So ‘I’ cannot do anything about them.
We cannot prevent a deluded thought appearing in our mind, since that appearance is a consequence of
a seed sown in the past. But we can restrain ourselves from appropriating and clinging to it and so being
carried away on the stream of other thoughts which it brings in its wake. We can also wean ourselves off the
habitual behaviour which sows the seeds of such thoughts for the future.

Tathātā: Suchness
At all times let us purify our own mind from one thought-moment to another.

45
Morinaga, A Treatise on the Ceasing of Notions, ch. XIII:9 comment.
46
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 27:3.
 37

Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 47

What does it mean to ‘purify our own mind from one thought-moment to another’? In what sense is the
mind not ‘pure’ in a given moment of thought? It is not pure when that thought is distorted by conceptual
discrimination: ‘I’-oriented opinions, value judgements and the like. In the absence of such distortions, we
see the world in its ‘suchness’
Seeing things and situations in their suchness is not a matter of visualising them in some special way,
such as like a complex of interrelated components which are in constant flux. Visualisations of this type are
simply devices for loosening specific attachments, or sorts of attachment, by focusing on some aspect of
reality. But they are not thereby ‘revealing’ a reality which had been ‘hidden’ until we hit on this way of
looking at it.
Rather, it is a matter of seeing things without any of the ‘I’ oriented notions and value judgements we
usually weave around them. The suchness of washing the dishes is washing the dishes, as opposed to
washing the dishes while plagued by thoughts like ‘Here I am washing the dishes for the third time today
because my wife is too lazy to do things when they need doing, and which I hate doing anyway, and I am
going to leave them in the sink next time to teach her a lesson, and…’. The suchness of a particular plate we
are holding is the plate, as opposed to the plate thought of as ‘this plate, which was one of my favourite set
of eight, until that fool broke one last Christmas and never even apologised - which is typical of him, and
really we should all eat in a restaurant next Christmas because they don’t deserve….’.
In short, the obstacle to seeing things in their suchness is our attachments: grasping for and clinging to
what we like: rejecting and avoiding what we dislike; allowing ourselves to be carried away by the surges of
emotion or chains of thought which these attachments generate. So, the key to insight into suchness is
detachment.
If you want to penetrate to this truth, first you must clear out the gates of the six senses, leaving
them without the slightest affliction. What does affliction mean? It means to be turned around by form,
sound, scent, taste, touch and phenomena and not detaching from them.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 48
And again, we are reminded of the Buddha’s ‘Sadly, because of their attachments, human beings
are not aware of the Tathagata’s wisdom and power.’ Not detached from the senses.
There’s nothing wrong with the senses. On the contrary, they are not only important for our
survival, they’re also very often a joy. But to be carried away by them, to cling to them, to be attached
to them, rather than detached from them – then we are in trouble, as we know to our cost.
Daiyu Myokyo 49
Living the suchness of each moment is being wholeheartedly given in to whatever the situation
brings. And it’s not that we don’t know how to do this: we know it very well and, what’s more, value
the experience highly, because it is fulfilling. So why the training? Because we only know it from the
situations we like and enjoy, or discover by chance, whereas we need to learn how to do it in every
situation, regardless of our likes and dislikes and value judgements: to wash the dishes wholeheartedly
whether we like doing it or not, whether we think it an important task or not, whether we think it is fair
on us or not….

47
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
48
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’ Vol. 30:2, .
49
Myokyo-ni, Vol. 30:2.
 38

But this, at first, seems impossible because we cannot imagine going against our preferences
without generating a strong negative feeling. And the reason we can’t imagine doing that is because we
identify with our likes and dislikes and value judgements.
If we can only give ourselves to those situations we value positively, we are rejecting the other half
of life. And when we do this, it begins to grow in the shadows and we become afraid, not so much of
the thing in itself, but more of the anticipated violence of our reactions if we cannot escape an encounter
with it. Furthermore, we feel that something is lacking; we do not feel fulfilled. These feelings
constitute the suffering, in the sense of the First Noble Truth, which the training helps reduce and
eventually eliminate.

Two aspects of Samādhi

The second is the Samādhi Incense, which means that our mind is unperturbed in all circumstances,
favourable or unfavourable.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 50
‘Samādhi’ is usually translated as ‘concentration’. But we tend to think of concentration as focus on a
particular thing or activity, for example, as when studying or trying to perform a complicated procedure
which is new to us. So, then we get the idea that ‘samādhi’ is the ultimate in focussing, where we ‘become
one with the object’. But what if there is no particular object to focus on? Is there no samādhi?
The confusion arises when we overlook the fact that ‘concentration’ can refer either to focus or to
collectedness. We cannot be focussed on something without being collected, but we can be collected without
being focussed on anything in particular. Therefore, insofar as we are collected, the mind is unperturbed in
all circumstances, favourable or unfavourable, occupied with something specific or not.
The Mirror
But we have to be very careful with the term ‘concentration’, because we so easily fall into the trap
that ‘I’ must concentrate. And what happens if ‘I’ concentrate? What can ‘I’ concentrate on? Yes, of
course I can concentrate – ‘I’ can concentrate on this machine here, for example. But the more ‘I’
concentrate, ‘I’ concentrate, ‘I’ concentrate, the more focused this becomes. And the more it excludes
everything else, doesn’t it? With this ‘I’ concentration, everything else is shut out. But the Buddhist
concentration, on the other hand, being Eastern, is to open up, and like a mirror to take in just what is,
without any kind of exclusiveness. Such concentration takes in just what is, and like a mirror, when it
turns away a little bit to something else, it lets what was in it before drop, and takes the new picture in.
Please do not forget, the Buddhist concentration is the mirror. That’s why Buddhism talks so often
about the heart mirror. Whereas ‘I’ concentration is ‘I’ focusing and is totally exclusive.
Daiyu Myokyo 51
Ideally, the state of samādhi persists in all circumstances, whether we are occupied or not. When
occupied, we may become focussed on the activity. But here we need to make a distinction between the
focus arising within a state of samādhi, which remains open to the situation, and the sort of focus which
arises from ‘I’ concentrating through a wilful exclusion of everything outside of the scope of the focus,
which tends towards our being swallowed up by the activity, leaving us unresponsive to our surroundings.

50
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
51
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 29:3.
 39

If we remain collected, then we are open to what comes up, respond appropriately, but are not caught up
by it. Eventually, like everything else, it will pass. And when it is passes, if we are collected, we let it go. In
this sense, the mind and heart of one who remains collected are like a mirror.
One Practice Samādhi
But what does it mean to be collected? When we are collected, we are resistant to dispersion, to having
our attention scattered. But what is meant by ‘dispersion’ here? It refers to an eruption of the Three Fires:
the heart being swept away by lust for, or hatred of, something, or by some train of thoughts. Therefore,
being collected involves mindfulness, the readiness to exercise restraint, and the exercise of prajñā, even in
the absence of any specific focus of interest.
Only a Buddha is completely free from all attachments. But a follower of the Buddha may at least aspire
to not being destabilised by his attachments in a given moment.
Samādhi and Prajñā are fundamental. But do not be under the wrong impression that these two are
independent of each other, for they are inseparably united and are not two entities. Samādhi is the
quintessence of Prajñā, while Prajñā is the activity of Samādhi.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 52
Samādhi is the ongoing state, prajñā is the activity required from moment to moment in order to
maintain that state. Suppose that in a given moment a captivating thought arises, then there are two
possibilities. Either ignorance prevails or prajñā (wisdom) prevails. If we cling to a thought and get carried
away on the train of thoughts that it brings in its wake, then ignorance has prevailed. If we cut off that
thought and throw ourselves right back into whatever we were doing in that moment, then prajñā has
prevailed and samādhi has been maintained.
It is not that the mere appearance of a captivating thought has disrupted samādhi. Maintaining samādhi
is like riding a bike, which requires constant small adjustments in order to maintain our equilibrium. Even
the occasional large adjustment, which requires more effort, is only a wobble. Riding is only interrupted
when a foot, or the whole body in a fall, is on the ground and all momentum is lost.
We have the innate ability to keep our balance, but although we use it, we are usually unaware of it.
Then when we find ourselves destabilised on the saddle of a bike for the first time, we overreact, trying to
consciously control every movement in order to maintain our equilibrium. But it is impossible to do so by
conscious control because it is too complicated. The only way is to get our interfering selves out of the way
and learn to trust our innate ability to keep our balance. This is the essence of riding a bike well, just as the
essence of swimming well is learning to trust our innate ability to float, or the water’s ability to carry us. On
that basis we can build techniques and develop strategies for specific situations.
So too, we have the innate capacity for Samādhi, a state of collectedness unhindered by anything to do
with concerns related to ‘I, me, mine’. But then we find ourselves destabilised by attachments and opinions
which throw us off balance. When the situation gets serious, usually after a fall or two, we start trying to
stabilise ourselves by means of consciously applied ‘techniques’ we hear about. All to no avail. Finally, we
get the idea and relax, rediscovering our trust in what has always been there and realising that all that is
required for it to be able to act freely is for us to let go.
Finding and maintaining our balance on a bike is not a matter of discovering a fixed position from
which we cannot fall. It is a matter of trusting in our ability to make continuous adjustments to complement
shifts in our centre of gravity. It is a dynamic process. Just so, in order to maintain samādhi we are
continuously adjusting: a thought comes up, endures, and goes. Another comes up and there is a small

52
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘Samdhi and Prajna’.
 40

attraction towards it which leads to a second thought. At that point we calmly cut the chain and return to our
original state of collectedness. A noise begins to distract us: we react the same way. But now a nagging
doubt comes up which takes more effort to cut off: this is no more than a wobble. An emotional reaction
fires up: we simply let it burn itself out. And so on. Practising in this way, we are learning to be
wholeheartedly given into the suchness of the moment. Clearly then, collectedness requires mindfulness and
effort, but we need not be focussed on anything in particular such as an image, an object, our breathing, a
particular way of visualising the world. The multiplicity of things we could focus on offer the opportunity
for a multiplicity of samādhis of focus but supporting them all is the one samādhi of collectedness.
This samādhi has been given many names: ‘samādhi of one practice’, ‘samādhi of specific mode’,
‘samādhi of oneness’, ‘one-mode samādhi ’. All are translations of the Chinese expression ‘I-hsing san-mei’,
which was originally chosen to translate either the Sanskrit ‘ekavyuha samādhi’ (single magnificence
samādhi) or ‘ekākāra samādhi’ (single-mode samādhi), but which acquired various interpretations during the
development of Chinese Buddhism. Which should serve as a warning not to get too attached to words and
phrases.
The term ‘one-mode samādhi’ highlights the aspect of non-attachment, the one mode of being which is
the essence of samādhi, whereas the term ‘one-practice samādhi’ highlights the fact that this samādhi is
maintained by the single practice of exercising of prajñā to cut off attachments.
Mañjuśrī asked: ‘World Honoured One, what is i-hsing san-mei?’The Buddha answered: ‘The
Dharmadhatu has only one mark (i-hsiang; ekalakṣaṇa). To take this Dharmadhatu as an object is called
i-hsing san-mei.’ 53
The ‘one mark’ of the Dharmadhatu is the mark of ‘suchness’ (tathatā). To see things in their suchness,
as they really are, rather than as distorted through the conceptual discrimination generated by attachments, is
one-mode samādhi.
Through this samādhi, you understand that the Dharmadhātu has only one mark; in other words,
that the Dharma-body (dharmakāya) of the Buddhas is the same as the body of sentient beings and that
there is no duality between them. Hence this expression ‘one-mark samādhi’ (i-hsiang san‐mei). You
must know that suchness (chen-ju; tathatā) is the basis of the samādhis. If you practice it, you can
gradually produce an infinity of samādhis.
Aśvaghoṣa 54

All beings share the same Buddha-Nature and, in this sense, are identical. Just as all the leaves on an
oak tree are oak leaves. Fundamentally, samādhi is concentration in the sense of collectedness. When, from
within this Samādhi, there arises concentration in the sense of focus in relation to anything which might
come up, we may talk of ‘the samādhi of’ this, that and the other.
The fundamental teachings of mine are (1) the mind of all the Buddhas is the First Principle, based on
the Lankavatara Sutra; and (2) I-hsing san-mei means that the mind which is aware of the Buddha is the
Buddha, whereas (the mind which) does false thinking is the ordinary person, based on the Wen shu shuo po
jo ching (The Mañjuśrī Sutra). …
Every aspect of the mind and body, (even) lifting your foot and putting it down, always is the place of
enlightenment.
Tao-hsin (Dōshin Daii) 55

53
Faure, ‘The Concept of One-Practice Samādhi in Early Ch’an’, ‘The Mañjuśrī Sutra’.
54
Faure, ‘The Awakening of Faith’.
55
Chappell, ‘The Teachings of the Fourth Ch’an Patriarch Tao-Hsin (580-651)’, ‘The fundamental expedient means for calming
the mind which attains enlightenment’, Pt.I, A.
 41

By ‘the mind of all the Buddhas’ the Fourth Patriarch means the Dharmakāya. In i-hsing san-mei, one-
mode samādhi, the mind which is collected, and therefore aware of Suchness, the absolute aspect of the
Buddha, is itself a manifestation of the Saṃbhogakāya aspect of Buddha. And this one-mode samādhi
functions here and now, in relation to whatever is going on, washing the dishes or walking to work. It is not
that it can only be found on a meditation cushion in beautiful, undisturbed surroundings.
To attain supreme enlightenment, one must be able to know spontaneously one’s own nature or
Essence of Mind, which is neither created nor can it be annihilated.
From ksana to ksana (thought-moment to thought-moment), one should be able to realize the
Essence of Mind all the time. All things will then be free from restraint (i.e., emancipated).
Once the Tathata (Suchness, another name for the Essence of Mind) is known, one will be free
from delusion forever; and in all circumstances one’s mind will be in a state of ‘Thusness’. Such a state
of mind is absolute Truth. If you can see things in such a frame of mind you will have known the
Essence of Mind, which is supreme enlightenment.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 56
‘Realizing’ our own nature, or ‘Essence of Mind’ means, as it does in Yoka Daishi’s ‘Song on the
realisation of the Way’, realizing:
in the sense of ‘realizing one’s assets’, to come into the use of them, being free to make use of
them…So, to come into the inheritance of the spiritual teachings, to be able to put them into effect, in
short, to live them rather than talking about them, that is the true ‘realisation’.
Daiyu Myokyo 57
The samādhi of oneness is straightforward mind at all times, walking, staying, sitting, and lying.
The Ching-ming ching says: 'Straightforward mind is the place of practice; straightforward mind is the
Pure Land.' Do not with a dishonest mind speak of the straightforwardness of the Dharma. If while
speaking of the samādhi of oneness, you fail to practice straightforward mind, you will not be disciples
of the Buddha. Only practising straightforward mind, and in all things having no attachments
whatsoever, is called the samādhi of oneness.
The deluded man clings to the characteristics of things, adheres to the samādhi of oneness, [thinks]
that straightforward mind is sitting without moving and casting aside delusions without letting things
arise in the mind. This he considers to be the samādhi of oneness. This kind of practice is the same as
insentiency and the cause of an obstruction to the Tao. Tao must be something that circulates freely;
why should he impede it? If the mind does not abide in things the Tao circulates freely; if the mind
abides in things, it becomes entangled.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 58
The attempt to suppress all activity of the mind and render it blank is the equivalent of sitting on an
indoor bike trainer: certainly, you are making an effort and developing your muscles, but you aren’t going
anywhere, and you aren’t building the skills you will need to survive the rush hour on your bicycle. Zazen
should be like improving your riding technique by cycling in a safe, controlled environment, not like
exercising on an indoor trainer.
The true Buddhist attitude is very difficult. When you observe the koan, ‘Without depending upon
anything, manifest your own mind,’ you will get the answer to the Samādhi of one practice.

56
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘Autobiography’.
57
Myokyo-ni, ‘Yoka Daishi’s Song on the Realisation of the Way - Commentary’, Vol. 17:1.
58
Huineng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, section 14.
 42

This does not mean harping upon one word.

It is the attitude of practice, not the practice itself.
Sokei-An 59
‘Without depending upon’, in other words, without clinging to attachments, be they to things, people,
hopes, opinions or whatever, we manifest our own mind which is the Dharmakāya Buddha within. This non-
clinging is a habitual orientation towards choosing the Buddha’s Way over ‘my’ way from moment to
moment. As such, it is an attitude which we have chosen to adopt and cultivate.

59
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Samadhi and Prajna’.
 43

3 Prajñā (Wisdom)
The third is the Prajñā incense, which means that our mind is free from all impediments, that we
constantly introspect our Essence of Mind with wisdom.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 60
In the Platform Sutra, and earlier, the main concern was with concentration in the sense of collectedness
from moment to moment, and the wisdom required to attain and maintain it. This is the ‘One-Practice, or
One-Mode, Samādhi’ already discussed.
The later Mahayana distinguished various aspects of concentration and wisdom. For example, according
to one schema we can distinguish four aspects of wisdom: the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom; the Universal
Nature Wisdom; the Profound Observing Wisdom; the Perfecting of Action Wisdom. However,
interpretations of such distinctions varied from school to school.
Maha – The Great
Learned Audience, when you hear me talk about the Void, do not at once fall into the idea of
vacuity, (because this involves the heresy of the doctrine of annihilation). It is of the utmost importance
that we should not fall into this idea, because when a man sits quietly and keeps his mind blank he will
abide in a state of ‘Voidness of Indifference’.
Learned Audience, the illimitable Void of the universe is capable of holding myriads of things of
various shape and form, such as the sun, the moon, stars, mountains, rivers, men, dharmas pertaining to
goodness or badness, deva planes, hells, great oceans, and all the mountains of the Mahameru.
Space takes in all of these, and so does the voidness of our nature. We say that the Essence of Mind
is great because it embraces all things, since all things are within our nature. When we see the goodness
or the badness of other people, we are not attracted by it, nor repelled by it, nor attached to it; so that our
attitude of mind is as void as space. In this way, we say our mind is great. Therefore, we call it ‘Maha’.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 61
Detachment is not indifference. Indifference closes us off, detachment opens us up to whatever life has
to offer. This does not imply a failure to recognise and respect distinctions. But differentiation need not be
divisive.
Buddha said, ‘If you want to know the realm of Buddhahood you must make your heart as empty as
space and leave false thinking and all grasping far behind, causing your heart to be unobstructed
wherever it may turn. The realm of Buddhahood is not some external world where there is a formal
Buddha. It is the realm of the wisdom of self-awakening.’
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 62
How do I make my heart as empty as space? According to the basic Buddhist teaching, ‘I’ am a
delusion, and so I do not really need to trouble myself to make my heart empty as space, I only need to
get out of the way. But since I cannot do this by an act of will, there are specific methods that help me
to do so and our Daily Life practice is a well-tested one, because if I really want to give myself into
something, then I have given myself away and therefore I am no longer there.
Daiyu Myokyo 63

60
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
61
Hui-Neng, ‘On Prajna’.
62
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:1.
63
Myokyo-ni, Vol. 26:1.
 44

The notion that the heart is ‘my’ heart is the main obstruction to freedom and peace of heart.
The so-called Empty Heart is not being inert and unknowing, like earth, wood, fire or stone. It
means that the heart is settled and imperturbable when in contact with situation and meeting
circumstances, that it does not cling to anything, but is clear in all places with hindrance or obstruction;
without being stained, yet without dwelling in the stainlessness; viewing body and mind like dreams or
illusions, yet without remaining in the perspective of dreams and illusions, the empty nothingness. Only
when one arrives at a realm like this, can it be called the true Empty Heart.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 64
Śūnyāta is a state in which we are empty of attachments, free from impassioned grasping or rejection of
anything. This is not to say that we are deadened to feeling. It is one thing to be able to thoroughly enjoy and
appreciate our first cup of coffee in the morning, quite another to feel that the world will end if we don’t get
it.
When we are finally liberated from the grip of the divisive consciousness which has limited our outlook
to the boundaries of the interests of the tiny, isolated ‘I’ we have considered ourselves to be, self and other
are seen to be no more than waves in the vast ocean of being.
For an unprepared I, to suddenly plunge into Śūnyāta, into wide open vastness, is shattering. Hence
our training, our Daily Life Practice, our giving ourselves over to what at this moment is being done,
and continuing always and deeper, and always a little more of I drops off. I am thus softened up and
chipped away until there is so little left that the final shift is an opening towards, rather than a stunning
shock. We need to keep that carefully in mind. Yoko Daishi points to it, ‘Clearly seen, not a single thing
exists and there is neither human being nor Buddha.’
Daiyu Myokyo 65
Hence the warning not to tell the frog in the well about the vastness of the wide ocean.

Prajñā - Wisdom
The Power of the Path
When our mind works without hindrance, and is at liberty to ‘come’ or to ‘go’, then it is in a state
of ‘Prajñā’…
Learned Audience, what is Prajñā? It means ‘Wisdom’. If at all times and at all places we steadily
keep our thought free from foolish desire, and act wisely on all occasions, then we are practising Prajñā.
One foolish notion is enough to shut off Prajñā, while one wise thought will bring it forth again...
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 66
To be more precise, as has already been discussed, the state in which wisdom prevails is samādhi, and
the activity which maintains that state is prajñā. The requisite for such activity is what Master Daie calls ‘the
power of the Path’.
And Master Daie says, ‘If you are a real man of wisdom, you will use the power of the Path to clear
away the power of habitual Action.’
‘Power of the Path’ – the insight and the strength, as an instrument to clear away the power of
habitual Action. ‘I have always done it, surely, this is nothing? It has nothing against the Dharma, it’s

64
Myokyo-ni, Vol. 26:2.
65
Myokyo-ni, ‘Yoka Daishi’s Song on the Realisation of the Way - Commentary’, Vol. 24:2.
66
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Prajna’.
 45

just a habit of mine.’ Are we quite sure on those kind of things? Or is there still a clinging to it? And
that clinging prevents the free flow of going with things as they are, the continuous becoming and
becoming, and with the becoming comes also the continuous dying.
Continuous becoming and dying and becoming and dying and becoming and dying – and if that
really has become a natural habit, a free flow, then there is no more ‘I’ that obstructs it, and with no
more ‘I’ the fear is also gone. And our final fear of death is also no longer there.
As long as ‘I’ am there, there is fear. Fear and ‘I’ are as inseparable as the palm and the back of the
hand. And I would like to keep ‘I’ but lose fear. If I would like to have insight in the Dharma, but not to
give up life, then I’m on a very wrong path, or not wrong, but on a path that will not answer.
Daiyu Myokyo 67
The key to insight into the Dharma is renunciation.

The Heart Mirror

The Empty Heart
When someone is openly and blatantly self-obsessed and self-centred, we say that he is ‘full of himself’.
Such behaviour is hardly likely to endear him to others. In fact, it is frankly divisive, usually provoking
derision. But our derision is aimed not at his self-centredness as such, so much as at his unashamed openness
about it. For our guilty little secret is that it is something which we all have in common. Though we may not
all be, in our hearts, absolutely full of ourselves, we are certainly not completely empty of ourselves either.
…if I feel I, self-conscious, I am out of proportion, alone, alienated from what is. I am caught up by
myself, bound, thus can no longer act freely, spontaneously. Everything, the whole wide world, is
shrunk only to the proportion of me, of how I feel, or how I perform, and, of course, such a little self-
conscious thing, out of accord, performs very badly. The more I try to overcome this, the worse it gets.
Daiyu Myokyo 68
The real realm of Buddhahood is the realm of wisdom, opening to one who has awakened to his own
nature. This Empty Heart is also called the Heart Mirror.
…a (clear) mirror will exactly reflect whatever falls into it, without any opinions or desires,
without adding or subtracting anything. And when moved into another direction it again reflects exactly
what is. It doesn’t hold on to what it has just reflected and superimpose it on this one, or this on the next
one. But that is just what we do with our clinging, notions and ideas, a multi-layered jumble and
naturally it is quite impossible to see clearly. Hence the cleaning, polishing and keeping that Heart
Mirror always bright…
And this is not something external, with an external Buddha set up somewhere, but is the realm of
wisdom of a self-awakened one.
Daiyu Myokyo 69
If the Heart Mirror is to remain clear, we must not let ourselves be carried away be either externals or
our thoughts. To this end we must polish the mirror.

The Dust of the Passions

67
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 31:2.
68
Schloegl, Introducing Buddhism, ‘No-I’.
69
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:1.
 46

The great obstacle to our realisation of the Dharma is our wilfulness, our insistence on having our own
way instead of following the way of the Buddha. In Christian terms, it is our refusal to submit to the will of
God. Furthermore, when we do contain the passions and submit, more often than not, we expect some sort of
reward.
…, nothing can make a true man but the giving up of the will. Indeed, except by giving up our will
in all things we cannot achieve anything with God. But if it should come to the point that we gave up all
of our will, daring to abandon all things for God's sake, then we should have done all things, and not
before.
There are not many people who -whether they know it or not - do not wish to be in such a state and
to feel lofty emotions about it, that is, they want to have this condition and the profit together – but this
is nothing but self-will. You must give yourself up wholly to God in every respect, not caring what He
does with His own…
A man who had thus thoroughly abandoned self and everything pertaining to self would in truth be
so firmly established in God that, wherever you touched him you would first touch God, for he is
completely in God and God is all round him just as my cowl is round my head, and if anyone wants to
take hold of me, he must first touch my clothing.
Meister Eckhart 70
Clearly this is not a problem peculiar to Christianity. Substitute ‘the Dharma’ for ‘God’ and everything
said can be seen to apply to the followers of the Buddha. For when we come to our personal sticking points
in the daily life practice, the times we suddenly find ourselves saying ‘No’ to something, and it doesn’t have
to be something we imagine to be a ‘big deal’, then the question we have to answer is, ‘Is it to be my way or
the Buddha’s way?’ And why is it that we so frequently, despite all our declared good intentions, when it
comes to the crunch, find some justification for going our own way? What is the obstacle to letting go and
giving in? Fear. But fear of what? Fear of being belittled, reduced, nullified. And the root of that fear is our
identification with desire which leads us to suppose that our very being is, to some degree or another,
dependent upon its gratification.
The Mirror Wisdom is that which enables us to step back from our blind identification with the fires,
observe and contain them. Instead of an emotional up-rush carrying us away, it is observed as a passing
phenomenon and the energy in it is contained, and willingly and patiently endured. The burning and
churning is accepted as the necessary process of purifying the heart. Of course, this is something which has
to be practised and which cannot begin with huge reactions which are simply too strong for the container to
hold at the start. So we begin with small up-rushes, the many ‘little’ things we say ‘No’ to in daily life.
‘Little’ in inverted commas, because when we make an effort to give ourselves wholeheartedly into doing
them despite not wanting to, we discover that the term ‘little’ is applied as an excuse for not doing them and
may be surprised at the strength of the reaction against. But if we give ourselves into the daily life practice
seriously, then each apparently trivial occasion on which Mirror Wisdom is exercised and the energy
contained until the reaction burns itself out, increases the strength to contain and so favours the growth of
that wisdom.

The Dust of Wrong Thoughts

To know this Dharma is to know the Dharma of Prajñā, and to practice this is to practice Prajñā. He
who does not practice it is an ordinary man. He who directs his mind to practice it even for one moment
is the equal of Buddha…

70
Eckhart, ‘The Talks of Instruction’, 2009, Talk 11.
 47

A foolish passing thought makes one an ordinary man, while an enlightened second thought makes
one a Buddha. A passing thought that clings to sense-objects is klesa, while a second thought that frees
one from attachment is Bodhi…
To be free from being infatuated by one particular thought, from clinging to desire, and from
falsehood; to put one’s own essence of Tathātā into operation; to use Prajñā for contemplation, and to
take an attitude of neither indifference nor attachment towards all things – this is what is meant by
realizing one’s own Essence of Mind for the attainment of Buddhahood…
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 71
Hui-Neng is quite explicit. The concern of the wayfarer should be to cultivate the right attitude from
moment to moment. He is detached but not indifferent. In the moment when ignorance prevails and he is
driven by craving, he is an ordinary person. But in the moment when prajñā prevails, the essence of Tathātā
(Suchness), the Dharma, acts through him and the Saṃbhogakāya Buddha is realised. Prajñā prevails when
craving is contained, and the energy of the Fires is suffered through.
Learned Audience, when we use Prajñā for introspection, we are illumined within and without, and
in a position to know our own mind. To know our mind is to obtain liberation. To obtain liberation is to
attain Samādhi of Prajñā, which is ‘No-Thought’(1).
What is ‘No-Thought’? ‘No-Thought' is to see and to know all Dharmas (things) with a mind free
from attachment. When in use it pervades everywhere, and yet it sticks nowhere. What we have to do is
to purify our mind so that the six vijnanas (aspects of consciousness), in passing through the six gates
(sense organs) will neither be defiled by nor attached to the six sense-objects.
When our mind works freely without any hindrance and is at liberty to ‘come’ or to ‘go’, we attain
Samādhi of Prajñā, or liberation. Such a state is called the function of ‘No-Thought’’.
But to refrain from thinking of anything, so that all thoughts are suppressed, is to be Dharma-
ridden, and this is an erroneous view.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 72
(1) Yampolsky’s term ‘No-thought’ has been preferred to the original’s ’thoughtlessness’
This is a description of One-Practice Samādhi discussed earlier. Hui-Neng emphasises once more that it
is not a matter of suppressing thought and feeling. There is nothing more alive and responsive than the
Saṃbhogakāya Buddha, which has all the potential for the manifestation of the Nirmāṇakāya in
transformations according to the needs of the moment.
Since you are studying this path, then at all times in your encounters with people and responses to
circumstances you must not let wrong thoughts continue. If you cannot see through them, then the
moment a wrong thought comes up, you should quickly concentrate your mental energy to pull yourself
away. If you always follow those thoughts and let them continue without a break, not only does this
obstruct the path but it makes you out to be a man without wisdom.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 73
What are those wrong thoughts? They are the ‘I’-connected thoughts, the planning thoughts, of my
liking and disliking this, that or the other. ‘Wrong thoughts’ are not only about harming anything but
thoughts that make me feel separate alienated from what is, take me out of life into an abstract realm,
filling the head with all kinds of notions. These are the wrong thoughts…

71
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Prajna’.
72
Hui-Neng, ‘On Prajna’.
73
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:3.
 48

The moment a wrong thought comes up, be aware. The awareness is almost physical. Either it
comes up with heat, the Fires, wants and dislikes, or it comes up as a bubbly stream. You notice it
particularly in Zazen. There you sit, alive, awake, all there. And then suddenly, hands loosen, the chin
sags and away we are. Now at that moment, if there is real being with it, the moment the hands lose
their grip and the chin sags, with an energetic breath come right back into what is being done. This
continued and continued will make the awareness prevail and the wrong thoughts decline.
Do not try to go against them. That is quite useless. It is only just to jump right back into the
liveliness and awareness of this moment where the own feet stand…
Why is it so necessary to recognise wrong thoughts? Because if we always follow those thoughts
and let them continue without a break, we miss the living moment. Then what happens is that we feel
that life is not really what we hoped it would be, it is boring, uninteresting, unsatisfactory. This is what
the Buddha called Suffering.
Daiyu Myokyo 74
Pāramitā – Gone Beyond
What is Pāramitā? It is a Sanskrit word, meaning ‘to the opposite shore’. Figuratively, it means
‘above existence and non-existence’. By clinging to sense objects, existence or non-existence arises like
the up and down of the billowy sea, and such a state is called metaphorically ‘this shore’; while by non-
attachment a state above existence and non-existence, like smoothly running water is attained, and this
is called ‘the opposite shore’. This is why it is called ‘Pāramitā’…
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 75
Clinging arises from craving. And what do we crave? The coming into existence and possession of that
which we lust after, and the annihilation and non-existence of that which we hate. On the ‘opposite shore’ of
detachment, our dealings with whatever comes along are in accord with the Dharma, untainted by ‘I’
oriented discrimination.
This ‘I’ is our basic belief. We see, experience the world by judging and valuing from that ‘I’
orientation. In the Buddhist view, we blind ourselves against understanding what that Buddha-nature is,
what our real true nature is, what we really are, by the delusion of thinking of myself as an ‘I’ and
therefore separating myself. The Sixth Patriarch said, ‘The peasant uses it all the time but is not aware
of it.’ We make our home in our I-oriented discriminations, our notions of what is right and wrong,
black and white, good and bad.
Daiyu Myokyo 76

Beyond Self and Other

Differentiation and Discrimination
To attain the enlightenment of all the Buddhas, meeting things peacefully with the light [of
wisdom], making no distinction between self and others.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 77
Suppose a teacher has a class of thirty students who, following the school norm must be seated in
alphabetical order. Then it is discovered that one student at the back of the class has hearing difficulties, so

74
Myokyo-ni Vol. 26:3.
75
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Prajna’.
76
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol.28:2.
77
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Confession’.
 49

he is brought to sit at the front. No protest is heard from the other students because they recognise that the
exception respects their individual differences within the unity of the class.
However, suppose that, for some reason, the teacher comes to feel a personal affinity with one of the
students and begins to show him special consideration as a result. This behaviour will be immediately
perceived by the rest of the class and resented as divisive, because it does not respect the right of all
members to equal treatment, barring any differences which might, in theory, mark out any member as an
exception.
So differentiation, considered to be recognition of, and respect towards, natural differences, needs to be
distinguished from divisive discrimination which forces the imposition of personal preferences.

The Extended Self

Consider two couples, each with a new-born baby. Both mothers need their sleep, both fathers need to
get up early and go to work, both babies wake up crying during the night.
The first father tries to ignore his child, then finally gets up in a bad temper thinking about how he
needs his sleep. He tries for a while to quieten the baby, but his irritation is perceptible and only increases
the baby’s distress. Eventually the baby falls asleep through sheer exhaustion and the father goes off to work
the next morning feeling resentful and grumpy and resolving that the next night it will be his wife’s turn.
The second father hears his baby cry and immediately slips out of bed quietly so as not to disturb his
wife. He takes his baby and cradles him lovingly until he falls asleep. He then slips back into bed and is
immediately asleep. He goes off to work the next morning tired, but happy that his wife will be a little
stronger and his child content. During the day he looks up some nursery songs of his childhood in case he
might need them that night.
The two fathers live the same circumstances but with radically different attitudes. The first father is
centred on his own self-interest and well-being, and this divides him from his child and wife. The second
father includes his family within the scope of his self-interest.
We all engage in some degree of self-extension through our identification with family, team, regiment,
nation, groups with common interests or opinions. And though many do so to the extent that they are willing
to sacrifice their lives in defence of the interests of their extended self, nevertheless it remains a sacrifice for
the sake of the separate, admittedly extended, self. How, then, are we to cross the gulf between care of the
doting father, which is limited in extension to the boundaries of his extended self, to the boundless
compassion of the Buddha?

Looking up
To overcome the divisive attitude generated by Manas our behaviour needs to go beyond the limits of
the ‘self vs other’ dualistic attitude, to treat the ‘other’ as ‘self’. The Buddhist practice of the cultivation of
loving kindness works towards this, as does the practice of cultivating reverence towards all things as
‘Buddha things’.
The great religions all agree that we would all be a lot happier if we could become less self-centred.
Selfishness separates us from others, making us feel isolated and vulnerable. Ideally, they say, we should be
completely selfless.
But what does being selfless mean? Does it mean that we neglect our own well-being: for example,
giving away all our food and not eating ourselves? Clearly not. It is not that a selfless person puts others
before himself, but rather that he treats others as himself. He does negate his self; he equates it with the self
of others.
Essentially it is what Jesus was preaching when he said:
 50

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 78

But how can we love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves? Perhaps we can imagine something
like it with the friendly helpful neighbour, but what about the unfriendly neighbour we dislike intensely? It
seems beyond us to love them. And indeed, it is beyond the capacity of the self-centred ‘I’ who, at best, can
only extend the limits of what he considers his ‘self’ to include that which he identifies with as ‘his’: family,
team, race, nation or whatever.
The paradox is resolved when we take into consideration that this is the second commandment, which
presupposes the first:
The first of all the commandments is, Hear O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength: this is the first commandment. 79
The difficulty only exists if there is something selfish in our love for ourselves and others, if it is based
on our personal preferences. But if we have been transformed through a process of self-emptying to become
the vehicle of something greater than ourselves such as the Dharma, Ishvara, God, the Tao, then our feelings
towards ourselves and others, being mediated through the same Principle, are the same. This is quite
different from the possessive love through which ‘I’ tries to appropriate the object of affection in some way.
When in complete conformity with the Dharma how can we not treat our neighbour as ourselves since we
are one in the Dharma. This is the essence of the matter, for which reason Jesus declared:
There is none other commandment greater than these. 80
As Buddhists, when we are being instructed in daily life practice, we are urged to treat all things as
Buddha things. That is to say, we are not simply asked to believe blindly in a point of doctrine: we are asked
to exert ourselves to treat everyone and everything with the care and respect due to a Buddha, regardless of
our personal feelings about them. In other words, just as the Christian overcomes the limitations of the ‘self
vs other’ attitude through his love of God, the Buddhist does so through his reverence for the Buddha and all
that he represents.
But it is not being suggested that this is easy to pull off! It doesn’t mean we should fool ourselves into
thinking that we suddenly no longer bear a grudge against our mortal enemy. Let us begin with little things
like not leaving the sink full of dirty dishes or making an effort to smile and give a friendly greeting to the
woman on the supermarket till who never seems inclined to acknowledge our existence. And if we notice an
emotional reaction against it, that is where the exercise of the Mirror Wisdom comes in. Rather than letting
the matter go round and round in our heads, let us stand back and contain that energy, cutting off all
obsessive chains of thought.
Have we ever thought that we can be gentle and polite with the spoon or with a plate or cup? It does
not occur to us, and yet that is what it needs to extend to. When we make an effort to do so, over a long
time, it becomes habitual, and it becomes natural. There is an analogy in the ‘Inexhaustible Lamp’. If
you go for a long walk in rather thick fog, though it is not raining, when you come home, your clothes
will be wet. And equally, if you burn incense in a room, the room, the walls, the curtains, everything
will smell of it.
Daiyu Myokyo 81

78
Mark 12, 29-30: The Holy Bible.
79
Mark 12, 29-30: The Holy Bible.
80
Mark 12, 31: The Holy Bible.
81
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 27:1.
 51

‘I’ is tiny compared with, and opposite to all that is other than I, and which can and does interfere
with what I like or what suits me. Thus, I am afraid of other, and consequently feel insecure, alienated
from other. So, I overcompensate, seeking security in position, by possession, even incorporation, in
order to get control of other. Obviously, this is not possible and merely leads to frustration…
Yes, I am afraid. On closer inspection, I find fear has two aspects, fear of I ceasing to be, and fear
of I losing control, of an outbreak in me which swamps me; to the latter clings something other/worldly,
ghostly, that besets me in the small hours. Fear is the consequence of I, the alienation of I as I conceive
myself. No-I is the end of fear, and this is what the No-I teaching points to; negatively, so that fearful I
may not mistakenly try to clutch it.
To I, the absence of I is inconceivable. Again, only by practising does the vista open. The end of
the fear is the end of the I that I know and everything as I know it. It is also the point where the heart
turns over, and hence the emergence of true warmth of heart, of the love that relates to other as to
myself. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is the result of life’s practice; nor is this love blind, for in the
true warmth of a liberated heart – liberated from the stranglehold of I - there is light to see clearly the
distinctions, as well as love to relate to all that is. Thus, true understanding and right action become
possible; in fact, take place of themselves.
Daiyu Myokyo 82

The Bodhisattva Perspective

The Self is hidden in the lotus of the heart. Those who see themselves in all creatures go day by day
into the world of Brahman hidden in the heart.
The Chāndogya Upanishad Ch. VIII 83

‘Those who see themselves in all creatures’, in other words, those who are no longer deceived by
Manas, the divisive consciousness which sees the world as a multiplicity of separate, independent entities,
ourselves being one of them. The ‘world of Brahman hidden in the heart’ of the Upanishads is known to the
Buddhist as the Tathāgatagarbha.
’If the truth is realised there is neither self nor other.’ If the truth is realised, the seeing has become
the Buddha-seeing, seeing all things the way they really are, neither self nor other. This insight of
neither self nor other is common to all religions…As long as we mistake ourselves as separate ‘I’, there
must be ‘other’, and that ‘other’ can and does interfere with ‘I’. Therefore, I feel threatened and so I fear
or covet ‘other’. In fact ‘I’ and fear are inseparable, they belong together like the palm and back of the
hand: if there is ‘I’, there is fear.
Daiyu Myokyo 84
Master Sesso said to me once and I have never forgotten, ‘Of course one cannot do this training for
oneself alone.’ To the extent that ‘I’ decrease, the openness and awareness and connectedness with
everything else opens up. We cannot help others without helping ourselves and we must understand that
in helping ourselves, we help others too. These others are not just human beings, but literally everything
else which is not ‘I’.
And what does this result in? That we become respectful, careful and open and therefore notice
what at this moment is actually right in front of us. It is said in Torei’s ‘Inexhaustible Lamp’ what this
means is to help all things fulfil their appropriate function.

82
Schloegl, Introducing Buddhism, ‘No-I’.
83
Easwaran, The Upanishads.
84
Myokyo-ni, ‘Yoka Daishi’s Song on the Realisation of the Way - Commentary’, Vol. 17:2.
 52

Daiyu Myokyo 85
From the Bodhisattva perspective we all advance together, every possible circumstance bringing us the
opportunity to learn from each other. This has an important implication. We are quite wrong to try and judge
the value of our lives according to what we feel we can contribute through the exercise of our will. This sort
of attitude leads many to despair when they find themselves incapacitated and dependent upon others. They
often feel guilty at being a burden to those attending them, which only serves to add unnecessary suffering
to that which is inherent in the situation. For, by their very dependence, they are giving those who care for
them the opportunity to practice generosity. Not to mention the opportunity the situation offers to give a
lesson in patient endurance, if not more. The outstanding example of the bishop Ross comes to mind.
Towards the end of his life, he had a cerebral haemorrhage which paralysed half his body and impaired his
speech.
His eyes, bright as a child’s, his kind smile and good humour completely captured the hearts of the
sisters and nurses and doctors who cared for him… As a matter of fact, I heard that one of the doctors
decided to become a Christian after coming into contact with the bishop’s silent example.
Kadowaki 86
So rather than becoming obsessed with ideas about our own individual progress along the path, we
would be better advised to cultivate the Bodhisattva perspective, realising that we are all in this together.
The Buddha-Tathagatas, while in the stages of bodhisattvahood, exercised great compassion,
practised Pāramitās, and accepted and transformed sentient beings. They took great vows, desiring to
liberate all sentient beings through countless aeons until the end of future time, for they regarded all
sentient beings as they regarded themselves. And yet they never regarded them as [separate] sentient
beings. Why? Because they truly knew that all sentient beings and they themselves were identical in
Suchness and that there could be no distinction between them.
Aśvaghoṣa 87
I cannot do the practice. It’s as simple and straightforward as that. But what I can do is to give
myself. To give myself into every moment. And then I forget again and immediately bring myself back
again. And slowly a new, more wholesome attitude is created, more being given, more at one with
things. And ‘I’ little by little is squeezed out. Has less and less clamour. And with that life becomes
much more rounded, much more enjoyable but also much more warm-hearted, because it is only ‘I’,
always separate, and therefore always insecure, who flails around to keep myself up. If that is no longer
there, there is a true commonality with an understanding of each other. And with warmth in the heart for
each other. And with that we have really reached not only the human state proper, but our feet are
firmly on the Path that the Buddha indicated.
Daiyu Myokyo 88

Beyond Good and Bad

The fourth is the Incense of Liberation, this means that our mind is in such an absolutely free state
that it clings to nothing and concerns itself neither with good nor evil.

85
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:4.
86
Kadowaki, Zen and the Bible, Pt.II:12.
87
Aśvaghoṣa, The Awakening of Faith, ch.1, II C.
88
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 31:2.
 53

Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 89

This is the split we make, and with us Westerners it is absolutely antagonistic. Between light and
dark, between good and bad, between right and wrong: the one must be right, and we cling to it, and the
other has to be annihilated. But this is not true. They are both halves of the same thing. They are
different in aspect but not in essence. And therefore, to cling to one is to refuse half of life. This is what
is particularly stressed in Buddhism.
And what’s more …it’s the clinging, the attachment which the Buddha, on his own awakening, saw
was the reason why we human beings cannot be aware of our inherent wisdom and power. And
clinging, whether it’s to this or that, the clinger, the attachment, is ‘I’. And ‘I’ can’t help but being
split….
And so in both cases, if you cling to this, you are still attached to ‘I’. ‘I’ is still there in one of its
manifestations. And if you cling to the opposite, it’s still clinging, you are still there. That we really
need to take into our own heart and so not to take this part or that part but to move freely in-between.
‘Do not cling’ is the simple story of this. And ‘I’, being naturally a clever fellow, say ‘What? Shall
I consider the one who has just mugged a poor old woman the same as the Good Samaritan who is
helping her up and cleaning her up? Are they really just the same? Well, of course they are not the
same. But to see them as they are and to give what help is necessary, but without being partisan towards
the one or the other, thereby hangs the story. Therefore, you should not cling to what is Dharma, and
you should not cling to what is A-Dharma, untrue, Master Daie says.
Daiyu Myokyo 90
It is not that the liberated one denies or ignores the difference between good and bad. He takes the
difference into account but does not cling to one side or the other. He feels the pain of the old lady who has
been mugged and tries to help her. But if he becomes an interfering do-gooder, he might actually do more
harm than good. This is to be stained by virtue. And what is our attitude to the mugger? Do we throw him to
the wolves? This is to be stained by evil. Or can we empathize with him in his unhappy entrapment in a
mind-set which leads him to behave in such a way?
A hospital nurse who worked in the emergency department once rather shamefacedly admitted to the
camera that sometimes, for example when the patient is a drunk driver who has killed an innocent bystander
in a crash, the medical team might take a little longer to administer the necessary relief-giving treatment than
the situation required. She admitted, ‘I know we shouldn’t do it, but it happens.’ Of course, many of us
might be tempted to applaud her action. But we can only do so by wilfully ignoring the little voice inside
which whispers ‘No!’ This, the nurse was honest and brave enough to admit.
To give all the help required as fast as possible to anyone who needs it is to honour the Hippocratic
Oath. It is also not to allow personal judgements of good and bad to interfere with fulfilling one’s
obligations. Which is not to deny that the drunk driver did wrong, or that he deserves punishment. In fact, if
he is a decent person, when he sobers up and realizes what he has done, he will probably want to punish
himself. If so, there is something tragic in the situation and we might feel for him.
The Daily Life Practice requires us to give ourselves wholeheartedly into whatever is required whether
we like it or not. It is not that we are asked to be masochists. If we have toothache and a dentist is available,
we go to the dentist. But if the dentist is closed and the pain continues despite the painkiller, we do not curl
up in a self-pitying ball and spend the rest of the day making everyone else’s life a misery with our laments,
but rather we do what needs doing in pain as wholeheartedly as we would without pain.

89
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
90
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 31:2.
 54

We are all too ready to see people and situations in terms of black and white, good and bad, and to take
sides, holding back from whatever we dislike. But to refuse to participate fully in the dark side of life is to
be only half alive. Furthermore, that which we refuse gains power over us as something feared. The dark
side of life is to be lived as fully as the bright side. The way out of suffering runs through suffering.
A teacher must be willing and able to use means which, under ordinary circumstances, would be
considered improper: for example, going against the norms of Right Speech by openly and publicly
belittling a student to his face in order to put him to the test. Even when the ‘public’ is group of reasonably
seasoned trainees, the initial effect is usually a shocked silence followed by an intense examination of the
‘victim’ to see how he will respond, for the student on the receiving end is probably one who has been
praised to the skies in the past.
A genuine teacher is capable of being as a playful as a bear, but the experienced student grows wary
because he is aware of the hidden claws. For all their warmth, genuine teachers have about them a slight
whiff of danger. For when we begin to appreciate what they are pointing towards, and that they are deadly
serious about it, we come up against the fear of No-I.
So the teacher must be willing and able to run the risk of hurting the feelings of those he/she most
appreciates and supporting the puzzlement and condemnation of those who do not understand what is going
on. And if the student feels any reaction arising against such ‘injustice’, he knows he still has a long way to
go. Only in the absence of such an I-based reaction, can he respond freely and without artifice, i.e. playfully.
Of course, the teacher might just as well come out with extravagant praise which puts the victim on the
spot just as much as an insult would. And any resentment or ridicule such praise provokes in others must
leave the teacher unmoved.
The point being that a teacher can play freely with the duality of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in order to test the
student. To one who has never witnessed it, this might not seem so difficult. But it is absolutely essential
that the teacher be free in his actions, or much damage can be done. This freedom of the teacher is there to
be seen, even though his/her behaviour may confuse, hurt or irritate us at first.

Beyond Quiescence and Interference

Quiescence
Though your mind no longer attaches to the outside, you must not hold to quiescence or submerge
yourself in emptiness.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 91
The man of the Way who does not depend on anything makes use of both the moving and the
motionless.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 92
‘You may think, my daughters,’ says St Teresa, ‘that the soul in this state (of union) should be so
absorbed that she can occupy herself with nothing. You deceive yourselves. She turns with greater ease
and ardour than before to all that which belongs to the service of God, and when these occupations
leave her free again, she remains in the enjoyment of that companionship.’
Teresa of Ávila 93

91
Sasaki, Original Nature, ‘Confession’.
92
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai / sect. 27.
93
Underhill, Mysticism, Pt.2, ch.I.
 55

The man of the Way has gone beyond wilfulness. For we who see everything from the viewpoint of ‘I’,
which is precisely that of wilfulness, it is impossible to understand either the state of movement, or that of
rest, of the man of the Way. And even those who attain the Way must find their feet.
Supposing someone wanted to withdraw into themselves with all their faculties, both inner and
outer, and they were in this state in such a way that there were neither images nor impulses in them and
they were thus without any form of activity, either inner or outer, then they would have to note carefully
whether there are not in them any spontaneous promptings to action.
If nothing impels them to act and they do not wish to undertake anything, then they should
energetically force themselves to act, whether internally or externally, for we should rest content with
nothing, however good it may seem to be…
It is not that we should abandon, neglect or deny our inner self, but we should learn to work
precisely in it, with it and from it in such a way that interiority turns into effective action and effective
action leads back to interiority and we become used to acting without any compulsion.
For we should concentrate on this inner prompting, and act from it, whether through reading or
praying or – if it is fitting – some form of external activity. Though if the external activity destroys the
inner one, we should give priority to the latter. But if both are united as one, then that is best for
cooperating with God.
Meister Eckhart 94
Here, Meister Eckhart first warns of the danger of falling into a state of quiescence, becoming attached
to the peacefulness of it. When we find ourselves lapsing in this way, we are to jerk ourselves out of it. On
the other hand, we are not being advised to return to acting wilfully either. We need to become used to
‘acting without any compulsion’, in other words, without being driven by considerations of ‘I, me and
mine’. So we learn how the state of ‘interiority’ can give birth to ‘effective action’.
That is what is meant by ‘should be quiet and calm’, not ‘I do not feel anything, I must be above it,
I must be beyond it’ which is simply silly. But fully given into the situation, flowing with the situation,
at that moment there is also quiet calmness. The heart is calm, the discriminating intellect can no longer
function because I am not there. But awareness is there to go with it. This is why it is said in the
Diamond Sutra, ‘The heart flows with the ten thousand things, this flowing is truly mysterious.’ It does
not get rigid, it is not caught on anything, it does not stick to anything, it flows freely with the changing
situations and itself is quiet and still without getting carried away by emotions.
Daiyu Myokyo 95
The real unimpeded freedom opens only when the discriminating intellect – that is, the ‘I’ delusion
– has truly dropped off and there is only clear seeing of what is, the way all things really are, without
liking or disliking, but, and that is important, with real warmth of heart…the good will which fills the
heart and flows out towards all, rather as the sun shines, because shining is its nature.
Daiyu Myokyo 96

Interference
Torei 226 Master Setcho says in a poem, ‘Reaching down a helping hand is just the same as
standing on a towering precipice.

94
Eckhart, ‘The Talks of Instruction’, 1994, Talk 23.
95
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 27:3.
96
Myokyo-ni, Vol.26:1.
 56

Daibi comment … With compassion and skilful means, reaching down the hand for the sake
of others is itself the towering precipice, isolated, dangerous and sheer. Reaching down the hand is the
very essence of the differentiation in the Rank of the Apparent, and the towering precipice is the very
essence of equality in the Rank of the Real. So in this single line of the verse the truth of the mutual
interpenetration of the Apparent within the Real is directly shown. Setcho’s words of wisdom reflect
right into the innermost wisdom of the great Tozan.
Master Daibi 97
Tozan’s Five Ranks are a teaching device designed to examine different aspects of wisdom. The Rank
of the Real concerns the aspect which recognizes what we all have in common, the Dharmakāya. The Rank
of the Apparent concerns the appearance of multiplicity, the Absolute as experienced by sentient beings. The
problem is to be able to operate by respecting multiplicity through differentiation, recognising and
respecting differences without falling into the trap of divisiveness, supposing the differences to reveal a
constellation of isolated, independent entities.
I also praise detachment above all compassion, for compassion is nothing but a man's going out of
himself by reason of his fellow creatures' lack, by which his heart is troubled. But detachment is free of
this, stays in itself and is not troubled by any thing: for as long as any thing can trouble a man, he is not
in a right state.
Meister Eckhart 98
Eckhart is not referring to the ‘uncaused compassion’ of the Bodhisattva. He is warning against the
sentimental compassion which traps one in another’s suffering, adding to the sum of suffering and making
one incapable of helping the sufferer. He who falls into the trap of sentimentality when faced with the
suffering of others is one who has fallen off Master Setcho’s precipice.
‘Do not grasp another’s bow, do not ride another’s horse, do not meddle in another’s affairs.
Though this is a commonplace saying, it can also be sustenance for entering the path. Just examine
yourself constantly from morning to night. What do you do to help others and to help yourself? If you
notice the slightest partiality or insensitivity, you must admonish yourself. Do not be careless about this.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 99
Partiality and insensitivity go together. I cannot be partial about one thing without being insensitive
of something else. Kipling’s ‘If’ expresses it, ‘If all men count with you, but none too much.’ If I am
partial to one thing, I overlook the other. It means to be open so as to take in what is, and to respond to
that to the situation as it is, whole-heartedly, in harmony with the demands of the situation. If that is not
so, if I am glued to one thing and forget, miss or don’t care about the other, that is not wholeheartedness
and there is no harmony with the situation.
Daiyu Myokyo 100

We must go beyond the interfering attitude of the do-gooder. Each person is a world unto himself and
unique. His autonomy must be respected. Mothers who fail in this with their children are known as
‘helicopter mothers’, always hovering above, ready to swoop down at the first sign of danger. They think
they are saving their children from themselves, whereas, in fact, they are robbing them of themselves,

97
Tōrei and Shaku, The Discourse on the Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School, ch. 4.
98
Eckhart, ‘On Detachment’.
99
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 26:4.
100
Myokyo-ni, 363 / Vol. 26:4.
 57

depriving them of their right to develop their independence by learning from their own mistakes. Of course,
this is not to recommend recklessly abandoning our children to their fates in all circumstances.
We easily recognise a do-gooder and usually resent him. The do-gooder is not doing good for the
sake of doing good, but out of selfishness, to make himself feel good. In our practice we particularly
have to be careful about that – I the good practiser, I do the good!
Master Rinzai warned his monks, ‘Just be your natural selves and do not give yourselves airs.’ If I
walk about with a holy face, that is not the purpose of the exercise. One who does harm on the pretext
of doing good is called in the teachings ‘one whose causal ground is not genuine, bringing on crooked
results’. ‘I do it for your own good you know.’ We are familiar with that phrase, and it is usually
something pretty nasty, otherwise it would not be prefixed by that. So, we have to be careful.
Daiyu Myokyo 101
The capacity to judge when to intervene, and when not, is an important aspect of the Perfection of
Action Wisdom. But we are on the wrong track if we think that such wisdom is the accumulation of practical
knowledge about risk evaluation for every situation. An obsessive attempt to evaluate all possible risk is not
only doomed to failure, but also paralyses us at the moment we are required to act – like the centipede who
tried to decide consciously which leg to move first. Wisdom is developed by emptying the heart. The empty
heart sees the situation clearly and responds appropriately.

101
Myokyo-ni, 4 / Vol. 27:1.
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4 Liberation -The Dharmakāya Buddha

The Dharmakāya Buddha
Let us…realize our own Dharmakāya, realize the Buddha in our own mind.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 102
The Buddha is realized in our own heart/mind insofar as there is accordance with the Dharma. Such
accordance is only possible in the absence of ‘I’ oriented conceptual discrimination.
With enlightenment, the doors of perception are cleansed. It is still the same subject, John or Mary, who
perceives. But since their perceiving is no longer conditioned and distorted by ‘I’ oriented opinions and
feelings, nor appropriated to a delusory ‘I’, subjectively the experience of perceiving is now very different.
It is now as if they were a vehicle for something acting through them.
Followers of the Way, the Dharma of the heart has no form and pervades the Ten Directions. In the
eye, it is called seeing; in the ear, hearing; in the nose, smelling; in the mouth, talking; in the hands,
grasping; in the feet, walking. Fundamentally, it is one light; differentiated, it becomes the six senses.
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 103
When there is only a beholding, there is no seeing as ‘I’ see; there is no hearing as ‘I’ hear; and
therefore, things are truly seen and heard as they are. And with that awareness comes the response.
… that awareness - the true beholding, the true hearing, where there is no judgement of nice and
not nice, of annoying or not annoying, or whatever it might be. Where there is just the seeing and the
hearing. And it is at such times, there is nobody who hears. There is only the hearing. There is nobody
who sees, there is only the seeing. This is why there are no judgements with it. When the seer and the
hearer etc. have vanished, and become one with the activity, that is where the entrance is.
Daiyu Myokyo 104
As manifest in the individual sentient being, the Dharma is referred to by Master Rinzai as the ‘True
Man of no Status’.
Upon the lump of red flash there is a True man of no Status who ceaselessly goes out and in
through the gates of your face. Those who have not yet recognized him, look out, look out!
Lin-chi I-hsüan (Rinzai Gigen) 105
This ‘True Man’ is the same wherever he appears. Accordance with the Dharma is functionally
equivalent to what, in the Christian tradition, is understood to be complete detachment in submission to the
will of God.
When you have completely stripped yourself of your own self, and all things and every kind of
attachment, and have transferred, made over, and abandoned yourself to God in utter faith and perfect
love, then whatever is born in you or touches you, within or without, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet,
that is no longer yours, it is altogether your God's to whom you have abandoned yourself…
Meister Eckhart 106

102
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘On Repentance’.
103
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Pt. 1, 11d.
104
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 29:3.
105
Rinzai, The Zen Teaching of Rinzai Pt 1, 3.
106
Eckhart, ‘Sermons’, Sermon 3.
 59

The process of self-emptying described by Meister Eckhart is essentially the same for the Christian as it
is for the Buddhist, inasmuch as it is the journey from selfishness to selflessness. For the Christian, the
empty heart is likened to an inner desert.
The true word of eternity is spoken only in solitude, where a man is a desert and alien to himself
and multiplicity.
Meister Eckhart 107
This above all else is needful: you must lay claim to nothing! Let go of yourself and let God act
with you and in you as He will. This work is His, this Word is His, this birth is His, in fact every single
thing that you are. For you have abandoned self and have gone out of your (soul's) powers and their
activities, and your personal nature. Therefore God must enter into your being and powers, because you
have bereft yourself of all possessions, and become as a desert, as it is written, "The voice of one crying
in the wilderness" (Matt. 3 : 3 ) . Let this eternal voice cry out in you as it listeth and be as a desert in
respect of yourself and all things.
Meister Eckhart 108
The inner desert is propitious for the birth of the Word, the Son, in the depths of the soul, who then acts
though the senses as he sees fit.
God bears the Word in the soul, and the soul conceives it and passes it on to her powers in varied
guise: now as desire, now as good intent, now as charity, now as gratitude, or however it may affect
you. It is all His, and not yours at all. What God thus does, you must accept all that as His and not as
your own…
109
Meister Eckhart
Whatever the tradition, the dynamics are the same. Clinging and grasping in the interests of what has
been conceived to be a small, isolated, separate self, are abandoned in the name of something greater, which
had always been there, but had been hidden from view by our sticky attachments.
Initially Buddha-Nature acts through the agency of a being who blindly identifies with it; then through a
being who, with the development of his capacity for conscious reflection, deludedly appropriates it; finally
being able to shine through a being who is in full, conscious conformity with it.
In the end, this wisdom is acknowledged, but not appropriated. It is not ‘my’ wisdom. I am the vehicle
for it. Since it is selfless, it works for the benefit of all beings, tempering the compassion which overflows
from the heart.
If we go willingly along with it, there will be no difficulty, but there is an opening up of the heart,
of the human heart which is ours, in its looking up, in its joy, its kindliness and its warmth. And in that,
not only does the heart find its fulfilment, but it has also become again what it always has been, part of
what is. And in that there is no estrangement anymore, no separation anymore, no fear any more, but
there is a commonality which is the true heart of being a human being.
Daiyu Myokyo 110

107
Eckhart, Sermon 4.
108
Eckhart, Sermon 3.
109
Eckhart, Sermon 3.
110
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 30:4.
 60

The Eternal in the Present

We are liberated from suffering to the extent that we are in accord, here and now, with the timeless
principle, the Dharma. We are in accord with the Dharma, here and now, to the extent that we are
wholeheartedly given into whatever the circumstances require of us at this moment, regardless of our
preferences. This is to dwell in the samādhi of the present.
But wholeheartedness in itself is not enough. After all, many a rabid fanatic of one sort or another has
given himself wholeheartedly into the pursuit and slaughter of those who offend him, but we would hardly
want to say that in so doing he was in conformity with the Dharma. Therefore, wholeheartedness must be
tempered by the wisdom which can see the ‘circumstances’ clearly, without any I-oriented distortion.
If we are not in such accord, it is because we have been swept away by the passions, either on a wave of
emotion, or on a train of ‘I’-oriented thoughts. Being swept away, we are blinded to Tathātā, the way things
really are right now.
So, it is not about a particular moment of time, the present, being a topic of thought or object of
meditation: it is about ourselves being present, fully here, not swept away, from moment to moment through
the day, whatever the circumstances.
And if we are fully present, neither swept away nor deluded, we are effectively vehicles of the Buddha-
Nature manifesting through us in accordance with the Dharma right now. It is effectively the birth of the
Tathāgata in this moment from the Tathāgatagarbha inherent in all beings.
In Meister Eckhart’s schema, the eternal principle is conceived of as God the Father; the realisation of
the principle in time, in the individual in a fit state to receive it, is described as the speaking of the Word in
the depths of the soul
Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly
in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. St. Augustine says, 'What does
it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me
is what matters.'
We shall therefore speak of this birth, of how it may take place in us and be consummated in the
virtuous soul, whenever God the Father speaks His eternal Word in the perfect soul. For what I say here
is to be understood of the good and perfected man who has walked and is still walking in the ways of
God; not of the natural, undisciplined man, for he is entirely remote from, and totally ignorant of this
birth.
Meister Eckhart 111

The Inconceivable
What is the unfamiliar? It’s Enlightenment, Nirvana, True Thusness, the Buddha-Nature, where
there is no thought or discrimination, where figuring and calculation cannot reach, where there’s no way
for you to use your mental arrangements.
Ta-hui Tsung-kao (Daie Sōkō) 112
We cannot form a concept of the absolute using ideas derived from the world of sense experience,
which in the Buddhist scheme of things includes the phenomena of the mind such as thoughts, memories and
so on.
The place where ‘thought cannot reach’ – do we know that place? ‘I’ do not know it:’I’ cannot
know it. But there is a continuous abiding in it…

111
Eckhart, ‘Sermons’, Sermon 1.
112
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol.29:3.
 61

…where there is no ‘I’ is the place without birth and death, without continuing on the Wheel, the
place of liberation from the Wheel.
Daiyu Myokyo 113
This abiding is best described in negative terms as abiding in non-attachment, no-I, the empty heart. The
universal principle is sometimes referred to as ‘Suchness’, which might seem positive. But the suchness of
the world is no more than the world as such, that is, not as it appears through the distortions of conceptual
discrimination.
But we find it difficult to accept the idea that there is something of which we cannot form a positive
image, and in that sense, of which we must remain ignorant.
Another question arises. You might say, 'Sir, you place all our salvation in ignorance. That sounds
like a lack…Where there is ignorance there is a lack, something is missing, a man is brutish, an ape, a
fool, and remains so, as long as he is ignorant.'
Ah, but here we must come to a transformed knowledge, and this unknowing must not come from
ignorance, but rather from knowing we must get to this unknowing. Then we shall become knowing
with divine knowing, and our unknowing will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowing. And
through holding ourselves passive in this, we are more perfect than if we were active…
But our bliss lies not in our activity, but in being passive to God. For just as God is more excellent
than creatures, by so much is God's work more excellent than mine.
Meister Eckhart 114
Inevitably, we bristle at the idea of being passive to God or the Dharma, because we are thinking of it as
the subjection of an independent being to an outside force. And there lies the root of the problem: our
thinking of ourselves as separate.
Maitreyi:
I am bewildered, Blessed One, when you say there is then no separate self.
Yajnavalkya:
Reflect on what I have said, beloved, and you will not be confused.
As long as there is separateness, one sees another as separate from oneself, hears another as
separate from oneself, smells another as separate from oneself, speaks to another as separate from
oneself, thinks of another as separate from oneself, knows another as separate from oneself.
But when the Self is realized as the indivisible unity of life, who can be seen by whom, who can be
heard by whom, who can be smelled by whom, who can be spoken to by whom, who can be thought of
by whom, who can be known by whom? Maitreyi, my beloved, how can the knower ever be known? 115
In the Upanishads, ‘Self’ refers to the universal principle, just as Tao does for the Taoist, ‘Godhead’ for
the Christian, and ‘Dharma’ for the Buddhist. All paths lead to the realisation of the ‘indivisible unity of life’
and joyful acceptance of our role as vehicles for that universal principle. We can live it, but we cannot stand
outside it and understand it as something experienced by a separate ‘self’.
For all the truth learned by all the masters by their own intellect and understanding, or ever to be
learned till Doomsday, they never had the slightest inkling of this knowledge and this ground. Though it
may be called a nescience, an unknowing, yet there is in it more than in all knowing and understanding

113
Myokyo-ni, Vol. 29:2.
114
Eckhart, ‘Sermons’, Sermon 2.
115
Easwaran, The Upanishads, ‘The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad’, ch. II, 4:13-14.
 62

without it, for this unknowing lure and attracts you from all understood things, and from yourself as
well.
Meister Eckhart 116
That of which we cannot form a conception, in Buddhist terms, is the strength and wisdom of the
Tathagata inherent in every sentient being. It is there, and exerts its attraction however deluded we may be.
We only free ourselves from our attachments in order to become, in some sense, aware of it. But full
awareness lies on the other side of what is known in Zen tradition as the Great Death. The total
abandonment of clinging to anything as ‘I, me, mine’.
For the Christian is the union of the soul with God.
And when the soul has got so far, it loses its name and is drawn into God, so that in itself it
becomes nothing, just as the sun draws the dawn into itself and annihilates it. To this state nothing
brings a man but pure detachment.
To this we may add a saying of St. Augustine, 'The soul has a secret entrance to the divine nature,
when all things become nothing for it.' On earth, this entrance is nothing but pure detachment, and when
the detachment reaches its climax, it becomes ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, and dark
with enlightenment.
Thus, we may understand the words of a master, that the poor in spirit are they who have
abandoned all things to God, just as He possessed them when we did not exist. None can do this but a
pure, detached heart.
Meister Eckhart 117
‘Pure detachment’, which is to say the abandonment of all those sticky attachments which, as the
Buddhist understands it, conceal the wisdom and strength of the Tathagata hidden within all sentient beings.
If we ponder these words deeply enough to get an inkling of what they are pointing to, then we will
inevitably come up against the fear of losing ourselves. But we can rest assured that with a good teacher to
guide us along a well-established path, none of our most cherished attachments will be torn from our grasp
against our will. They will be there for as long as they matter to us, right up to the moment when we
ourselves feel able to open up and let go.

116
Eckhart, ‘Sermons’, Sermon 1.
117
Eckhart, ‘On Detachment’.
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5 Knowledge of Emancipation -The Man of the Way

Imperturbable and serene,
The ideal man practices no virtue.
Self-possessed and dispassionate,
He commits no sin.
Calm and silent, he gives up seeing and hearing.
Even and upright, his mind abides nowhere.
Hui-Neng (Enō Daikan) 118
Being self-possessed and dispassionate, he is naturally in conformity with the Dharma. So without
needing reference to ideals of virtue, he does no wrong. Free from attachment to whatever the senses might
offer, his mind and heart are free.
A ‘Man of the Way’ has realized the Way. There are no more attachments. Master Rinzai also say
of this ‘Man of the Way’ that he has nothing further to do! Which comes to the same thing, but we must
not mistake ‘nothing further to do’ for inactivity, sitting comfortably without stirring. Actually, a Man
of the Way has many things to do to help others, but he himself has nothing further to seek. He has
realized his training; he has attained full insight and so no longer needs to look for anything…. He has
realized his assets and now, as a Man of the Way, lives his life. Not for himself, because that feeling has
gone, but open-endedly for others.
Daiyu Myokyo 119
The state of liberation, once attained, must be thoroughly investigated and known so that others may be
helped. Only through helping others towards liberation can we ourselves be emancipated. It is not a question
of putting off ‘my’ emancipation until all others are liberated. Emancipation cannot be ‘mine’, and there are
no ‘others’. This is the inclusiveness common to all the Mahayana schools, the Bodhisattva perspective.
…the Tao Te Ching, which says ‘Man obeys the laws of the Earth, Earth obeys the laws of Heaven;
heaven obeys the Laws of Tao – or Dharma if you want to – and Tao obeys its own inherent nature.’
And so if man is only in accord with the laws of earth, that brings him into that complete accord
with everything, and then can follow dictates of the heart without transgressing… That is, not according
to your Tao, not according to your will, because the will and the Dharma and the Tao are all one thing
and there is no more possibility of transgressing.
This is what makes a human being really a whole human being, a master. And that does not say that
there is nothing otherwise left, because to a full human being belongs also the human stature and the
human heart: and the human heart is something that has a lot of properties, qualities, such as gratitude
and joy and warmth and compassion, and with that also there is the re-linking to everything that is –
nothing separate, only ‘I’ is separate. A human being at one with everything is acting also from that
understanding and in good will. That please, take to heart, and just little by little, by your own practice,
let it emerge.
Daiyu Myokyo 120

118
Hui-Neng, ‘The Sutra of Hui Neng’, ‘His Final Instructions’.
119
Myokyo-ni, ‘Yoka Daishi’s Song on the Realisation of the Way - Commentary’, Vol. 17:1.
120
Myokyo-ni, ‘Selected Sayings of Master Daie Soko - Commentary’, Vol. 30:2.
 64

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