Not the body, rock or cart

To rightly understand that it is unnecessary to transform the maculate into the immaculate is to fully comprehend that our true nature is primordially pure.  Nothing needs to be done to improve it, in other words.  We only need to find it like finding gold instead of trying to transform rock into gold.

When Zen master Huai-jang of Wisdom Temple asked Ma-tsu what he wished to attain by zazen and Ma-tsu replied, “To attain Buddhahood” Huai-jang had the sneaking suspicion that Ma-tsu was trying to turn the maculate “sitting Ma-tsu” into the immaculate Buddha Ma-tsu, that is, to transform the mind and body of samsara into the pure Mind that is naturally liberated in nirvana.  This is when Huai-jang took a brick and began to polish it with a stone.  Curious as to what he was doing, Ma-tsu asked Huai-jang, “Why are you polishing that brick?”  Huai-jang replied, “I’m trying to polish it into a mirror.”  “But how is that possible?” asked Ma-tsu.  Huai-jang then asked Ma-tsu, “If a brick cannot be polished into a mirror how can sitting make a Buddha?  Look at it this way, if the ox cart does not move what do you do, whip the cart or the ox?”  After this, Zen master Huai-jang went on to say that Zen is not about sitting or lying down; moreover true meditation (samadhi) is without form.

Zen master Huai-jang, in essence, was telling Ma-tsu that no amount of physical effort will transform the human mind and body into anything except a human mind and body—which it is already.  Our true mirror-like nature lies elsewhere.  Instead, the right practice is to see our immaculate Buddha-nature that transcends the carnal body of birth and death.  Like with the analogy of the ox cart, the moving principle is not the cart, but the ox.  With pure Mind, it is the moving or animative principle of the body.  We need to apply our practice in perfectly realizing this principle in which we have to be more like detectives looking for the pure Mind mirror than brick polishers or cart whippers.