The Zennist: The seed

The mental depiction of the Judeo-Christian God is always in someway personal. This I suppose is a counter sentiment to any thought of an impersonal divine substance. It seems the choice is either go with the personal God or take your chance with the impersonal divine.

Fortunately, in Mahayana Buddhism there is a better choice. The divine or absolute is neither personal nor impersonal. More importantly, the mystery of this absolute can be directly experienced by each of us. But it is never something to ‘think about’ or ‘hope for’ or ‘believe in’. It comes, instead, by way of allowing oneself to be swallowed up in the utter emptiness and forlornness of phenomenal illusion while staying singularly focused as if passing through a terrible, dark storm. If one weathers the storm, so to speak, sufficiently passing through it, supremely focused, something wonderful appears.

What is then received from this is the vision of the eternal that exists behind the veil of empty phenomena (including even our thoughts). Put another way, this means that we have arrived at a positive, lucid seed (garbha) of accomplished spirit (tathagata) which is now gestating in the dark soil of phenomena—growing to become the Bodhi-tree which the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng said is Mind.

Hence, it is also realized that God is nothing. Nor is there even such a thing as a divine impersonal substance. What comes to be realized is that each of us is the immediacy of Buddha-nature. But first we have to plant its seed in the dark, moist soil of utter emptiness and forlornness, for only in this soil can it take root eventually converting all into blessedness.