Insidious machinations

I asked myself today, “What does a failed Buddhist seeker do when they can’t intuit pure Mind?”  I didn’t have to wait long to find the answer.  I just looked at a few Buddhist forums on the Internet.  They are always well stocked full of failed Buddhists.  Putting what I found into a paragraph it goes like this:

Trying to cognize the essence of Mind or trying to attain nirvana is nothing more than an illusion—a fool’s errand. We cannot know anything, but we can stop desiring to attain pure Mind or nirvana. There is no spiritual mountain to climb and no paths that will take us to the summit.  The real problem is dissatisfaction which is born of our desire, of wanting things, even nirvana.  It is far wiser to give up desire than pursue what, in the end, will inevitably turn out dissatisfying.  

If we had to characterize this with a name, it would be radical agnosticism, that we cannot know.  And in the face of being unable to know (in this case know or cognize pure Mind) the best we can do is just stop desiring awakening.  It ain’t going to happen.

Despite all the Buddhist records we have, especially in Zen, of people awakening to pure Mind, our failed Buddhist seeker—the ultimate wimp—has to make sure others are poisoned by his foul and rotting ideas.  This is somewhat like reading about self-made millionaires, then trying to become rich, but ultimately failing, only to write a book that nobody ever became rich!

Let’s face it.  Not everyone can awaken to pure Mind.  Not everyone can become rich.  Not everyone can become a great musician or scientist.  Awakening is not easy.  But to suggest that striving to cognize pure Mind or realize nirvana is, essentially, a fool’s errand is the insidious machinations of a diabolical intellect.

 

Comments

[Susan]

I refuse to parrot someone...Who the hell cares what this or that teacher said anyway? What? I want to join the ranks of the know-it-alls?? Yeah, let's play with conceptions that you read about in books for the next 30 years and pretend to be smart. The more blabbing the less enlightenment. And that's why I stick to the Zennist and don't read other people's comments. Someone calling himself Quote Dispenser? He can't speak for himself?

[thezennist]

QuoteDispenser: Addressing the first part of your comment, The Zennist has solved the problem. The world is an antithesis of the Original Mind; we are intrinsically this Mind but are unable to recognize it. It is by penetrating through the antithesis (via meditation) that we return-to-self (Original Mind). The antithesis is really a heuristic display of Mind. This helps to lead us to the ultimate insight (anuttarasamyaksambodhi).

[QuoteDispenser]

"How can you think of your original mind? How can you see your own eye? When you are looking inward, furthermore, there
is no seeing subject. Some people swallow this in one gulp, so their^ ye of insight opens wide and they immediately arrive at their homeland.

How can people nowadays each the point where there is no
seeing and no hearing?

Everything is always there; you see peo­ple, houses, and all sorts of forms, like boiling water bubbling.

When you were infants, you also heard sounds and saw forms, but you didn't know how to discriminate.

Once you came to the age of reason, then you listened to discriminatory thinking, and
from that time on have suffered a split between the primal and the temporal.

At this point, it is inevitably hard for people to restore nat­ural order even if they want to. Those who attain enlightenment do not see walking when they walk, and do not see sitting when
they sit. That is why the Buddha said, “ The eyes seeing forms is
equivalent to blindness; the ears hearing sounds is equivalent to deafness.”

How can we say we are as if blind and deaf? When we hear
sound, there is no sound to be heard; when we see form, there is no form to be seen.

What we see and hear is all equivalent to an echo. It is like seeing all sorts of things in a dream— is there all that when you wake up?

If you say yes, yet there's only the blanket and pillow on the bed; if you say no, yet all those things are clearly registered in your mind, and you can tell what they were.

The same is true of what you see and hear now in broad daylight. So it is said, what can be seen by the eye or heard by the ear can be studied in the scriptures and treatises; but what about the basis of awareness itself— how do you study that?"

( Instant Zen - Waking Up in the Present )