Modern society wants us all to be winners, to accomplish the impossible if we can. Above all else we have to make a success of our temporal body’s brief time on this planet. But in the spiritual world things are somewhat different because what we have to accomplish, in the way of awakening to the true nature of existence, transcends the temporal body, its senses and its perceptions (samjñâ). Yes, this immaculate nature is attainable. Yes, it’s real. In fact, it is the very substance of the universe. If it were not, Zen master Huang-po would not have said the following:
"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measure, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you—begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifest in the Buddhas."
To realize the One Mind (ekacitta), or our true nature, we have to give up our worldly presuppositions including our preconceived way of conducting a search for it, while still maintaining an intensive search. We cannot approach the One Mind by conceptualizing it (samjñâ). It is not in the world of philosophical thought. Such thoughts (even the word “One Mind”) at best are mere signifiers—not the One Mind itself. They are inadequate to the task at hand which is to stand in the presence of the actual One Mind which is the Buddha. In a way, we are there right now. But the Five Aggregates including other things prevent us from fully knowing this. It’s like having a dark cloud over us all the time which keeps us from seeing the sun.
Try as we might, for example, by pretending to be Bodhisattvas (taking the Bodhisattva precepts) or becoming a monk or a nun, we are still far away from the One Mind. At some point our old ways of searching have to be exhausted and put to an end. We have to come to the realization that nothing we’ve tried has worked in the past or will ever work. Sitting in zazen until our arse bleeds or doing a million prostrations will not succeed. The force of our will that tries to make the One Mind a reality for us is doomed to fail, also. As paradoxical as it sounds, an exhaustive search that drains away all of our presuppositions, which eventually leads to utter failure, is what we really need. In other words, truly, there is no success like total failure. Only then will the Buddha appear.
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