The path of the Buddhas and Zen masters is a subtle path. There is no yellow brick road stretching out before us. It is a not straight or crooked path. At first it is difficult to make sense of. The practices we undertake to accomplish the path give us no guarantees of success. They can even lead us in the wrong direction. The odd thing is that we are the path; both its inception and its completion. The self we do not know now will, eventually, become the self we will know, or the same, the Buddha Mind that we use unknowingly will eventually become recognized.
In my own case, I always had a hunch that Zen was about some kind of required mystical insight; that if I accomplished it all of the mysteries of Zen Buddhism would be unlocked, including Buddhism in general. Looking back, I wasn’t wrong. The problem I faced was, “What the hell is this insight about?” I needed a clue. Then with the help of Bishop Nippo Shaku I had a clue. It was pure Mind. That was the start of the path. I now knew what I was looking for although, at the same time, I also knew that I had not seen it.
The path of discovery, for want of a better name, was also about exhausting every idea I had about pure Mind. The path required that in order to advance, I had to let go of my presuppositions. No letting go—no advance. This proved extremely difficult. I did not know that the last presupposition I had to dump (I was getting to my wit's end) was that I could be aware of this pure Mind in the same way that I was aware of the rolling hills and oak trees just beyond my back door. In fact, I was not going to actually attain anything in the way I believed an attainment should be. At this point, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was about to make my greatest advance upon the subtle path (or the path of discovery).
Is this a surefire recipe for the realization of pure Mind? I would have to say, not quite. I am only saying that the adept has to dump everything to advance, but it still requires more. The path must culminate with a direct insight into the one who has actually been treading the path; who finally discovers himself.
So is Pure Mind another way of saying Universal Consciousness?
Posted by: Billy | January 04, 2014 at 09:10 PM