All the teachings of the Buddha may seem different at times but in truth they are in the long run intended to point to Mind. If we think of the teachings as sections of a great map, with faith and discipline on our part, they can lead us to the treasure trove of Mind. In this treasure trove is to be found the supernatural faculties. Nothing is outside of Mind’s range. In truth, there is Mind-only.
But we have never met this Mind face-to-face. Our imagination is always trying to make a copy of this Mind but this is not the Mind of the Buddha.
If we wish to realize such a Mind as this, we first must acknowledge that what hinders our attainment of bodhi or perfect enlightenment is, foremost, our ideations of this Mind. This is somewhat like a hungry person who hasn’t eaten in days and constantly thinks about food. But these mental images of food do not take away the hunger. Only real food can bring about the cessation of hunger. But in the case of Mind the problem is much more difficult. Our ideations of it are guesses. We are not even sure that we are on the right track as to what this Mind is. We are even willing to believe that this Mind could well be our ordinary mind or it could just the awareness of awareness. But it is not.
We stubbornly fight to preserve our ideations. Likewise, we argue with others who may try to convince us that we are on the wrong track. What is apparent is that we may not have grasped that our constant generation of ideations is holding us back. However, Mind is never touched by them. They cannot affect it but they can make it more difficult to find.
Ideations about Mind, the more we indulge in them, can become like a huge wall which seems impossible to go around or to climb over. So we just end up standing in front of it perplexed. This is apparent with koans which seem, at times, impossible to comprehend. Every practitioner, sooner or later, faces this wall—the impossibility of going through it. Ironically, this wall is the practitioner's creation.
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