Various conceptualizations or patterns of thought, including thought, are really shapes of spirit or Mind. But wise Buddhists whose spiritual depth is great do not mistake shape for the substance or the actual content, itself, which is shapeless and most primordial.
We would not mistake a 'ring' or a 'bracelet' (i.e., shapes) for gold (the substance). The world of the manas (the sixth sense) is never other than thought-shapes. Thought, including our everyday thoughts, cannot take us to dharmatā, i.e., what Siddhartha intuited, directly.
We can say that dharmatā (essence, inherent nature) is outside of texts which is covered by the second verse of the Zen quatrain which is: do not depend on written words (不立文字 ). We have to aim for direct intuition or gnosis of dharmatā.
So a time comes in the life of every devoted student when they become overwhelmed by the various shapes of thought. Still, they haven’t come close to realizing spirit or dharmatā. But have their teachers forewarned them that even a single thought is still hiding dharmatā? How is this thought-shape stripped away? With more thought?
More and more thought (the process of thinking) leads to discursiveness. But the intuitive, which is opposed to the discursive, does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on this basis to a conclusion which is the way discursiveness works. Enlightenment is attained by means of immediate intuition. Nagarjuna, in his Mahāprajñāpāramitaśāstra, says that “non-discursiveness is the seal of the Dharma (dharmamudrā)”.
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