Don't Fill in the ________

I don't know when mothers (and maybe fathers) and teachers started saying it, or whether they still do, but when I was young, I'd be told, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." I'd like to amend that to, "If you don't have anything to say, don't say anything." Better yet, "If I don't have anything to say, don't say it."

Before the assembled monks, the Buddha held up a flower. The vast majority of them raised one collective eyebrow (well, one each anyway),and cocked their collective heads (again, one each) like a confused dog. But only Mahakasyapa smiled. To him, the Buddha transmitted the wordless, formless Dharma. One flower held aloft, one subtle smile. Before thought, Mahakasyapa smiles. And so, the legend has it, Zen is born, beyond words and scriptures.

The talk this week started with noting the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Bell is struck, no words, just silence. Bell is hit again, talking may resume. If you listen, there's a bit of a gap even after the second bell. I wanted to experiment with something, and I had to go with what was at hand. I didn't have a flower. I did however have a big blue Pilates ball. I held it aloft, and it elicited a smile. Correct response to the stimulus. If I'd looked menacing, looking like I might throw it, cowering might have been the appropriate response. But I didn't, and in return received a smile. No words yet, just a big old grin.

The assembled Bodhisattvas try to explain the entry to non-duality under the guidance of Manjusri. They take their turns, and do alright. But Manjusri tells them that all their explanations are in and of themselves dualistic. He turns to the layman Vimalakirti for his explanation. Vimalakirti says nothing, which has since become known as Vimalakirti's "thunderous silence". Great response. There was no explanation of non-duality that wouldn't involve some duality, even if it were only to juxtapose duality with non-duality. I've given this a shot when working through kong-ans with my teacher; sometimes it's acceptable. Sometimes not (dammit!).

Huineng said he had one thing that had no name or form. He asked if any of his monks knew what it was. Shenhui responds by saying "It's my Buddha-Nature". Nope. Years later, Nanyue Huairang comes back to Huineng and says, "To call it 'one thing'  is not correct."

In Zen meditation, we sit and walk silently, the only sound is the clap of the chugpi or bell, sometimes instruction from the meditation leader, and chanting. The silence allows us the space to investigate ourselves, to ask, "What is this?" that's doing the investigating. It allows us the space to listen. The incessant chatter can distract us from hearing the "cries of the world."

In the NYC subways, commuter rail lines, and most likely elsewhere, since 2001, they've put up these signs, "If you see something, say something." I'd like to amend that to, "If you see something, see something Hear something, hear something".

I picked up the big blue Pilates ball again at the end of the talk. I did throw it that time. A hearty laugh was had by all. Sometimes, laughter, or a silent smile is the correct response. And sometimes, we need to think silently, "Don't fill in the ___________".

Click this to listen to the talk:

onemindzen/dont-fill-in-the ________ mp3

Just Verbs

Words: Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. A few other parts of speech (I'm being fonding of gerunds). Grammar, syntax, predicates, subjects, clauses, (I'm really fond of parenthetical statements). Bodhidharma, First Patriarch of Ch'an (Zen) that Awakening is beyond words...among other things. But of course, he said something—maybe that, somebody remembered what he said, someone else wrote it down. And it was communicated with those damn words. So given the inevitable game of telephone (if you're too young to know what that refers to, look it up!), and throw in a few centuries and languages worth of translation, Bodhidharma may have said “The Great Way is a bowl of rice, maybe a little cumin thrown in,” somebody else says, “Yeah, that doesn't have the same ring as 'Vast emptiness, nothing holy,' so I'll just massage it a little bit,” and thus begin the paradoxical statements associated with Zen. Or not, I wasn't there, so I'm only going by hearsay when you get down to it.

The Buddhist Sutras speak of the “Third Dharma-Ending Age,” during which people will be morally corrupt, unable to actually receive the Dharma, Shakyamuni's words will lose all ability to save people from their struggles. In some texts, Ksitigarbha (Jijang Bosal in Korea, Jizo in Japan, Dayuan Dizang Pusa in Mandarin) vows to take on the task of keeping things going until Maitreya comes along. (And also to empty hell, but that's another story). Now I'm sure there are some Buddhist “end-of-the-worlders” out there saying, “Yep, that's where we are now, degenerate age, corrupt people, 'why can't they just get it?,” the end times when you just want to go out on the corner of 47^th Street and Park Ave, and join the guy who screams at the Pan Am building about the “End Being Nigh” (he's been there a while).

These days Israelis are shelling Palestinian schools and hospitals, Palestinians are lobbing rockets into anywhere they'll reach in Israel, Sri Lankan and Burmese Buddhists are conducting pogroms against Muslims, Russia is either doing or not doing something in Ukraine, and there are any number of other conflicts and outright wars going on elsewhere in the world, so yep, this must be the Dharma Ending Age. Or not. Depending on your time-line frame of reference, there are those who might point out to the Crusades, the Feudal Warlord period of Japanese history, Stalin, British colonization, Hitler, the anti-Buddhist pogroms in China in either the 800's or the Cultural Revolution, and many other periods that could possibly fall into the “corrupt” and downright ignorant ages. 

Personally I don't put too much stock in any of that as signifying the End, as that's just a mental construct based in perceptions of what good and bad are supposed to be, more perceptions of what right and wrong are. After all, whoever was on the winning side of any of those events thought it was fine...until they lost, in which case the other side could say that they were right all along and were suffering at the hands of their oppressors and have since liberated “their” people. All these conversations going on in everybody's heads, each thinking the other knows exactly what they're talking about, and even than that, that the meaning of what they're talking about is coming through loud and clear.

Upon examining all this, Awakening being beyond words is looking pretty promising. Our innate Buddha-nature (a verbal description that is totally inaccurate and incapable of describing it) would say that we are already awakened, but maybe just a few layers of delusion need to be scraped off, some of the habits need to be broken. The point is, except in some rare cases, we all “know” how to behave—not an intellectual knowing, but the internal gyroscope of balanced behavior knowing—that sometimes gets buried by our preference for greed, anger, aversion, delusion and all those other things we do that we think will make us happy, but never quite get there, and if they do, not for long. If you look at any number of Buddhist forums, invariably there will be a point at which discussion goes way off the expedient means rails and heads into the ravine of, “I'M right! That's not what the Dharmakaya is, it's this! How can I save you, sentient being, if you're so stupid!?!”(The problems with the preceding being the dualism of right vs. wrong, the reification of Dharmakaya, the duality of that being different from any other -kaya, and “I'M” probably being the biggest mistake of all. And there will be those who quibble about “problems” and “mistake” being dualistic as well).
It's all fine just as it is, how could it be any other way that it is right now, including that type of interchange? Accepting the status quo as reality as it happens to be presenting itself in this moment, but without settling for the status quo, figuring out how, when present moves into the past and there's a new present presenting itself, what are the Buddha-things I can think and do that will lessen the struggle in the world in this moment. But what can I say....

Better come up with something. We're stuck with words. More often than not, there's a narrator inside my head, who if he isn't talking to me about what's going on at the moment, is doing a running commentary on what the other narrator is saying, and second-guessing half of it. That “thinking about thinking” issue, which more likely might be talking about thoughts in conversation with other voices describing the thoughts, but being the description of the thought rather than the thought itself. But every now and then there are those moments of what I assume to be clarity, when there are no nouns, no adjectives or adverbs. The sentence has no subject, there are definitely no pronouns, the only conjunction is “and” with no “or” or “but.” In those moments when all there are is verbs (and maybe gerunds if not descriptive), it doesn't feel so much like the Dharma-Ending Age, in fact it doesn't feel like any age in particular at all. It's just tasting, just seeing, just typing, just trying to figure out a way to use the correct words where words are totally inadequate. It's all “IS” with no “it's.” And that's all fine.

Metta-Data

From the ars technica website by Joe Mullin - Aug 27 2013:
"Yesterday, the ACLU filed a declaration by Princeton Computer Science Prof. Edward Felten to support its quest for a preliminary injunction in that lawsuit. Felten, a former technical director of the Federal Trade Commission, has testified to Congress several times on technology issues, and he explained why "metadata" really is a big deal...Unlike the actual contents of calls and e-mails, the metadata about those calls often can't be hidden. And it can be incredibly revealing—sometimes moreso than the actual content".
 
Big deal, this NSA data-collection storm. Since it truly is a World-Wide Web, it can be understandable that someone somewhere is potentially looking at your metadata, regardless of where in the world you might be. I don't know about you, but I don't live globally. I know that things I do could have some big-picture impact, but I can't really see it. So I live locally, which can actually include people from Japan and Jersey City, Korea and Kalamazoo, but generally one-to-one; if they're far enough away, probably electronically, and maybe collected by the NSA.

On a personal level, what sort of data collection do we do? We take notes, either based on personal observations or things that we've heard other people say, assuming that it's based on their personal observations. Thereby revealing this data collection as The Great Generalizations, like “All atheists are evil and not only immoral, but a-moral since they have no God.” “Christian fundamentalists are intolerant bigots with a room temperature IQ (which in Celsius is really low).” “Jews are money-hungry.” “Buddhists are wimps.” “Muslims are intolerant and violent.” And many of these data are accepted as fact, since it's “common knowledge", or maybe, "It's in Wikipedia, it must be true.” 

But quite often, there's no real objective evaluation of fact or reality, so the veracity of any of these statements is at best suspect, and very often just plain wrong...unless it agrees with your position.
Taking it down another notch on the personal scale, let's look at what data we collect locally in a third-person way: “That guy, he's just a jerk.” “Man, she's really got it together.” “I'm a mess.” “I'm the best thing since sliced bread.” “Look at the way they do sitting meditation, can't sit still for more than a minute.” “Wow, that Roshi, he's enlightened, I'll never get there.” “I am SO freakin' enlightened.” “Oh, well he's Hinayana, so you know, he's just in it for himself.” “I save all sentient beings on a daily basis.” “Hmmm, Zen...that's nice, but it's not the True Teaching.” “Pure Land...Oh. Are you a fisherman or something?”

There's something even more personal—keeping score of my actions...and yours. The Metta-Data.“I helped an old lady cross the street, I'm so proud of myself.” “She was mean to me, so she'll get it back ten-fold.” “I drive a hybrid, I care so much for the environment.” “Well, he does drive an SUV, so, y'know...” “I take a bike to work!”

All more data collection. All based on there being some sort of real, enduring, self. Separation between you and me, us and them, self and other. And inherently delusional. It's the reality of things that are thought, and delusional nonetheless. Can do things to gain “points” on the karmic scoreboard? If one does something “good,” but the intention is to gain anything, well...not bad, but not necessarily good.

Some Buddhist traditions put forth that one can not only accumulate merit, but that this merit can be transferred to another, such as a loved-one who has died, so that they may enjoy a more favorable rebirth.
The Diamond Sutra speaks of merit: “Subhuti, what do you think? If anyone filled three thousand galaxies of worlds with the seven treasures and gave all away in gifts of alms, would he gain great merit? Subhuti said: Great indeed, World-honored One! Wherefore? Because merit partakes of the character of no-merit, the Tathagata characterized the merit as great...Subhuti, I will declare a truth to you. If a good man or good woman filled three thousand galaxies of worlds with the seven treasures for each sand-grain in all those Ganges rivers, and gave all away in gifts of alms, would he gain great merit? Subhuti answered: Great indeed, World-honored One! Then Buddha declared: Nevertheless, Subhuti, if a good man or good woman studies this Discourse only so far as to receive and retain four lines, and teaches and explains them to others, the consequent merit would be far greater.”

Wait, what? Is it merit or no-merit? Is it something that can be accumulated, stored up, kept? Merit is no-merit, thus it is called merit. This, not-this, and not-not-this. For provisional convenience sake, pointing to the Relative, we call it this.

When Bodhidharma came to China, he was summoned to meet with Emperor, who said to him, "Since I came to the throne, I have built many temples, published numerous scriptures and supported countless monks and nuns. How great is the merit in all these?" Bodhidharma's response, “None whatsoever.”
The emperor asked him what the essence of Buddhism was. Bodhidharma's reply: “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.” The emperor went his way (I like to think with one eyebrow raised and with teeth clenched), Bodhidharma the other. So all the temple building, financial support for the monks, even just not killing them as foreign barbarians, or home-grown heretics...Nothing. Not bad things for an emperor to do (or not do), just not necessarily good. 
 
Good/bad are still dualistic, and dualistic concepts to boot. Accumulating “good” karma, attaching to “good” karma, revulsion at “bad” karma are elements of dukkha—suffering—just another spoke in the samasaric wheel. Good, not-good, so we call it good.. Bad, not-bad, so we call it bad.
What is Metta? It's a Pali word, usually defined as loving-kindness. Sometimes it's described as compassion, but that somehow falls short. Altruism...that's in there, but not the totality. So far as I'm concerned, metta is just metta. Words, as they often do, don't quite hit the mark in describing the actual mind of metta. It's one of those Absolute things; so far as I can tell, there's no not-metta. Maybe it's not manifested at all times, but it's there, like Buddha-Nature.

Here, from the Pali Canon is the Metta Sutta:


This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise,
Who seeks the good, and has obtained peace.
Let one be strenuous, upright, and sincere,
Without pride, easily contented, and joyous.
Let one not be submerged by the things of the world.
Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches.
Let one's senses be controlled.
Let one be wise but not puffed up and
Let one not desire great possessions even for one's family.
Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would
reprove.
May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety,
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
In high or middle or low realms of existence.
Small or great, visible or invisible,
Near or far, born or to be born,
May all beings be happy.
Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state.
Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life
Watches over and protects her only child,
So with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things.
Suffusing love over the entire world,
Above, below, and all around, without limit,
So let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world.
Standing or walking, sitting or lying down,
During all one's waking hours,
Let one practice the way with gratitude.
Not holding to fixed views,
Endowed with insight,
Freed from sense appetites,
One who achieves the way
Will be freed from the duality of birth and death.

If one can perform acts of metta,without the notion that it will have any payoff whatsoever, that is having the mind of metta. If one can realize that there is no merit in having the mind of metta, and have that mind regardless, then one gains great merit. And no-merit. And that's OK. 

But don't keep score, don't puff yourself up for having done something “good,” don't denigrate someone who doesn't live up to your standards. Don't practice spiritual materialism, as Chogyam Trungpa called it, as if there were riches to be accumulated and clung to.

Don't bother collecting the Metta-Data. It's just a creation of thinking (which is no-thinking, therefore we call it thinking).
And may you and all beings be happy.

Made by Thinking

Zen Master Seung Sahn constantly tried to get his students to "wake up," that is to say, to realize their True Nature which exists before thought. He returned to "What is this? Don't know," in order for the student to see that thinking creates all dualities, that dualities lead to suffering, and that the "Don't Know" state was in and of itself enlightenment...but enlightenment that doesn't "know" it is enlightenment.

Huineng said, "You should not think of good and of bad; cut all thinking and all speech. Right now, what is your Master?'' Sin Hae bowed, saying, "I don't know.'' The Patriarch said, "Keep this 'don't know' mind at all times, and you will understand your Master.''
After the passing of a few years, Sin Hae said, "The 'don't know' mind is origin of Buddha and of my Buddha-Nature." Huineng said, "The 'don't know' mind is no name and no form. Why do you say 'the origin of Buddha and of my Buddha-Nature'?" Sin Hae just then understood, stood up, and bowed three full bows. He went to the South, and became a great Zen Master.

Hui Neng also described the state of no-thinking as being as dead as a rock. But as with the Buddha and Hui Neng, Seung Sahn would often use emptiness to counter a student's attachment to form, or use form to counter one attached to emptiness. Form and emptiness in and of themselves weren't necessarily the problem, it was the attachment to both or either that presented the hindrance, and that attachment was the end product of thinking.

"The mind is that which knows the object! The object is that, which is known!
These two processes always arise and cease together simultaneously...
Neither inside, within, nor apart from, outside these two is any observer agent,
person, I, Me, or other assumed entity as a hidden variable, ever involved!
The mind is immaterial, formless and invisible. The object may be designated
or named 'material', 'physical', 'formed' and even 'visible' only and exactly
to the extent and in so far as it is experiencable by the mind!"~The Buddha
The Buddha himself taught that attachment to nama rupa i.e. "name & form" was a hindrance that would prevent one from attaining enlightenment. Name and form are merely constructs of thinking, and have nothing to do with that which is being named or identified. They are the essence of duality.
Nagarjuna states, "O Realizer of the Transitory World. Don’t have as objects of your mind.
The eight transitory things of the world:
Namely, material gain and no gain, happiness and unhappiness,
Things nice to hear and not nice to hear, or praise and scorn.
Be indifferent (toward them)."
All these things that Nagarjuna refers to are products of thinking, creations of the discriminatory mind. Seung Sahn might say along these same lines that gain and no-gain, etc. are made by thinking, are a separation between the one experiencing something, and making a value judgment of it. A person might think, "Gain is better than loss, so I'll strive for gain, and then once I've gained, I'll cling to that which I've gained, because that will result in my happiness, and it will last forever, and I will be eternally happy." This would be wrong on so many counts--better than, desire, clinging, not recognizing impermanence, and the "I." And all these are created by thinking, and all are impermanent and delusion.
Hua-yen Buddhism from China developed into Korean Hwa-om, and probably the major teaching of that school was the identity of all dharmas, i.e. that all dharmas are identical (not “identity” in terms of name and/or form). Fazang had his teaching to the empress using the metaphor of the golden lion statue not being separate from its golden nature, nor its nature as a lion statue. Seung Sahn used the cookie-dough teaching, that regardless of the different shapes forms may take, or the different names we might give them, when it is all distilled to its most basic original nature, it's all the same, it's all "Don't Know."
If a student gave “the same” as his/her answer to Seung Sahn's question “are...the same or different?” the answer that they are the same might have worked as incompletely as "different," as the Tao is "Don't Know," the before-thought instant. Again, the name-and-form implies a duality that will lead nowhere, attachment to “same” and “different” implies duality. And depending on where on the Zen Wheel the student was, either could demonstrate insight or delusion. Pencil may be pencil, book may be book, pencil may be book, and pencil may be not-book, to bring Nagarjuna's tetralemma in (partially). The only acceptable answer was however “Don't Know” was demonstrated, be it through “KATZ!,” slapping the floor, or if appropriate to the situation, through words. In the Relative, dharmas are different, in the Absolute, they are one and the same cookie cough.
Possibly the greatest example of "Don't know mind" is in the Vimalakirti-Nirdesa Sutra, where Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, asks Vimalakirti to give his own 'entrance into Non-duality', Vimalakirti's answer being the famous 'thunderous silence'. But is that any more "Don't know" than mosquito lands on arm, hand slaps mosquito?
After having taken this course and others, having heard numerous Dharma talks, and just from my own experience, I have come to certain conclusions. One way I have of looking at the way the mind often works is that there is direct experience, followed by the noticing of the experience, followed by the commentator describing the experience as if it were the sportscaster doing a play-by-play of the experience. This also leads to my observation that “Zen” is reflexively reacting to whatever situation one is in, and being acutely aware of the situation and the reaction, but without the commentary, and with not much more than a noticing that there was a reaction, and then letting go of both the reaction and the noticing. And this is all well and good, but only as an intellectual exercise.
Exercise is a good thing, it keeps one in shape mentally and physically, but it is no substitute for real action. A baseball player can swing in the batting cage or against a batting practice pitcher, but when the game is actually being played, thought has to go out the window and the reflexive response to the pitch has to take over, or all the practice is for naught. (In baseball, one can “fail” seven out of ten times in a real game and be looked upon as successful).
Life and death is not necessarily so forgiving as baseball. It is all about birth-and-death, and the suffering in between. Zen Master Seung Sahn's teachings weren't for the benefit of the individual to become “enlightened” for the sake of their own individual enlightenment. Any number of times he would urge his students to “become enlightened” in order that the enlightened one could save all other sentient beings as a great bodhisattva, to end their own suffering, and in turn the suffering of others. The “Sitting practice” of meditation would be of no more use than “Batting practice” in a baseball game if their practical application was limited only to the batting cage or the Dharma hall. To further grind this metaphor into the ground, one has to “step up to the plate,” and become actively involved in the daily, the mundane, the moment after moment opportunity to save all sentient beings, be it by holding a door open for someone else, feeding the hungry, or spreading the Dharma.
Meditation is most effectively practiced when sitting, standing, walking or reclining away from the cushion, when the distractions, the “noise,” and the obstructions are there to be seen as opportunities rather than impediments. But opportunity/impediment are just more dualities, thinking of how one perceives dharmas rather than the experience of them is placing yet another layer between one and his/her True Nature. When one realizes this True Nature, one is best equipped to help another, seeing that any distinctions between self and other, between good and bad, are artificial impositions that are directly related to "thinking about” reality, not Reality. In the Relative, words are a convenient, if provisional, way to help someone else. In the Absolute, there is no “someone else” and no helping to be done. But, as we live in the Relative, we use the convenient and provisional, the impermanent, the empty, and other expedient means to help others to realize their own True Nature, become enlightened and save all sentient beings. In order to do that, one must return to the “before-thought” state, the “Don't Know” state, where the natural action one takes would be to act with lovingkindness toward all others.

Ch'an Master Huangbo

Student of Baizhang Huaihai, who was a student of Mazu, whose lineage traces back to Hui-Neng, Bodhidharma, and on back to Shakyamuni Buddha, Huangbo lived in the first half of the 9^th Century CE. His base was in the modern-day Chinese province of Jiangxi, not far from where both Mazu and Baizhang also taught. Huangbo himself was the teacher of Linji, and the four are among those who constitute what is now known as the Hongzhou school.
The school was not without its critics, notably Zongmi, who was both a Ch'an practitioner and a major figure in the Huayen school. His critiques cenetered on the Hongzhou school's teaching on Buddha-nature, which Zongmi didn't take issue with in principle, but in the Hongzhou all-inclusiveness of all dharmas being buddhadharmas, i.e., even the most delusional thoughts and behaviors are as much buddhadharma as the most “enlightened.” This is borne out in some of the teachings attributed to Huangbo and published as “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po—On the Transmission of Mind,” rendered into English by John Blofeld (1958 Grove Press).

Where Mazu started with “Mind is Buddha,” Huangbo taught “One Mind,” that there is only One Mind. This is not altogether at odds with Huayen, which although not using the phrase “One Mind,” easily could have, in its teaching of the interconnectedness of all dharmas, all dharmas sharing identity, etc. Perhaps Zongmi's critiques had more than just doctrine or teaching at their root, involving more than just buddhadharma and how it was manifested, but that on a practical level that the Hongchou school ignored cultivation after enlightenment, Of course, the Huangchou's would note that this dualism would also be a buddhadharma.

Like many of the Ch'an Masters, Huangbo eschewed everything except beholding one's True Nature/Original Mind/Ordinary Mind/One Mind as unnecessary in regard to one realizing awakening on a personal level. Also like many others, he regarded chanting the names of Buddhas, the practice of attaining merit, meditation, Sutra study, and other standard “Buddhist” practices, as potentially detrimental to one's awakening. The irony here is that as with the others, it isn't as if he hadn't studied Sutras, didn't meditate, didn't lead a moral life, etc., but his realization was that these things were not a means to, not an aid in, the “attainment” of Awakening.

Attachment to any of these practices was just another attachment, and no different from any other attachment that prevented this awakening to One Mind. This didn't prevent Huangbo from referring to Sutras either directly or indirectly in his talks and dialogs. Many of the “paradoxical” statements he made can be found in essence in the Diamond Sutra, other references to Mahakasyapa, the Ten Stages of the Boddhisatva Path, karma, the Six Perfections, and indeed to the Buddha himself point to Huangbo's deep roots in Buddhism. He was teaching a Buddhist audience, both lay and ordained. They were on a base-line level already practicing all these “buddhist” forms; they were all followers of the Buddha. So, Huangbo's insistence on the irrelevance of the practice of these forms was not to say that he didn't think they should be performed. I'm making an assumption here, but I'd have to think that if one of the monks committed murder, Huangbo would not have condoned it, would probably have pointed out the karmic fruit that the act would bear, and no doubt would have expelled the murderer and possibly more.

Going back to Huineng, even the practice of meditation was said not to be a means of one attaining Buddhahood, and yet in the hundreds of years that followed him, Ch'an practitioners still sat. And while they sat, they were admonished, as was Mazu, that one does not “sit to become a Buddha.” Hongren, the Fifth Patriarch of Ch'an and Huineng's teacher had the monks at his temple chant the Diamond Sutra so that they might realize their True Nature. There's no harm in doing so, the harm comes when one has expectations of it so far as the practice doing any good.

So, what exactly is this “One Mind” that Huangbo was so intent on transmitting to his students? Was it any different from Mazu's “Mind is Buddha,” or Bodhidharma 's references to True Nature? All the same. All the Absolute. All the Dharma. There are any number of words used to convey the message, or to point to IT, for which no word or words really does any justice. As the title of the book suggests, Huangbo dealt with the Transmission of Mind, which is variously referred to as Mind-to-Mind transmission, the wordless doctrine, but in reality there is no-Mind, and nothing to be transmitted. He was as limited as every other teacher going back to the Buddha himself, being stuck with language as the most effective way to convey his message (shouts, slaps, and liberal application of the “Zen stick” notwithstanding, of course. These were not Huangbo's preferred methods, so far as the Blofeld book is concerned.).

One thing that should be pointed out is the nature of translation, and the inability of spoken 9^th Century Chinese that was then written down after the fact, passed down for a millenium and change, then eventually translated into English (in the 1950's), is that the specifics of how the message was originally conveyed in language may have been lost to some extent over the passage of time. This is especially true when one takes the original Chinese, and its differing structure from English into account. One thing I've tried to be mindful of when reading any of the accounts of Ch'an Masters is whether even the word “the” is actually in the original, whether it is necessarily an accurate way to convey the meaning of what was said, or merely an imposition of English syntax as a means to make something look like it “makes sense.”
For example, in dialog 12 (p. 78), the questioner asks, “What is the Buddha?” The attributed response follows with (the italics are mine), “Your mind is the Buddha. The Buddha is Mind. Mind and Buddha are indivisible...'That which is Mind is the Buddha; if it is other than Mind, it is certainly other than Buddha.” Even in this short section, “the” intrudes into what I believe to be the essence of what was being said, or at least intended. The continuity varies even within one paragraph—I take the phrase “Mind and Buddha are indivisible” to be the more accurate way of understanding Huangbo's message: There is no “the,” which can be construed as a way to separate dharmas into individual elements, thereby setting up a this/that duality which I find contrary to the teaching. There is no “the Buddha,” in Huangbo's context there is only “Buddha.” There is no “the Mind,” there is only “Mind.” Huangbo's use of “One Mind,” wasn't to give it some numerical value, or in contrast to “many minds,” or “this Mind/that Mind,” but rather to show that the One Mind was everything in its entirety, that there is no other than the One Mind. The “the” is superfluous; one doesn't refer to “the” everything. It's just “everything.”
And that is what I believe to be the crux of Huangbo's teaching, that although he can make the statement that the “minds of all of you have been from the very first been identical with the Buddha, and in no way separate from each other.” Later in dialog 13, “You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can attain this oneness by various practices.” Given Upaya, Huangbo needed to tailor his message to the audience. They may have been very attached to the notion of the Buddha, as a different entity from themselves.
The students' realization that they were each already Buddha wasn't there yet, so Huangbo needed to nudge them toward that realization. The students speak of “the moment of Enlightenment,” as if it were different from this moment, that it was a different state than that which they were already in. In the Relative, these dharmas may exist, but in the Absolute, there is no moment other than thisone, there is no Enlightenment that one doesn't already have. Buddha-nature doesn't differentiate, students do. They try to follow the Way; there is no path to be followed and no “the” Way to be on. It's all Mind, it's all Buddha, it's all Tao. The eye can't behold the eye, there is no need to try to put a head on a head. There is no Bodhi-Mind, no Bodhi-Mind to be attained, if there is the appearance of there being something to be attained, or a state other than Bodhi-Mind, then there is indeed no attainment, no realization, only more grasping and futile search. One cannot go to where one already is; one step in any direction clearly leads away from where one already is, so what would the point be in trying to take a path to it? As Huangbo puts it, “Seeking outside for a Buddha posessed of form has nothing to do with you.”
Harkening back to his predecessors, Haungbo responds to students' questions with teachings that they may be familiar with, but probably haven't grasped at least entirely. When asked how “...does a man accomplish this comprehension of his own Mind?,” Huangbo uses Mazu--”That which asked the question is your own Mind.” He brings Bodhidharma into the mix with, “Mind, which is our True Nature, is the unbegotten and indestructible Womb (Tathagatgarbha); in response to circumstances, it transforms itself into phenomena. For the sake of convenience (my italics), we speak of Mind as the intelligence; but when it does not respond to circumstances, it cannot be spoken of in such dualistic terms as existence or non-existence. Besides, even when engaged in creating objects in response to causality, it is still imperceptible. If you know this and rest tranquilly in nothingness—then you are indeed following the Way of the Buddhas. Therefore does the Sutra say: 'Develop a mind which rests on no thing whatever.'” This also points to the emptiness of all dharmas, and likewise the emptiness of Dharma, and the simulataneous thusness (if not existence) of each.
Here Huangbo (via Bodhidharma) brings in what on the surface seems to be two opposing ideas—that the Mind does not respond to circumstances (i.e. not subject to causality), and later on says that even when it is subject to causality, it is still imperceptible. So now we have one of the great lessons (and great paradoxes) of Huangbo: the seeming contradiction to what is normally the dividing line between the Absolute and the Relative. Aside from the obvious duality of separating Dharma (to be consistent, without the “the”), Huangbo points out that Absolute and Relative are not just two sides of the same coin, they are more accurately just the coin. Not one, not two, just it. The Absolute doesn't exist in a vacuum; we live in a world of form, as empty as that is, and in that emptiness, it is manifested as form. That is to say the Absolute is the Absolute only because of the Relative, and that the Absolute is manifested in this world of form as the Relative. Huangbo quotes, “ The perception of a phenomenon (dharma) is the perception of Universal Nature (or One Mind), since phenomena and Mind are the same.” To put it another way, the awakening to the Mind may be sudden like when water boils, but whether boiling or not, water is water.
This also returns to 'all dharmas are buddhadharmas.' “Give up those erroneous thoughts leading to false distinctions! There is no 'self' and no 'other.' There is no 'wrong desire,' no 'anger,' no 'hatred,' no 'love,' no 'victory,' no 'failure.'” It isn't so much that these dharmas aren't manifested in what we encounter in our everyday lives, and/or even that they are empty. All these things are Dharma, they are Reality, and they are what we experience. Differentiating them into good and bad is delusion, and having a negative connotation to delusion is delusion. Each dharma is an individual manifestation of Dharma, the Dharma that can't exist as Dharma without the dharmas, which are equally no-dharmas. One can't even say that these emotions, perceptions, forms, or whatever are a part of Dharma, they are Dharma, Dharma is them. Picking and choosing, seeing dharmas as good or bad, exhibiting dualism in its myriad forms, as much as we'd like to think of that as undesirable, as not-the-Buddha, they are indeed Buddha. To make a distinction, they are not necessarily manifestations of awakened behavior, but the realization that non-awakened behavior is as “good” as awakened behavior, is in itself exhibiting, if only momentarily, awakened behavior. To take this a step further, Huangbo would point out that all this conceptual thought involved in noticing these realizations is a step away from the actual realization of One Mind.
Conceiving of, noticing, taking any step away from the experience of Thusness, is not being Thusness, although not-Thusness is also Thusness. “...[W]hen the moment of understanding comes, do not think in terms of understanding, not understanding or not not-understanding, for none of these is something to be grasped (or understood). This Dharma of Thusness when 'grasped' is 'grasped,' but he who 'grasps' is no more conscious of having done so than someone ignorant of it is conscious of his failure.” Huangbo also states, “The Absolute is Thusness—how can it be discussed?” The “grasping” here doesn't refer to “attched/Clinging” grasping, but intuitive understanding, and certainly not “conceptual” understanding.

Huangbo was not interested in practice as a mere conceptual, intellectual exercise, his concern was only that his students realize the One Mind. But of what possible purpose does one realizing the One Mind serve? How does that “stop the children from crying?” How does all this have any connection to anything, to Buddhism, to Buddhist practices, to anything that is of any use for anything other than personal “liberation,” a decidedly non-Ch'an purpose, and one which he has alluded to as an “inferior” path to the Mahayana (which Huangbo has also termed as mistaken at points)? He brings traditional practice back into the fray, stating, “When you practice [meditation], sit in the proper position, stay perfectly tranquil, and do not permit the least movement of your minds disturb you. That alone is what is called liberation.” (Sounds like a later Soto Zen statement, that “our practice is zazen.”) Huangbo also gives some direction in order for his students, and the students of those students: “Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of 'A Liberated One.'” In other words, one muct take one's practice into the marketplace, the tenth of the Ox-herding pictures.

So, to leave us with what on the surface may seem to be another paradoxical statement, Huangbo sums up in one dialog (#55) the way we should follow the Way: not to neglect one's practice of meditation and cultivation, and not to withdraw from the world, neglecting the vow to “save all sentient beings.” One needs to get off the cushion in order to do so, and one needs to spend time on the cushion in order to do so as well. Not to say that there is a “Way” or any following to be done, just to stop the conceptual thinking of such things, and “Destroy All Limitations, ” as his posthumous title would have it. To save all sentient beings is to save all sentient beings, and despite that there are no beings and no saving to be done, we go out into the marketplace and save them, which in light of “One Mind,” is also saving ourselves so that we can save others.