/lit/ - Literature

This statement completely blew Ma Tzu’s mind. His entire determination and understanding about meditation and enlightenment was rapidly collapsing under the force of the blow coming from Master Huai Jang’s impeccable metaphorical logic. Huai Jang had unleashed a superthought upon the consciousness of Ma Tzu.

Ma Tzu then rose from his seat. This corresponds to the rising internally of his great potential for direct awakening of his Buddha-nature, which is the primary cause of his enlightenment which was being triggered by the superaction of Huai Jang as the concurrent or intervening cause.

Ma Tzu, now standing, asked Master Huai Jang, “What should one do then?”

The Master answered, “If a cart drawn by an ox does not move, is it correct to whip the ox or the cart?”

What is Huai Jang talking about here? If the inner mind is attending to disciplining and suppressing physical and mental activity to achieve stillness of body and outer mind, is not the ignorant state of the inner mind the real problem? How can an ignorant, but determined inner mind produce an awakened Buddha-nature? How can a consciousness, however sincere and aspiring, produce superconsciousness? The Indian Buddhist Adept, Tilopa, once said, “If the mind, filled with ambition, should seek a goal, it only hides the Light.” Ma Tzu was being shown that his ambitious, goal-seeking inner mind, focused on the disciplinary and suppression of body and outer mind, was missing the point that the very status of his ambitious inner mind was the real target, the ox.

Huai Jang could see that the ambitious inner mind of Ma Tzu was not yet fully stopped in its tracks, so he made the further explanation by saying, “Do you want to go on endlessly sitting in meditation trying to become a Buddha or would you not rather be a Buddha who just happens to be sitting when it is necessary to sit? If you want to sit in real meditative awareness, meditative awareness does not cling to sitting, lying down, standing up or walking about. If you would rather be a Buddha who happens to be sitting, Buddha-nature is neither motionless nor forced to be always in motion, which means that motion is neither accepted nor rejected. If you sit with determination of your non-Buddha nature to become a Buddha, you are killing Buddha in your effort to resurrect him. If you go on clinging to your stupidly ambitious sitting practice, you will never awaken to the true Dharma.”

Upon hearing this with super-receptivity, Ma Tzu awakened within his Buddha-nature beyond all doubts, arguments and spiritual ambitions of his inner causal mind of duality. Ma Tzu could not help but bow thankfully at the feet of Master Huai Jang, for this was indeed the supreme moment of his life that he had most deeply hoped for, which he could now recognize.