The Great Way

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

In Zen we sometimes talk of non-discrimination. This is a tough one to describe. Its as challenging as the fact that we say there is no birth or death. The two are related.

A few lines from the Third Patriarch:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things are not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. (to read the read of this piece, go to http://clearmindzen.org and click on Hsin Hsin Ming.)

What is the nature of this clarity which occurs in the absence of discrimination? What does the Patriarch mean when he says "When the deep meaning of things" and "the essential peace"?

How can we live without this or that?

Care must be taken. We are asked to see that love and hate are mental constructs. When we live in these constructs we live in relative mind. When we set one against the other, we live in a mind that suffers..

When everything is one, there is no two. There is no subject, no object, no verb. Life is thusness.

These points are being made from a POV that is all-inclusive. They are points made standing upright in Big Mind. This is the Bodhisattva Way. How can we love or hate when there is no-thing and everything is one?

Zazen helps us develop our ability and willingness to reside in Big Mind. It occurs as we sit upright on the cushion and think not thinking. It is a divergent, Teflon-like mind that is at home in every moment.

Embrace yourself; embrace the universe. Likewise, embrace the universe; embrace yourself. In such a place there is no room for self and universe. There is just the embrace.

Be well.