[snips a tiny branch from a bonsai tree]
“When this world ends, where will you go?”
“But Master, surely this world is not about to end and I will probably go before it goes?”
“Is there a difference?”
“But people die all the time and the world is still here.”
” Something empty dies for sure, but what transmigrates in ignorance, sustains a myriad possible worlds of which the one closest to come about in the next rebirth, is the one of closest match to the amassed karma. We speak of a great Mind field able to animate such worlds like a great imageless canvas being available to a proficient master-painter.”
“I don’t feel this answers your original question Master. Care to elaborate?”
“It is not the [world] construct that is real; it is the Spirit with a defiled consciousness filtering what is essentially unborn mind substance, as a world or even the body inhabiting it that is REAL.”
“I see. So I, the one believing in death and a rebirth am real while this is merely illusion to which I have conditioned my self to see as real by the reference my senses provides me with at any given moment?”
“So it is. But if you do not behold your true self, that is, allowing the real to behold the real as the great Avalokitesvara proclaimed, you will forever generate further illusion and sink deeper into the conditioning of its Lord and Master, Mara.”
“We seem to been having discussing this subject many times now Master. I am doing my best, you know.”
“You are fighting against yourself. A battle of wills are fighting for the same spot. One of pure imageless beingness. When the demon is on top, the false you is present and consequently that body is its foremost proof of existence. When the angelic bodhisattva is present , there is blissful light as it stares down on its construct of so many illusions and desires and the joy of knowing it can move around this abomination for good purposes or cut the flow of bodhipower and end its life, rendering it inanimate.”
“Master, I am speechless. I am feeling enormously energized. How??! ”
[snips another branch]
“You see, The demon was silenced by the kindled bodhichild, the future Buddha. Soon its eyes will open. Give room for that miraculous birth in your heart and free space in your Mind and you´ll see things will happen on their own accord. ”
[laughs and sings an ancient lullaby for children]
In dharma,
Tozen