Tozen: Facing the dilemma of the fourth noble truth

Gandharan_-_Expounding_the_Law_-_Walters_2551

 

“Master, please tell me. What is the difference between the material body-mind
and the spiritual one? I know I am supposed to cut through the dialectical mind
with your koans, directly seeing for myself what truth is, but I would
appreciate a basic simple explanation to my dilemma, which i share with my
lesser able brothers and sisters in the sangha. Is a fair answer to this inquiry
possible at all?”

“You pose a fair question which deserves a good answer.

Lets see now…(ponders a moment)…In this mind-field our samsaric consciousness
reveals a seamless frame by frame realm and body that is both frightening and
yet very alluring . It is one that resonates faster than our senses can notice.

We are basically walking around in a deep dream because we are dealing with a
spiritual being caught up in the biological imperative. In other words, we
as spiritual beings are caught in the matrix of the skandhas, dealing with
something that demands constant attention or action, granting pleasure and
pain depending on concurrent conditions very hard to see through for what they
are. Pure illusion.

This is an evil circle. One created by the evil one (Mara) where some of us
strive to desperately break free from. Luckily others, before us, have done just
that by the direct realization of their true self-nature. This great awakening
is produced by a force (of Buddhas) that is immaterial. It is uncreated, unborn
and as such free from any mark of corruption or decay that signifies all
phenomena.

Among us, whom by the aid of this pure light of the Unborn Mind (The Mind of the
Buddhas) have broken free from the shackles of the evil one, we return
to samsara, now fully conscious of our true body of pure spirit/light
(Bodhi-sattva) which is free from the previous psychophysical one.

We can now as a self awakened fully self-aware spirit (maha-bodhisattva) steer
around the biological suit or in special cases myriad suits, like it /they were
a robot/s, driven by virtue of a good remote (right thought) among sentient
beings caught in the spiritually numbing consciousness of their own “biological
suits”.

We become thus bringers of light, arised from the noble wisdom found in this
deathless body of truth. We fulfill in a way a beginningless vow to those
shining ones that aided us in our struggle to break free and awake and in this
awakening and cultivation of the deathless principle that guides all things in
any universe, aid sentient beings in a myriad ways, although in truth there
are no actual sentient beings to save.

As the Lankavatara sutra states to us whom solved its mystery; It’s all illusion in the great mind field of the One Mind. Thus we call our profound dharma, one of Mind Only. The last four words effectively solving the raised dilemma each practitioner encounter in the last of the four noble truths.”

Tozen

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