Saturday
Vespers
Blessed One, come to my assistance
O’ Lord, make haste to help me
Glory be to the Blessed Buddha and to the Divine Dharma and to the Hallowed Sangha, both now and forever and ever. Swaha.
Come, Bless the Lord, all you supplicants of Holy Gnosis. You who reside in the house of the Noble One, in the sanctum sanctorum of the Unborn Mind.
Blessed One, be merciful to me, a transgressor of your ways. Oh Lord, create in me a mind and heart that is worthy of your Divine Precepts. I have fallen out of your favor, turn-me about O’ Lord, so that I may again rest secure in the hidden light of thy holy Countenance.
Loving mother of all Buddhas,
imageless gate of the Dharmakaya,
assist those who seek safe-haven in you.
To the bewilderment of all the composed you conceived
in the darkened womb of Bodhi a fetus so singular in nature,
Yet remained a virgin after as before.
You have received Mañjuśhrī’s Wisdom Stamp,
Arya Tara, may we be indivisible from you.
Your name is Our Lady of the Void. You alone are Holy Mother of all Buddhas
and are raised on high over all spheres. O’ Spouse of the Unborn, we honor you as the Mediatrix of the Divine Mercy of the Tathāgatas. At all times we
reverently proclaim you Blessed for you conceived the Holy Garbha Child of
supreme auspiciousness.
From the Diamond Sutra (Rare is True Faith)
Subhuti said to Buddha: World-honored One, will there always be men who will truly believe after coming to hear these teachings?
Buddha answered: Subhuti, do not utter such words! At the end of the last five-hundred-year period following the passing of the Tathagata, there will be self-controlled men, rooted in merit, coming to hear these teachings, who will be inspired with belief. But you should realize that such men have not strengthened their root of merit under just one Buddha, or two Buddhas, or three, or four, or five Buddhas, but under countless Buddhas; and their merit is of every kind. Such men, coming to hear these teachings, will have an immediate uprising of pure faith, Subhuti; and the Tathagata will recognize them. Yes, He will clearly perceive all these of pure heart, and the magnitude of their moral excellences.
Wherefore? It is because such men will not fall back to cherishing the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality. They will neither fall back to cherishing the idea of things as having intrinsic qualities, nor even of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities.
Wherefore? Because if such men allowed their minds to grasp and hold on to anything they would be cherishing the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality; and if they grasped and held on to the notion of things as having intrinsic qualities they would be cherishing the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality. Likewise, if they grasped and held on to the notion of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities they would be cherishing the idea of an ego-entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality. So you should not be attached to things as being possessed of, or devoid of, intrinsic qualities. This is the reason why the Tathagata always teaches this saying: My teaching of the Good Law is to be likened unto a raft. [Does a man who has safely crossed a flood upon a raft continue his journey carrying that raft upon his head?] The Buddha-teaching must be relinquished; how much more so mis-teaching!
From the Atthi Raga Sutta:
If, O monks, there is lust for the nutriment sense-impression… volitional
thought… consciousness, if there is pleasure in it and craving for it, then
consciousness takes a hold therein and grows. Where consciousness takes a
hold and grows, there will be occurrence of mind-and-body. Where there is
occurrence of mind-and-body, there is growth of kamma-formations. Where
there is growth of kamma-formations, there is a future arising of renewed
existence. Where there is a future arising of renewed existence, there is future
birth, decay and death.
Holy Tara, Mother of all Buddhas, Mother of engendered Bodhicitta activity who ignites the living Buddhaic Flame in the hearts of all beings…
May the empowerment of this supplication to you bestow upon me eternal and meritorious wisdom…
Then, through the living compassionate grace of the Blessed One accomplish in me extraordinary siddhis….
May the pure vision of the Buddhas and Maha-Bodhisattvas and the Holy Mantras arise from the sacred depths of the dharmadhatu,
May this sacred Spiritual Generation fulfill the vow to Liberate all Sentient Beings in the Ten Directions from the darkness of samsara.
Tozen, (Being of a Single Mind – One-pointedness (Zen) is attained):
Let not the appearance of these words fool you,
yet do not wander off from the context at hand.
Being One in Spirit (will) and of One Mind
is to be of a Single Mind in a here and now
that stretches beyond the temporal prison
of this body consciousness, which clouds
the true vision of your luminous Self.
The Buddhas have never lied nor will they ever
bare false witness [of the Dharma] to you.
Their dharma unfolds before you Minds´s eye
at any given moment.
Blink and you´ve already missed its splendor; speak and
the spiritual song of the truly living, becomes absent.
What you choose to SEE and SENSE and what really IS though,
are not of the same nature.
Where the one is empty (of dharma), the other shines
as purely itself permanently througout all ten directions.
How can you ever approach it or run from it by conventional means?
To say you are here, or there, or in that, or in the other,
implies the need of your present mind to constantly find
settlement and self identity with that, or the other.
This is the prison-consciousness of Samsara.
Though ashes to some, and golden to others,
It binds demons, animals, men and gods alike.
But your true Mind is primordially free; radiant, luminous – Unborn
and hence not subject [initself] to any position or law of becoming
giving the false sense of real beingness arising from it.
We speak of something incomprehensible pure; a nature and light,
second to no thing, or ideated being.
Where the ignorant bow to things, gods and other formations of desire, fear and ignorance, the true being of no rank, is One with The Mind´s supra-positional essence which the Lankavatara Sutra describes as IMAGELESS.
This is what is meant with establishing a Single Mind of one-pointedness (Zen) in the light of the Unborn Mind. This imageless light is within yourself. Where else would it be?
Focus on this lamp by means of a mandala, a koan or a dharani and it will one day break through the shades you´ve surrounded it with, shining its light upwards, filling your awed mind and Spirit, with the absolute contentment of its first enlightenment.
This in the very presence of countless Buddha’s and Bodhisattvas, all suddenly present, as to finalize your practice that reveals the other shore of Nirvana.
How can any true path and dharma of the Buddhas be found beyond it?
Those of One Mind are never alone, though it might seem so in the darkest moments of their practice.
Realizing the perfect purity of one’s true nature, after seemingly endless eons in the darkness of one´s willed ignorance from the body consciousness and its vicious wheel of endless regenesis, is not easy.
Hence, once again, for the sake of your future success;
Let not the appearance of these words fool you,
Yet do not wander off from the context at hand.
Being One in Spirit and of One Mind is to be of a Single Mind,
a permanent REALITY where the absolute light in the Mind
of One-Pointedness [Zen] is attained.
With the Light of Mahayana finally at hand,
the path becomes crystal clear and its end
self-evident.
As a famous poet once wrote;
Deep Truth is always Imageless.
Hence, you need nothing more and nothing less.
From The Denkōroku (The Eighteenth ancestor, Kayashata):
Once, when he heard a sound as the wind blew the bell
in the temple hall, Ságyanandai asked Kayashata, “Is that
the sound of the bell or of the wind?” What is happening here
must indeed be studied carefully. Although Ságyanandai never
actually saw either bell or wind, still he put the question as
‘Is THAT the sound of the bell or the sound of the wind’?
because he wanted to get Kayashata to know this ‘THAT’.
This ‘THAT’ cannot be grasped in terms of wind or bell; they are
not the everyday ‘wind’ and ‘bell’ for this would amount to
saying, “There was a bell that hung in the corner of the hall
which was called the Great Bell and such a bell now hangs in a
temple tower in the Southern Capital of Nara,” since this is the
way in which people discriminate among such things as humans
and buildings. Originally, in the Northern Capital of Peking
they used to hang a Great Bell in a temple building, but in our
time this custom has fallen into disuse and lost its meaning.
Nevertheless, in India, whenever the wind blew the Great Bell
in this manner, this koan was signified.
When Kayashata answered, “Neither the wind nor the bell,
merely the sound of the TRUE NATURE,” he truly understood at
last; he had no need to set up boundaries for even a single mote
of dust. Hence, were someone to say, “The wind makes no
sound nor does the bell, but if you think there is a sound, then
there is a sound,” with such a view there would still be no
silence in the mind. This is precisely why he said, “It is the
TRUE NATURE that resounds.”
From the Blog-post AS IT IS:
In Buddhism, the noble enterprise of seeing things “as they are” is known as Yathabhutam: essentially “seeing” the nature of Reality AS IT IS (suchness, or tathata), devoid of any phenomenal outflows. The contemporary Buddhist milieu has apparently forgotten this timeless axiom and, instead, has plunged itself headstrong into the maelstrom of spiritual materialism with its decadent, anthropocentric notions of what constitutes life in the spirit. Can anyone wake-up and see the absurdity in the very notion of this oxymoron? One is truly moronic and fails to pass the muster in equating spiritual/material. Yet, this is the party-line of Buddhism today, replacing the great Buddhardharma with sensualist notions of pathetic psychological, sociological, emotional, physical, sensational, attributes that are linked under the pretense of holistic development; yet, in reality, keeping the spirit imprisoned in these categorical-material-skandhic chains that have as their insidious hallmark—everyday in your face—sensual gratification.
One of the Buddha’s greatest axioms is ehipassiko, meaning “come and see”. It means to not simply believe in something merely because someone who is supposed to be “in the know” has stated it to be so (de facto); rather, look to your own experience for confirmation. Look and discover the Absolute Reality AS IT IS through your own awakening to the Noble Realm of Self-Realization, rather than sit in the darkened theater of your own mind and wait for the arrival on the screen of a Dali Lama to enlighten you. You have within a dormant, deathless seed that awaits the moment of awakening and realizing and celebrating Its full potential as a spiritual child of the Unborn. It is through this auspicious dharma-seed that the True You will be empowered to come and see Its rightful inheritance. This is the Right View that will eradicate and exorcise the Wrong View of the spiritual materialists. Yes, Buddhism is in dire need of this Spiritual Reformation that will once again guarantee Yathabhutam—a true spiritual ascent from the malignant material descent into the darkened bowels of the ordinary body-consciousness; when the wounded chameleon mind can finally become free from the colorful karmic dance of the vijnanas—with no more coming or going, but looking directly at the Real, AS IT IS.
Unborn Magnificat
My soul magnifies the Unborn.
And my spirit rejoices in the Buddhadharma,
For the Blessed One has anointed me;
Behold! All generations shall call me blessed,
For the Mighty Lord has bestowed His Immaculate Bodhi-Seed within me;
And hallowed is His Dharma-realm.
His mercy and compassion are conferred upon all who revere Him.
He has scattered the darkness of ignorance,
And has cast-down Mara from his throne.
He has filled the restless with peaceful repose,
And has turned the haughty-minded away in their delusions.
His Spirit enlightens the resolute in their Recollective Resolve,
Being thus mindful of His Divine-Mercy,
The promise He made to our fathers of old,
To Bodhidharma and his disciples forever.
Glory be to the Blessed Buddha and to the Divine Dharma and to the Hallowed Sangha, both now and forever and ever. Swaha.
May all the Buddhas and Dharma-Guardians bless us, protect us from all harm, and awaken us to the Light of Truth in the Unborn. Swaha
