The untrapped Mind is the Mind of Nirvana.
Where defiled minds dwell in countless positions of their own making, the untrapped Mind remains free in the shining reality of its own uncreatedness.
Any mind given to the most minute desire for resistance against its own true nature is prone to the endless formations of good and evil. Though the aforementioned are mere illusory positions of a snared mind, they still, though devoid of inherent power, use the power of the trapped mind to influence a perpetuation of any given position.
This position can be said to be one of the desired outcome, based on a divided will which equals confusion (skrt. विभ्रम vibhrama ).
The mind prone to vibrahma keeps creating, indefinitely through its inexhaustible supply of bodhi-power (the light behind the shadows), animating positions of [self]-ignorance, desire, fear, anger, hatred, greed and the rest of an assortment of bijas that perfumes the mind as to view self-nature [svabhava] as a consciousness perceiving an external and internal world of birth, life and death (afterlife-bardo).
Though the former is nothing but manifestations of thought, all made possible through a generated scandic field of thing-ness, it is hard for the trapped mind to see beyond it due to its incessant desire to propagate a perpetual continuance of itself as a desired avatar in said continuum.
In said continuum of entrapment, any position believed in due to ignorance, is upheld as logical through means of dialectic “self”-affirmation between subject and object.
Thus what appears as form, is affirmed as such through apparent solidity (via its five elements), co-dependently established through the five skandhas as a believable criterium of an absolute and only reality. Given the influence of the four freely, unceasingly, interacting skandhas, the fifth skandha of consciousness is formed dooming said mind, to perpetuate its field of birth, entropy, and death, indefinitely as time itself is merely a factor necessary for consciousness-field sustainment. Time itself is a measure on how things in said field are seen. What one mind may see as a seed sprouting to a tree through decades of growth, another just sees a single effectuation of instant birth and death.
Arriving at the blazing reality of Mind Only [skrt. मात्र चित्त) Citta Matra], is merely an illusion due to the said minds deference to the experienced temporality within the scandic field of its own entrapment.
Let me give you an example:
When Huike stood outside Bodhidharma´s cave seeking liberation from his anxious prone mind, Bodhidharma, knowing the cause and origination of the request, simply returned the reply;
“Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it.” (basically telling Huike, who, or what, exactly is seeking this liberation?) to which Huike replied, “Although I’ve sought it, I cannot find it.” upon which delivered the self-evident reality shining within Huike´s own {boundless] mind. “There, I have pacified your mind.”
Instantaneously beyond the shackles of temporality Huike´s mind broke through the spatial-temporality of his body-consciousness field and realized the luminous nature of Citta Matra.
Huike´s Kensho where direct knowledge of the Minds unborn light (working instantaneously in its dynamic nature) had basically affirmed Bodhidharma’s response as
Now you see [know] THAT which is real and impervious to suffering, and that which is not real, and perpetually prone to suffering.
As mentioned above, in any given consciousness field of spatiotemporality, this could be seen as first enlightenment [Kensho].
Until the amount of trapping positions could be dissolved by the awakened Mind of Huike [skrt बोधि] bodhi] , through the untrapping influence and presence by its own unborn pure Mind [skrt चित्त बोधि bodhi citta], Huike´s mind had to “engage” in dhyAna [skrt ध्यान] which later became known as Zen.
The original meaning of dhyAna is “profound and abstract religious meditation”
Its appliance, known as Pi Kuan (ch. bìguān) which literally means “Wall contemplation”, was encouraged via the Lankavatarian school of Bodhidharma. Though it was a school without a lineage (tsung), it could still trace its roots back to the first great Mind Masters like Buddhabhadra, PrajnaTara (also known as Keytara) and her Teacher Puṇyamitra to mention a few.
Though what has been described above was a mere historiographic background on the origins of Zen and its foremost proponents, it still is nothing more than that, a mere excursion in a set of positions of the mind, about the Mind.
What “reads” this article is investing in the illusion of TIME as to affirm its own entrapment in SPATIALITY.
What is untrapped, cannot be seen in terms of time or spatiality, yet again it cannot be said to a mere nothingness in itself, for what IS just IS as ITSELF and nothing else.
That is the original nature of yourself. Birth or death is irrelevant to IT and thus the act of entrapment can “last” eternally or instantaneously vanish as it fully realizes itself for what IS and what IS NOT.
What is Nirvana, pervades Samsara, To not instantly realize the illusion of Samsara as Nirvana, is to never realize Nirvana as Samsara in disguise.
Tozen
