Nothing in this life is Zen. Not your assumed birth, nor an inevitable cessation of your present biological matrix.
One´s dreams, desires, ideas, and imaginations are not Zen. Faith in Zen, or the dharma, is not Zen. This world, or the perceived beyond, is not Zen, nor are the various bodily positions, or meditative states – Zen. No god, or God, is Zen or the root-source of zen. No Buddhas are zen. Nor any ritual of any sort or age of reverence is zen.
All this is merely relativistic existentialism, caused by incalculable, interdependent conditions, as a given seemingly instantaneous rendition of all the aforementioned at any given moment, of what is perceived as time, and as such, affecting a body consciousness caught in a perceived space-time bubble of no intrinsic reality.
Zen is therefore not space and much less time.
Zen is not in the perceived before, it is certainly not in the perceived now, and forever absent in the assumed tomorrow.
Zen is Mind Only. Your very own true self [nature]. These two words, spoken since beginningless time, in countless worlds, are so easy to read or hear, but to most, they are almost impossible to understand, and above all, perceive and realize directly beyond and through all phenomena.
Ponder this Mind for a while and you will see that despite being your root-source you cannot see it, you cannot touch it, or dream it and much less taste it, or hear it. Yet it is all present at all times. Ready to effectuate your slightest desire and thought, provided conditions are right.
Don’t misunderstand me. This Mind effectuates at all times. Instantaneously and faster than you can blink, or think. It is its own perfect Intelligence way before anything you can imagine, or see. At the beginning of your first awakening, this Mind of Zen is a pure light of an unknowable immensity, and despite its omniscient presence, it still holds a most sublime compassion, and wisdom, that validates your Spirit as your true nature.
It is then up to this nature, pervading your self, to know and validate itself to a degree your awakened Mind (Bodhi) can fully identify with this Mind of Zen and nothing else. Therein is the island Buddha asked you to take full refuge in. Where else would it be, this Island of permanence that stands against any form of aging, suffering and other karmic entropies?
When the pure luminosity of Zen finally emerges through the veil of all the aforementioned, you will certainly know it like hit by lightning. You will know it as you would instantly know the taste of water, or the faces of your parents in a vast crowd of people once you discover them. 
At the ground and shore of that absolute reality, it is impossible to not know what has been present since beginningless time, yet obscured by all things mentioned earlier.
The worldlings speak of the void and emptiness so lightly but believe me when I say that this Great Mind of all Buddhas is anything but the aforementioned. It is basically, and indisputably, un-becomed, unborn, unconditioned, meaning in itself void of all conditions, yet it is at the core of its immense splendor, pure light of sheer actuosity. It is truly limitless Spiritual energy, a life-force, that is ever-present. IT alone contains what the Buddhas referred to as Noble Wisdom and IT alone SERVES as the ultimate source of your perfect refuge from all ignorance and suffering.
Standing before it, death has no dominion, and suffering is like a dissolved cloud of no more concerns. To be able to understand it intuitively is to SEE it AS IS. Thought and logic cannot see it or even sense it, for they are unreal in its presence, and the Real deals only with the Real – never illusions.
Again – that is its Noble Wisdom, which the ancients spent a great part of their lives to name, in so many ways, as to honor its radiance and perfection. Whenever a mind of sufficient gift, but still blind to its splendor, stumbled over the trees of its own makings, the Masters pointed with a finger towards the full moon encouraging the spiritually initiated to look at the Moon, and not at the finger, or the reflection in the pond.
They basically tried to awake the mind of the adept to its own true “body” that held the creation of past karma going, and vibrating as a psychobiological matrix which they reminded the adept had even given a name as to distinguish it from others during its everyday life. Your present karma has such a name. Do you recall the previous one, or the one before that?
With its mind firmly focused in one-pointed meditation, the adept came one day, intuitively, and directly face to face, to realize what held its body, in function. What enabled its walk and breathing. What moved its major and minor limbs, its inner organs and cells, and also what enabled artificial consciousness charged and vibrant with its converting function of what is a transformed version of Mind-Only as a Universe of appearing and disappearing phenomena. The adept gained the right view of having realized that the Real was since beginningless time standing imperviously free and bright “behind” the assumed solid Illusion of the False.
Without this Mind, the adept realized this Universe, as well as their own body consciousness, would instantly collapse and the remaining ambers fly away to become a new being, unaware for immense eons of time of its true Master and root source, yet forever supported by the latter in everchanging chain reactions, seen and experienced as birth, life, and death.
When the absolute reality of Mind Only shines through clearly, all sins are forgiven, for they are like an empty mass, subject to the gravity force of that black hole you know as Karma. Ponder this last statement carefully, for it effectuated your birth into this world and will actualize and effectuate your journey into the next [awaiting].
The Buddhas saw this and asked their students to drop all illusions and desires to anything conditioned, and subject to decay and cessation because, again, they declared, it is that mass of illusions that cause your rebirth into uncertain worlds, and bodies, through the pullback of an immense spiritual gravity well, of said black hole, which is not your true self but the evil that latches on the slightest thought, or desire, or deed, that cannot be put aside in favor of the pure Light of the Unborn Mind.
That Great Mind is a sheer permanent reality, beyond said illusory force, because it is in itself a REAL life-giving force which enables the slightest desire to come true, and in so doing, it becomes the very true force that instantly assures the destruction of any and all illusions at a given point of complete awakening.
Thus, to know Zen you have to un-become all illusions and embrace the Real which you do not understand by the veil of the Unreal, but certainly, recognize by the unmistakable grace of its own unquestionable presence.
This realization is the gateless (shining) gate of Zen. Passing through it is only possible by the man of no rank, and standing on the shores of nirvana where all Buddhas reside, is to know the true nature of Zen which is your true, deathless, self.
You have but to reach out and beyond the veil before your senses, memories, fears, dreams, and desires. It is not a leap of great faith, but one of right and direct knowledge (Prajna), and Right and irrevocable Release (Nirvana), from all phenomena of ignorance and suffering, so done by the infusion of the Noble Wisdom integrated into your true awakened self.
This Noble Wisdom is everpresent. No demon, god or Buddha can prohibit you from finding and use it to heal and awake yourself. The true YOU is IT and IT is YOU. You alone stand in the shadows of illusion and ignorance and you alone are the ONE that discovers and passes through the gateless gate of Zen.
It is therefore only this self that can stand firmly against the illusory reigns of space and time. As such having fully accepted and found perfect fulfillment and refuge in the foreverness of Zen – which we also know as Dharmakaya, or the Unborn Mind.
In dharma,
Tozen
This is one of the great Zen sermons of the present age. Sadhu!
Sadhu!
Ο Δάσκαλος επέστρεψε και είμαστε ευτυχείς!
Well, I had to re-edit several times, considering my increasingly senile biological matrix prohibited a first good and accurate presentation of this discourse.
This time though, it might serve its purpose to remind the needing of where to look for the ox.
Σας ευχαριστώ Vajragoni, για την ευγενική σας υποδοχή στη γλώσσα της πατρίδας μου.
You’re most welcome–great to see you back!
Hi,
My name is Javi gomez and I am a seeker for enlightenment for 20 years.
Today for the first time I realized that I was aware or noticing stuff happen for 1 minute. Some call it choicless awareness. Is this the unborn Mind that you are talking about? SOMETHING knows what ever is going on. It is still stubtle and effortlessness seems the way to recongize this knowing.
You have already received an answer to your question (and assumptions) here:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TheUnbornMind/conversations/topics/4976
Do the best of it.
hi Tozen
I am realizing that I am being done (including in walking meditation) and that thinking is not who I am. I came back to check you and this website. I clicked on that link you left behind and I have a yahoo account created especially for your forum. It says:
You need to be a member to perform this action.
and I can´t find any button where I can add myself. my yahoo mail is: zenstudentjavi@yahoo.com
ty
I have invited you. Welcome to join us. The archives of past history stretch almost 20 years back. You have a lot to read. Best of luck.
ty,
it works. I can now read the posts. awesome. let´s see if I can find info on the Mind and that there is no doer, no thinker, no seeker for enlightenment. I have been doing the inches above head and navel energy thing and I feel something in my head.
If there is no doer, no thinker and no seeker, who then drags this decaying body of elements from birth to death. You better shape up your adherence to zen bs talk before your next encounter wth King Yama.
I saw that you spoke of choiceless awareness. Though I responded to you on this matter in our Sangha, I will respond here for the sake of those beings not present in the same sangha.
The nature of awareness (Sanskrit – Chit चित् or Smrti स्मृति)) is simple and very direct. It is, as such, merely A FUNCTION of the true Unborn Mind that permeates your being at all times in this realm.
Awareness, being one of the Unborn Mind´s many functions have been depicted in many Asian religions, primarily recognized as one of the many arms of the Hindu gods Brahma, Shiva and so on, or for example, the dancing Mahabodhisattva Avalokitesvara in Buddhism, see this short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_OSPL7CXWo).
In a deep dhyana, especially 4th Jhana, which withdraws the mind from its incessant responses to sense-impressions, there arises a seemingly perfect equanimity between subject-object where the illusory presence of the object is penetrated by what is now pure awareness or the light that RECOLLECT (which is what the above Sanskrit word smrti originally meant).
By allowing said natural and now pure undisturbed, or, undivided between myriad phenomena craving Its attention, the meditating bodhisattva (bodhi-sattva meaning light- being) is now free from the obfuscations of the body and its false consciousness, and can direct this pure awareness towards Its true self and thus emerge awakened through Its first enlightenment, through this right view (jap. Kensho) of Its true self-nature (skt. Svabhava).
Because this true nature is, as stated in the Lankavatara sutra, Imageless, it is beyond the purview of ordinary sentient beings caught in the maelstrom of Samsara which divides their awareness into myriad phenomena of Internal or seemingly External permutational characteristics.
Yet, it has to be underlined that even the ability to produce the highly samadhic and blissful power of pure awareness unto oneself, beyond all that I have mentioned above, does not equal Buddhahood or the absolute reality of the Unborn Mind.
Best regards
Tozen
Dear Tozen. Your doctrine is very sound, and in accord with the true intent of lord Buddha Shakyamuni. It is rigorous of you to point out that undivided pure awareness power IS not Absolute Reality as such.
Regarding right view (kensho), I am interested in what’s your take on the reference to ‘hearing’ the ‘sound’ of the Deathless (etc) in early Buddhism? (See citations in ‘Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism’). Can you relate to this from your own experience? What makes it different from the ‘seeing’ or ‘view’?
I’d be interested in others’ take on it too, of course.
Hello Jonathan,
Suffice to say your request is not an easy one, as the most fitting answer would probably leave room for some confusion.
When it comes to the “sound” of the deathless, know this;
Make a snapping sound with your fingers and you LOOK BACK on the effect from “hearing” the sound of the Deathless.
This “sound” is an everflowing actuality of the Unborn Mind, that when viewed by the awakened Mind, is something that instantly MUTES the snapping sound of the fingers, as it reveals itself radiantly in the Mind of the Bodhisattva – the deathless nature and body of your true self.
This comes from the simple law (dharma) that a phenomenon, or series of phenomena, can never replace the immutable presence of Absolute Reality, i.e. the true nature of the Unborn Mind. But it, or they, can OBSCURE through division, and/or re-direction of undivided awareness power, which thus becomes desire, fear, anger, lust, and will of creation by the divided (skandhic) mind, frantically feeding on the impressions of its generated consciousness field.
Hence the deluded is more focused on a false premise of reality, being anything from a subtle to a heavily distorted reflection of the Dharma Jewel, than directly facing the pure radiance and absolute truth of the jewel itself.
What is deluded leads to a vast assortment of errors that opens the doors to an even greater assortment of misfortunes and uncertainty-distress -confusion-suffering (dukkha).
One requires direct insight in the Unborn Mind, transcending the extremely thin, but yet powerful, veil of the dialectical positionings of the divided mind that always craves this positional differentiation of countless multisensory images in order to satisfy the insatiable divided mind of an everflowing phenomenology on the wall of its phantasmagoric field you presently experience as an external and internal universe.
Only the divided applies to the divided. As such it does it mainly by means of these two selective positions of the divided;
A/ Logic – as such, with all its sub-positional inclusions; for example, reason and inference feeding its apparent reality with propositions, syllogisms and premises, which inevitably leads to declarative sentences, or conclusions, the full circle of this limited view of reality, being deemed as Logic and as such, accepted as fact/truth at any given position of the divided mind.
Logic encompasses the illusion of empiricism where its seeming precision so easily enhances the power of illusion that it is hard, if not impossible for most sentients to refute its myriad positions of a continuously rendering consciousness-field with what they daily fill and use with appropriate content that enhances the Mobius-like loop of the former.
B/ Epistemology – as such, normative, or naturalized (common in science). Both though, overly concerned with JUSTIFICATION, though the former part also includes sincerity and honesty (which is needed in a consciousness field of sheer uncertainty).
To give an example, we speak of a proposition K that equals Knowledge if;
Mind X believes K
K is through interdependent origination, within a collective structure, seen as true,
Mind X is justified in believing in K.
From this flawed view of the Absolute Reality, you find yourself in a world and reality, thoroughly positioned in a distorted faith in divine power, or God/s, and of course its antithesis, of secular naturalized empiricism which includes rejecting atheism.
Understand that ultimately all this falls back on the inability to view, accept and completely encompass the absolute reality of the Unborn Mind, which a Mind Master (Chan lineage, or otherwise) often refers to as; THERE IS ONLY MIND. Anything else is an illusion. Period.
Finally…
you referred to Peter Masefield’s thesis from his youth, that although it is a detailed and lucid analysis, Mr. Masefield’s epistemological conclusions are in many places somewhat inaccurate considering his academic, read – naturalized epistemological, approach on the subject compared to a purely spiritual one.
Again, repeating the above;
There is no ABSOLUTE REALITY self-vibrating as Divinity or Divine Revelations. There is Only Mind. In its true state; Unborn, Absolute, Permanent, Perfectly Unconditional.
This Mind is permanently vibrating AS ITSELF, but due to error of perception, it emerges, through division, as other, thus creating the Maya-like interdependent illusion of self and other, allowing the self believing in the other as an extension or separation of itself.
The errors, and ultimately suffering, created by the latter are countless and impossible to account for except in the illusory presence of each vibration of Spirit reviewing itself in this, or that, imaginary [impermanent] position in the undivided light of the Absolute.
Most sentients, counting any consciousness, born and active (being anything from mere demons, animals, humanoids, including artificial sentient mechanisms, titans, devas and Brahmas of the highest order), fail to fully realize what this actually is, and more importantly, what it truly entails in their field of consciousness, governing intelligence and the will to act out on the aforementioned.
When the sentients of the highest order fail to awake to absolute reality, universes are created from seemingly nothingness (read: the inexhaustible dynamic & creative essence of the Unborn Mind).
When the sentients of the lowest order fail to awake to the Absolute Reality of the Unborn Mind, immense suffering is created in the very same universe that serves as its medium of regenesis by the will of the sentients in the highest order. This actuality of ideations and will takes place on many dimensions.
Both extremes of these sentients thus complete the creation in presence and content through interdependent origination.
You, in all this, are of course caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to find a way out where you can escape the endless causality of error, distress, and suffering by one day being able to find (resting on the quality of your merit and virtue), enlightenment and completion in the incomparable and compassionate light of Noble Wisdom which we also refer to as Nirvana.
Best regards
Tozen
Thank you, Tozen, I found that most helpful.
In the Japanese form of Chan Buddhism also known as Zen, Soto zen has undoubtedly attracted the most students due to its Dogen inspired tradition of just sitting (zazen). Dogen never attained any true enlightenment, neither in its first initial state nor in its many following states where the spiritual growth of the Garba child triggers an expansion and unification with the absolute pure Mind of the Tataghata on the imageless shore of the Dharmakaya.
Hence the Soto lineage suffered many corrupt teachers with a poor spiritual understanding of what true enlightenment (Satori) really is, and more importantly, how it is cultivated by the production of Bodhicitta – the very stuff of Buddhas and Maha-Bodhisattvas. Hence Hakuins rather blunt comment that the Soto schools basically harbored
“half-dead duffers, listless old grannie, and miserable wretches.”
In Hakuin´s eyes, as well as in Lin-Chi´s, only a “True Man of no Rank” equaled an enlightened superbeing corresponding to the marvelous and incomparable Mind of a Bodhisattva, or a Buddha.
I understand your current position and your doubt about which way to choose as to cultivate your “kensho” (right view of the path). Above I have shown you why and where you should look. Yet, you ask if you should join the currently quiet electronic sangha of the Unborn Mind School. Well, these days it serves more like a vast archive of the spiritual advice on matters you mentioned in your inquiry. I do not any more participate actively as I did in the initial years of this sangha.
There are 88 members these days and most of them have been with the school for 20 years back. They read, apply and practice according to what is proposed on a trial and error basis. Spiritual intuition does the rest as it emerges with careful insight and abidance in the imageless light of your own true Mind.
Best regards
Tozen
The “true man of no rank” reminds me of Ibn Arabi’s “station of no-station”:
http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/nostation.html