The infusion of the Dark Light can be excruciating since all former modes of the perceptional apparatus are abandoned and one is left staring into the great abyss of their own abject poverty (sunyata), compared to the translucent majesty of the Unborn. One now stares into the black hole of emptiness itself, resulting in an aridity of spirit and a feeling of total abandonment –lying hopelessly on this dry plane of darkness. One cries out in the lament of old, “My soul is deprived of peace…I have forgotten what happiness is…”
Yet, it is through this dark purgation from all sensate crutches that one can finally taste the first dewdrops of liberation. Like a lizard shedding its skin in the noonday sun, one is purified from the toxins of its former skandhic host as scales drop from eyes long blind and partakes in the poet Wordsworth’s words, “trailing clouds of Glory do we come.” There is now an all-consuming fire within that reduces any lingering impurities in the alaya-recepticle, like the dying embers on a rotting piece of wood crackling and dispersing in the desert wind.
Nothing is left to grasp except the gritty particles of sand sifting through one’s fingers. This is the desert; the place of solitude, for it is only in solitude that we can see things as they truly are (Yathabhutam). Another image that needs to be purged here is that an exterior setting for this solitude—like a monastery—is the perquisite for this self-realization. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, these exterior mausoleums create a real fata morgana on the plane of spirit—a false, created environment, wherein the demons of perception have a real field day as the unwary mind is wooed and self-embalmed and entombed into a false sense of peace and security from the apparent “outside” world.
There is no inner; there is no outer…only the Unborn Mind in a perfect stateless state of luminous actuosity. In this sense the last purgation is from purgation itself as one awakens with the realization that there is really nothing that needs to be purged…where the Real simply looks at the Real and no-thing else.
“In this sense the last purgation is from purgation itself as one awakens with the realization that there is really nothing that needs to be purged…”
Pondering about “inner” and “outer” – one risks forgetting about the Mind in which both the internal and external are “standing in” …
How good these interventions have become, cutting my doubts with his sword of wisdom the author speaks from the place of “mirror is not a stand” …
Fundamentally no wisdom-tree exists,
Nor the stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is empty from the beginning,
Where can the dust alight
And I, poor sod, am still trying to polish my “so precious” tile.
“Mind has no form, no characters, no directions; it cannot be found in any particular place. It cannot be grasped. Originally, Mind is purity, universally embracing all Dharma realms. No inn or out, no coming or going. Originally, Mind is pure Dharmakaya.
When investigating hua to , the practitioner should first close down all six sense organs and seek where thoughts arise. Practitioners should concentrate on the hua to until they see the pure original mind which is apart from thoughts. If one does this without interruption, the mind becomes fine, quiet tranquil, silently illuminating. At that moment the five skandhas are empty, body and mind are extinguished, nothing remains. From that point, walking, standing, sitting and lying down are all done motionlessly. In time the practice will deepen, and eventually practitioners will see their self-nature and become Buddhas and suffering will cease.”
Master Xuyun