Wake Up Now by Stephan Bodian Page A

Hui-neng. Originally an illiterate woodcutter from the southern frontier, Hui-neng was enlightened as a young man even before entering the monastery when he heard these words from the Diamond Sutra: “Cultivate a mind that dwells nowhere.” Recognized immediately for his extraordinary clarity by the Fifth Patriarch, the young novice nevertheless toiled away in the monastery kitchen, gathering firewood and washing pots, because his teacher didn’t want to upset the monastery hierarchy by acknowledging him. Eventually, the Fifth Patriarch invited his disciples to submit their understanding in the form of a poem, hoping that this contest would help reveal his true successor. The head monk wrote the following verse and posted it on the monastery wall:
    Our body is the bodhi tree,
    Our mind is a mirror bright.
    Carefully we wipe them, hour by hour,
    And let no dust alight.
    The meaning here is that we need to meditate regularly in order to clear our minds of the negative emotions and habitual patterns that obscure our true nature.
    When the young Hui-neng heard this verse being repeated by one of the monks, he knew the realization it expressed was incomplete and had someone write the following rejoinder:
    There is no bodhi tree,
    No stand of a mirror bright.
    Since everything is empty,
    Where can the dust alight?
    In other words, your true nature is inherently empty and pure and can’t be obscured even for an instant; therefore, what need could there possibly be for meditation? Needless to say, this verse was approved by the Fifth Patriarch, and he secretly appointed Hui-neng his successor.
    Of course, many teachers embrace both points of view, contending paradoxically that the secret of your true nature may be open, but it’s still a secret until you make it your own. “The Tao is basically perfect and all-pervasive. How could it depend on practice and realization?” wrote Zen Master Eihei Dogen more than seven hundred years ago. Yet as long as your mind is confused by attachments and preferences,he advised, you need to take “the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate the Self” through the practice of meditation.
    According to the twentieth-century Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, the Self alone exists, and separate objects are merely the illusory play of consciousness. From this perspective, there’s nothing to practice and nowhere to go. “Transcend what, and by whom?” he often said. “You alone exist.” Yet Ramana also recognized that most people suffer because they don’t realize who they are, and he taught a variety of practices depending on the needs and maturity of the seekers. Some, he believed, could benefit from sitting in silence and practicing self-inquiry, whereas others might be better suited to prayer or mantra recitation. For those rare few who were already poised on the threshold of awakening, he simply offered the direct pointer of his words and the profound silence of his presence.
    Jean Klein counseled his students not to make meditation a habit, but rather to allow the genuine silence that is ever-present behind the noise of everyday life to increasingly draw them to itself: “When you become responsive to the solicitations of silence, you may be called to explore the invitation.” Otherwise, meditation merely evokes a temporary state of mind, a kind of enforced tranquillity that inevitably ends when your meditation comes to a close, rather than the abiding silence that has no beginning or end. Jean likened meditation to a laboratory that you enter when silence solicits you, for the sole purpose of discovering the meditator. Deliberate attempts to meditate regularly justcreate expectations of future results and reinforce the fictitious identity of the meditator. When you finally recognize that the meditator is merely a figment of the imagination fabricated from thoughts, feelings, images, and memories, you no longer need to experiment—awakening has become your ongoing