How to Continue Investigating the Mahāyāna Dharma After Eradicating the View of Self

Ru Chun: These past few days, I have been contemplating the meaning of the Mahāyāna Dharma in my dreams. Just before waking, I always have a feeling of: Oh, so that's how it is! Once, upon waking, a thought arose in my mind: So true and false are not two! I felt the whole person overjoyed, but after becoming fully awake, I couldn't recall the specific details. So I tried hard to search for fragments of memory and continued contemplating. Often, in a daze or trance-like state, I seemed to have some realization, yet the specific content felt hazy and unclear. At the same time, I felt my entire chest surging and churning, as if it were about to split open, as if something were about to rush out, and my heart was filled with inexplicable joy.

Gradually, Dharma meanings that I couldn't understand before now seem to be somewhat comprehensible. For example: why does one eat all day yet not touch a single grain of rice, why does one walk all day yet not touch a single patch of earth. This is saying that the mind of self-nature has walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, wearing clothes and eating meals in terms of form, yet in terms of essence, it is completely naked, not stained by a single speck of dust. It speaks of the pure and free nature of the true mind of self-nature.

It is like dreaming — within a dream there are countless worlds with all kinds of wonders, yet they have not the slightest connection to oneself after waking. But this dream also exists because of oneself; they are not two, but neither one nor different. The dream world refers to the various mundane forms conjured by the tathāgatagarbha; the awakened state refers to the essence of the tathāgatagarbha. The mind's forms have arising and ceasing, gain and loss; the mind's essence neither increases nor decreases, neither comes nor goes. The true mind does not require the assistance of any dharmic conditions to exist; rather, it is extremely independent and naturally exists on its own. Only when spring is warm can flowers bloom; only when the mind arises can forms arise. The formless, markless spring is right within that expanse of vibrant springtime; that springtime can exist only because of spring. Spring and springtime are neither one nor different. The wordless, formless, markless (silent) true mind's self-nature is right within that vibrant, variously formed, thousand-worded dharmas of delusion (majestic deportment). True and false are neither two nor one — both the same and not the same, neither one nor different.

Commentary: The Mahāyāna Dharma closest to the Lesser Vehicle is the emptiness of prajñā, not the Vaipulya Consciousness-Only doctrine. After eradicating the view of self, what practitioners of the Lesser Vehicle first study and accomplish is the prajñā portion of the foundational Mahāyāna Dharma. Because I have spoken very little on the prajñā portion and very much on the Consciousness-Only portion, many disciples find the Mahāyāna Dharma difficult to understand and enter into. In particular, they know very little about the prajñā emptiness dharma, and after eradicating the view of self, they feel deeply lost and inadequate when investigating the Mahāyāna Dharma. Ru Chun is also like this — not knowing the foundational Dharma meanings of the Mahāyāna, with no sequence in contemplating the Dharma, the logic appears quite chaotic and somewhat off the mark.

This is a gap in my teaching of the Dharma, and the responsibility lies with me. Over the years, I have focused on teaching the emptiness of the Lesser Vehicle, in order to prevent disciples from practicing without their feet on the ground, not being pragmatic, building castles in the air, shouting empty slogans, having a name but no substance. Therefore, I have spoken more on the foundational part of practice, to tamp down the foundation solidly, so that when walking, one won't be top-heavy and stumble. At the same time, in order to prevent people from analyzing and dissecting the Buddha Dharma, leading to mistaken enlightenment, false enlightenment, and great boastful lies, I have taught a great deal about the Dharma of direct realization through the manas in actual practice. In this way, I did not have the energy to pay much attention to the prajñā portion. As for the Chan School portion, because I was worried that everyone would merely understand it intellectually, the parts I taught before were not published as books due to their straightforward language — all because I was concerned that people would directly interpret them and be unable to actually realize them. Because the trend of superficiality within the Buddhist community is very strong nowadays, the phenomenon of false, grandiose, and empty talk is very serious. Sentient beings do not like to be down-to-earth; vanity and competitiveness are very strong. Therefore, the parts that had to be spoken plainly were not made public.

Under these circumstances, practitioners who have already seen the path in the Lesser Vehicle, or are about to see the path, if they wish to enter into the investigation of the Mahāyāna Dharma, they must self-study the prajñā Dharma meaning of the six hundred fascicles of the Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, study the Mahāyāna emptiness meaning within it, and at the same time explore some ancient Chan School gong'ans. However, among the Chan School gong'ans from the Tang Dynasty, some have verbal entanglements and some are suspected of being intellectual understandings. The sharp repartee of language can easily cause people to remain stuck in surface phenomena, entangled by the verbal and textual vines, unable to leap out. Therefore, it is not to say that things from ancient times are necessarily correct and error-free, or necessarily the standard. One must learn to think dialectically. As for the prajñā Dharma meanings that I have spoken little about, for now rely on self-study and self-learning, to train one's ability to self-study and reduce dependency. Later, if there is energy, I can speak more on the Chan School or prajñā sūtras.