#moheyan

Bodhisattva Road April 2018

If one sees conceptions as no conception, one sees the Tathāgata.

[The] awareness and place where [awareness] occurs cannot be obtained by any search. There is no way of reflecting on the inconceivable. Not to cling even to this absence of thought is [the immediate access of] the Tathāgatas.

Kamalaśīla’s point is that to strive for no-thought, no mind, no conceptualization, is to be no better than the mindless denizens of the Heaven of Gods Without Conception—beings who ignorantly mistake insentience for the goal of spiritual practice. [Representing Chan,] Moheyan responds that it is precisely such ideas—ideas like a state of non-conceptualization, or a heaven wherein there are beings without sentience—that keep people bound to saṃsāra. The goal of practice is to let go of attachment to any and all discursive formations, to abandon conceptualization altogether, to reach a state of no mind. Is this tantamount to insentience, as Kamalaśīla believed? The Chan tradition—the tradition that rose to dominate Buddhism in China—was weaned on precisely this struggle.

[Some] posit the existence of both meditative discernments and paths of rebirth, and they grasp at the absorption of non-conception. It is precisely because of such deluded conceptualization that they are born into that [realm of grasping at non-conception]. If they could free  themselves  from  [attachment  to] the  meditative  absorption  into non-conception, then there would be no deluded thought nor rebirth into that heaven. The Vajracchedikā-sūtra says, ‘To be free of all marks, this is called [the way of ] the Buddhas.’ In what scripture is it said that freedom from deluded conception is not the way to Buddhahood?