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LIFESTYLE | WELLNESS | BUDDHISM
Twelve words of encouragement
transmitted from Língyòu, by Guīshān and the school at Guīyang
If you want to practice Zen and study the Way, you should go beyond the expedient teachings. Work diligently, for the sublime wonder of this teaching is difficult to grasp. It takes not a minor time of praxis for one to realize that all phenomena, internal and external, are not real. In fact, they are co-dependently arising with the mind’s transformations. They are provisional designations. There is no need to anchor the mind anywhere. When feelings merely do not attach to things, then how can things cause suffering to anyone? Let the nature of all phenomena flow freely, without interfering or trying to break apart or extend anything. Let be. The sounds that one hears and the forms that one sees are merely superficial.
Guīshān Língyòu, the fifth of the six patriarchs of the Guīyang school of Zen, lived in Hunan (China) at the turn of the 8th to 9th century CE, where he worked and taught and practiced with a small community of Buddhists. The times were not favorable. There was a lot going on and Buddhist communities, essentially practicing a so-called “foreign” mental discipline, were an easy target for hate and persecution. We can see the same phenomenon today. In India, for instance…
