All Buddhas and all ordinary beings are
nothing but the one mind. This mind is beginningless and endless,
unborn and indestructible. It has no color or shape, neither
exists, nor doesn’t exist, isn’t old or new, long or short, large
or small, since it transcends all measures, limits, names and
comparison. It is what you see in front of you. Start to think
about it and immediately you are mistaken. It is like the boundless
void, which can’t fathom or measured. The one mind is the Buddha,
and there is no distinction between Buddha and ordinary beings,
except that ordinary beings are attached to forms and thus seek
Buddhahood outside themselves. By this very seeking they lose it,
since they are using Buddha to seek for Buddha, using mind to seek
for mind. Even if they continue for a million eons, they will never
be able to find it. They don’t know that all they have to do is put
a stop to conceptual thinking, and the Buddha will appear before
them, because this mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living
beings. It is not any less for being manifested in ordinary beings,
nor any greater for being manifested in Buddhas. This pure mind,
which is the source of all things, shines forever with the radiance
of its own perfection. But most people are not aware of it, and
think that mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels and
knows. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing,
they don’t perceive the radiance of the source. If they could
eliminate all conceptual thinking, this source would appear, like
the sun rising through the empty sky and illuminating the whole
universe. Therefore, you students of the Way who seek to understand
through seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing, when your perceptions
are cut off, your way to mind will be cut off and you find nowhere
to enter. Just realize that although mind is
manifested in these perceptions, it is
neither part of them nor separate from them. You should not try to
analyze these perceptions, or think about them at all; but you
shouldn’t seek the one mind apart from them.Don’t hold on to
them or leave them behind or dwell in them or reject them. Above,
below, and around you, all things spontaneously exist, because
there is nowhere outside the Buddha mind. Your true nature is not
lost in moments of delusions, nor is it gained at the moment of
enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines
through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness.
It is without time or space, and has no passions, actions,
ignorance, or knowledge. In it there are no things, no people and
no Buddhas; it contains not the smallest hair-breadth of anything
that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to
nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty; absolute reality,
self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha
has no mouth to speak and nothing to teach, or that the truth is
learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel
beyond all prices – Huang-Po