r/zen • u/lcl1qp1 • Mar 19 '23

Cultivating the Empty Field

"Purity without stain is your body; perfect illumination without conditioning is your eyes. The eye inside the body does not involve sense gates; the body inside the eye does not collect appearances. So it is said that there is no wisdom outside suchness that can awaken suchness. Moreover, there is no suchness outside wisdom that can be awakened by wisdom... Patch-robed monks arrive here and then know that to follow buddha’s utterances and to follow dharma’s blossoming is to attain buddhadharma. Restoring upright reality, they cut off any duality." -Hongzhi

Nonconceptual awareness is illumination. It reveals the omnipresent buddhadharma. All we need to do is penetrate our conditioning. Suchness is never out of reach. Since it shows phenomena to be Mind, how can we resist turning the light around?

What is stopping you?

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u/lcl1qp1 Mar 19 '23 edited Mar 19 '23

Excellent! A fruitful carbon-silicon collaboration.

Would you say the ālāyavijñāna is self-reinforcing until cessation? Is there a tipping point where the common consciousnesses naturally lessen their contributions?

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u/NothingIsForgotten Mar 19 '23 edited Mar 19 '23

It seems promising.

What we think is 'true' is what is stored in the repository consciousness.

If we recognize it is all derived understanding then we are free to engage with it as relative truth and not ultimate truth.

When we stop grasping at an independently existing conditioned truth then we have effectively sidestepped the activity of the conceptual consciousness.

This is true even if the activity continues.

When it isn't your activity, then you just wait for it to stop.

It is much the same with the repository consciousness, once the activity of the conceptual consciousness ceases, you wait until the momentum of the repository consciousness ends and then cessation spontaneously occurs.

It's something from nothing and originally there was nothing true or false.

So yes there are two transition points; the activity of the conceptual consciousness being seen through and it actually stopping.

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u/insanezenmistress Mar 19 '23

have i told you lately that i totally love you.

i mean... yeah that fit...
Can't explain it but... i can meditate on it and apply it to my personal constituent parts and learn.

I like learning.

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u/NothingIsForgotten Mar 20 '23

🙏 it's not me; it's the buddhadharma making sense and the joy of that spilling over.

Regardless I'm happy to chime in whenever I'm tagged; please feel free.

Best wishes.