Zen Mind Seeing Mind

Q. What is Zen? Is it the nihilistic idea that there is nothing? Is that the"emptiness" I hear so much about?

A. The Nirvana Sutra says:

Emptiness means perceiving neither ‘empty’ nor ‘non-empty’. The natural radiance of emptiness can appear as anything at all. Since it is empty as it appears, appearance and emptiness are a unity. This can only be known by looking inwards. It is within the domain of your own self-knowing awareness-wisdom.

Zen is Bodhidharma's transmission of the Highest Truth (Tattva) outside teachings. Bodhidharma just pointed "inwards" to the treasure storehouse of bright, pure, stainless, timeless original self-knowing awareness-wisdom, aka your Mind. As Huang-Po said:

When all the Buddhas manifest themselves in the world, they proclaim nothing but the One Mind. Thus, Gautama Buddha silently transmitted to Mahakasyapa the doctrine that the One Mind, which is the substance of all things, is co-extensive with the Void and fills the entire world of phenomena. This is called the Law of All the Buddhas. Discuss it as you may, how can you even hope to approach the truth through words? Nor can it be perceived either subjectively or objectively. So full understanding can come to you only through an inexpressible mystery. The approach to it is called the Gateway of the Stillness beyond all Activity. If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity. Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it.

There is no lineage outside of this Mind. There is no teaching or listening to teaching outside Mind either. What is Mind? It's the Buddha nature. Self-originating, self-enlightening, ultimately true and real. You can't grasp or conceptualize it; it can't be held, restrained, or put into a box. Even the Great Wall of China can't obstruct it. This Mind is not to be confused with the senses or with ideas. Yet it acts and perceives through the senses, and it is certainly the source of all ideas. "Outside of Mind there are no dharmas." Do not confuse this Mind with what it uses. Undoubtedly all that it ever uses is itself, but as soon as you conceptualize this or that function and reduce Mind to THAT, you are mistaken. Anything of which you can say "it is" is just Mind in its majestic, instantaneous functioning.

So how is it that this all-powerful Mind falls into ignorance and petty delusion, and comes to mistake itself for physical stuff? Mind itself never does; "ignorance and delusion" are names for a disease caused by enslavement to thinking, to conceptualizations that obscure it. Mind is just bright and knowing, and spontaneously acting out of its own infinite store of wisdom, in every situation.

The Sutra Requested by Kashyapa says:

Mind is not to be found within. Nor does it exist outside. And it can not be observed anywhere else.

The Sutra Requested by Maitreya says:

Mind has no shape, no color and no location. It is like space.

There is no need to train or do anything to this original Mind. What could you do to it? Only Mind is. All being is just this mind. As for physical stuff, it isn't apart from Mind, insofar it only appears in and to Mind; yet Mind is, in one sense, apart from it, transcendent to it, beyond it. Mind is "not this, not that," but rather the Way both this and that appear. As soon as you isolate some "thing" out of Mind's shockingly direct and original being, you are setting Mind against itself and getting confused. Such name-and-form thinking is the source of ignorant delusion. "All appearance is but a delusory image. Do not try to grasp or to follow such images. Try instead to see with the Buddha eye."

Q. What is Bodhidharma's "wall-gazing"?

A. It is just the direct experience of this mind. It is Mind seeing Mind without any conceptual problem. You can actually experience that your being is this mind, that all being is this Mind. It's bright and boundless. It's the blissful true reality that has never come or gone. You don't have to gaze at a wall. You can be aware of your pure awareness-wisdom in all situations, all the time.