Q: Roshi, can the highest blazing truth of Zen be realized in everyday things and activities, like peeling an onion? Or is it reserved for states of deep meditation?
A: Peeling an onion can definitely take place within the great space of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi, if the one peeling it has "cast off all things, becoming without thought and without mind," dropped the dull and monotonous attachment to names and forms that leads one to make unwarranted distinctions between enlightenment and non-enlightenment, has suddenly awakened from thinking-sickness, and is just nakedly, radiantly present the way Buddha was in the Shurangama Sutra when he caused a light ray to shoot from his hand, turning Ananda's head. ("Your head just turned, Ananda, but did your Seeing-nature, which is the clear and bright Source-consciousness, turn?" "No, World Honored One.") After all, Master Hakuin said, "Meditation in action is ten thousand times better than sitting meditation"! And Huang-Po said, "If you could only keep your mind motionless while sitting, standing, lying down or walking [or peeling onions] you would soon awaken to a state of BEING more brilliant than a sun in which there is nothing left to realize." What a wonderful onion-peeler that would be! Maybe there was once such an onion-peeler working in the monastery of Lin-Chi's kitchen.
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Perhaps the Tibetan distinction can make this clearer. Sems-nyid is the Nature of Mind or Mind-Essence. It's the matrix of pure, "self-springing awareness," in Padmasambhava's terms, uncaused and unborn, as opposed to the ordinary mind, sems, which thinks it's living in a world of subject and objects. ("Thinks." Ha ha!)
When awareness is nakedly itself, it's open like space. It doesn't suffer, fall into dualistic distinctions, bicker with people online, or ever get reborn. It can't, because it's unborn by nature. Here the word "it" is misleading, because it isn't a thing, thus it corresponds perfectly to the "Seeing-nature" that Shakyamuni explains to Ananda in the Shurangama Sutra.
Vijnana is just undercover Citta. It's the rich man's child who has forgotten he's rich and is wandering around as a beggar. When you wake up, your mindstream (vijnana) self-realizes itself for what it really is and always was and will be, which is nothing but the clear brightness of the Unborn. You also realize that, although you might have believed you were just a beggar, you were always rich, even when you ate and slept in filth.
But just because the so-called beggar realizes he's rich doesn't mean he's going to stop walking around and enjoying the sights. He'll just do it without feeling bitter and upset about having to live out his life as a beggar.
The Bodhi Mind is perfectly capable of seeing, hearing, feeling, and peeling onions. It's just "not-hindered" by any of it, not captured by it, not deluded, not afflicted, not worried. That's why Lin-Chi says Manjusri isn't on Mt. Wutai but "right in front of your eyes."
When vijnana wakes up, it sees it was always Citta, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz who, had she known it, could always have gone right back home to Kansas by clicking her magic red shoes.
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