Posted inBlue Cliff, Henry's Messages

Message from Henry: Setcho’s verse to Case 2 of the Blue Cliff Record, Part 1

June 5, 2018

Setcho’s verse to Case 2 of the Blue Cliff Record says…

In one there are many kinds.
In two there are not two.

The Prajna Paramita Sutra says: Prajna Paramita’s children “who clearly and blissfully see the emptiness, insubstantiality and transparency of all apparent self-existence, while continuing to abide in the very depth of loving concern, remain active in the destiny of all lives.”

From the one reality of all-gone, infinite things and infinite possibilities arise. Maybe we can conceptually agree this might be possible. But it doesn’t change us or help us unless we are hit by it, and deeply. Unless the “bottom falls out of the bucket” – and somehow all we know falls away, along with all knowing. Then the great abyss of Prajna Paramita’s love opens up. Totally empty, yet totally loving, because all arises from it and in it.

Thus we are all Prajna Paramita’s children. Not just all us humans, but all beings of all kinds, and not just animate beings but all things. Each last little lowly thing — raindrops, crumbs on a plate – is Prajna Paramita’s child. So we are all one family, as Mumon says. But not only that, each thing is also Prajna Paramita herself. Born of the great abyss. But also the great abyss itself too. Nothing ever ceases being the abyss. So we are its children, and we are it itself. Thus we are all family. And also all one.

Hence: in one there are many kinds, as Setcho says above.

But likewise, in two there are not two: even as we appear separately, we are never separate from one another, nor from Prajna Paramita.

But this is hard to get, and its implications are bewildering to the old mind. For example, there are a billion billion worlds. Setcho’s book, the Blue Cliff Record (as it came to be called), contains billions of actual worlds. It’s not a book at all. It’s an infinite reality generator. And yet each last thing is exactly the one empty reality. Which is actually no reality.

Click here to read Part 2 of Setcho’s Verse.

 

Message from Henry is from our June 4, 2018 Newsletter
Image: Thunderstorm by jplenio;  Public Domain CC0 1.0 from Pixabay.com
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