This is not mind, this is not Buddha, this is not a thing.
Today’s message is an excerpt from Henry’s memoir One Blade of Grass describing as aspect fo his path of training. Read Inside Out to put this week’s piece in context.
This kind of state, according to the old way of thinking, would obviously wear off after a while. Yet, year after year, if anything, the wonder and gratitude grew, the space of the heart welling up daily with love. It confounded all conditioned expectations. But that’s what this practice is for: to deliver such a blow to our conditioned construction of reality that the factory itself is knocked out.
In Japanese they say: mu ichi motsu–mu ju zo.
“Not one single thing–an inexhaustible treasury.”
They also say: shin ku–myo u.
“True goneness–wondrous being.”
To drop into bottomless, timeless, spaceless zero–that is to emerge as wondrous being, from which nothing is excluded. A world beyond things, where, although phenomena appear as before, it’s impossible to say whether there are or aren’t things. It no longer matters. As Master Nansen said, “This is not mind, this is not Buddha, this is not a thing.”
Instead, each tiniest phenomenon is beloved, is love itself. In spite of being limited, mortal, multi-flawed beings, we are nevertheless capable of finding timeless love in the depths of our being.