Making 'Everywhere' Your Home...

[Shi Da Dao]

'Silence' is preferable to words - but where words are needed - they must be used as if like flashing a sword 'cutting' through delusion without a moment's hesitation... As words can 'hurt' as well as 'heal', they must be used sparingly and in a responsible manner. Words, of course, whether 'thought' in the head or formed by the 'tongue', are the very things the Hua Tou use to return to the empty mind ground. Words are powerful, but equally all words (and ideas) emerge into 'perception' from their 'non-perception' origin. What we eventually experience as living and functioning beings is a merging and transcendng of these two states. Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) always taught that no matter what our external circumstances are, we must always look within and keep our attention focused upon the empty mind ground. As this is the same experience in every situation, it follows that those practitioners who merge with this all embracing void, experience a different type of reality. Pain still hurts, pleasure still fells nice and neutral experiences are still indifferent - but we acquire a positioning or alignment of being that is neither attached to the void, nor hindered by phenomena... Is this easy? No - of course not - but who said anything about enlightenment being easy? No one except fakes, fiddlers and deceivers, etc.