Teachings From Ancient Vietnamese Zen Masters – 74
31 Zen
After seeing the mind essence, you have to keep the precepts purely.
How is “keeping the precepts purely”? That means in twelve hours, stop
all involvement outwardly, and still your mind inwardly. Because the
mind is still, you are peaceful while seeing a scene.
Your eyes don’t slip outward when consciousness arises by the seen,
and your consciousness doesn’t slip inward by the scene you see. The
outward and the inward don’t interfere each other, so we call blockade.
We say blockade, but it doesn’t mean “to block.” The senses of ears,
nose, tongue, body and mind are just like that.
That is called the Mahayana precepts, the unsurpassed precepts, also
the unequalled precepts. All the monks, young or old, must keep the
precepts purely like that.
Keeping the precepts firmly, then you practice Zen. The key of Zen is
that you must drop all body and mind. First, while practicing the
samatha meditation, you should often ask yourself some questions.
Where did this body come from? Where did this mind come from? While
the mind doesn’t really exist, where did the body come from?
While body and mind are emptiness, where did all things come from? All
things don’t really exist, because while there was no existence [at the
beginning], where did existence come from? That existence was
nonexistence, so there is no existence. A thing is not really a thing, then
where does each thing depend on? If there is no where to depend on,
then a thing is not a thing. This thing is not real, but also not unreal.
