Master Huineng (Zen Buddhist) heard these words and became enlightened.
Let your mind function freely
Without abiding anywhere or in anything.
Let your mind function freely – let it go, let it be, let it roam…. What is mind? Is it fixed? Is it just inside your brain or head? At what age did you become aware that you could observe your mind? What is it that observes the thoughts? What does ‘freely’ mean here? Perhaps the weight lies with the word ‘abiding’ which implies to rest for a while or even longer. If mind, which is essentially free in nature rests in any particular place, ideal or thing for long enough, it tends to gravitate towards repeating or replicating this experience – either inwardly or, outwardly towards the world. The mind is like a mirror which reflects what is perceived from the exterior to the interior to be interpreted and then formulated for future use. It also projects its own ideals outwardly in to the world so that others may perceive and relationships can occur.
But what if our mind doesn’t rest anywhere, waiting to catch the dust. What if our mind didn’t gravitate towards anything for long enough that in so doing, becomes as fixed or solid as that object or place? You know the feeling of watching a sad film, which touches your heart. As you see the love and the tears and usually some emotional pain, you empathise and so a tear or few start to well up. What if you didn’t abide long enough for this to occur? Would your life be easier or more difficult? Would there be more or less love in the world?
As a yogi, I meditate and through this I remember what it is to abide in space.
Space is empty, (or is it?) – it has no substance. It is the space ‘inside the cup which is useful’ (Dao De Jing).
Through experience I have sensed many times that to rest in space ‘anywhere’, one may also connect to the ‘everywhere’ simultaneously. A moment of omnipresence across space-time if you like. It is this feeling which allows the understanding that time is non linear – past although past is still present in the same way that the light of a distant star takes a long time to reach your perception, past is forever moving away from your perception. This doesn’t mean its finished, it just means it’s moving in what appears to be the opposite direction in space time.
A question which arises ~ Is space a thing? Is it limited? Within the cup, it certainly seems so.
Within the universe – they say it’s expanding. Will it reach a limit and then pop like a balloon?
Awareness and questions like these arise when mind is no longer fixed, or, is local yet also open to non locality.
How does one get to this state? One usually focuses the mind into a nearby locality, like the navel centre or third eye, in order to expand it further through the inner-outer limits. For a more advanced yogi, they may simply connect to empty space more easily, having spent much of their time thereby abiding.
As we rest within space we may sense its awareness /consciousness and the resulting wisdom which can be derived through this.
There is much to debate 🙂
You may wish to simply forget everything I’ve shared and simply listen to Hui Neng!
What do Hui Neng’s words do for you?