Teaching You Zazen 22: The Buddha-Demon Is Hardest to Eliminate

2008/1/27 10:15:10

What will ultimately destroy Buddhism will certainly be people within the Buddhist fold — the so-called lion's parasites. Of course, true Buddhism neither departs nor arrives, is neither born nor destroyed — there is nothing to be destroyed per se. What is born must die; what can be destroyed is merely some form of so-called Buddhism as perceived by ordinary people.

Those garbage bugs who try to understand Buddhism by reading Buddhist dictionaries and philosophy textbooks certainly can't become lion's parasites. Those who can become lion's parasites are all so-called great virtuous masters. These people have probably read through at least one of the three baskets of the Tripitaka, probably memorized a whole basket of Buddha-speak, and probably fiddled around with some cultivation. Conning a bunch of sentient beings? That's child's play for them.

These types of people are everywhere in the world, and of course, even more of them wear the cloak of various "spiritual mentors," with followers as numerous as ox hairs. Sentient beings are deluded, always hoping to find a crutch outside of themselves — and that's exactly why all these types find their market.

All of these tricks, without exception, are just spinning around within consciousness. When death arrives, they're worth a fart. The first step in distinguishing these people: just ask, when death arrives, are these teachings useful? Even if you've cultivated to the point where not a single so-called idle thought arises, where your mind is so free of discrimination that seeing the market drop from 10,000 to 0 is the same as seeing it go from 0 to 10,000, where someone slaps both your cheeks and you offer up your backside for more abuse, where you can go 1,000 days without eating or drinking and still perform N-squared P, and so forth — when death arrives, is any of it useful?

Then there are those who promise you that after death you can go here or there, your body can transform into a beam of light and fly somewhere, after judgment you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven while your enemies all go to hell, your body is destroyed but your soul is immortal, and similar nonsense — all of which is merely the work of human greed, anger, delusion, doubt, and arrogance. It's as laughable as the Egyptian pharaohs turning themselves into mummies to seek immortality.

These people are merely employing crude tricks — they don't even count as being possessed by the Buddha-demon. They're merely possessed by their own ego-demon.

Let's take a look at some of the phrases these boring people use to con others:

"Learn to live in the present moment": Pray tell, is there anyone who at any given moment is not "living in the present moment"? To be alive is to be in the present moment — is there any living that departs from the present moment? Whether you study it or not, even if you firmly refuse and forcefully resist, no matter how you struggle, your every moment and every second is nothing but living in the present moment. Some say that "living in the present moment" here refers to your consciousness — well, does your present moment not include consciousness? Every person's present moment involves all six consciousnesses operating together. No matter what you're conscious of, you're in the present moment. Tell me, how many people has a single phrase "learn to live in the present moment" conned?

"Let go of the discriminating mind": Pray tell, isn't the act of letting go of the discriminating mind itself a discriminating mind? Without discrimination, where does the question of letting go or not letting go come from? More importantly, after letting go of the so-called discriminating mind, that is the greatest discrimination of all — because the world and time-space are thereby split by this so-called "letting go" into before-letting-go and after-letting-go. This so-called "let go of the discriminating mind" actually creates the greatest discrimination. Tell me, who "lets go of the discriminating mind"? Is this "who" the same as or different from this "letting go"? If the same, then the who is the letting go — why let go again? If different, then the who and the letting go have been discriminated from each other — where is the letting go of the discriminating mind? This piece of nonsense — who knows how many people it has conned.

"Cultivate to single-minded non-distraction": Whatever can be cultivated can be destroyed. Your so-called "single-minded non-distraction" is merely self-indulgent delirium — internally closed off in darkness without self-awareness. Non-distraction is precisely the greatest distraction; single-minded is actually multi-minded. That so-called state of "single-minded non-distraction" evaporates into thin air at the gate of death. And this rotten phrase — how many people has it conned?

There are far too many such phrases; I have no interest in analyzing them one by one. None of these fall under the category of the Buddha-demon being hard to eliminate. Someone asks: then is "killing the Buddha upon seeing the Buddha" the way to break the Buddha-demon? Laughable — can what can be killed be the Buddha? What you kill is merely your own illusion, and the killing itself is an even greater illusion. Those who think "killing the Buddha upon seeing the Buddha" is some profound state don't even measure up to a child who stops crying when shown a yellow leaf.

The Buddha-demon is hard to eliminate precisely because you can't even dream of reaching the state where the Buddha-demon is hard to eliminate. What you're playing with is merely your own illusions.

People always deceive themselves; people can only deceive themselves. Without yourself, no one can deceive you.

The world is just that simple. Ah, humanity.