Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this.
- The ordinary mind — crowded with desire, anger, greed, irrelevant dreams — is not the obstacle but the door (revolutionary: we assume only a Buddha’s ‘supermind’ can enter). Thoughts are clouds; the consciousness behind them is the sky, never touched or dirtied by any cloud — always virgin. You are already the sky, only clinging to your clouds as if they were your property.
- The instruction: when the mind wanders, do not try to stop or concentrate it — being for or against it keeps you concerned with the clouds. Shift focus from clouds to sky, guest to host, object to subject: ‘I am the sky, these are clouds passing.’ Allow the wandering. Marker: clouds slow, gaps widen, intervals appear and the sky shows through — but the actual turn inward, when it comes, is sudden.
- Lin-Chi and ‘Who am I?’: he seized the questioner’s collar, made him shut his eyes and find who was asking; the man went inward, fell silent, could not come back. The answer is in the asker, not in any content of thought — change the focus, return to the questioner.
- Marpa after realizing: ‘as miserable as before — but now voluntary.’ Once you know the inner sky you can return to the clouds as master, untouched; the world is beautiful when entered by choice. Only now are you the master — able to change focus at will.
- The shift is always sudden and 100%, never gradual: you cannot be ‘20% sky’ — either you see clouds or you see sky. The focus is indivisible.
- Q&A (Q1): the growing silence, stillness and peace felt in practice is only a lessening of disease, not health — you are still hot water, not vapor. Evaporation at 100 degrees is sudden. Keep heating (keep doing the practice), but do not mistake gradual clarity for enlightenment: effort only makes you available (opens the door); it cannot cause the shift.
- Q&A (Q1, Bokuju): even a perfectly clear, silent mind is still a barrier — polishing a brick cannot make a mirror. At the furthest point, meditation itself must be thrown; first learn meditation, then non-meditation. The last renunciation is of the meditating self.
- Q&A (Q3): noticing ‘now there is no thought’ is itself the last thought — drop that too. And the desire for buddha-nature is the final barrier: you will not be there when it happens (Kabir: ‘When I was, you were not; now you are — where has Kabir gone?’). Lin-Chi: ‘If you meet Buddha anywhere, kill him immediately’ — even the wish for enlightenment must dissolve, including the desire for total desirelessness.