Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart.
- What ‘mindstuff’ is: Sanskrit CHITT — not the thoughts themselves but the sky on which thoughts float. Pure consciousness, the most subtle thing possible. Thoughts (good or bad, prayer or lust) are clouds; CHITT is the cloudless sky. Any cloud, however white, means the sky is no longer pure. To bring it to ‘inexpressible fineness’ = be conscious but conscious of no thought; every thought is expressible, only pure consciousness is inexpressible.
- The needle-point balance: We know two states — thoughts present (waking: cannot reach heart) and thoughts absent (sleep: also cannot reach heart, because unconscious). The required point is where both qualities meet: mind as silent as dreamless deep sleep, awareness as sharp as waking. Samadhi is ‘like sushupti’ — this exact combination.
- Mechanism — why it works: Thoughts are the roots keeping consciousness anchored in the head. When roots are cut, consciousness drops back automatically to the heart — its original home before education and culture transplanted it upward. You do not go anywhere; you fall back.
- Heart = totality, head = fragment: A hand, an eye, the brain — all are disposable parts. The heart is the whole; when it stops, you are gone. From the head the world appears as isolated ego-units. From the heart it appears as one oceanic consciousness with individuals as waves, constantly exchanging breath and energy.
- No ego-fighting needed: The ego is a projection of the head, not a real entity — a shadow. Don’t fight it; fighting it feeds it and proves you believe in it. Move standpoint from head to heart and the ego dissolves on its own. Ramteerth’s parable: a child chases his own shadow and weeps, unable to catch it; Ramteerth puts the child’s hand on the child’s own head — now the shadow is ‘caught.’ Catch yourself, not the shadow.
- The fear at the threshold: We block the heart because moving there feels like death — control is lost, something greater possesses you. This ‘death’ is the door. Unless willing to be possessed by the cosmos, there is no mystery, no bliss. Love is feared for the same reason.
- Q1 — you will not observe the mystery, you will be it: If you can say ‘I feel inner emptiness,’ the ego is still present as subtle observer. True emptiness = no one left to report it. Bokuju told his master ‘I have become nothing’ — master replied: ‘Go and throw this nothingness out also. Who is carrying it?’ You can be filled with emptiness — that is still not empty.
- Q1 — the mystery is nothing special: Do not expect something staggering. Lin Chi laughed when he attained enlightenment: ‘I endeavored for thousands of lives — and it is so ordinary.’ Do-zen’s first desire after enlightenment: a cup of tea. The ego craves the special, the extraordinary. Reality is the most ordinary thing. Any expectation of the special is the barrier itself.
- Q1 — meditate as play, not work: Work is end-oriented — meaning lives outside it, in a goal; the activity is a means. Play is timeless and purposeless — the activity is the reward. If you meditate for something, meditation cannot happen. Meditate for its own sake; the ego cannot then project into the future, desire collapses, enlightenment is possible this very moment. ‘People come to me after three months and say nothing has happened yet — that desire is the barrier.’