You’ve Got to Intend

  With all the clatter, chaos, and confusion anticipated in tomorrow night’s debates—oh yes, I’m going to watch them—I am comforted to return each day to the teachings of the Buddha. As for the debates, I ask one question. What do they intend?

  My intention for today is to bring to you the following at Ancestral Well:

  Here lies the ultimate, subtle, and elusive truth of all the Buddha’s teachings—  enlightenment occurs in the realization of one's own inner primal nature, which as the buddha-nature, is infused with all experience, is absolute and universal—purest being—the totality of all things, a spontaneous awakening occurring at the root of consciousness that comprehends the entire manifold world. Moreover, this primal vision encompasses the opposites of existence, including the darkness of non-being, so it is ineffable and mysterious. Here, says Hui-neng, rejoice in your primal nature where becoming (samsara) is being (nir­vana), and being is becoming.

  This remarkable doctrine of self-salvation centers on the identity of one's own nature with the Buddha. It is the Buddha (or Tathagata) in the minds of the aspirants who save themselves. From this insight a charity and a morality arise, because the individual and the totality are one ecological organism, mutually dependent.

– Hui-neng's Enlightenment—Here and Now, by George Pracy Pugh in DHARMA WORLD, July 1982 Vol. 9, published monthly; Copyright – 1982; Kosei Publishing Co., Tokyo.