“If all sentient beings possess the buddha-nature . . . then why must people develop the aspiration for awakening and vigorously engage in austerities in order to realize this truth?” Dogen
“[A]wakening is the paradigm of total, unreserved, and artless self-surrender.”
C. W. Huntington Jr. “A Pathless Land” Tricycle magazine Aug. 31, 2025
Buddhist traditions claim that the nature of Mind is free, open, and pure awareness. Well, that’s capital “M” Mind, whereas what I’m using now is mostly small “m” mind. I always wondered how we get from here to there. I certainly don’t relate to my mind in that way, do you? —as though it were free, open and pure!? Everywhere… well, in the Wikipedia entry, “Buddha-nature” at least—it is said “the natural and true state of the mind” which is pure capital “M” Mind undefiled by afflictions. The natural and true state of the Mind “is inherently present in every sentient being, and is eternal and unchanging. It will shine forth when it is cleansed of the defilements, that is, when the nature of mind is recognized for what it is.” Whew!
Well, right now I’m stuck at the “cleansed of defilements” part. And though clarification lies in the next half-sentence to wit: “that is, when the nature of mind is recognized for what it is,” it still implies that there is a before and an after, which implies there’s a ‘how’ and some means to an end. Very thinky stuff, and an entanglement! If there is a “how,” there is a means to an end, then something is not whole, is not right with the situation as it was before. That’s the way our (small “m”) minds work. Let me back up for a bit.
Let’s see, here I am in the zendo. I bow, take my seat, lower my gaze, breathe. Why? To reach some magical state called enlightenment? Should I wash my mouth out with soap?
What is the implication of being enlightened already? What is the implication of enlightenment being the natural and true state of the mind? Let’s try something: imagine that it is really so: that buddha-nature is inherently present in every sentient being, and it is eternal and unchanging. So sitting here we are not trying to get anywhere or achieve anything. If it’s true that we are already complete, then our mind is not different from buddha-nature. All right, just for thirty seconds, let’s try assuming nothing is missing, nothing is incomplete in or wrong with, our experience; that you too, sitting here this very moment, completely embody this thing called buddha-nature: OK—thirty seconds: ready? go! (half a minute pause; and stop). That was one-half minute. Kind of like jumping into cold water!? Or what was your experience? Let’s try it one more time, this time for a whole minute. Now that you know what’s coming: you are completely OK just as you are, an embodiment of buddha-nature, and nothing is missing, nothing is wrong (or right). OK—one minute: go! (one minute pause; and stop).
This is a small sip of letting go.
CW Huntington Jr. said:
Buddhism is about waking up—not falling asleep—but it might be more accurate in this case to speak of falling awake, since Buddhist awakening is the paradigm of total, unreserved, and artless self-surrender. (A Pathless Land Tricycle Magazine, Aug 31, 2025)
All right. What if this were true? Checking out the (small “m”) mind right now, I’m aware of various things: the humming, ringing and hissing in my ears (a companion since the age of 3), the concern that this topic may be inappropriate for a dharma talk; the pain in my legs, the pressure of my seat on the zafu, etc., etc.
If I bypass the thinky stuff (of relationships and causalities, judgments and open–ended possibilities) if I bypass if-then thinking, in other words, what does that leave? Sensory input without evaluation? What else? Well, I’m awake, so new details are making themselves known, observations without evaluation . . . things do change. I am a being that registers change.
That may be a clue: observation of change without evaluation. Not trying to change anything. But then what about urgent situations that we encounter where something has to be done? A person in a crosswalk is struggling with a box that’s too big for them. If there’s a chance to stop, maybe I can be helpful. Or somebody’s cat has been hit by a car. Maybe I’ll just pick it up and see if anyone recognizes it—or at least move the body out of the way of cars. Or what about the starving people in Gaza . . . What can I do, or rather, what’s right now within my means? These situations can—indeed, must—be addressed without thinking at all. But here in the realm of small-m mind—asking “what” starts the chain of associations, which are by nature partial. How do I know what’s thinking (small-m mind-work) vs. something else? The response has to be as direct as Guanyin’s shifting the pillow in the night. And furthermore, asking “how do I know . . .” is the wrong question. It might be that questioning at all is the wrong move to begin with.
Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.’
We might think this is an example of self-surrender, since there is no sense of Guanyin holding herself apart from the pillow or the covers or the bed for that matter. No sense of Guanyin as an entity at all—no sense of someone at all.
Here we can see how radical C.W. Huntington’s falling awake image actually is when he says that waking is “total, unreserved, and artless self-surrender.” And you know how strange it is to try that, now that we’ve considered doing nothing as an informed practice. I mean, if buddha-nature is already here, one has to consider something like the one-minute –or the half-minute! practice as a taste of embodying it.
If, that is, we can do it by dropping all expectations, realizing that even to identify an object of awareness may already be a problem, and dropping any judgments of our own behavior. That is a big order if, like me, you tend to be critical of every instance of your own behavior when you assume the position on your cushion. This, I imagine, was the rationale for Seung Sahn Sunim’s maxim, “Put it all down.”
We need to see and not-see, hear and not-hear, touch and not-touch simultaneously, the so-called “objects” all around us. But does this mean that I should ignore the stop sign on the corner? No! Of course not. How then do we reconcile the formless not-knowing with the realities of the world of form? It’s not another task on the to-do list. It’s simply embodying the fact that I and that stop sign are not-two. As well as I and the keyboard, here; I and the cat who is meowing to go out again; I and the motorist who needs me to follow the rules of the road. Ultimately nothing can be called “seeing,” yet there is light entering, activating receptors in the back of the eye. The principal difference is that in not-seeing, I am not in the picture. There is seeing without a seer.
On the one hand, this presents an incredible tangle to sort out. On the other hand, it is clear as day. 5:30–time for the cat to go out again: meow, meow, prrrt? To respond to this requires no thought, no do-er, only doing.
Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’ Daowu asked, ‘How do you understand it?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body are hands and eyes.’ Daowu said, ‘That is very well expressed, but it is only eight-tenths of the answer.’ Yunyan said, ‘How would you say it, Elder Brother?’ Daowu said, ‘Throughout the body are hands and eyes.’ BCR 89
And as Lee said once: None of it matters to the pillow.
So why vigorously engage in anything in order to realize something? Any notion of what we want to realize can only be a stumbling block on the way. And what about the notion of artless surrender, that is, surrender without any notion of a reason why? As has been said, total, unreserved and artless self-surrender is the paradigm of Buddhist “falling awake.” Of course this has problems of syntax and sense: how can we surrender if there is nothing known that we should surrender to? What CW is hinting at here is an openness of heart and attention that cannot be replicated very well at all through the medium of words.
Aspiration is a preliminary state: it contains and conceals the notion of what one is looking for. If we jump ahead to self-surrender and simple curiosity, it is like the person in bed, shifting the pillow. No aspiration is required: the discomfort of deep curiosity is enough.
Dogen has been cited as a prime example of life-long aspiration to enlightenment. Because his mother died when he was a boy, he began wondering what life is all about, and he kept wondering, effectively engaging the discomfort of deep curiosity.
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands.
What you do not have you find everywhere.
-W.S. Merwin