Not knowing it, I spin in the seas of samsara,
Knowing it, buddha isn’t anywhere else.
“It is everything”, “It isn’t anything”: none of this.
Pure being, the basis of everything, may I see any misunderstanding here.
Commentary
Our relationship with mind-nature is crucial. If we have no connection with
the possibility of empty experience, then we are condemned to samsaric
existence, a constant cycling from one realm of reactive emotion to another — perpetual struggling and suffering. When we are not in touch with mind-nature, we are lost in the darkness of ignorance, and the chain of reactions described in the twelve links of interdependent arising propel us from one realm to another.
On the other hand, when we shift from ordinary knowing to knowing in
mind-nature, we wake up from that turbulent dream — we buddha, as it were, that is, we become buddha.
How do we make that transition? We let go of conceptual, thinking, and cultivate our relationship with the knowing that is mind-nature. To do so, don’t even begin to think in terms of is and isn’t. As Seng-ts’an writes in Faith in the Mind:
The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
It is easy to mistake other states of mind for mind-nature or pure being. This
is one reason to have a connection with a capable teacher. And it is why we pray and aspire to see and move beyond any misunderstandings.