Excerpts from The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po (Huangbo), translated by John Blofeld, part 1 sections 6-10

Some light commentary in square brackets:

• This Mind is no mind of conceptual thought and it is completely detached from form.
• If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything.
• But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for aeon after aeon, you will never accomplish it.
• Enmeshed in the meritorious practices of the Three Vehicles, you will be unable to attain Enlightenment. Nevertheless, the realization of the One Mind may come after a shorter or a longer period.
• There are those who, upon hearing this teaching, rid themselves of conceptual thought in a flash.
• There are others who do this after following through the Ten Beliefs, the Ten Stages, the Ten Activities and the Ten Bestowals of Merit. Yet others accomplish it after passing through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva’s Progress.
• But whether they transcend conceptual thought by a longer or a shorter way, the result is a state of BEING: there is no pious practising and no action of realizing.
• That there is nothing which can be attained is not idle talk; it is the truth.
• The building up of good and evil [i.e. bright and dark karma] both involve attachment to form.
• Those who, being attached to form, do evil have to undergo various incarnations unnecessarily; while those who, being attached to form, do good, subject themselves to toil and privation equally to no purpose. [This is a mind-only theory of karma, that is still fully consistent with the Pali Canon teachings.]
• In either case it is better to achieve sudden self-realization and to grasp the fundamental Dharma.
• Mind in itself is not mind, yet neither is it no-mind. [The relation between Nibbana and the human mind cannot be expressed in words or concepts.] [...] Let there be a silent understanding and no more.
• Away with all thinking and explaining. Then we may say that the Way of Words has been cut off and movements of the mind eliminated.
• This Mind is the pure Buddha-Source inherent in all men. All wriggling beings possessed of sentient life and all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are of this one substance and do not differ. Differences arise from wrong-thinking only and lead to the creation of all kinds of karma. [Any delusion leads directly to desire and aversion, because it posits objects that are "external" to the "self", and thenceforth craved or recoiled from. Karma is part of this delusion, in which we treat "external" beings in a positive or negative manner, in order to gain "external" pleasing objects we desire and avoid "external" unwanted objects we abhor. Positive and negative action, just like positive and negative outcome, are both a dualistic delusion in a mind that has forgotten to see its inherent non-dualism, aka Buddha-Nature.]
• Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy—and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awaking to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside.
• Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva’s progress towards Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.
• You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream. [To the awakened mind, the dualistic misrepresentation of the world is like a dream, a mirage, a figment of the imagination.]
• That is why the Tathāgata said: ‘I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment. Had there been anything attained, Dīpamkara Buddha would not have made the prophecy concerning me.’ [Quote is from the Diamond Sutra. Means it is impossible to "gain" or "attain" any enlightenment which isn't already there. Compare this to Socratic ideas...]
• He also said: ‘This Dharma is absolutely without distinctions, neither high nor low, and its name is Bodhi.’ [To the enlightened person, feasting or being burnt alive are not different. One is not preferable to the other. This is the ultimate freedom, the ultimate liberation from the delusion of self and dualistic reality.]
• It is pure Mind, which is the source of everything and which, whether appearing as sentient beings or as Buddhas, as the rivers and mountains of the world which has form, as that which is formless, or as penetrating the whole universe, is absolutely without distinctions, there being no such entities as selfness and otherness.
• This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.
• But the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance.
• If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a flash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds. [Voiding conceptual thought means seeing through the delusion of nāmarūpa - name and form.]
• Therefore, if you students of the Way seek to progress through seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing, when you are deprived of your perceptions, your way to Mind will be cut off and you will find nowhere to enter. [You cannot progress towards Nirvana in a vehicle deluded by name-and-form Wrong View.]
• Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. [The Mind is like the film projector. The images presented on the screen in front of you are expressions of this mind, but no matter how closely you scrutinize them, you will never realize the truth of the projector; rather you will be further deceived by the apparent reality of the forms on the screen. Also compare Plato's Allegory of the Cave, although tellingly he saw form as the fundamental truth. He saw beyond physical forms, but became attached to conceptual forms and stopped there, unable to see beyond.]
• You should not start REASONING from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma. [Seeing the shadows as the truth is incorrect, but so is seeing the shadows as entirely divorced from the truth of the fundamental Mind.]
• Do not keep them nor abandon them nor dwell in them nor cleave to them. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha-Mind.
• When the people of the world hear it said that the Buddhas transmit the Doctrine of the Mind, they suppose that there is something to be attained or realized apart from Mind, and thereupon they use Mind to seek the Dharma, not knowing that Mind and the object of their search are one. [It's like trying to see your eye with your own eye directly and without a mirror.]
• Mind cannot be used to seek something from Mind; for then, after the passing of millions of aeons, the day of success will still not have dawned.
• Such a method is not to be compared with suddenly eliminating conceptual thought, which is the fundamental Dharma. [Has the Buddha ever used such phrasing? I don't recall seeing it in the Pali Canon - the idea that the fundamental principle of the Dhamma is to eliminate all conceptual thought.]
• Suppose a warrior, forgetting that he was already wearing his pearl on his forehead, were to seek for it elsewhere, he could travel the whole world without finding it. But if someone who knew what was wrong were to point it out to him, the warrior would immediately realize that the pearl had been there all the time.
• So, if you students of the Way are mistaken about your own real Mind, not recognizing that it is the Buddha, you will consequently look for him elsewhere, indulging in various achievements and practices and expecting to attain realization by such graduated practices. [Accumulating merits that are either entirely material, or manifest in karma which is attachment to delusion in all its forms.]
• But, even after aeons of diligent searching, you will not be able to attain to the Way.
• These methods cannot be compared to the sudden elimination of conceptual thought, in the certain knowledge that there is nothing at all which has absolute existence, nothing on which to lay hold, nothing on which to rely, nothing in which to abide, nothing subjective or objective. [OK, so now he makes this "elimination of conceptual thought" sound like a profound realization of Anicca (impermanence). I suppose we can see emptiness (Suññatā) as a lesson of Anicca as well? Still, I'm curious if there are Pali Canon quotes to substantially support this view about the importance of stopping conceptual thought.]
• It is by preventing the rise of conceptual thought that you will realize Bodhi; and, when you do, you will just be realizing the Buddha who has always existed in your own Mind!
• Aeons of striving will prove to be so much wasted effort; just as, when the warrior found his pearl, he merely discovered what had been hanging on his forehead all the time; and just as his finding of it had nothing to do with his efforts to discover it elsewhere.
• Therefore the Buddha said: ‘I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment.’ [Is this quote supported anywhere besides the Diamond Sutra?]
• It was for fear that people would not believe this that he drew upon what is seen with the five sorts of vision and spoken with the five kinds of speech. [I was not familiar with "five sorts of vision", which are apparently a Chinese concept. My understanding of this sentence (which Blofeld doesn't explain): the Buddha used five levels of discourse, that could be comprehended by beings on the five levels of sight as described by the "five eyes". In this way, more realized beings could tell that he had superhuman knowledge, but the less awakened could still understand some of his teachings.]

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