Direct Pointing to the Human Mind
■ Direct Pointing to the Human Mind
Long ago, there was a Zen monk named Master Doeung.
A monk was reading sutras in his room when the master, passing by the window, heard the sound and asked:
"What sutra are you reading?"
The monk reading in the room replied:
"The Vimalakirti Sutra."
"I'm not asking about the Vimalakirti Sutra. What sutra is that fellow who is thinking?"
At that moment, the monk suddenly awakened.
Just like the train you conjured up in your mind a moment ago, this monk who was reading a book answered "The Vimalakirti Sutra" to the master's sudden question.
There are few things that cast as many shadows as books. Especially when you look at philosophical books, they are entirely shadows. This monk too was reading a book and passing through a forest of shadows.
At that moment, the master suddenly asked "Train!" so he reflexively answered "Train!" What Master Doeung was asking about was not the title of the book. He was probing whether this fellow was living in a world of shadows or in the world of reality.
"I'm not asking about the Vimalakirti Sutra. What sutra is that fellow who is thinking?"
At that moment, the monk suddenly awakened.
In the moment of directly intuiting the Vimalakirti Sutra not as a conceptual world made of language, but as the world of essence where one's own consciousness operates, that monk came to grasp the world of water from the world of water droplets.
All the stories in the Transmission of the Lamp records of ancient Zen masters were of this nature. And it was through this method that they transmitted the light of essence. In other words, by clearly pointing out the boundary between the mind's essence and the world of one's functioning self, they guided that person's spirit into the world of essence and enabled them to feel the world of light.
This is truly an exquisite magic of language. Yet it is a language beyond language that cannot be reached through verbal wit or skill alone. That is, by accurately grasping the other person's state and making them understand situationally through the circumstances created by words—not through the content of words themselves.
The Sixth Patriarch Huineng called this insight that enables one to grasp reality from such functioning illusions "Direct Pointing to the Human Mind" (zhizhi renxin). This is something that can only be possible in a world of profound trust and honesty. It is something that can exist only between master and disciple, a rare phenomenon that can occur only in an open mind.
Source: From Master Sogongja's Lectures on the Transmission of the Lamp - "The Path Beyond Which One Cannot Go"
