Discrimination and Discrimination
One of the essential teachings of the Masters to which we in the West most consistently close our eyes is their repeated condemnation of 'mentation', 'intellection', which connotes wrong thinking, the wrong kind of thinking, mental activity which affirms our identification with an imaginary ego and so hinders the elimination of what is called 'ignorance', and renders liberation therefrom and living in a state of enlightenment forever impossible.
The above is an omnibus statement. It should suffice to say that wrong thinking is mental activity on the plane of seeming. Do we understand this? What do we do about it? Have we any reason to doubt that the Masters knew what they were saying and meant what they said? If we are serious we should act upon their advice. If we do not - what result can we ever expect to obtain?
* * *
Also we are apt to be appalled when we find 'discrimination' roundly condemned, as all the Masters condemn it, and then, on the next page, 'discrimination' lauded as a high and essential activity of the bodhisattva. The explanation is simple enough once it is understood. Discrimination on the plane of seeming is equivalent to identification and attachment, for it is affective; but discrimination on the plane of intuitive cognition is neither more nor less than vision of Reality.
* * *
The incalculable value of the brief statements of Hsi Yun and Hui Hai lies in that they, and they alone, explain these things to us.
As regards discrimination on the plane of seeming no quotation is necessary, since every Master has condemned it, and an explanation is offered above. As regards correct discrimination Hui Hai says this:
'An equal combination of abstraction ('abstraction' here means detachment from affectivity) and understanding is called deliverance.'
'To be able to distinguish minutely between every kind of good and evil is called understanding. Not to feel love or hatred or to be in any way affected at the moment of making these distinctions is called abstraction (detachment). This is an equal combination of abstraction (detachment) and understanding.'
And, therefore, 'is called deliverance'.But let us not forget that on the plane of seeming discrimination, that is affective discrimination, between 'good' and 'evil' is illusory.
Hui Hai also states, 'No attachment means that feelings of hatred and love do not arise. That is what is meant by no attachment.'
The Void: What is it?
Have we a greater difficulty than the famous 'Void' which forms the principal subject of so many sutras and statements of the Masters as of the Buddha himself? How many hair-splitting definitions, negations of negations and contradictions of contradictions have been attempted in order to suggest its meaning to our tridimensional minds?
Supposing we ask Hui Hai?
'The Void is simply non-attachment' (Section 25). Did that not need saying? Does it not say enough?** * *
It may be necessary to regard the Void in a more metaphysical aspect. 'Emptiness', 'the Void' - if one thinks about it, surely the epithet most suggestive and least misleading to us today should be just 'Non-Manifestation'?
If anything is clear it is that the Taoist conception of Non-Action is the basis of all action. Similarly Non-manifestation must be the basis of all manifestation.
* * *
Huang Po regards phenomenal or sensory experience as universal mind wrongly apprehended, form and real nature being therefore identical (Section 5)*.
Let me put it like this: Manifestation and Non-Manifestation are identical, but we have an inaccurate (because tridimensional) perception of Reality which we call phenomena.
This inaccurate perception may be presumed to be neither more nor less than the limitative faculty of perceiving the fourth dimension of space serially in what we know as Time.
This conception of Huang Po should perhaps be regarded as fundamental in Zen after Hui Neng, and is to be retained.
* * *
Most, if not all, sects of most, if not all, superior religions seek to transmute hate into love, that is negative into positive. Zen alone requires no such transmutation, between two aspects of a single thing, which are evaluations of an affective manifestation. Instead it requires absolute non-attachment, the exclusion of both hate and love, which may be defined as the abolition of affectivity itself. One may look for the origin of this in the original Taoism.
But if Caritas, impersonal compassion, be an accurate description of the resulting state, one must envisage it as a strictly non-affective condition of the mind.
Evolution of the Ego
May we not conveniently regard the persona (mask), or false 'me', as a function of the relative ego, wherein lies its particular unreality?
When the relative 'me' begins to understand and evolve, the false 'me', which depends upon it, is modified and subsides in ratio to such evolution. If enlightenment is realised the false 'me' is thereby cut off from its source and extinguished - for the relative 'me' has abandoned its relativity.
* * * * *
