Looking around one it is quite evident that the significance of Huang Po's repeated statement about the use of mind has not been grasped. We have pointed out that the reason 'You cannot use mind to seek mind' (Chü Chou Record, 14) is that we are mind, and that therefore there is nothing to seek, 'mind' being the term the T'ang Masters preferred while pointing out that no such thing really exists. To us 'mind' is apt to be confusing, and 'reality' is more in our idiom. 'How can you use mind to perceive (or reach or grasp) mind?' he asks again in the Wan Ling Record, 37. How can an eye see itself? we have asked. And all the Masters have told us that there is nothing to grasp anyway. Huang Po usually adds, by way of explanation, 'or the Buddha to seek the Buddha', 'or the Dharma to seek the Dharma', 'formlessness to grasp formlessness', 'void to grasp Void', 'the Way to grasp the Way'; he neglects nothing in his desire that we should understand. I have tried to show that I-subject is the Buddha, or the Buddha-nature, in Western idiom. There is nothing to seek or to reach or to grasp, neither our own actual face nor our 'original face' - for we have both already, just as we have 'enlightenment' but fail to notice it.
But there is another sense in Huang Po's statement about mind, one which needs emphasis. We cannot use our psyche either in order to seek, reach, attain or grasp 'mind'. We cannot use any concept in order to perceive mind. No object in consciousness can do that. One would need an adding-machine in order to tot up the number of times all the Masters have told us that the conceptualisation process stands in our way, and that until we can by-pass that we cannot hope to get anywhere - not in aeons as numerous as those over-used and hard-worn grains of sand in the Ganges.
Cannot we make up our minds to believe them? We don't really know what they mean? And anyhow we haven't a ghost of a notion of how to do it? 'I think, therefore I exist', we echo Descartes. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed, alas, alas! I think, therefore I think I am an ego! I think I am an ego, therefore I think! But the intellect is a machine, and often a serviceable one; the electronic variety can do better, but ours is adequate for our real needs. Has our intuition not made it clear that our intellectual machine can never reveal Mind? In between thoughts, we can know ourselves as Mind. By suppressing thoughts? Never on your life! Just leave them alone.
And as for manipulations of the psyche as means to the end ... springes to catch wodecockes!
Let us ask ourselves each time, 'Is it a concept?' If so - we have lost our way.
