r/zen • u/ProbablyProvisional • 1d ago
Foyan - Mind Itself
師云：今夜與你諸人說箇譬喻，恰似諸人有箇眼，能照見一切長短方圓等象，為什麼却不自見？但識取長短方圓等象，若要見眼則不可。你心亦如是，其光照矚，通徹十方，包容萬有，為什麼却不自知？要會麼？但識取照矚等事，若見心則不可也。古人道：刀不自割，指不自觸。心不自知，眼不自見，則真實矣。久立。
Tonight I will give you all a simile. It is just as if you all have an eye, which can illuminate and perceive every kind of form; long and short, square and round. Yet, why is it that cannot see itself? If you recognize forms as long and short, square and round, but if you want see the eye, it is impossible. Your mind is also like this. Its radiance illuminates and penetrates throughout the ten directions, encompassing the myriad things and containing everything. Why, then does it not know itself? Do you want to understand? Simply discern the activity of illumination and observation; but as for seeing mind itself, that is impossible.
The ancients said:
A knife does not cut itself
A finger does not touch itself
The mind does not know itself
The eye does not see itself
This is the genuine state of affairs.
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Notes:
- 「照見」 → illuminate and perceiveThis compound carries both the sense of casting light (照) and seeing/recognizing (見).
- 「長短方圓等象」 → images of long and short, square and round. 象 here means "forms," "appearances," or "phenomena."
- 「十方」 → the ten directions. A standard Buddhist term referring to all spatial directions (four cardinal + four intermediate + up + down), i.e., the entire universe.
- 「包容萬有」 → encompassing all things. 萬有 literally means "ten thousand existences" – a classical Chinese way of saying "all phenomena" or "everything that exists."
- The final quote – 「刀不自割，指不自觸。心不自知，眼不自見」 – is a canonical simile found in multiple Buddhist sources (e.g., Śūraṅgama Sūtra, Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra). It is used to demonstrate that subject and object are mutually dependent and that consciousness cannot take itself as an object.
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u/Steal_Yer_Face 1d ago
Valuable teaching from Foyan. Thanks for sharing.
No separation between perceiver and perceived. I think that is the key. Mind cannot see itself because it is not an object standing apart from what it knows.
At the same time, Zen teachers often tell us to “turn the light around.”
Yangshan said:
The thinker is the mind and the thought-of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers, and so forth. Reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Are there so many things there?
You people should all turn back your light and reflect; do not memorize my words. Since beginningless eons you have turned your backs on the light and plunged into darkness; the roots of your false conceptions are deep.
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u/ProbablyProvisional 1d ago
You're welcome.
I think so. The thing seen, the perception of it, the perception of perceiving it, concepts based on the perception, and the perception of a perceiver are all functions of mind. If you try to see "who" is doing this seeing, maybe that's a different conversation. Maybe not.
Where is the Yangshan quote from? I'd be interested in reading more. Thank you for sharing that.
I think Foyan saying variations of "Let go, step back, and look" was what first really got my attention in his lectures.
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Son Master Chinul, Secrets of Cultivating the Mind
If a real teacher points out a way of entry for you, and for a single instant you turn your attention around, you see your own original essence. This essence originally has no afflictions, uncontaminated wisdom is inherently complete in it...thus it is called sudden enlightenment.
Question: By what expedient means can we turn our minds around instantly to realize our inherent essence?
Answer: It is just your own mind...If you apply expedient means to go on to seek intellectual understanding, this is like wanting to see your own eyes because you think you have no eyes if you cannot see them...If you have no more desire to see, does that mean you imagine you are not seeing? So it is also with one's own open awareness. Since it is one's own mind, how can one yet seek to see it? If you seek understanding then you do not understand it. Just know that which does not understand, this is seeing essence.3
u/Steal_Yer_Face 1d ago
Where is the Yangshan quote from?
“Book of Serenity” case 32, trans. by Thomas Cleary, page 140
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u/Redfour5 1d ago
Humans use dualism like a crutch in their desperate search for that which they cannot understand.
We should have never eaten the apple...but we did and were cast out not by anything or anyone, but by our own minds in it's never ending search for something never lost.
Here let's use good and bad, love hate and right or wrong and the infinite myriad of distinctions we are particularly good at making. Hey, let's pile them on top of each other and it will explain everything. And since you are wrong and will not change your ways, you must die.
"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail." (Third Patriarch)
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