Do Not Dwell on the Mind That Ranks You and Others

Only ultimate no-mind is true no-thought. No-thought points to ultimate no-mind, in which every delusive thought has fallen away. From ultimate no-mind, where all delusive thought has been extinguished, arises seeing your true nature, the realization of suchness. Do not consider this teaching only in the place of practice; look at it also in daily life, where you meet people and form relationships.

There are times when you feel that people are not treating you properly and are looking down on you. You consider yourself not so lacking a person, well studied, and excellent in many ways. Yet when you feel that the other person does not recognize you, your mind becomes uneasy.

At that moment, you also need to look at your own mind toward the other person. Believing yourself to be an excellent person, you may look at others and think, "That person is less developed in practice than I am," or "That person is beneath me." The other looks down on you, and you look down on the other. Each of you divides high from low by your own standard, and so the relationship goes awry.

If you were to examine in detail how others have seen you over the long years of your life, you would find much that weighs on the mind. What matters is not to be held by each of those things, and to live meeting the situation in front of you with wisdom, in your own way. Here too you can look at the teaching of delusive thought and ultimate no-mind.

When all kinds of delusive thoughts and fantasies keep arising during practice, your practice does not go well. You are pulled along by thoughts, and by grasping those thoughts again, you make a stumbling block for yourself. Clinging to delusion in this way brings no benefit to your practice.

The affairs of the world are also linked to delusive thought. As you run a business, go to work, and form relationships with people, many matters tangle together. Even when you sit still, those matters continue as a stream of thought. Because you must keep up your work and relationships as you live, escaping delusive thought can feel difficult.

Then a question arises: to extinguish delusive thought and fantasy completely, must you drop every task and cut every relationship? As you live, you cannot cut every connection. Thoughts arise right in the midst of ongoing work and relationships. So in that very situation, you need to go forward with a mind that is not caught on yourself or on the other, and does not dwell anywhere.

When you divide self and other, subject and object, and stay in that division, hindrance arises. If you are held by the judgments "I am this kind of person" and "the other is that kind of person," the mind that follows keeps arising. You must not be caught on even one thing, and must have nowhere to dwell. You need to go so thoroughly that you do not even hold that place by calling it "mind." Ultimate no-mind is the ground of practice to be realized in just this way, and from there seeing your true nature arises.

This practice is needed in everyday relationships too. In an unfamiliar place, someone may treat you as easy to push around or as someone who can be deceived. You may think little of that person, while that person too may be looking far down on you. This can happen whomever you meet. At such a time, you need the practice of not letting your mind be held by the other's attitude.

If you are caught on the thought that the other looks down on you, your heart aches and trouble arises. If you can meet the situation without being held by that thought, you can respond with wisdom. Watch how the other person acts, but do not let their action keep binding your own mind.

Let go of the mind that you are an excellent person, and do not be caught on the other's evaluation either. If you stay in dividing yourself from the other, another delusive thought arises along that division. Within your work and relationships, notice that mind, and keep up the practice of not dwelling in it.