Seeing Dharma Nature Means Seeing the Freedom of One Mind

Seeing Dharma nature does not mean seeing some special object with the eyes. Even if we give it names such as self-nature, Buddha-nature, or Dharma nature, once we begin searching for it as a mysterious object, we have already moved away from its original meaning.

In Seon Buddhism, seeing true nature does not mean grasping an outer object. It means directly knowing the source from which all objects and phenomena arise. All the conditions we see, hear, feel, and think are the activity and projection of one mind.

Suffering and joy, good and bad, right and wrong do not stand apart from the mind. When this becomes clear, a practitioner is not dragged around by circumstances. There is less to like, less to hate, less to cling to as gain, and less to collapse over as loss.

People of old compared this to a mani jewel. When the mani jewel meets red, it reflects red; when it meets blue, it reflects blue. Yet it does not cling to red or become bound by blue. It simply reflects what comes and lets go of what goes.

Dharma nature is the same. Flowers are mind, wind is mind, suffering is mind, and joy is mind. When we know that ten thousand different phenomena are originally the revealing of one mind, there is no reason to be caught by praise or blame, success or failure.

This is the world of nirvana. Nirvana is not some place we go after death. It is the freedom revealed right now, in the place where discrimination and attachment disappear. Seeing Dharma nature is not gaining a special world; it is directly seeing one’s own mind, which has been free from the beginning.