Seeing Clearly What Is Already There

It is a good morning, but now it is a cold morning too. In the changing of the seasons, you need to keep your body warm even while you still feel no cold. Before the thought of cold arises, you may already have met the chill wind, and you may catch a cold without knowing it. The thought "I am still fine" cannot tell you everything about your present state.

Study, too, is looked at again in the place where you already stand. When you take a thought that arises during study and keep asking about it, you arrive at this: seeing things as they are is the path of awakening. Practice is not making what is not there. It is properly seeing and being aware of what is already there, just as it is.

True nature is not something anyone makes. It does not newly come into being because you practice. It is there just as it originally is, so rather than trying to gain something else, you need to know that nature directly.

When dust gathers on a mirror, it cannot reflect properly. In the same way, when true nature is covered by ignorance, delusive thoughts, discriminating thought, and clinging, you cannot recognize it. Just as it is hard to know the clarity of a mirror while looking at one buried in dust, you cannot see your own nature properly while it is veiled by delusion.

So practice does not lie in adding more and more, or in making something new. It lies in being aware of what is already there, just as it is. Adding needless clinging does not help. You need to look at what is here now, and at what covers it so that you cannot see it.

When you see a flower, you know it is a flower. When you hear a sound, you know it is a sound. When a thought arises, you know a thought is arising. Yet the mind does not abide anywhere. Abiding here does not stop at recognizing an object; it means being bound by a mind that likes and holds on, or dislikes and pushes away. Not only attachment and clinging but also a mind of rejection becomes abiding.

This does not mean doing nothing. It means being aware just as things are, without holding the mind fixed on them. This is the practice of no-thought and non-abiding. You know a thought is arising without being tied to it, and whatever you see or hear, you do not seize it and make it your own.

Awakening is not making and gaining what is not there; it is seeing directly, without obstruction, what has been there from the beginning. Knowing and seeing what is there just as it is also connects with the practice of vipassana. Here, seeing one's nature (gyeonseong) goes one step further and leads to going beyond even the one who is aware. You look into that very subject, the "I am aware," and move toward the place where only awareness remains.

Even if you cannot reach that state right away, the practice for now is clear. Put your effort into being aware of things as they are and seeing them directly. When the mind reacts to an object, do not follow it into holding on or pushing away; keep up the practice of simply seeing. Going further, going beyond even the one who is aware leads to the state of seeing one's nature.

Awakening is opening your eyes to what is originally there, not creating or newly acquiring what was not. When you see this meaning clearly and trust it deeply, you can let go of the mind that tries to force something into being. When you leave it be in this way, true nature reveals its own completeness by itself.