Three Thunderous Paragraphs On Zen Enlightenment*

The title says it all. Here it is... invaluable and free. You can do it!
*There is only one kind of enlightenment... there are simply various ways to get it.

Essentials of Practice and Enlightenment for Beginners
By Master Han-shan Te-ching [1546-1623]
Translation by Guo-gu Shi


I. How to Practice and Reach Enlightenment

The causes and conditions for this Great Matter, [this Buddha-nature] are intrinsically within everyone; as such, it is already complete in you, lacking nothing. The difficulty is that, since time without beginning, seeds of passion, deluded thinking, emotional conceptualizations, and deep-rooted habitual tendencies have obscured this marvelous luminosity. You cannot genuinely realize it because you have being wallowing in remnant deluded thoughts of body, mind, and the world, discriminating and musing [about this and that]. For these reasons you have been roaming the cycle of birth and death [endlessly]. Yet, all Buddhas and ancestral masters have appeared in the world using countless words and expedient means to expound on enlightenment and to clarify doctrine ... all of these expedient means are like tools to crush our mind of clinging and realize that originally there is no real "stand-alone" substantiality to things or the "self."

What is commonly known as practice means simply to accord with [whatever state] of mind you’re in so as to purify and relinquish the deluded thoughts and traces of your habit tendencies. Exerting your efforts here is called practice. If within a single moment deluded thinking suddenly ceases, [you will] thoroughly perceive your own mind and realize that it is vast and open, bright and luminous—intrinsically perfect and complete. This state, being originally pure, devoid of a single thing, is called Enlightenment. Apart from this mind, there is no such thing as cultivation or Enlightenment. The essence of your mind is like a mirror and all the traces of deluded thoughts and clinging to conditions are defiling dust of the mind. Your conception of appearances is this dust and your emotional consciousness is the defilement. If all the deluded thoughts melt away, the intrinsic essence will reveal in its own accord. It’s like when the defilement is polished away, the mirror regains its clarity. It is the same with Dharma.

However, our habit, defilement, and self-clinging accumulated throughout eons have become solid and deep-rooted. Fortunately, through the condition of having the guidance of a good spiritual friend, our internal prajna as a cause can influence our being so this inherent prajna can be augmented. Having realized that [prajna] is inherent in us, we will be able to arouse the [Bodhi-] mind and steer our direction toward the aspiration of relinquishing [the cyclic existence of] birth and death. This task of uprooting the roots of birth and death accumulated through innumerable eons all at once is a subtle matter. If you are not someone with great strength and ability brave enough to shoulder such a burden and to cut through directly [to this matter] without the slightest hesitation, then [this task] will be extremely difficult. An ancient one has said, "This matter is like one person confronting ten thousand enemies." These are not false words.