Sublime

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. —Shunryu Suzuki

Chao-ming titles this: “The Wonderful Practice of No Attachment.”

“Keep this ‘don’t-know mind.’ It is an open mind, a clear mind.”

Practice is about breaking our exclusive identification with ourselves. This process has sometimes been called purifying the mind. To “purify the mind” doesn’t mean that you become holy or other than you are; it means to strip away that which keeps a person—or a furnace—from functioning best.

So as you begin to meditate, you become more perceptive. Your mind becomes clearer and clearer, like an immaculate microscope lens. Out of that clarity, various styles of perception begin to develop, which are the styles of the five buddha families. So artistic expression develops from meditation. To be an artist, one needs mental training through

Dharma art is a long-term project, but if you are willing to keep up with the basic discipline, you will never regret it.

the principle that “the true mind is no mind,” which is to say that the hsin is true, is working properly, when it works as if it were not present. In the same way, the eyes are seeing properly when they do not see themselves, in terms of spots or blotches in the air.

As the final teaching, let us remove the last veil of NOT-MIND.