Shenxiu's most detailed explanation of meditative practice. From the miscellaneous material of the East Mountain School, translated by McRae.
If you wish to cultivate contemplation, you must proceed first from the contemplation of the external. Why is this necessary? Because the external sensory realms constitute the causes and conditions of the generated mind, the locus of the activated illusions. Also, because ordinary people are so crude and shallow in determination, they generally have difficulty proceed ing to the profound and excellent region [of the absolute, separate from sensory input]. Therefore, one enters the profound and excellent region by first undertaking contemplation of the external.
[In this contemplation] one must understand that the various dharmas are fundamentally and in their essential nature universally “same” and without any distinctive characteristics. The various dharmas exist only as a phantasmagorical creation of the beginningless perfumings. They have no real essence. According to this principle of the dharmas’ universal “sameness” and phantasmagorical creation through causes and conditions, [the dharmas] are fundamentally nonexistent and without birth and death, positive and negative, long and short. They are only the illusions of beginningless ignorance.
Through noncomprehension of this principle, one perceives people and dharmas where there are no people and dharmas, one falsely perceives being and nonbeing where there are no being and nonbeing. One falsely generates attachment, grasping at people and grasping at dharmas, creating various kinds of karma and circulating through the six modes of existence. These individuals and dharmas, birth and death, and being and nonbeing are only the false mind. Outside of this [false] mind not a single dharma can be apprehended (te).
Understanding this principle, one must simply follow each and every [object upon which the] mind is conditioned, investigating it intimately. Know that there is only this mind and no external realms. Perform this investigation purely and attentively, always keeping the mind focused (yuan, “conditioned”) on this principle of the empty falsity [of all dharmas].
When you can maintain the mind [on this subject] for some time, then you must “countercontemplate” (chieh-kuan, i.e., turn around and contemplate) this false mind [itself]. Whether it is existent or nonexistent, [whether it is generated or] extinguished, [the discriminatory mind] is ultimately not apprehendable, [no matter how one may attempt] various methods of searching for it. The mind of the future is still in the future, the mind of the past is in the past, and the mind of the present is not maintained [beyond the immediate moment]. Also, because [every] two [states of] mind are dissimilar, when one realizes the generation of [one state of] mind, one does not realize the extinction [of another state of] mind (?).
In discussing the generation of the mind, one must postulate causes and conditions. Since it is only through the accumulation of causes and condi tions that the mind is generated, if those causes and conditions did not accumulate, how could there be any “generation”? This “generation” is “nongeneration” (wu-sheng, “birthless,” a synonym for nirvana) and this “extinction” is “nonextinction.” [Therefore,] one must countercontemplate this mind.
Question: This mind being the mind of wisdom, the enlightened mind, why must one contemplate it?
Answer: Although this mind is the mind of wisdom, the enlightened mind, it is because of the flowing capacities (liu-lei) of the mind that there is generation and extinction and the nonannihilation of the characteristics of the sensory realms.
Question: Does not this style of contemplation imply a subject and an object of contemplation (i.e., an inherent duality)?
Answer: What I am here calling countercontemplation is only to be con stantly mindful of the contemplating mind’s countercontemplation of itself —there is no subject and object. [Just as] a knife cannot cut itself and a fin ger cannot point at itself, the mind cannot contemplate itself [dualistically]. When there is no contemplation (i.e., when you are just trying to imagine what this practice might be like), subject and object of contemplation exist, but in actual countercontemplation there are no subject and object of con templation. This [practice] transcends words and characteristics, the path of words being eradicated and the locus of mental activity extinguished.
Question: Does not the mind enter [a state of] blankness (wu-chi) [through this practice]?
Answer: During [this practice the Buddha] Nature develops of itself and becomes increasingly bright and vast. How could this be blankness? What was referred to earlier as the “entrance into the profound and excellent region” is a contemplation in which subject and object are both purified (i.e., rendered nonsubstantial, hence nonexistent) and which cannot be interpreted either in words or with the active mind. As just stated, the more profound and vast [one’s realization of the Buddha Nature], the greater and brighter [one’s contemplation] becomes
One who hears this and decides to cultivate enlightenment according to this principle [must realize that this point] cannot be attained through effort. How can it be reached? When the [true] practitioner hears this, he cultivates this realization through meditation