A discourse without Mind
In my blog, The blockhead years I noted that Mind has been virtually ignored in the modern Buddhist discourse which should be obvious to those of us who have studied Vajrayana Buddhism and the sermons of the Chinese and Korean Zen masters. Mind is almost on every page.
I suspect the main reason Mind has been absent from the modern Buddhist discourse is because mindfulness and awareness have taken over the spot. But these two terms tend to be used in a psychological context except for mindfulness when it is used to translate smriti which has a highly technical meaning that eclipses the English word, mindfulness.
With Mind stricken from the modern Buddhist discourse, Mind as the absolute medium of existence is stricken, too, including the realization of Bodhicitta. By comparison, one cannot discuss Vajrayana Buddhism, that is, Tibetan Buddhism, without discussing the two forms of Bodhicitta, viz., Bodhicitta aspired to and Bodhicitta attained, not to mention luminous or clear light Mind.
More telling of Minds absence in the modern Buddhist discourse becomes apparent when we look at how Western Zennists handle koans. To be frank, these Zennists just dont get koans, that is, they are clueless about the real purpose of koans and what they are fundamentally based on. At this point, I will only say that if one has truly awakened to Buddha Mind all the koans point to it, without exception, and do so ingeniously.
Especially, with regard to Zen, without Mind being included in the modern Zen conversation and practice, much of what the old Chinese Zen masters taught makes hardly any senseand the koans become nonsense. What is replacing the older works of Zenand the core teaching of Buddha Mindis modernist claptrap which points to the here and the now, which becomes a kind of aesthetic phenomenalism. Such phenomenalism views phenomena ! as Buddh a-nature so that everything we do from peeling onions to sitting on our ass in zazen half asleep becomes a manifestation of Buddha-nature. This, to be sure, is not the right path to Buddha Mind.
