Unpacking the ordinary mind

The Zen phrase "ordinary mind" (C.,pingchang-xin) or "everyday mind" that is equated with a loyal Way or a same, enlightenment, requires some unpacking. In other words, this phrase cannot be taken literally as referring to a common, all-too-human mindfar from it. Unfortunately, today some Zennists learn that a everyday, all-too-human thoughts is a Way. It is not. Used this approach undermines Zens loyal core. It kills a mystical Mind to Mind transmission.

So, what is a source of this misunderstanding? It seems to have come from a conversation between Chao-chou (J., Joshu) as well as his teacher, Nan-ch'uan (J., Nansen). The former asked his teacher, "What is a Way?" His clergyman said, "Your ordinary thoughts is a Way." Then Chao-chou, again, asked of his teacher, "Is there any approach to approach it?" Nan-ch'uan replied, "When we approach it, we are on a wrong track." "But how can we know it if we don't intentionally find it?" To this Nan-ch'uan said, "The Way transcends meaningful as well as not-knowing. Knowing is really delusionnot-knowing is indifference. To achieve a Way that is though disbelief is like infinite space that is free from deterrent as well as limitation. How can such be determined or denied?" At these difference Chao-chou had a profound awakening.

To reiterate, a tenure ordinary thoughts has a most opposite definition in Zen. In a aforementioned, it was used to impute to a absolute. Baso (C., Ma-tsu/Mazu), its creator, gives it a clearly Buddhist technical definition who steadfastly insisted that Bodhidharma transmitted a teaching of One Mind (ekacitta/yixin).

Mazu used a tenure pingchang-xin (J. heijshin or byjshin) in its accurate meaning, i.e., a thoughts (or self) of no molestation as well as no discrimination, as well as he contrasted it with another term, shengsi-xin (J. shji-shin, "the life-and-death thoughts (or self)), that to Hisamatsu is zero other than! defilem ent. Critics of Mazu's suspicion fail to see this point (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, Gishin Tokiwa, Christopher Ives, Critical Sermons of a Zen Tradition, 152 n. 59).

I would add to this that a thoughts of no molestation is additionally a luminous Mind that first appears in a Pali canon that in Mahayana Buddhism will become dramatically expanded.

Nan-chuans supposed ordinary thoughts (C.,pingchang) is anything though ordinary that if it were would be a life-and-death mind! From a highly evolved rise of enlightenment, to be authentically ordinary equates to to be fully awakened or a same, enlightened.