Master Zibo on Putting the Mind to Good Use

A sharp blade drawn from its sheath, its radiance dazzling as the sun. It cuts through iron as if it were clay. Whatever wood it meets—catalpa, nanmu, pine, or cypress—each becomes a useful vessel once shaped by its edge. Such is one who knows how to wield a blade. But there are fools who, though the knife is keen, use it only to slice through mud. From mud no vessel can be made, and day by day the edge is dulled. Such is one who does not know how to wield a blade.

So it is with sentient beings. The mind-nature is wondrous from the start, yet instead of observing and illuminating through concentration and wisdom, they let the mind grasp and cling, racing through the dusts of the world with no thought of return. Drifting through birth and death, the illusions of suffering grow only deeper, with never a glimpse of escape. Can such people be said to put the mind to good use? But a person of keen faculties and higher wisdom lets the radiance of mind-nature shine forth, piercing through both sense and object to reveal that neither has any fixed nature. With concentration and wisdom brought to fulfillment, they find liberation right within the dusts of the world, and reach the light of wisdom through feeling and discernment. To wield the blade in this way—is it not like cutting through gold and carving jade? Whatever vessel is thus formed is solid and enduring, never breaking. It brims with sweet dew and pours it forth upon all, so that every being who receives but a single drop finds the fever of affliction cooled and gains measureless hundreds of thousands of samadhis. None of this comes from outside, for it is none other than the mind-nature itself, originally complete within.

Therefore it is said: when one makes good use of the mind, the eighty-four thousand afflictions become eighty-four thousand samadhis; when one fails to make good use of the mind, the eighty-four thousand samadhis become eighty-four thousand afflictions. Alas! The blade itself is fundamentally one—used well, there is nothing it cannot cut and shape; used poorly, it wears itself away day by day.