The Tao-man is lazy

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The Song of Enlightenment opens with this statement: “Stopping learning and practicing wu-wei is the leisurely Tao-man. He does not try to rid of illusions and he does not seek Truth.”

Most practitioners of religion and spirituality would not understand this. Understanding this statement requires deep insight. The ordinary mind is dualistic. It is always thinking in terms of good and bad, purity and defilement, ego and egoless. For this reason, the practitioners are always busy ridding of this and that. When Master Hui Neng was studying under the Fifth Patriarch(Hongren), the latter called for a poetry contest so that everyone could show his true understanding. A senior disciple, Shenxiu, wrote this:

The body is the bodhi tree.

The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand.

At all times we must strive to polish it

and must not let dust collect.

This urge to always polish in order to rid of impurities and defilements is very typical of the ordinary practitioner of spirituality. It also reflects a total lack of understanding of Buddha’s teaching of no-self. In response to the Fifth Patriarch’s request, Hui Neng wrote this poem:

Bodhi originally has no tree.

The bright mirror also has no stand.

Fundamentally there…