The Rock and the Kesa

¿My friend, what are you looking for?

¿ The Kesa or the Dharma?

¿Are you looking for other people´s recognition or for recognizing your own mind?

The true Kesa is not external: it is BODHICHITTA.

And nobody will ever GIVE it to you.

Your own EFFORT and CORRECT PRACTICE, combined with the RIGHT MOTIVATION, are your real KESA, and the TRUE MASTERS can SEE if you are wearing a KESA or only a cheap imitation of it.

This was the question that the sixth patriarch put to one practitioner who thought that he was not the true heir of the fifth patriarch, and wanted to steal the external kesa from him.

This was the rock where he supposedly left the kesa, and his prosecutor could not take it.
That was because the Kesa of Hui Neng was REAL, heavy like the ROCK where his external kesa was laying on.

He had been practicing for many lives, and he woke up SUDDENLY, because of his karmic predispositions.

It is not a question of if you have been practicing zazen for many years with this or that master,
or cracking koans for a long time.

It is a question of SEEING your MIND.

If you have not seen your mind, then that is not ZEN.

That is the preliminary practices.

If you have seen your mind, then everything you do is ZEN.

This simple fact can not be accepted by the practitioners who are not established on the ZEN MIND, and that is why they always criticize and try to put down the practitioners who HAVE SEEN their MIND, and don´t need to follow the standard methods.

If you try to ritualize and standardize ZEN, then that is not ZEN. It is only the preliminary.

The ZEN master only UNTIES KNOTS.

And each situation is unique, so there is no standard recipe to prescribe for everybody.

You are unique, and you have your own path to liberation.

So, my friend, ¿ What are you looking for, the kesa or the Dharma?