Daehaeng Sunim
Editor’s Note: This excerpt comes from a little-known book I came across a few months ago that has quickly become one of my most cherished dharma books, No River to Cross: Trusting the Enlightenment That’s Already Here. The author is a female Korean Zen master who taught laypeople as well as monastics (she passed away just a few years ago). She writes about developing an unshakable faith in our own buddha nature and bringing that to bear in all situations and circumstances. I’ve never read another Buddhist teacher who speaks about the themes of trust, belief, and letting go the way she does. Perhaps you will find her teaching as arresting, encouraging, and useful as I have.
What is Buddha? Buddha is within your mind. All beings, patriarchs, enlightened people, and the Buddha who embraces the universe and encompasses the past, present, and future–all of these are within you mind. What is outside of yourself that you are trying so hard to find?
Because you exist, Buddhist exists. Buddha’s shape is your shape, and Buddha’s mind is your mind. If you awaken to the Buddha-nature that is within you, at that instant, you become Buddha.
Above all else, you have to believe that you have Buddha-nature, the power within yourself that enables you to become a buddha. Then, like a gardener taking care of a plant, you have to make this Buddha-nature bloom.
You already have every kind of treasure there is, so believe in yourself and throw away those thoughts that you are great or that you are no good. True self can do all things–even things that you imagined were impossible. If you have faith that true self can do it, you can survive even on top of a barren rock. When you have unwavering faith that “Buddha-nature can solve it,” you begin to find your true self. When you have strong faith like this, you will be free from fear and doubt, and you will be unshakable yet open to whatever confronts you.
Entrust and let go of everything. “Letting go” means letting go of not only distressing and unpleasant things, but also every kind of fixed idea. The worst prison in the world is the prison of thought. The most difficult wall in the world to overcome is the wall of fixed ideas. From a certain perspective, spiritual practice means freeing yourself from such prisons of thought.
There are no justifications or reasons involved in letting go. As soon as something arises, unconditionally entrust it to your true nature, to your foundation. Entrust the things you understand and the things you don’t understand, entrust happiness and entrust suffering. Keep letting go, so that it becomes second nature.
As things confront you, let them go to your foundation and observe. Even if the sky collapses, continue to let go and observe. Let go of everything to your foundation and watch, because everything functions together as one through this root. When you keep letting go like this, karma will collapse, habits will melt down, your true self will be revealed, and every kind of hindrance will surrender to you.
