Reminders of Our Original Nature

This world is already complete before anything can be said about it. Then why do we have sutras and dharma talk and articles, such as the one you are reading now? It is only because we forget that we are already complete that we have all these words. Dharma talks and kong-ans and poems and sutras and explications of sutras and poems are all only reminders.

If we attach to all these words and sentences we are lost, as these lines from one of Mu Mun’s poems reminds us:

One who holds onto words is dead,

One who attaches to sentences is lost.

But if we let these words remind us of our original nature, the completeness of our mind before thoughts and words arise in it, if we perceive what these words are pointing to then let them go, even these words and sentences can help us fulfill our great vows to wake up from our dreams and help this world.

By Zen Master Hae Kwang