𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲 ...

‘I' and the Necessity of Finding ‘I'
- Zen Master Mangong

"The reason that human beings are the most noble of the myriad things is that they are able to find and attain ‘I.’ The essence of ‘I’ exists in absolute freedom, so one ought to be able to control everything as one pleases.

"But the reason we human beings do not have any freedom at any specific time or place, and the reason why nothing goes the way we wish, is that we live our lives with our ‘deluded I’ as the master and the ‘true I’ as the slave. The ‘deluded I’ is the child of the ‘true I,’ but the mind that we exercise at present is actually the perverted mind. Although the ‘true I’ is the correct mind that has neither beginning nor end, existence nor extinction, or any form, it nevertheless is ‘I’ that has no deficiency.

"Once human beings forget the ‘true I,’ they are no better than dogs or pigs. What difference is there between animals that are lost because of attachment to their instinctive desires for food and sex or human beings who, being ignorant of their true face, are lost because of attachment to their superficial realities? Even though someone may be regarded as the most superior person in the world, if he does not understand his own face, then he is just a one tiny part of the turning wheel of transmigration within the four modes of birth and the six destinies.

"When the World Honored One, Sakyamuni, was born, he pointed to the sky with one hand and pointed to the ground with the other and said, “In heaven above and earth below, only I alone am venerated.” The ‘I’ he mentions here refers to the ‘[true] I.’ Although every person possesses the inherent nature to become a buddha, he is unable to attain this buddhahood because one does not know the ‘I.’ Because all things are ‘I,’ to waste even as insignificant amount of energy as that on the tip of a hair on matters other than finding the ‘I’ would be one’s own loss.

"In this world, there are such sayings and phrases as ‘knowing I’ or ‘finding I,’ but we only consider ‘I’ through our own activating consciousness. We’re not even able really to imagine what ‘I’ is. ‘I,’ as that which possesses limitless life, has a diamond-like, indestructible spirit that cannot be destroyed even if one tries. Thus, the birth and death of this physical body is only like changing my clothes. If you are a human being, you should be able to put on or take off as you please your own clothes of birth and death.

"‘I’ cannot be obtained through the knowledge we acquire by seeing or listening. Even the very thought of ‘I’ is already not ‘I.’ ‘I’ can only be found at the locus of no-thought, because the locus of no-thought already possesses all things. If one reaches that ultimate realm of buddhahood, one will discover that I am in fact a buddha. Ultimately, I have to discover the ‘I’ within myself.

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