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mind for dhyana by remaining still and calm in body
and mind. When he is free of thought, there is no way
for evil to arise. In preparing for dhyana, one must
endure whatever happens, never tiring, always perse-
vering. When confronted with evil (an obstacle to
samadhi), he must exercise great patience in not re-
sponding with the defilement of anger. This is accom-
plished by not discriminating and by neither grasping
at nor rejecting anything. In his quest for dhyana, he
concentrates on the one Mind (the one mind being no-
mind). Nothing sways him from his course. He sits,
never lying down, sits even though tired, never resting;
and, though seemingly gaining nothing by his apparent
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efforts, he, thereby shows, indeed, his great progress.
A Bodhisattva practices and completes all of the Six
Paramitas, concentrates on the one Mind, which is no-
mind, and can finally understand all the aspects of
birth and death in the world through Prajna.
Counting the Breath
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All of the Six Wonderful and Profound Dharma Gates
can produce many kinds of dhyana. The first of these
is attained by the practice of counting the breath,
because, in this way, you will arrive at the Four Dhy-
anas of Form, the Four Immeasurable Minds and the
Four Formless Dhyanas. When you have attained the
last stage of Neither Thinking Nor Not Thinking is Not
Nirvana, you have only attained The Way of The Three
Vehicles, because this worldly Ch an Ting is not yet
real, still having some defilement. Using The Wonder-
ful Dharma Gate of counting the breath and neither
discriminating nor grasping, you can attain all three
Vehicles at the level of Hinayana.
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Following The Breath
By this second practice, you can produce the Sixteen
Special Dharmas:
1. When inhaling, knowing that you are inhaling;
2. When exhaling, knowing that you are exhaling;
3. Knowing when you are breathing a long or a
short breath;
4. Knowing the whole body as the breath;
5. Knowing the movement of the body;
6. Knowing the delight of the mind;
7. Knowing the happiness of the mind;
8. Knowing mind activity;
9. Knowing comfort of the mind;
10. Knowing concentration of the mind;
11. Knowing freedom of mind;
12. Knowing impermanence;
13. Knowing all things (dharmas) as dispersed;
14. Knowing desirelessness;
15. Knowing nothingness or the property of vanishing;
16. Knowing what it is to abandon and give up
everything.
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Stopping
If you practice stopping, you can obtain five kinds of
dhyana, as follows:
1. Earth-Wheel Samadhi (which is not yet to have
arrived at the tenth stage);
2. Water-Wheel Samadhi (which enables you to
have good conditions for all kinds of dhyanas);
3. Space-Wheel Samadhi (which consists of five
expedient ways of dhyana practice, whereby you
come to understand space as being without any
nature);
4. The Wheel-of-Golden-Sand Samadhi (which
frees you from misleading views, so that you no
longer grasp after right wisdom);
5. The Wheel-of-Diamond Samadhi (which is also
known as The Completely-Without-Obstacles
Tao, a practice that lets you sever your bondage
to the three realms of desire, form and formless-
ness forever).
Furthermore, by stopping, you can attain Birthless
Wisdom, whereby you can gain entrance to Nirvana.
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Contemplation
Through contemplation, you can take part in the Nine
Thinkings, the Eight Lines of Thought, the Freedom
From Eight Forms, the Eight Stages of Mental
Concentration, the Ten Universals, the Samadhi of the
Nine Degrees, the Samadhi of the Powerful Lion s
Roar, the Transcendental Samadhi, the Practice of
Ch an, the Fourteen Transmutations of Mind, the
Triple Bright Samadhi, the Six Transcendental Powers,
and the Eight Liberations, all of which enable you to
acquire the Samadhi of No-Sensation and No-Thought.
Returning
The meditator, through Prajna, is freed of defilements
by returning to the void of the Original Source, which
is no source and in which there is nothing but void-
without form and with non-action-indicating an ab-
sence of self-nature. Without any self-nature, there is
no longer a subject or an object, and distinctions are no
longer made because there is no one to make them and
nothing to make them about.
In this way, the thirty-seven conditions leading to
Bodhi are satisfied, as well as those contained in the
Four Noble Truths, the Twelve Nidanas and in the
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Right Contemplation of the Middle Way, whereby
Nirvana can be attained.
Purification
If a meditator knows, through Prajna, that all Dharmas
are originally pure, he can acquire the Dhyana of Self-
Nature because he has attained what is known as
Hinayana Nirvana, or Two-Vehicles Nirvana. If a
Bodhisattva can enter the stage of the Iron-Wheel
King, has completed the Ten Grades of Bodhisattva
Faith and continues to practice, he can produce the
following nine kinds of Great Dhyana:
1. Self-Nature Dhyana
2. All Kinds of Dhyana
3. Difficult Dhyana
4. All-Kinds-of-Doors Dhyana
5. Good-Person Dhyana
6. All-Active Dhyana
7. Rid-of-Defilement Dhyana
8. The-Joy-of-This-Life-and-The-Next-Life Dhyana
9. Pure-and-Clean Dhyana (Since a Bodhisattva
depends on this kind of Dhyana, he can attain
The Fruit-of-Great-Bodhi Nirvana)
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In Sudden Enlightenment, the nature of mind is real-
ized as being originally pure. Dharmas are neither
grasped at nor rejected; there is neither being nor non-
being; there is neither birth nor death; there is neither
this nor that; and there is neither void nor existence,
Then, there is the knowing afforded by the awareness
of non-duality, where nothing is grasped, there being
neither someone to grasp nor anything to grasp at. If
Original Substance is known, there is freedom from
attachment to the objects of the sense organs. Once
there is no longer any illusion of the existence of a
permanent self, there are no longer any encumbrances.
There is no grasping at the void and no holding to
stillness; there is simply whatever is, without defining
or choosing. Short of this, there might still be a some-
what encumbered level of awareness where there is a
recognition of still being in the midst of causes and
conditions, without attachment; but it is to be under-
stood that even this recognition is a kind of grasping.
The Sastra of Entering The Tao of Sudden Enlight-
enment, by Ch an Master Hui Hai of the T ang Dy-
nasty, asks what method should be used to understand
Original Dharma. The reply is that one need only to
practice dhyana. Referring to The Sutra of the Ch an
Door, one reads that if you seek the wisdom of the
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Buddha, you need Ch an-Ting; for without it, you will
have a great abundance of false thoughts and will be in
danger of destroying your good roots. To understand
this more clearly, Ch an-Ting is defined as follows:
When there are no false thoughts, that is Ch an; and to
see one s Original Nature is Ting. Original Nature is
also known as Non-Birth, or Unborn Mind, where
there is no longer any one to be moved by the eight
winds of gain, loss, defamation, fame, praise, ridicule,
sorrow and joy. Thus, even if one is worldly but attains
Ting, he already approaches being a Buddha.
Elsewhere it is written that if you are free of attach-
ment and if you no longer think of things (dharmas)
during meditation nor discriminate between good and
evil, then past things are past. If you do not think of
them, the mind of the past vanishes. This is called no
past. Furthermore, the future has not yet arrived; and
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