“The eighth-century Chinese Zen teacher Mazu Daoyi once said: 'All of you should realize that your own mind is Buddha. This mind is Buddha’s mind. You who seek the truth should realize there is nothing to seek. There is no Buddha but mind; no mind but Buddha.'
“Mazu’s point is simple. He’s saying that whatever you seek to achieve in meditation is already right here before your eyes. As soon as you use words like 'Buddha' or 'enlightenment' or 'truth,' you tend to imagine something far away from the situation you find yourself in now. Mazu tells us that these things are found only in the very midst of what it means to be human in this moment. They are not located anywhere else. Nor, he is saying, are they hidden somewhere in another dimension of your psyche. They are right here in the messiness, confusion, darkness, and anxiety of the very mind that is reading these words.
“And, I might add, the body of the Buddha is nothing but the very body that sits on your cushion, its heart beating, its lungs drawing and exhaling each breath, its knees aching from sitting cross-legged. Stop making a difference between who you think you are and who you think the Buddha is.”
