Soto Zen master, Dogen Zenji, wrote this primer of Zen instruction around 1242 a.d.
Fukanzazengi
Translated by Norman Wadell & Masao Abe
“The Way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization?
The Dharma-vehicle is utterly free and un-trammeled. What need is there for our concentrated effort?
Indeed, the Dharmakaya is far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean?
It is never apart from you right where you are. What use is there going off here and there to practice?”
Shen-hui was the champion of Zen’s Sixth Patriarch, Huineng’s “Sudden Enlightenment” teaching tradition. This was the lineage that was transmitted to me by my teacher Yen Wai Shi, while I was in China in 1978. The teaching seems identical to earliest Dzogchen tradition called “Semde”.
Shen-hui:
“Do not practice mindfulness of the Buddha, do not grasp the mind, do not view the mind, do not measure the mind, do not meditate, do not contemplate, and do not interfere with the mind. Just let it flow. Do not make it go and do not make it stay. Alone in a pure and ultimate location as the absolute, the mind will be naturally bright and pure.”
An example:
Look at a coffee cup. It is already a coffee cup. It requires no further help or enhancements to be what it already is. Our Buddha Mind is the same; it is already perfect and requires no additional “perfecting”. It is the Absolute and therefore never changes. It is the only quality of consciousness that is “aware” and “knowing” by default. That quality of sentience is like empty, aware space. All that’s required is being what you already are; not a body, not an individual soul, not any identity at all, just “aware knowingness” that has no location in space or time. It’s the space-like context, all the rest is merely ever-changing content.
Longchenpa clarifies the Dzogchen view:
"Because Awareness (Rigpa) has no finite essence, and because suchness and deliberate activity are mutually exclusive, and because Awareness is already timelessly and spontaneously present, nothing need be done concerning levels of realization on which to train, spiritual paths to traverse, mandalas to visualize, empowerments to be bestowed, paths to cultivate in meditation, samaya to uphold, enlightened activities to accomplish, and so forth. This is because there is no need to accomplish anew what is already timelessly and spontaneously accomplished. If there were such need, it would be inappropriate to use the conventional designation "spontaneously present and uncompounded." And it would follow that dharmakaya was subject to destruction, because it would be compounded, and this because it would be created by causes and conditions." (practices etc.) Longchenpa, Choying Dzod, A Treasure Trove of Scriptural Transmission, page 120, first paragraph. Padma Publications.
Page 190: first main paragraph:
Longchenpa writes: "Since all phenomena are timelessly free, nothing need be done to free them anew through realization."
Next paragraph: "Even the thought that freedom comes about through “direct introduction “is deluded. One strives to free this essence from whatever binds it, but nothing need be done to free it, for unobstructed Awareness, which has never existed as anything whatsoever, does not entail any duality of something to be realized and someone to realize it. There is equalness because nothing is improved by realization or worsened by it's absence, so there is no need for any adventitious realization. And because there never has existed anything to realize- for the ultimate nature of phenomena is beyond ordinary consciousness- to speak of realization on even the relative level is nothing but deluded. What can be shown at this point is the transcendence of view and meditation, in which nothing need be done regarding realization, nothing need be directly introduced, and no state of meditation need be cultivated. So there is the expression 'it is irrelevant whether or not one has realization'."
Page 191: middle paragraph
"In this case what makes perfect sense in the Ati approach is the superior realization whereby one directly experiences the unobstructed state in it's nakedness, without relying on anything whatsoever. Since one does not experience separation from the essence of Awareness even for an instant, to say that is realized or perceived is merely to use a conventional expression."
Longchenpa wrote in his Choying Dzod:
"There is only awareness, pure in being free of adventitious distortions; there is no essence of buddhahood other than this Mind itself; nothing to seek through causes or conditions, effort or achievement, because the term "buddhahood" is being used merely to describe pure awareness." (P. 84)
Sri Ramana Maharshi:
"You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it."
Longchenpa:
"Awareness abides as the aspect which is aware under any and all circumstances, and so occurs naturally, without transition or change."