Are senses a gateway to nondual awakening?

Q.  Hi Gary,

I follow your blog and I really enjoy it. 

I've been thinking...about the direct inquiry path and good ways to go about it... I've had the realisation that there is no solid entity that we can call a self...What if you...divide all...experience into the different existing senses...?

...divide reality into whatever senses...you have access to in this moment...sight..., hearing, touch (tactile sensations and also temperature), feeling (sensations associated with emotions as fear, anxiety, anger etc), smelling, tasting and also thoughts.

...to see thoughts as a sense...say to yourself "I'm having the thought X"...thought is an external thing for the self. You have thoughts, you aren't thoughts...see that a thought is not reality... the thoughts "tree", "car", "chair", are all just generalized pointers to the real thing. The thought "tree" is not an actual tree.

...the thought "I"/"Me" etc, it's just a pointer to the self...if the self exists, is it something that you would be able to find here and now, does it exist now?...if you won't find it NOW, it doesn't exist. It can't exist in the future or past, as they are only thoughts in the NOW. The self can exist in the past or the future as a generalized concept, but not as the entity...the so called "self" to whom the thoughts are pointing...

...can you find a self in any of these senses?  "Does a self exist in feeling?"... do you HAVE a feeling?...ARE (you) a feeling?...do this with every sense...if you...have checked everywhere a self could possibly be and...haven't found it anywhere...the only conclusion...is that the concept of self is supervened onto (added onto) the different senses and (what one) has thought the self to be doesn't exist...the only thing that one surely can know are the senses.

Best regards,

Rinzai Zen master Bassui
14th century Japan

G.  Senses are one of the most powerful approaches to nondual awakening.

One of the great classics of nondual inquiry, is Bassui Tokusho's "Dharma Talk on One Mind". Bassui, a Rinzai Zen master, lived in Japan from 1327 to 1387.  He had been trained by Soto, Rinzai and Ch'an masters.  He was "unhappy with the state of Zen practice in Japan during this time, so he set out in life with the mission of revitalizing it.  The problems he saw were two sides of the same coin.  That is, he saw too much attachment by some monks and masters to ritual and dogma, as well as attachment by some monks and masters to freedom and informality."

When Bassui was an infant, he was abandoned by his mother in a field as she had a dream in which she saw her child would be born a "demon".  A servant of the family retrieved and raised him.  However, there was at this time in Japan the belief that if a child was born a demon, if it was abandoned when it was born, that would dispel the evil spirits.  The mother could well have expected that her servant would find the baby and raise it (demon-free).

Bassui's "Dharma Talk on One Mind", which i would recommend folk take a few minutes to read, was reproduced in full in Dai Bosatsu Zendo's (where i did sesshins) "Sutra Book".  The DBZ sutra book was only 50 pages thick - Bassuis's dharma talk occupied fully 10% of the sutra book, so it was "obviously" important.  

Toni Packer
Springwater

This turned out to be very important for my practices as DBZ was heavily focused on the famous koan "Mu" and all of us were supposed to try to engage it.  "Mu" never "worked" for me, but i had seen Bassui's dharma talk and letters in the Rinzai Zen "bible" of the time, Philip Kapleau's "The Three Pillars of Zen" (pp. 163- 195).  As the Universe would have it, my other Zen teacher, Toni Packer, was in line to be successor of Kapleau's Zen center in Rochester, NY.  So all roads led to Bassui.  (Toni was @ Rochester until she met J. Krishnamurti, left Kapleau's center, and founded her own iconoclastic center in Springwater, NY.) 

When i approached Eido Roshi @ DBZ, and Toni Packer @ Springwater, and asked if i could work on Bassui's approach, both were highly supportive, and remained so; they both ultimately "passed" me.  

Bassui's Dharma Talk on One Mind has many powerful and useful passages:

    a)   "It is better to search your own mind devotedly than to read and recite innumerable sutras and dharana every day for countless years."  

     b)  "What kind of master is it that this very moment sees colors with the eyes and hears voices with the ears, that now raises the hands and moves the feet?  We know these are functions of our mind, but no one know precisely how they are performed.  It may be asserted that behind these actions there is no entity, yet it is obvious they are being performed spontaneously.  

Conversely, it may be maintained that these are the acts of some entity, still the entity is invisible.  If one regards this question as unfathomable, all attempts to reason (out an answer) will cease and one will be at a loss to know what to do.  In this propitious state deepen and deepen the yearning, tirelessly, to the extreme.  

When the profound questioning penetrates to the very bottom, and that bottom is broken open, not the slightest doubt will remain that your own Mind is itself Buddha, the Void-universe.  There will then be no anxiety about life or death, no truth to search for. "

             c)  "My mind, looking into itself, is as formless as empty-space, yet somewhere within sounds are perceived.  'Who is hearing?'  Should you question yourself in this wise with profound absorption, never slackening the intensity of your effort...your long-held conceptions and notions will perish...in the way that every drop of water vanishes from a tub broken open at the bottom, and perfect enlightenment will follow like flowers blooming on withered trees."

             d) "At work, at rest, never stop trying to realize who it is that hears.  Even though your questioning becomes almost unconscious, you won't find the one who hears, and all your efforts will come to naught.  Yet sounds can be heard, so question yourself at an even profounder level."

Ramana Maharshi

If folk have been reading this blog, they will know that "Who hears?" and "Where am I?" were my principal practices.  Ramana Maharshi, my "Satguru"  in 20th century India echoed exactly the same theme with "Who am I?" and many other similar inquiries, that Bassui had in the 14th century in Japan.  Bassui's "Dharma Talk on One Mind" and Ramana's "Who Am I?" were constant companions on my path.

you, the questioner, have through your own insights and pondering, come upon the same approach, in the 21st century.   Pursue it with the same diligence as Ramana Maharshi and Bassui have urged, and you, too, will find what they found.