Zen Is a Method for Opening the Self-Nature
Zen is a method for opening the self-nature. The practice of the Buddha-dharma exists for one purpose alone: to clarify the mind and see into one's own nature.
The nature seen in that seeing is the self-nature itself, and the mind that is clarified is the very awareness from which the self-nature arises. To clarify the mind and see one's nature is the only true awakening. If you have not yet seen your nature, then every teaching you follow remains an expedient means. If you have seen your nature, then whatever you practice is itself the ultimate truth. This is why true Zen speaks of one thing only: seeing one's nature.
Seeing Your Nature Is Awakening; Seeing Your Nature Is Liberation
True Zen exists solely for the sake of seeing one's nature. Seeing one's nature is awakening. Seeing one's nature is liberation.
Any teaching that does not take seeing one's nature as its essential meaning is an outside path. Whatever attainment such a practice produces is merely a worldly appearance — the ingenuity of worldly intelligence — and never the gate to the liberation of the self-nature.
The Function of Practice: Clearing Away Every Obstruction
The essential point of true Zen is to awaken the self-nature. The function of practice is likewise to remove every interference and clear away every obscuration, so that body and mind become pure and clean. Only then can your own wondrous nature reveal itself — giving rise to wondrous being, manifesting the ten thousand dharmas, illuminating the true reality of the dharma-realm, and giving birth to prajna-paramita, the perfection of wisdom.
