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Buddhist Comments by John Blofeld in Bodhisattva of Compassion:

            You must realize that our minds are not separate from Mind as Lao Tzu puts it.  There is no going from the one to the other, only a transmutation of your mode of perception.

Two cannot exist in the great Mind.  When a single bee sucks honey, all beings in the universe suck honey; when a worm is crushed, all beings in those universes are crushed. 

“What can a well-frog know of the sky’s immensity?” – means can a finite mind presume to grasp the infinite?  I had some contempt for parsons and school masters who spoke as though perfectly familiar with God’s will.

Everything is created from mind alone.  How can the false become true just by believing it?  Any picture of what lies beyond the range of conceptual thought is bound to be too poor an approximation to have intrinsic worth; therefore, all ways of picturing the path and goal are of value only as convenient stand-ins for use until direct intuitive perception is attained.

Reciting mantras lead the mind to an exalted level beyond conceptual thought where one is occupied with meaning.

“To the frogs in a temple pool the lotus-stems are tall; To the Gods of Mount Everest an elephant is small.”

When awareness of both existence and non-existence vanishes Nirvana supervenes.

Bodhisattvas relying on Highest Wisdom, of knowing there is no wisdom, no attainment, are free from hindrances of mind.

When understanding dawns, you will know that ordinary teachings, no matter how exalted, must be laid aside, for Nirvana – that pure state beyond being and non-being – be inaccessible to those who cling to differentiated concepts, however holy.

The concluding words of the Heart Sutra – Therefore utter this mantra of Highest Wisdom thus – Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svanha.  (Gone, gone, gone beyond, wholly gone beyond!  Enlightenment!  Svaha!)  Note:  uttering means living.

Ta Hai laughed delightedly and asked, “Why you care about logical, not logical?  Truth have plenty faces.  As you see things, so things are.  As you expect things, so things come.  Why?  Because your mind make them so.  You know very well that – form is void and void is form; form not differ from void, void not differ from form.  Then why you worry about these nonsense things?  Appearances are all in mind.  Why you not understand?  Outside mind – nothing!  Only mind is real, but now you try to put front door and back door on it.  Self?  Other?  Inside?  Outside?  How can be?  People look for enlightenment in different places.  Never can be!  Because whole universe live inside your bony skull.  Nowhere else at all.  Amitabha Buddha in your skull.  Kuan Yin in your skull.  What difference?  Two thoughts; one Source.  You seek compassion in mind, soon you find.  Tell everybody must use self-power, not other power.”

Look at this blackwood desk.  Is it real, do you think?  How about, say, justice?  Though you cannot hurt your hand by banging it against justice, you do agree it is real.  But why is it real?  Because mind conceives it.  Whatever the mind conceives thereby achieves reality.

What is needed is to direct one’s attention to the present - thinking:  This is how things are; what is to be done about them?  It is taught that reality has two aspects – the realms of void and form – but that due to obscurations arising from primordial ignorance and from evil karma accumulated in past lives, we fail to see that nothing can exist independently of everything else, that all entities are transient, mutable, unsatisfying and lacking in own-being.  It is the illusion of possessing an ego that leads to such obscurations as passion, lust and inordinate desire.

When entities vanish, nothing is lost, for they had no ultimate existence in the first place.

The seemingly startling departure from logic is somewhat less puzzling if one accepts that all entities are mental creations, none ultimately more or less real than any other.

The whole Mahayana Canon contains no greater wisdom than the wisdom of letting go.  This is also called dana, giving.

You sentient beings who seek deliverance, why do you not – let go?  When sad, let go of the cause of sadness.  When wrathful, let go of the occasion of wrath.  When covetous let go of the object of desire.  From moment to moment, be free of self.  Where no self is, there can be no sorrow, no desire; no “I” to weep, no “I” to lust, no “being” to die or be reborn.  The winds of circumstance blow across emptiness.

Sad, let fall the cause of woe; win all by simply letting go.

If you desire to know the Bodhisattva, meditate.  Without meditation, studying the Buddha’s teaching is like learning sword play without so much as a stick in your hand.

Get rid of complacency about progress in meditation.

The one way to reach truth is to abandon discursive argument and approach it yogically, that is to say by cultivating direct perception.

The purpose of the Zen koans is to stretch the mind beyond the breaking point so that “ordinary” consciousness gives way to “extraordinary” consciousness.

The Zen koans are intended to boggle the mind – the purpose is to exhaust the mind to the point where it is jerked into a new dimension.

Cleaving to the sacred name results smoothly and easily in one-pointedness of mind – the very state which is sought by all eight schools of Buddhism, to say nothing of Taoists, Hindus, and others.

Asian Buddhists have always understood, different kinds of people need to make widely different approaches to the same truth.  This is possible because one is not dealing with understanding, but with practice.

Be aware of the harm done by definitions that demean and annihilate the more subtle kinds of concepts.  Discourage questions about what can be properly understood only when direct perception is attained.

Where words are bound to mislead, silence is best.

The effect of erasing extraneous thoughts for such long periods is highly beneficial.  Vast accumulations of ego-centered thinking, petty cares and real anxieties are obliterated.

Silence is best, silence and tranquillity of mind.

Beings should choose their own embodiments of divinity.  It is not enough to reject the absurd conceptions foisted on us as children.  They must be replaced with something able to pour forth inspiration glowing and sparkling like the magical elixir sought by Taoist sages, like the nectar of immortality that flows from Kuan Yin’s vase!  We must cease unctuously exposing children to boring sermons, to affirmations of belief in which we have little or no faith ourselves.

Our children must be saved from tasting the bitter fruits of cynical unbelief.  How?  We must build upon their natural sense of awe and reverence, their belief in spirits, gods and fairies.  We must tell them frankly that, since few  can behold and none describe reality – a vast and glorious immensity immeasurably further than the furthest stars and nearer than the eyebrows to the eyes – they must choose for it symbols lovely, glowing, joyous as their minds can make them.