Meditation is the most effective action spiritual seekers can take to inch up closer to Realization. But where Huang Po, this somewhat obscure Zen teacher comes into it? Firstly, Huang Po may seem little known to those who… didn’t look further a field. In my case, Po’s name appeared for the first time in Dr David R Hawkins’ books; right from the beginning appearing special, with his Level of Consciousness calibrations recording 950 – a level close to that of Avatars. But, it took time to arrive at the moment when the urge to find more about him had to be satisfied. There’s very little about
Huang Po on the Internet, and that’s not only because this remarkable Zen Buddhism teacher lived more than one thousand years ago. His message, being as uncompromising, austere and radical as it is, doesn’t gel well with the contemporary society. In my case however, it does. What attract me particularly are his words on the transmission of mind. And that’s where the meditation practice comes in.

Huang Po

Huang Po gives us few instructions as to how to “meditate,” but he is specific us to what to avoid. If, conceiving of the phenomenal world as illusion, we try to shut it out of the picture; we make a false distinction between the “real” and the “unreal.” Consequently, we must not shut anything out, but try to reach the point where all distinctions are seen to be invalid, where nothing is seen as desirable or undesirable, existing or not existing. At the same time, this does not mean that we should empty our minds, for then we should be no better than dead wood or pieces of stone. And, if we remained in this state, we should not be able to deal with the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives, or even be capable of observing the Zen precept “When hungry, eat.” Instead, we must cultivate dispassion and realize that none of the attractive or unattractive attributes of things and phenomenon have any absolute existence. This, to me, is the essence of Huang Po’s message that from now on, I’ll try to incorporate in my meditation practices.

Said Huang Po: “The Mind is no mind of conceptual thought, and it is completely detached from form…. There are those who, upon hearing this teaching, rid themselves of conceptual thought in a flash…. But whether they transcend conceptual thought by a longer or shorter way, the result is a state of BEING: there is no practicing and no action of realizing. That there is nothing which can be attained is not idle talk; it is the truth.
If you would spend all your time – walking, standing, sitting or lying down – learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your own mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining the goal.” The last sentence is the most revealing – use anything you can, to stop the conceptual activities of your mind and you’ll get THERE… What a wonderful “shortcut” I can use in meditation! Even more remarkably, as any advanced spiritual seeker would have noticed, the essence of his message was evident again in what Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said some one thousand years later: “Deliberate daily exercise in discrimination between the true and the false and renunciation of the false is meditation.”

For those who see mediation as a means to “achieving” or “gaining” something (usually, of the spiritual nature) all Realized Masters have one common message: reject the desire for the fruits of your action. In other words, do not meditate to get something. Meditate for the sake of it, for it gets you as close as you can get, being limited by your personhood, to your natural state. And the time will come, as per Huang Po’s words: “To awaken suddenly to the fact that your own Mind is the Buddha, that there is nothing to be attained or a single action to be performed – this is the Supreme Way.”
Maharaj’s advice was to meditate on the meditator, meaning the Self. Yes, the Mind and the Self are one and the same. That’s where Huang Po and other spiritual masters sing in a resounding unison. Become of the One Mind and join them!
N.B. Next step is to get John Blofeld’s book “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of Mind.”