Body and mind are not separate in buddha dharma. This being so, they are also called body-mind.
With the body and mind that migrate through birth and death, you should arouse the aspiration for enlightenment to awaken others first. Even if you spare your body and mind from the way of arousing the aspiration for enlightenment in the course of birth, aging, sickness, and death, you cannot in the end keep them as your own possessions.
Do you attain the way with the mind or the body?
Those in the house of the scriptural schools say, “You attain the way with the body, because body and mind are one.” But they are not clear about how the body directly attains the way.
Now, in our house [of Zen practice], body and mind together attain the way. As long as you try to figure out buddha dharma with mind, you can never attain it even for myriad eons or thousands of lifetimes. It is attained by letting go of the mind and abandoning views and interpretations. To see form and clarify the mind, to hear sound and come to realization, is attainment of the way with the body.
Thus, when you practice just sitting and continuously give up all thoughts and views, the way becomes more and more intimate. So attaining the way means attaining it completely with the whole body. With this awareness you should sit wholeheartedly.
Thusness is the body and mind right now. Arouse the aspiration with this body and mind. Do not avoid stepping on water and stepping on stones. To take up just one blade of grass and create a sixteen-foot golden body, or to take up a particle of dust and build a stupa shrine of an ancient buddha, is arousing of the aspiration for enlightenment. It is to see buddha and hear buddha. It is to see dharma and hear dharma. It is to become buddha and practice buddha.
Since buddha ancestors are body and mind as one, one phrase or two are the buddha ancestors’ warm body-mind. Their body-mind comes forth and realizes your body-mind. At the very moment of realization, this realization comes forth and realizes your body-mind. This life realizes the life of many lifetimes. By becoming a buddha and becoming an ancestor, you go beyond buddha and go beyond ancestor.
For the time being let us say there are two approaches to studying the buddha way: to study with mind and to study with body.
To study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. The body comes forth from the study of the way. Everything that comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body.
To study with mind means to study with various aspects of mind, such as consciousness, emotion, and intellect. After resonating with the way and arousing the aspiration for enlightenment, take refuge in the great way of buddha ancestors and devote yourself to the practice of way-seeking mind. Even if you have not yet aroused the way-seeking mind, follow the examples of buddha ancestors who did arouse the way-seeking mind in former times.
Moment by moment a thought appears and disappears without abiding. Moment by moment a body appears and disappears without abiding. Yet the power of practice always matures.
Cleansing body and mind, spreading scented oil on the body after removing dirt, is a primary buddha dharma. To wear fresh clothes is a dharma of purification. By washing away dirt and spreading scented oil on the body, you become clean inside and outside. When you are clean inside and outside, your body, mind, and environs are all clean.
In zazen you invariably drop away body and mind, cut through fragmented concepts and thoughts from the past, and realize essential buddha dharma. You cultivate buddha activity at innumerable practice places of buddha tathagatas everywhere, provide the opportunity for everyone to engage in ongoing buddhahood, and vigorously uplift the dharma of going beyond buddha.
At the very moment of sitting, what is sitting? Is it an acrobat’s graceful somersault or the rapid darting of a fish? Is it thinking or not thinking? Is it doing or not doing? Is it sitting within sitting? Is it sitting within body-mind? Is it sitting letting go of sitting within sitting, or letting go of sitting within body-mind? Investigate this in every possible way. Sit in the body’s meditation posture. Sit in the mind’s meditation posture. Sit in the meditation posture of letting go of body-mind.