The center is everwhere

According to what has been said, we can encompass all the vast world-systems, though numberless as grains of sand, with our One Mind. Then, why talk of "inside" and "outside"? Honey having the invariable characteristic of sweetness, it follows that all honey is sweet. To speak of this honey as sweet and that honey as bitter would be nonsensical! How could it be so? Hence we say that the Void has no inside and outside. There is only the spontaneously existing Bhutatathata [Absolute]. And, for this same reason, we say it has no center. There is only the spontaneously existing Bhutatathata.

Thus, sentient beings are the Buddha. The Buddha is one with them. Both consist entirely of the one "substance." The phenomenal universe and Nirvana, activity, and motionless placidity - all are of the one "substance."

- Huang Po

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

- The Book of the Way

The one Mind, like a mirror, reflects everything brightly, and knows no limitations;
It pervades the entire universe in even its minutest crevices.
These worlds and all its contents, multitudinous in form, are reflected in the one Mind,
Which, shining like a perfect gem, has no 'outer' or 'inner'.

- Yung-chia Ta-shih

ascend

April 21st, 1996