The Meaning of Looking at the Self with Hatred

"The root of life and death is the discriminating mind." Mud and Water by Bassui

"Looking at one's self is as intense as hatred for the enemy. What is the meaning of this?" When you awaken to your true nature, wrote the Zen master Bassui, you cut off the wheel of reincarnation. Awakening to your many virtues, you bring benefit to the lives of others also. Bassui wrote, "In the self, there is true and false. The discriminating mind is false; the Buddha-nature is true. Beginning practitioners mistakenly take things like the [ability to] emit light and perform miracles which are really the roots of ignorance, being activities of the mind, for the clear expression of Buddha nature." He further noted that as long as students of the Way "haven't eradicated their discriminating minds, all their activities and words are the deeds of karmic consciousness"; they are not in accord with the Way.

"If, he wrote,'you clearly eliminate the drunken mind, drunken rages will instantly stop, and mind and body will be calm and quiet. If you want to recover completely from your illness, then stay free when sitting, lying down or doing walking meditation. And don't rely on another's power. Just stop your wandering, look penetratingly into your inherent nature and concentrating your spiritual energy, sit in
Zazen ... then you will for the first time, attain liberation." He further explains that if one only seeks to stop his movement, to contain his spiritual energy, then his consciousness will be that of one searching after a robber and treating him like a child. That, Bassui concludes is why one must regard the self with the fresh hatred of viewing an enemy. Only then will you succeed.

Bassui: The Sole Practice of Zen

Zen Master Bassui writes in the Book, Mud and Water, "clearly seeing into one's nature is called practice. And the seat that puts an end to analytic thoughts is called zazen...There is no gate through which demons and heretics can secretly enter... On perceiving that the five skandas are empty, one is saved from all kinds of pain and misfortune... If, while practicing, you have thoughts of gain... this kind of reason will immediately create demons inside of you, attracting demons from outside, and causing chaos within, like a stinking carcass attracts blowflies... You will very quickly lose sight of the seeds of the right karma."