THE SIX TECHNIQUES OF THE GOLDEN ERA

Remember that these methods support the Chan Contemplations and are used by a Master for those in residence every day in order to destroy the power of Identity and Duality. These practices in this age may be used as precursors to the Chan Contemplations, if you are fortunate enough to have a genuine Master.

You can see after understanding these methods why practice away from the master is so much more difficult and requires constant vigilance and attention.

The more you contemplate on these and APPLY them every moment of the working day then the closer and more easily you will advance upon the path.

          The Method of Yunmen  

The method uses words as projectiles which pierce the target, violently colliding with the adept's consciousness. These hurled words attempt to violate the mute consciousness of the adepts sleeping in a disconcerting pseudo-spiritual Identity satisfaction.  

The personal experience discards all references which are either religious, pseudo-spiritual or philosophical and thus are perched on the last point which can generate the instantaneous revelation of TRUE BEING.     

The fall of a torrent, the trajectory of the stars, the style of a potter, reflect the truth without reference to an abstract didactic symbolism.

This method shows the practice to be a direct confrontation with the Identity which observes. The method of using words as projectiles is not simply as a barrage of abuse whenever the Aversive and dominating identity or temperament is perceived, but a careful administration of these projectiles at precisely the correct moment during the continual contemplation of the adept while either sitting in meditation or working with a conditioned mind.

This is the path for those with Aversion Dominance

(This becomes Natural Intelligence when liberation occurs).

The Method of Linji Yixuan (Lin-chi)  

The Linji method is directly aimed at the target, attempting to elicit concrete experiences, mercilessly crushing theoretical replies and abstractions which are mind-controlled and directed.

Diverse instruments are used such as yells, coarse sounds, noises, striking with a staff or with the traditional fly disperser. These are designed, like Yunmen's attacks, to disrupt conscious thought. However, Identity is not the target here but the Cognitive use of words themselves, which are known to be empty.

This idea in most moments in which the koan or text must be constantly present is to draw out like forceps this non-cognitive truth which continually escapes the student.

The method, like that of Yunmen, has as its object the cerebral awakening which is like disrobing the student of his or her cognitive mantle of words, in order to reveal the true nature of the human creature, which is the sum of his experiences.

The method also strikes away the student's false idea of what Vacuity and Awakening is, as they are within his mind just word-concepts.

The student must begin to see all phenomena in a different manner in accord with the Natural Law and not allow the disorientation of the social training and importance of words which prevails in Samsara. Whatever he encounters within consciousness which is believed to be real is to be destroyed.

          This is the path for those with a dominant Acquisition temperament who have developed a social mask of acceptable and functional Aversion

called or Superiority or Ambition.

It is also for those with a dominant Aversive temperament with a socially accepted mask of Acquisition.

(When liberated they are persons with excellent Natural Discrimination).

      The Method of the Caodong Zong 

The three contemplations upon Vacuity are respectively upon the Vacuity of Identity, the Vacuity of Words and conscious thought, and finally the Vacuity of all Phenomena.

THREE BEING THE AWARENESS OF AWARENESS 

Awareness of (sensory) Awareness strikes at the right hemisphere experience of the operation of the senses without any reference to the sense data.

The Method of Zongmi

Huayan practice has as its principal point the relation between phenomena and not between phenomena and the absolute. Thus, as essence is the pure signal of the perfect running of the six senses without content, then ideas relative to anything absolute are unnecessary.

It then is a subtle experience of the TOTAL experience of "sensing".

Everything in the universe arises from itself, or rather from the irritation it presents upon the sense doors, and these signals do not present any possibility of duality. This unity is pluralistic, for the multiple senses are expressed in the one total sensed state.

All  things, animate and inanimate, are expressions of the mind and are unified when contemplative understanding is established.

In the whole there are six characteristics when cognitively examined. They are the universal, the specific, the homogenous, the transparent, composition, and decomposition.

All phenomena are in perfect harmony as one.

Zongmi's method is perhaps the easiest to understand but one of the most difficult to accomplish because it uses the last conceptualization of the cognitive experience of awareness together with the one word "awareness".

Thus the meditation is in alliance with that of Caodong in being the perfect meditation on Awareness as Caodong is on Emptiness.

        A path for those with Acquisitiveness and a Mask of Confusion (Natural Discrimination when liberated).

          A path for those with Confusion and a Mask of Acquisitiveness (Natural Sensitivity when liberated).

In this method the adept does not torture the consciousness to know the significance of the Dharma. The adequate formula for the contemplation does not depend upon comprehension, for only the knowledge of the operation of the senses is the base.

In daily life one must maintain the unity of one's intention and not listen with thoughts; listen with the spirit of Shén. The function of sound is to be limited just to the sound itself and nothing more, the thoughts are limited to form the experience of word-images of ideas related to the last conceptualization.

This is not just a mindfulness, for it carries mindfulness one step further to a consciousness of the experiences of sensing.

Remember that Shén (the Mother principle) is an emptiness that responds to all phenomena.

The Dharma resides in this Emptiness and is the "fasting" of thought, so all sensory phenomena are just experiences. Yet those experiences are observed although that observing requires no observer, except as a valid illusion.

When thought as the last conceptualization falls away in this contemplation, only the "truth of sensing with observing happening without content" is all that is retained.

    A path for those with Aversion and a Mask of Confusion (Natural Intelligence when liberated).

    A path for those with Confusion and a Mask of Aversion (Natural Sensitivity when liberated).