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ZEN BUDDHISM his lower self that he has reached the final goal, he does not linger there. “To return to the Origin, to be back at the Source
already a false step this! Far better it is to stay at home; ... ... he comes out into the market-place; Daubed with mud and ashes, how broadly he smiles! There is no need for the miraculous power of the gods For he touches, and lo! the dead trees come into full
bloom.":1 Hence the exciting statement in that famous Chinese classic, The Secret of the Golden Flower,
"The holy science takes as a beginning the knowledge of where to stop, and as an end, stopping at the highest good. Its beginning is beyond polarity and it empties again beyond polarity."*2
The concentration upon inner values and processes was soon to pervade all Schools of the Mahayana. As the sixth Chinese Patriarch of Zen in the seventh century taught,
“Our mind should stand aloof from circumstances and on no account should we allow them to influence the function of our mind." And again, as illustrating this absolute idealism:
"You should know that so far as Buddha-nature is concerned, there is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realises it, while the other is ignorant of it." 1 Essays in Zen Buddhism, I, 365-66. 2 P. 66.
