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118. Ordinary Mind is The Way

Master Baso famously said, “Mind is Buddha.” He also said, ” Ordinary mind is the way.”

These remarks have been spectacularly misinterpreted. Otherwise sensible people claim he is saying that the nature of reality is mental, or that the self is Buddha, or similar nonsense.

By ‘ordinary mind’ he didn’t mean the karmic mind, the creator of dualities, the storybook of the self. By ‘ordinary’ he meant what is immediately available to us, if we cease our habitual dualistic behaviour.

This ‘ordinary’ mind is like a fragment of sky, it extends everywhere.

The issue is not whether you are illuminated, or not illuminated.

Everything is illuminated.