To be bigoted & argue with others, is to subject one's essence of mind to the bitterness of mundane existence.
Interpretation
Bigotry can poison the mind and lead to a bitter life.
Huineng suggests that engaging in bigotry and arguments with others not only harms relationships but also diminishes the quality of one's own thoughts and existence. It implies that such negativity traps a person in a mundane and unfulfilling life, inhibiting personal growth and understanding.
In practice
During a lecture on tolerance, the speaker might quote Huineng to emphasize the importance of open-mindedness.
Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon's location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?
When our mind works freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to 'come' or to 'go', we attain Samadhi of Prajna, or liberation. Such a state is called the function of 'thoughtlessness'. But to refrain from thinking of anything, so that all thoughts are suppressed, is to be Dharma-ridden, and this is an erroneous view.
Words are not truth. Truth is like the moon, and words are like my finger. I can point to the moon with my finger, but my finger is not the moon. Do you need my finger to see the moon?
Sit all together in meditation. Become peacefully calm and quiet, without motion, without stillness, without birth, without destruction, without coming or going, with no judgments of right or wrong, neither staying nor going. This, then, is the Great Way.
To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind. _x000D_ _x000D_ The reason why we are perturbed is because we allow ourselves to be carried away by the circumstances we are in. Those who are able to keep their mind unperturbed, irrespective of circumstances, have attained Inner Peace.
There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.
It's ironic that those who till the soil, cultivate and harvest the fruits, vegetables, and other foods that fill your tables with abundance have nothing left for themselves.
All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
When a man's home is born out of his heart and developed through his labor and perfected through his sense of beauty, it is the very cornerstone of life.
Your house is your larger body.
I would by all means have men beware, lest Γsop's pretty fable of the fly that sate [sic] on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the heaven, raises new heavens and new spheres and circles.
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