Question
To Ghislain's question of April 1, 2004, wondering whether human thought might be a barrier against our true nature, you answer: To the extent that it is used without control, human thought can become a barrier against our true nature. Nonthinking is the origin of the thought of the Buddhas...
I will pass quickly over the fact that imagining oneself outside one's own nature means considering that it is the nature of someone other than me, a human, that is acting... That of another animal, or an extraterrestrial, no doubt... Yet, Master, depending on how I define human nature, a thought is either "nature" or an obstacle to what is "nature," in that if I think of a human being as "this," I cannot think of them "otherwise." What is "other" is therefore an "obstacle" to my thought about human nature. Every thought about human nature is nature to the person holding it, and thus a barrier against any other definition of human nature. There is no thought that is not a thought fighting what lies outside nature. Put differently, every thought is at the same time everything that is not itself and that it condemns. Put differently again, every thought exists to condemn what it is not; that is its very reason for existing. Apart from the nonthinking that is the origin of the thought of the Buddhas, is there anything worthwhile? Is there REALLY anything worthwhile?
machin
Answer from Master Kosen
Human thought is more complex than that, for the simple reason that there are two cerebral hemispheres separated by a corpus callosum, and these two hemispheres apprehend reality in completely different ways.
Not to mention that there is also a consciousness of the midbrain and a tremendous store of information in the reptilian brain. No, no, I am not forgetting consciousness and the opening of the heart, nor placing my attention in the hara. For that very reason, it is not so easy to unite nature and reason into a harmonious whole. Transcending such complexity through practice is called awakening.
Kosen