To See God, To See the Buddha

All religions are by nature traditions based on words and ideas. In this respect, spirituality recognised in religion is spirituality mediated by words and concepts. However, there is also a spirituality that consciously rejects words or ideas: "seeing spirituality", as opposed to thinking (or believing) spirituality. This book sets out to explore and elucidate this seeing spirituality. The Introduction presents a distinction between the thinking mind and the seeing mind, exploring seeing spirituality first in Meister Eckhart's teaching of "empty soul", in the Mahayana teaching of sunyata (emptiness) as presented in the Diamond Sutra and Nagarjuna's Verses on the Middle Way, and, finally, in the Zen master Huang Bo's Transmission of Mind. The focus throughout is on the presentation and explanation of seeing spirituality as immediate awareness of the present free of all concepts. Discussion centres around specific texts, focusing on the working of the seeing mind, rather than through abstract or metaphysical explanation. The author's elucidation of sunyata in terms of the distinction between the thinking mind and the seeing mind, and likewise his juxtaposition of Meister Eckhart and Huang Bo -- far apart in their traditions, as they are in time and space -- is unique and a major contribution to religious and philosophical scholarship. In addition, the work contains a new translation of major sections of Huang Bo's Dharma talks, the first in English since 1958.