Ummon's Other Sickness

Ummon also taught that the Dharma-body also has two kinds of sickness.  One is when we manage to reach the Dharma-body, but still clinging to our sense of self, we abide at the margins of the Dharma-body. The other is that even if we can pass through, we cannot let go of having passed through.  Ummon encouraged us to  examine this state carefully, thinking "What inadequacy can there still be?," as this too is sickness.

The Dharma-body is without any characteristic, without any boundary; it reaches everywhere. It has no name and no form. But as long as we still cling to our sense of self, as long as we regard the Dharma-body as our Dharma-body, the sense of self still remains.   To use an eloquent example described by Sensei Geoffrey Shugen Arnold of Daido Loori's Mountains and Rivers Order, before it was like one drop of water within the great ocean drawing a circle around itself and declaring, “This is me. Everything else is not me.” But after it's like the line was erased and the one drop of water now declares "The great ocean is me."  This is still a sickness, as the clinging mind has merely altered its definition of itself, but still has not let go of itself.

But even if self drops away and we abide in the Dharma-body, Ummon encourages us to keep looking deeper, to find the dust within the dust within the dust, and to sweep even that away. Practice does not end at awakening and nothing is achieved.  We merely continue to look deeper and deeper for traces of the self, for who it is that's breathing and inquiring, and of what can still be let go.

A monk once asked Joshu, "I have nothing. How's that?"

Joshu replied, "Throw it away."
The monk then asked, "How can I throw away nothing?"
Joshu answered, "Carry it with you then."