Letting Delusion Rest
The madness needed no cause to begin, and none to end. It was never anything but attention, misplaced.
Consider Yajñadatta in that city — was there truly some cause for him to grow terrified that he’d lost his head, and run off in a panic? When his madness suddenly ceased, his head was not gained from outside. And even before it ceased, had he actually lost anything at all?
Pūrṇa, the nature of delusion is just the same — on what cause could it be said to exist? If you simply stop following the three kinds of continuity — of the world, of karmic consequence, of sentient beings — then, as these three conditions are severed, the three causes cease to arise; and within your own mind, Yajñadatta’s madness will naturally come to rest.
To rest is itself bodhi. This supreme, pure, luminous mind originally pervades the whole Dharma-realm; it is not something received from another. Why, then, rely on painstaking effort to cultivate and realize it?
The moment you become aware of a delusive thought, you see that clinging to it is nothing but a calamity — one that harms you, life after life. So you stop chasing it. You stop grasping it. You let delusive thought and attachment die out completely, right where they stand.
Don’t feed them. Don’t nourish them. Don’t satisfy them.
And everything they produce for you is only more calamity.
How wondrous! How wondrous! How is it that these beings, though endowed with the Tathāgata’s wisdom, remain foolish and confused, neither knowing it nor seeing it? I shall teach them the noble path, so that they may forever leave behind delusive thought and attachment, and come to see for themselves, within their own being, the Tathāgata’s vast wisdom — no different from the Buddha’s own.
This is the whole of the teaching: if we stop chasing scattered thought, stop clinging to it, and instead become aware that delusive thinking and attachment are a bottomless pit — this alone can ease the afflictions of modern life: worry, depression, anxiety. And it does more than that. It can unfold the Buddha’s own complete wisdom — because we already, inherently, possess it. We are only obstructed by the three hindrances.
Not by fighting the thought.
Not by feeding it, either.
Just by seeing it clearly enough
that it has nothing left to stand on.