A reading of the concept as it emerges primarily from the *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Dahui Zonggao* (《大慧普覺禪師語錄》, T1998A), with attention to its place in the broader Chan and Buddhist landscape.
Dahui Zonggao (大慧宗杲, 1089–1163) was one of the most influential Chan masters of the Song dynasty, a key figure in the Linji (臨濟) lineage and the originator of the "kanhua Chan" (看話禪, meditation on the critical phrase) approach. The term 覺心 is not a stock phrase from the earliest sutras—it emerges with full force inside Chan, where 覺 (jué, "awakening") is already loaded with the entire Buddhist inheritance: bodhi in Sanskrit, the awakening that ends the round of suffering. Dahui gives this loaded word a particular Chan inflection: not as a doctrine to believe, not as an experience to chase, but as something already operative that we obscure by clutching at it.
What follows is an attempt to read this concept carefully, in the way the classical text itself reads it.
What This Concept Is About
The Core: 覺心獨朗 — The Awakened Mind Shines Forth Alone
The most condensed formulation in the Dahui record is four characters: 覺心獨朗 (jué xīn dú lǎng) — the awakened mind shines forth alone.
This is not a state to manufacture. It is what is already the case when two things drop away: (1) the object the mind clings to, and (2) the meaning or concept it has fixed on. When neither the thing nor the word for the thing remains as a support, the mind's own luminosity shows itself — hence 獨朗, "alone-shining."
The word 獨 here is not "lonely" or "isolated." It means *without depending on* — 不依附外境與言義. The awakened mind is luminous not because of something outside it, but because that luminosity is its own nature. Like a window that becomes visible only when you stop trying to see through it, 覺心獨朗 is recognized in the release of dependence, not in the accumulation of qualities.
The 覺軒 Metaphor: Releasing Both Name and Meaning Together
Dahui's central illustration is deceptively simple. Consider a 軒 (xuān) — a veranda, a covered walkway. He writes:
若執著於「軒」之名相而以之為義，則既不能了達其義，亦未能真見其軒；必須「軒義俱亡」，不滯於名相與所託之境，方顯「覺心獨朗」，而後「始可與言覺」。 *If you cling to the name "veranda" and take the name itself as the meaning, then you neither understand the meaning nor have you truly seen the veranda; you must let both the veranda and its meaning perish, no longer sticking to name-form or to the object relied upon, only then does the awakened mind shine forth alone, and only then can one begin to speak of awakening.*
This is a precise philosophical move, not a casual metaphor. It says: you cannot use any conceptual handle to grab awakening. Every name you put on it — *clear*, *empty*, *luminous*, *aware*, *peaceful* — becomes a new 軒, a new veranda you are clinging to. Awakening shows itself in the letting-go, not in the accumulating.
The two failures happen together: misunderstanding the meaning and failing to actually see the thing. This is the structure of any ideological capture. The person who has built an elaborate theory of freedom has usually lost the actual freedom the theory points to. The theory is the veranda; the veranda is the theory. Both must be released together.
The Layers of 覺: From Innate Awakening to Great Awakening
Dahui unfolds 覺 across multiple registers, each pointing to a different facet of the same movement. The source text uses six related terms, and it is important not to flatten them:
- 性覺 (xìngjué) — innate awakening. The awakening-nature already present as one's own quality. 性 here is "essence" or "intrinsic nature," not a personality trait. - 本覺 (běnjué) — original awakening. Slightly different in flavor: this awakening is *fundamental*, prior to any specific realization. Used alongside 性覺 in Dahui's phrase "性覺妙明、本覺明妙" — innate awakening is wondrously bright, original awakening is brightly wondrous. - 自覺 (zìjué) — self-awakening. The *active* moment of recognition. The mind turning toward what it already is. This is not an event in time so much as a present function. - 大覺 (dàjué) — great awakening. Self-awakening alone is incomplete. Having realized awakening oneself, one uses that awakening to awaken others — 此覺覺諸群迷, "uses this awakening to awaken the mass of those in delusion." - 覺諸未覺者 — awakening those not yet awakened. The explicit activity of 大覺, taking form in teaching, in pointing, in sometimes-silent presence.
These are not ranks on a ladder but facets of one movement. 性覺 and 本覺 point to the fact that you are already this; 自覺 is the recognition happening now; 大覺 is what naturally arises from that recognition when it is no longer self-enclosed. 覺心 is the *locus* where all of these are operating simultaneously — the mind that is, by nature, luminous, and that is functioning as such.
Dahui explicitly commends his student Yan Ju (彥舉) for understanding that the point is not merely self-awakening but using it to awaken others. Self-awakening without 大覺 is a kind of private possession; awakened mind, when actual, is inherently generous.
You Cannot Cling to Awakening Either
Perhaps the most counterintuitive move in the text. Having pointed to awakened mind, having laid out its features, Dahui immediately warns: don't cling to this either.
Two pieces of evidence:
1. The prose: "夢覺覺非，覺亦非覺" — "Even in a dream of awakening, the awakening is not what you take it to be; awakening itself is not-awakening." Once "awakening" becomes a fixed object in your hand, it has stopped being awakening.
2. The gatha: "覺空空覺空空，覺覺覺空空空亦空" — "Awakening-of-emptiness, empty-awakening, awakening-awakening-awakening, emptiness-emptiness-emptiness, also empty." Each word cancels the next. 覺 and 空 are stacked against each other, then released together.
The teaching is structural, not just rhetorical. The moment you grasp 覺心 as something you have, you have turned it into another 軒. The awakened mind that has become *my* possession is no longer awakened — it is a possession.
This is why Dahui ends with "覺義深遠，言不能盡" — the meaning of awakening is profound and deep; words cannot exhaust it. Even the most careful exposition is a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon. Even *this* careful exposition. Especially *this* one.
The Parallel Terms: 圓覺, 空明, 靈光 — Near but Not Equated
Dahui also uses three other expressions to illuminate the same region:
- 圓覺 (yuánjué) — perfect or complete awakening. Carries resonance with the *Sutra of Perfect Awakening* (《圓覺經》) tradition. - 空明 (kōngmíng) — empty luminosity. Emphasizes that the brightness is inseparable from emptiness; it does not have substance to grasp. - 靈光 (língguāng) — numinous light. The phrase "一點靈光，萬化千變" — "a single point of numinous light, ten thousand transformations" — suggests a single radiant point from which all change arises.
The Dahui record explicitly notes that these three terms are not declared identical to 覺心獨朗. They are described as 相互映照 — "mutually illuminating each other," parallel expressions that all emphasize the bright, lucid quality of awakening, but each carrying its own flavor.
This matters because contemporary readers often flatten such terms into synonyms. The text invites us to let each term do its own work: 覺心 as the operative awakened mind; 圓覺 as the completeness; 空明 as the empty-luminosity aspect; 靈光 as the single radiant source. They are like four fingers pointing at one moon, but the fingers are not the moon, and they are not each other.
The Actual Stance: Not Adding Knowing, Not Killing Delusion
The most practically useful passage in Dahui's treatment runs:
不起妄念，亦不息滅妄心。於妄想境不加了知，於無了知不辯真實。 *Do not generate delusive thoughts, but also do not try to extinguish the delusive mind. When in a state of delusive imagination, do not add knowing to it; when in a state of non-knowing, do not try to discern what is real.*
This is the operational definition of 覺心獨朗 in practice. Let each clause be unfolded:
"不起妄念" — don't generate delusive thoughts. Not "don't have delusive thoughts" (which would imply thoughts arise without cause and you must police them). Rather: don't *add* to them. Don't feed them. Don't elaborate them into stories.
"亦不息滅妄心" — but also don't try to extinguish the delusive mind. This rules out the common move of treating awakening as a battle against the "bad" mind, where you crush thought into submission to get clarity. Such suppression is its own form of delusion — usually louder and more harmful than the original.
"於妄想境不加了知" — when in a state of delusive imagination, don't add knowing to it. This is the subtlest move. Modern mindfulness often says "notice your thought, label it, observe it." That is 了知 — adding knowing. Dahui is one step further back: when caught in a story ("they don't respect me," "I'll fail," "I'm wasting my life"), the awakened mind doesn't add a layer of meta-commentary ("I notice I'm having a thought about failure"). That meta-commentary is just more knowing piled on more knowing — another 義 built on top of the 軒.
"於無了知不辯真實" — when in a state of non-knowing, do not try to discern what is real. When the mind goes blank, diffuse, spaciously quiet, the habitual move is to rush in and certify it: "this is it, this is the real, this is the awakened mind." That certification is itself a new grasping. You have made the spaciousness into an object.
The awakened mind, in actual practice, is the mind that has stopped adding. It neither pushes away delusion nor piles analysis on top of it. This is what 不增益分別 means — not increasing discriminative activity.
The Relationship with 空 (Emptiness) and 妄 (Delusion)
覺 and 空: The gatha's mutual negation shows neither can be a final resting place. To fixate on "everything is empty" is just as much a 軒 as fixing on anything else. 覺心 and 空 are not two things you stack; they are two fingers pointing at one moon. The awakened mind is empty; emptiness is awake; trying to hold either one collapses both.
覺心 and 妄念 (delusive thought): The awakened mind's relationship to delusion is not adversarial. You do not gain awakening by defeating delusion; you do not lose awakening because delusion arises. The awakened mind is what is already operating when you are neither fighting the arising nor commenting on it. The arising and passing of thoughts is not the problem. The construction of the arising-and-passing into a story about yourself is the problem — and that construction is what 不加了知 interrupts.
Walking Through This in Daily Life
Let me walk this concept through several contemporary situations, mapping the classical structure precisely — not turning it into a vague "be present" message.
Scenario 1: The Morning Phone Reach
You wake up. Before you've had a thought, your thumb is already in the app. News, messages, the small dopamine of someone liking your post from three hours ago.
What is happening, in Dahui's terms: the mind has already, without your deciding, attached to an object (the phone) and a meaning (this is how I begin / I need to check / I need to feel connected). Both the phone-as-object and phone-as-meaning are the 軒. You are not yet seeing either clearly, because you are already inside the movement.
The classical instruction is: 不了知, don't add knowing. Do not add another layer of interpretation: "I shouldn't be doing this, I'm so addicted, what's wrong with me." That is a second 軒 being built on top of the first — a meaning stacked on the veranda.
覺心, here, does not need you to write a self-critical essay. It is the quality of mind that notices the thumb is moving and the screen is bright. The thumb can keep moving, or it can stop — but the noticing doesn't need commentary. The noticing that has to brand itself as awareness is no longer 覺心; it is the next 義 to be released.
Where modern mindfulness often goes wrong here: it tells you to "observe your urge" or "label the thought." That is 了知, adding knowing. The Dahui instruction is one step further back. 覺心 is the knowing that arises *before* you turn it into a label — not the label itself.
Scenario 2: The Self-Help Loop
You read a book that says you are not your thoughts. You try to dis-identify from thoughts. You fail. You read another book that says you cannot fail at meditation. You try not to fail at not failing. You read a third book.
Each book becomes a new 軒. "I am someone working on awakening" is a 軒. "I am someone who failed at awakening" is also a 軒. "Awakening is what happens when I stop trying" is yet another 軒 — and a particularly tricky one, because it sounds like the teaching itself.
The 覺軒 metaphor is almost literal here: if you cling to "覺" as your identity or project, you neither understand awakening nor have you truly seen your actual condition. You have a beautiful intellectual model of awakening, which is not the same as 覺心獨朗.
The actual move: notice that the model and the thing-it-models-of are different. The map is not the territory. Then let even that noticing not become a project. This is 軒義俱亡 — veranda and meaning perishing together.
Scenario 3: A Difficult Conversation at Work
A colleague criticizes your work in a meeting. Your chest tightens. You start composing a response. Then you start composing a meta-response about how you shouldn't be composing a response. Then you start composing a response to your meta-response.
This is 了知 piled on 了知. Each layer is a new 義 being attached. By the time you leave the meeting, you have had a five-course internal meal and tasted none of it.
覺心 here is not "observe your feelings" (that is another layer). It is the quality of mind that doesn't need the layers because it is not threatened — not in the sense of invulnerability (your chest can still tighten), but in the sense that the tightening is not taken as a verdict on who you are.
Concretely: 於妄想境不加了知. In the state of being caught in a story ("they are attacking me"), do not add commentary. Not because commentary is forbidden, but because commentary, right now, would be a new grasping, not a liberation.
The same principle applies to the inverse case: someone praises your work, your chest swells, you start composing responses, meta-responses, identities around being-validated. Same mechanism, different content. 覺心 is not specific to negative experiences; it is the mind that does not need either praise or blame to be built up around.
Scenario 4: Parenting a Tantrum-Throwing Child
Your three-year-old is screaming in the supermarket. Other shoppers are turning to look. Every nerve in your body wants this to stop.
The "mindfulness" response: breathe, notice the sensations, label the emotion. This is good as far as it goes, but it is still adding knowing — and it is adding it under duress, when the adding has the quality of a coping strategy.
The 覺心 invitation is more austere. Notice that the child is screaming. Notice that you are embarrassed. Notice that the embarrassment is also arising. Do not add the next layer: "I shouldn't be embarrassed, this is just my ego." That *shouldn't* is a hammer trying to flatten what is happening, and it usually just adds another voice to the chorus.
What does 不加了知 actually look like here? Sometimes it looks like picking up the child. Sometimes it looks like walking out to the car. The awakened mind does not have a special way of being with a screaming child — it has a non-extra way. The mind that does not need to comment on the situation can actually respond to it.
Scenario 5: The Identity Trap
Someone at a party asks what you do. Before you have checked in with yourself, you have answered "I'm a software engineer" or "I'm a writer" or "I'm in recovery" or "I'm a parent." The answer is automatic. The identity has been more real to you, in that moment, than you have.
This is 覺心 in its most concrete application. You are already the awakened mind, but the moment "I am X" becomes load-bearing, you have built a veranda (X-as-object) and a meaning (X-as-identity) and you are standing inside it.
覺心 does not deny that you are a software engineer. It does not even say "you are not your job." It simply notices that the identification is a 軒 — that it has form, that the form was built, that the form is not you.
大覺, in this context, is the moment where, instead of simply having the identity, you can also see others who are similarly wrapped in theirs, and you can — if and only if it is appropriate — help them see through theirs too. Not by preaching, but by example. The way you answer the question at the party changes not because you have a new line, but because you no longer need to lean on a line.
Where People Most Often Map This Wrong
The single most common mapping error in contemporary life: turning 覺心 into "being aware" or "being present" as a thin layer of meta-cognition riding on top of whatever you are doing. "Being aware" usually means a voice in your head commenting "I am now aware of my breathing." That voice is itself another 義 being constructed. It is another veranda.
覺心獨朗 has no observer inside it. It is the very quality that does not need an observer. This is the difference between Dahui's instruction and much of what is taught under the name of mindfulness today: Dahui is not asking you to cultivate the inner watcher. He is asking you to notice that the watcher, too, is something being constructed — and that what is left when even the watcher is released is what was always already operating.
This is not nihilism. The released mind is not empty of awareness. It is aware without having to announce its awareness to itself.
Why Contemporary People Need This
We Live in an Age of Identification
The modern self is constructed. This is not a complaint; it is a description. Our sense of who we are comes from résumés, social media profiles, professional certifications, the brands we consume, the political tribes we inhabit, the diagnoses we receive and the recoveries we celebrate. Each of these is a 軒, and we have built them so fast and so unconsciously that we experience them as the building itself, not as a veranda we could walk out of.
覺心 is medicine for this specific condition. It says: you can step out of the veranda without the building falling. The building (your constructed identity) was never load-bearing. What is load-bearing — what shines alone when the veranda is gone — is what is already here. You do not need to construct it. You do not even need to find it. You only need to stop looking at it through the veranda's window.
Some contemporary neuroscience has begun mapping phenomena related to over-identification. The *default mode network* — the brain activity associated with self-referential narrative — is one area of study; the way this network quiets in certain meditative states is another. There is suggestive correspondence with the structure Dahui is describing. But it is worth being careful: a brain map is not the awakened mind, and the awakened mind is not a brain map. Neuroscience can describe the conditions in which identification loosens; it cannot tell you what is present when identification is no longer being constructed.
We Have Made Awakening Into a Product
The contemporary mindfulness and "wellness" market has, perhaps inadvertently, produced a perfect 覺軒 situation. Awakening (or "presence" or "mindfulness" or "inner peace" or "higher consciousness") has been packaged. You buy the app, the retreat, the course, the certification, the ayahuasca journey, the silent meditation intensive. Each purchase becomes a 軒 — you have something that others don't, you are "on the path," you have the framework.
覺心 cuts through this with a single line: 軒義俱亡，方見覺心獨朗. When the veranda and its meaning are both gone, only then. The packaging is not the package. The path is not the destination. The retreat is not the awakening. Even "I went on a ten-day silent retreat" is a 軒 that must eventually be released.
This is not a critique of any particular teacher or tradition. It is a structural observation about how the mind turns anything it touches into another identity to wear, and how Dahui's teaching is precisely engineered to interrupt this move.
We Are Cognitively Overloaded
The contemporary condition involves more simultaneous inputs than at any previous time in human history. Multiple notifications, multiple open tabs, multiple relationships maintained through text, an inbox that never closes. The cognitive load is enormous, and our coping mechanism is to add more cognition — more interpretations, more analyses, more frameworks, more labels, more "I'm noticing that I'm noticing that."
覺心 offers something that no productivity system can: not more knowing, but less. The awakened mind is the mind that has stopped adding. In a culture of constant cognitive amplification, this is genuinely countercultural. It is not anti-intellectual; it just refuses the premise that more thinking is always the answer.
There is a tentative analogy in machine learning: a system that is constantly updating its parameters in response to every input will eventually lose coherence, and the most sophisticated systems often include mechanisms for *not* updating — for treating most inputs as noise rather than signal. This is a structural analogy only. It does not prove anything about consciousness or awakening. But the shape is interesting: in both cases, intelligence is sometimes a function of restraint, not accumulation.
We Mistake Understanding for Transformation
Many contemporary people have read extensively about Buddhism. They know the terminology. They can discuss emptiness, no-self, dependent origination, even Dahui's 覺心, with sophistication. And yet nothing in their lives has changed in any obvious way. They may even notice this gap with despair.
覺心 explains exactly what has happened: 執軒為義. They have taken the veranda (the conceptual framework) as the meaning (liberation). They have a very beautiful veranda and they have never stepped outside it. Understanding the words is not the awakened mind; it is the awakened mind's shadow on the wall — and shadows can be quite articulate.
The instruction here is gentle but firm: words are not the thing. Even these words. Let the veranda go. What is left is not nothing — it is what was always already the case before you started collecting frameworks about it.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading 1: 覺心 as a Special State to Achieve
This is the most common mistake. People hear "awakened mind" and think: *oh, that's a special state, like a flow state, or a state of deep peace, or a state of unity.* They set out to achieve it. They install apps. They go on retreats. They chase peak experiences.
But 覺心 is not a state. It is what is present when the grasping at states has ceased. You cannot aim at it, because aiming is itself a 軒. The instruction "don't add knowing" rules out the very project of getting 覺心.
If you find yourself experiencing a state of luminous clarity and you are tempted to call it 覺心, that is a sign it has become an object to you — another 軒. The actual 覺心 is what does not need to be called anything.
Misreading 2: 覺心 as "Being Mindful" or "Being Present"
Modern mindfulness has its own vocabulary: *awareness, presence, the observer, the witness.* These are useful pointers in their own context. But they are often deployed as a thin layer of meta-cognition — "I notice I am feeling anxious" — that becomes a habit of self-commentary rather than a release of self-commentary.
覺心 is not the observer. The observer is still an 義 — another layer, another meaning being constructed. 覺心獨朗 has no observer inside it; it is the very quality that does not need an observer. This is why Dahui's instruction is not "observe delusion" but "don't add knowing to delusion." Subtle, but crucial.
The test: if your "awareness practice" still requires you to maintain a subtle sense of "I am the one who is aware," you have not yet reached 覺心獨朗. You have reached the observer-self, which is a refinement of the constructed self, not its release.
Misreading 3: 覺心 as the Suppression or Elimination of Thoughts
This is the opposite error. Some readers, especially those with contemplative backgrounds, take 覺心 to mean "a mind without thoughts." They sit, they wait for silence, they judge every arising thought as a failure. The mind becomes a battlefield.
Dahui explicitly rules this out: 亦不息滅妄心. You do not get 覺心 by killing the delusive mind. You do not get it by getting thoughts to stop. You get it by neither adding to thoughts nor warring against them.
If your practice feels like a battle, you have turned awakening into a war, and wars do not produce awakening — they produce exhausted soldiers who eventually desert.
Misreading 4: Treating 覺心 as Identical with 圓覺, 佛性, or 覺性
The Dahui material is careful here: 圓覺, 空明, 靈光 are 相互映照 — mutually illuminating each other — but are not explicitly equated. They are like different fingers pointing at the same moon; the fingers are not the moon, and they are not each other.
In the broader Buddhist tradition, related terms like 佛性 (buddha-nature), 如來藏 (tathāgatagarbha, "womb of the thus-come"), 覺性 (awakening-nature), and 圓覺 (perfect awakening) overlap with 覺心 but have their own histories and connotations. Conflating them carelessly erases distinctions that matter.
For example, 圓覺 carries strong resonances with the *Sutra of Perfect Awakening* (《圓覺經》), a distinct text with its own doctrinal emphases and a unique framing of how awakening is "perfect" in a particular way. 佛性 is a technical term from tathāgatagarbha thought, with a long history of interpretation across East Asia. Treating 覺心 as just a synonym for these misses what is distinctive about the Chan framing: the emphasis on 覺心 as something actually operative, not just theoretically present. The Chan inflection is precisely that awakened mind is not a metaphysical claim but a present function.
Misreading 5: 覺心 as a Warm, Blissful Feeling
Sometimes seekers describe their practice as "really feeling awake" or "so present it felt blissful" or "I finally felt the love." These can be genuine experiences, but they are not 覺心. They are states, and as states, they are subject to arising and passing. They can become a new 軒 to cling to ("I need to feel that way again," "I have lost the feeling, what went wrong").
覺心 is not a feeling at all. It is more like the condition that allows feelings to arise and pass without being mistaken for who you are. It can be present when you are anxious, when you are grieving, when you are bored, when you are angry. The presence does not depend on the feeling. The awakened mind is not pleasant by default; it is awake by default. Pleasant and unpleasant come and go; awakened mind is what they come and go *in*.
Misreading 6: 覺心 as a One-Time Achievement
"I had an awakening experience. So now I have 覺心, right?" No — or at least, not in the way usually meant. Awakening experiences (sometimes called *kenshō* 見性 or *satori* 悟り in Chan contexts) are not the same as 覺心獨朗 continuously operating. The experience itself, if taken as an achievement, becomes a 軒.
覺心 is more like a direction than a destination. It keeps being 覺心 only as long as it is not being clutched. The moment you say "I got it," you have lost it — not in a punishing, karmic sense, but in a structural sense. The clutching is precisely the movement that obscures what was already there.
This is why Dahui's lineage places so much emphasis on continuous, ordinary practice — not because awakening must be re-earned each moment, but because the structures of grasping re-form each moment, and the release is moment-by-moment.
Misreading 7: 覺心 as a Solitary Achievement
The Dahui text includes 大覺 — great awakening — as an explicit dimension of 覺心. Awakening is not meant to remain private. The awakened mind, when actual, is not hoarding its insight but using it in the world. 覺諸未覺者 — awakening those not yet awakened — is part of what 覺心 is.
This rules out the contemporary reading of "awakening" as personal enlightenment, a private spiritual upgrade. The Chan framing is that awakened mind is inherently relational. The person who has had an experience and then withdraws to cultivate it in isolation has, by Dahui's reckoning, only half-understood what has happened. The other half is showing up, with whatever words or silence are appropriate, in the mess of other people's lives.
This is not a requirement to become a teacher. It is a recognition that awakened mind, by its nature, does not enclose itself. If yours does, that is a sign it has become a possession — another 軒.
A Closing Word
Dahui ends with 覺義深遠，言不能盡 — the meaning of awakening is profound and deep, words cannot exhaust it. This is not false modesty; it is a structural feature of what he is pointing to. The moment you think you have it pinned down in words, you have it pinned down in words — and not in your actual experience.
覺心 is the simplest thing and the hardest thing. It does not need you to add anything. It only needs you to stop adding. And "stopping adding" turns out to be the most subtle practice there is — because the very intention to stop adding is itself an adding.
The Chan tradition, especially in Dahui's line of it, has a long history of meeting this paradox with the simplest possible gesture: don't try. Don't try not to try. Just — sit. Read this. Hear the rain. Notice the breath. Let the veranda and its meaning dissolve, not by attacking them but by ceasing to maintain them.
What is left, when nothing is being constructed, is what was always already here — independent of your practice, your understanding, your retreat experiences, your philosophical sophistication. It does not need your belief in it to be present. It does not stop being present when you forget it.
That is what 覺心獨朗 is pointing at: not something to get, but what is left when you stop the getting.
And that, Dahui might say, is where speaking of awakening can finally begin.