親

What This Concept Is Saying

1. First, break the character 親 out of its everyday semantics

In Chinese, the first associations of 親 (qīn, "intimacy") are almost inevitably "family member," "to be close to," "affectionate," "intimate relationship." The moment one speaks, it is emotion, a position within a network of relationships—parental intimacy, marital intimacy, filial intimacy, even intimacy with a pet. The two verses in the *Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》) reject this entire direction from the very start:

「父母非我親，誰是最親者；諸佛非我道，誰是最道者。」

*"Parents are not my intimacy—who, then, is the most intimate? The Buddhas are not my path—who, then, is the most the path?"*

This is not saying one should be unfilial to one's parents, nor that the Buddhas are unworthy of refuge. It is doing something more fundamental: lifting the weight of "what is intimate to me" off every calculable object in the world, clearing a space in which to ask, "Who is the most intimate of all?"

Why must this be broken first? Because if it is not broken, an ordinary person will almost inevitably lodge 親 (qīn) in some object—a family member, a partner, a spiritual teacher, a community, a beloved hobby. Once lodged there, that 親 becomes conditional: so long as he/she/it is present, the intimacy is present; when he/she/it changes, leaves, or ceases to be, the intimacy is lost. What the Chan tradition means by this character is precisely that which cannot be lost.

The second verse then doubles down on the same operation:

「汝言與心親，父母非可比；汝行與道合，諸佛心即是。外求有相佛，與汝不相似；欲識汝本心，非合亦非離。」

*"You say that which is intimate with the mind—parents cannot compare. Your conduct accords with the Way—the mind of the Buddhas is precisely this. Seeking outwardly a Buddha with form—it does not resemble you. If you wish to know your original mind—it is neither united nor separate."*

Here two of the most tempting destinations leap out at once: seeking the Buddha outwardly and identifying feeling inwardly. Both are demolished.

2. The positive meaning of 親: intimate with the mind, aligned with the Way

Breaking is the means; establishing is the end. The establishing in these verses is stated on two sides simultaneously:

- "Intimate with the mind" (與心親): If one must speak of intimacy, the object is not one's parents, not one's partner—it is one's own original mind. - "Aligned with the Way" (與道合): The character 合 (hé, "union") here does not mean two things being pressed together, but rather "when one's conduct corresponds, it is naturally already there." Once this is so, "the mind of the Buddhas is precisely this"—not that you have become a Buddha, but that the Buddhas have always been right here.

These two lines stand side by side to say that the character 親 actually points to walking on two legs: inner recognition (intimacy with the mind) and outer practice (alignment with the Way) are not two separate matters. The classical metaphor is water and waves—waves are the functioning of water, water is the substance of waves. If intimacy merely abides in substance without moving into function, it falls into emptiness; if intimacy is merely busy with function without returning to substance, it scatters into chaos. What "aligned with the Way" does in this Chan context is precisely to sew substance and function back together—your conduct *is* your original mind.

3. The most critical sentence: neither united nor separate

The final two lines of the verse—"If you wish to know your original mind, it is neither united nor separate" (欲識汝本心，非合亦非離)—are the point of the whole set of verses.

These nine characters sweep away nearly every trap embedded in the character 親:

- Not "union": Union implies two things originally separate, needing force, method, or effort to be pressed together. Once one thinks this way, 親 becomes a cultivation goal to be achieved—which falls straight back into the pit of "seeking outwardly a Buddha with form." - Not "separation": Separation implies needing to cut off, let go, renounce. Once one thinks this way, 親 becomes a state of world-transcendence to be manufactured, requiring one to sculpt a purified self—another pit. - It is "inherent" (本然): It is originally thus. Never lost for a moment; the whole body manifest before you.

This "inherent" is not a static immobility, but the flavor of "never having been lost, and therefore never requiring that it be re-obtained." When Chan Master Qì'nè (契訥) of Dongchan Monastery in Fuzhou said, "Never lost for even a moment; the whole body manifest before you" (未曾暫失，全體現前), he was restating this same point in plain language. No new content—only the same pointer wearing a different expression.

4. Where 親 sits in the whole path of liberation

To see where this character falls on the map of the liberative path, first set it apart from several neighboring concepts:

- 無我 (anatta, "non-self"): Early Buddhism's deconstruction of "self"—from the impermanence of the five aggregates 五陰 (pañcaskandha, the five aggregates) and the non-self of the five clinging aggregates, pressed layer by layer to "there is no permanent, sovereign self." - 空 (śūnyatā, "emptiness"): Madhyamaka's deconstruction of all dharmas—from dependent origination 緣起 (pratītyasamutpāda, dependent origination) to "no self-nature." The character 親 does not advance further on the abstract plane of emptiness; it bypasses all metaphysical debate. - 如來藏 / 本心 (tathāgatagarbha / original mind): The shared pointer of the Mahāyāna tathāgatagarbha tradition and Chan—originally complete, pure, aware. 親 is precisely this pointer rendered in the most colloquial, most everyday register the Chan school has. - 明心見性 (míngxīn jiànxìng, "clarifying the mind and seeing one's nature"): The specific instant of sudden awakening. What "intimate with the mind" and "neither united nor separate" describe is precisely what that instant reveals.

In other words, 親 is not the full map of the path of liberation, but an extremely precise finger pointing at the moon: it does not explain how the world works; it only points toward "that from which you have never been separated." On this path, it sits near the summit—not the terminus (the very notion of a terminus is itself debatable within Chan), but absolutely the place where the final inversion happens.

This is also why the *Jingde Record* repeatedly deploys the negative sentence pattern: parents are not my intimacy, the Buddhas are not my path, outwardly seeking a Buddha with form does not resemble you, neither united nor separate. This is the Chan school's habitual "demolishing attachment" (破執) syntax, in the same lineage as the later "this very mind is the Buddha" 即心即佛 (jíxīn jífó) of Mazu Daoyi, and "not recognizing the original mind, studying the Dharma is of no benefit" (不識本心，學法無益) from the *Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch* (《六祖壇經》)—close in intent.

5. 親 and four relational words: union, separation, manifestation, and "is precisely"

The classical sources break this meaning down quite finely. The correspondences are preserved here:

| Term | Relation to 親 | Meaning | |---|---|---| | 合 (hé, "union") | Same direction, not repetition | The "union" in "aligned with the Way" is not pressing two things together, but that which was never separate—"already there" | | 離 (lí, "separation") | Both must be negated | True 親 is not in separation—separation means seeking elsewhere; nor in union—union means clinging | | 現前 (xiànqián, "manifest before one") | Describes its temporal state | "The whole body manifest before you"—not obtained in the future, not lost in the past, but present now and never absent | | 即是 (jíshì, "is precisely") | Describes its spatial state | "The mind of the Buddhas is precisely this"—not having to walk elsewhere to become a Buddha, but right here, right now |

To fold these four characters into one colloquial sentence: what is called 親 is always present, never separated, and therefore requires no seeking at all. It sounds like a platitude—but what makes a person exhausted by the dust of the world suddenly sit down and breathe is often precisely this kind of "platitude."

A Walk-Through in Daily Life

Let us take the above meaning and walk it through a contemporary person's day.

Scene One: The Commute on the Subway

The subway car is packed with people, each with their head down. Scrolling, dozing, staring at a station name.

Then, if you suddenly look up and find the person across from you looking up too, your eyes meet for less than half a second, and both of you look away. In that half second, something never entered any calculation: you saw, and he/she saw. Seeing requires no distance, no language, no post-hoc friend request.

The contemporary counterpart of "parents are not my intimacy" in this scene is not to deny the people squeezed in beside you on the subway, but to peel away the screen that sorts people into "intimate/not intimate." Once the sorting screen exists, you are forever calculating: who is close to me, who is distant; does my colleague sending me a joke this morning mean he/she is close to me? Once the screen is in place, the more you calculate, the more distant it becomes; the more you calculate, the more exhausted you are.

What met in that half second was never on the screen. It is "the whole body manifest before you"—you need no long-term relationship to have it, and no long-term avoidance to keep it. It was right there in that half second, present on the spot, never lost for a moment.

The easiest place to misproject: understanding 親 as "I should build a long-term relationship with this person on the subway." That is forcing 親, which cannot be objectified, back into the objectifiable.

Scene Two: "Do You Even Love Me?" in a Relationship

A couple reaches a turning point. One asks, "Do you even love me?" The other repeatedly assures, "I love you." But the one asking always feels the assurance is not specific enough, not sufficient, and so keeps asking—because what he/she wants is "confirmation," and that confirmation never seems to be enough.

Here the contemporary counterpart of "parents are not my intimacy" deserves a pause. Parental intimacy and romantic intimacy are conditional intimacies: when the other is present, the intimacy is present; when the other changes, the intimacy is lost. It necessarily fluctuates with time, with emotion, with a chain of conditions. Beneath the anxiety of "do you even love me" lies a deeper fear—what I fear is that the object I depend on for intimacy will change.

The first line of the verse is not telling you to deny your parents or your partner. It is telling you to lift the character 親 out of the conditioned continuity that necessarily arises dependent on another, and see what it looks like standing alone. When it stands alone, it is "neither united nor separate"—neither the romantic delusion of merging into one, nor the self-protection of gazing across a wall.

The landing point in a romantic relationship is subtle: when you can see the need itself—"I need the other to confirm that I am worthy of love" (note: *see* it, not *eliminate* it)—something of a different texture appears between you and the other person. It is not that you love the other more; it is that you finally see that love does not need to wait for the other's answer in order to be established.

The easiest place to misproject: understanding 親 as a binary choice—"either merge with my partner or break off the relationship"—and thereby hearing "neither united nor separate" as a gray zone of "neither together nor apart." This is mistaking Chan's double negation for equivocation.

Scene Three: Working Late, and the Work Is Overturned

At 2 a.m., after three days of effort, your proposal is overturned by a single sentence from the client. Your body's immediate response: chest tightening, shoulders hitching up, the mind racing to defend itself.

The story of the character 親 happens in that very second: who is the one experiencing all of this?

Not the overturned proposal. The proposal was made—it is conditional, constructible and destructible. Not the persona of "me." That "me" is ten or twenty years of history, praiseable and deniable. Not the chest tightening of that second. Tightening is a bodily reaction; it can be soothed. It is the one—watching the chest tighten, defending itself in thoughts, fearing denial, enduring all of it. That is the "mind" in "intimate with the mind."

It has been with you from birth to this very second. It is not something you "made," so the client cannot overturn it, the boss cannot negate it, and the fate of the proposal cannot damage it. In this second, it is present in its entirety. It has never been absent for half a second.

The *Diamond Sūtra* (《金剛經》, *Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra*) has the widely known line "give rise to a mind that does not abide anywhere" (應無所住而生其心)—the specific context being Subhūti's asking "how should one abide, how should one subdue the mind," not a simple "live in the moment" slogan. The character 親 is precisely the positive face of "not abiding": you have never abided anywhere, so you have never left anywhere—the mind is right there; no need to build it a home.

The easiest place to misproject: hearing "intimate with the mind" as "be kinder to yourself" or "make peace with yourself"—popular self-help slogans. Warmth is fine, but 親 is not about having a relationship with yourself; it is about recognizing that which was never separate from the concept of "self" in the first place—recognizing it, not managing it.

Scene Four: Chicken Soup and Enlightenment Guides While Scrolling

Short-video platforms offer "ten minutes to experience Chan," WeChat articles promise "nine signs that your original mind is awakening," podcasts run endless loops of "reconciling with your inner child."

The line from the *Jingde Record*—"seeking outwardly a Buddha with form does not resemble you" (外求有相佛，與汝不相似)—is devastatingly apt here: "a Buddha with form" is not only a statue in a temple, but also the visualized image of awakening that content platforms push to you—a silhouette suffused with Chan atmosphere, an animated loop of someone in meditation, a mountain photograph captioned "the original face."

Are these things good or bad? It depends on how you use them. If they briefly let you exhale from exhaustion, pause with them. But if you believe—after watching those ten minutes, after reading those nine signs, you have become 親 with it—you have fallen back into the same mechanism of "seeking outwardly what has form." One of the deepest illusions content platforms manufacture is making you believe spiritual resonance can be subscribed to.

The four characters "the whole body manifest before you" (全體現前) pivot in the scrolling scenario: in this very second that you are looking at this screen—the one who is looking, who is that? The answer is not in the next video, not in your follow list, not in the dopamine trough after closing the app.

The easiest place to misproject: treating 親 as a higher content tier to subscribe to (chasing more advanced masters, deeper teachings, purer lineages), while missing that it is not content at all—it is this very "one who is looking."

Scene Five: Living with an Adolescent Child

The child's door is shut. The food is going cold on the table. You stand outside. Two opposing forces tug at you: one says, "He/she is just at that age; you need to let go"; the other says, "After all these years of sacrifice, you won't even open the door?"

"Neither united nor separate" is extremely concrete guidance here. Union means demanding that the child share your emotions, your values, your vision of the future. Once you demand this, you and the child struggle endlessly in the illusion of "merging into one," and neither of you can breathe. Separation means withdrawing yourself entirely from the child's life—academics, daily life, the future, all handed over. Once you demand this, you have hidden 親 inside coldness.

There is a third path beyond these two: you know this child's original nature is free; you need not live for him/her, and he/she need not live for you. But when he/she needs you, you are there; when he/she does not, you step back—this capacity of "being present without clinging, stepping back without severing" is the most everyday expression of "neither united nor separate."

It is not a parenting theory. It is the quality of 親 within your own being, forced out as a test question by this specific situation.

The easiest place to misproject: treating this as a technique to learn—"let me learn how to love my child without clinging or severing"—which turns 親 into an acquirable interpersonal method and lands back on the path of "cultivating." The 親 of Chan always points to what you already possess, not to what you can learn.

Scene Six: The Desolation of Late-Night Solitude

After the lights are out, the room is dark. You suddenly feel an inexplicable emptiness—not caused by anything specific, but the feeling that "the whole world has nothing to do with me." This is a very familiar experience for contemporary people.

At this moment, the story of the character 親 can do one very concrete thing: is this emptiness of this second itself 親?

Do not rush to negate it. Do not rush to fill it (scrolling, watching shows, eating, finding someone to talk to—all are filling motions). Do not judge it as good or bad. Let it stay there.

In the few seconds it stays, if you pay attention, you will find that the one who is staying has texture. It is not empty—it is full, it is "never absent." It is the "whole body" in "the whole body manifest before you." It simply is not dazzling, not rousing, not shareable on social media, which is why you miss it on ordinary days.

This is not about turning it into a "mindfulness experience" to check off. It is about recognizing, in this second, that it has never been absent.

The easiest place to misproject: treating this experience as an achievement—"I have cultivated the original face"—and then clinging to re-entering that state next time. That turns "manifest before you" (現前) into "re-arrival" (再臨), and turns what was never absent into something that can be lost and regained.

Why Contemporary People Need It

1. The Secular Meaning of 親 Is Being Hollowed Out

Before the twentieth century, the matter of 親 had fairly stable cultural anchors: family, clan, blood, community. A person roughly knew where he/she belonged, who was one's own, who was not.

Contemporary society has loosened nearly all of these anchors: high mobility thins out geographically defined "family"; divorce rates and blended families reconstitute institutionally defined "family"; social networks make relationships capable of bulk purchase and bulk cancellation. A person has three hundred "friends" in an account this morning, and three hundred—more or less—tomorrow. Which of them counts as 親?

The loneliness of contemporary people is not the absence of companions. It is that the altitude of the character 親 has been diluted to the point of having no direction. The Chan school's character cuts in from the opposite direction: rather than searching among many relationships for the most intimate one, it removes the very screen that judges "who is most intimate." It sees what has always been there, outside the screen.

2. The Side Effects After the Industrialization of Chicken Soup

The contemporary era is an age of intense spiritual commodification. Search volumes, subscription counts, and like counts for terms like "inner child," "higher self," "original face," "connection with the universe" are enormous. This is not inherently bad, but there is a structural side effect:

People treat 親, "awakening," "enlightenment" as premium goods to be purchased, and so chase higher-level teachers, deeper Dharma-gates, older lineages. Once the character "chase" (追) is in play, the *Jingde Record*'s line—"seeking outwardly a Buddha with form does not resemble you"—immediately targets you: what you are seeking outwardly is precisely not what you are looking for.

The most direct use of the character 親 in the contemporary era is as an antidote to this over-seeking. It does not oppose seeking itself. It asks in return: before you seek, look first—who is the one seeking? Then you will find that the one seeking is what you were looking for.

3. The Exhaustion of App-Style Spiritual Practice

Contemporary practice faces a new phenomenon: meditation apps, meditation workshops, mindfulness retreats, spiritual writing classes—all useful tools, but they share one internal tendency: turning awareness into quantifiable content. "Meditated 15 minutes today, earned X points of calm." "This week unlocked the achievement 'recognizing the original face.'"

When the *Jingde Record*'s two verses speak of "neither united nor separate," what they pierce most directly is this quantification: 親 is neither something that can be accumulated through practice nor something that can be subtracted from practice. It was never increased by practice, so it requires no effort from you at all. For a person exhausted by self-optimization, this is a very concrete liberation.

4. What Neuroscience Can Tell Us (and What It Cannot)

Modern neuroscience has done considerable empirical research on themes like "the self," "the Default Mode Network (DMN)," and "present-moment perception." For example, it has found that the default mode network is highly active precisely when we are "not doing anything in particular," and that it is closely correlated with the "narrative self"—that voice that is constantly telling oneself stories about the past and the future. When attention genuinely returns to the present, the DMN's narrative voice temporarily recedes.

This has an obvious structural correspondence with the story of 親: that which has never been absent, which is not in the narrative, which is not in the stream of time—contemporary science can at least tell us that the "narrative self" is not all there is, and that beneath the narrative there is a layer of continuous, unbroken awareness. But here the boundary of science must be marked: neuroscience describes correlations and patterns of brain activity; it cannot adjudicate whether that continuous awareness "is" the original mind, nor can it tell you whether its relation to you is union, separation, or the falling away of both. Science can illuminate certain facets of this layer of experience, but it cannot perform for you the "recognition" toward which the finger pointing at the moon points.

This boundary is worth drawing again and again: using science as analogy is illuminating; using science as corroborating evidence for the Dharma stuffs it back into the same structure of "seeking outwardly"—and falls back into the very pit the verse demolishes.

5. Why "Neither United nor Separate" Is Needed More Than Ever Right Now

The contemporary era is an era of polarization: work and life must be separated; tradition and modernity must duel; the local and the global must contend; love and independence must oppose each other. Every issue seems to demand choosing a side. Having lived in this atmosphere for long enough, a person begins to assume that for everything, one must either cling, or sever; either commit wholly, or cut cleanly.

"Neither united nor separate" is precisely one of the most everyday expressions of Madhyamaka wisdom within Chan. It is not the compromise of "half united, half separate"; it is "the two concepts 'union' and 'separation' have never accurately described that thing." In the contemporary context, the decompressive effect of this sentence is very concrete: it lets a person trapped in "either marry or divorce," "either grind or lie flat," "either 100% patriotic or 100% free" pause first and look at the "I" who is making these binary choices—look at who it is, where it came from, whether it is there.

Common Misreadings and Clarifications

Misreading One: Understanding 親 as Emotional Intensity

「我與父母最親」「我與戀人最親」「我與祖國最親」——這是當代最自然的理解。

*"I am most intimate with my parents," "I am most intimate with my lover," "I am most intimate with my country"—this is the most natural contemporary understanding.*

But this understanding equates 親 with the intensity of emotion and the frequency of closeness—precisely the first attachment Chan demolishes. "Parents are not my intimacy" in the *Jingde Record* does not mean parents are unimportant; it means the character 親 should not be defined by worldly affection. Once the worldly definition dominates, everything pointing to the original mind is obscured.

Clarification: The 親 of Chan is the "never-interrupted" quality between the original mind and its original state, unrelated to emotional intensity. Your deep feeling for your parents does not mean you are "intimate with the mind"; your indifference to everything does not mean you are "aligned with the Way." The test is not the density of emotion, but whether you recognize that which has "never been lost for a moment."

Misreading Two: Understanding 親 as Union / Fusion with a Higher Being

「與道合」很容易被讀成「我與宇宙合一」「我與神合而為一」「我回歸了源頭」。

*"Aligned with the Way" is easily read as "I become one with the universe," "I merge with God," "I return to the Source."*

The problem with this reading: it presupposes that "I" and "the Way" were originally two separate things, and that "union" is an action that needs to happen. So you need to enter some mystical experience, need to be "opened up," need an "initiation," need to wait for the blissful light to descend.

Clarification: What the *Jingde Record* repeatedly demolishes is precisely this: once you think this way, you are externally seeking a "grander me" to merge with a "grander thing"—which is self-expansion to the scale of the cosmos. What the character 合 (hé, "union") in this Chan context expresses is never having been separate, and therefore there is no "union" as an action at all. If a practice tells you that "union" is an experience that will happen, it is pointing at something different from "neither united nor separate."

Misreading Three: Understanding 親 as a Weightless, Detached Floatiness

「親」既然不是黏著，那應該是一種輕的、淡淡的、不沾染的狀態吧？

*Since 親 is not clinging, it must be a light, faint, untouched state, right?*

This is another trap. It misreads Chan's "not falling into either extreme" as "falling into the middle"—becoming an emotionless flatness, unconcern, non-engagement. The spirit of Mazu Daoyi's "the ordinary mind is the Way" (平常心是道) is absolutely not this—carrying water and chopping wood, drinking tea and eating rice, all can be the site of 親. One does not need to extract oneself into a transparent, untouched position to call it 親.

Clarification: Neither clinging nor severing is 親, but neither ardor nor indifference conflicts with 親. The "inherent" (本然) of Chan does not refer to the color temperature of emotion; it refers to that which has never been absent, and which has never changed because of anything you did or did not do. You can be deep in relationships, cold toward worldly affairs, anxious and clear at the same time—none of this affects what the character 親 points to. It is the background, not the foreground; it is the screen, not the image on the screen.

Misreading Four: Understanding 親 as an Enlightenment Achievement

「證得本來面目」「見性成佛」「與心親」——聽起來像一個可以拿到手的高級成就。

*"Attaining the original face," "seeing one's nature and becoming a Buddha," "being intimate with the mind"—these sound like a high-level achievement one can obtain.*

This wrongly places 親 at some future point on the timeline. You hear that someone has "seen their nature," so you practice diligently, hoping that one day you too will arrive there. But the entire syntax of the verses says: it is something present and complete in the present moment, never absent—so it is not a matter of "going to obtain" it at all.

Clarification: This does not oppose hearing, reflecting, and practicing. It opposes treating the "fruit" of hearing, reflecting, and practicing as a trophy in the future. Mazu Daoyi's four characters "this very mind is the Buddha" (即心即佛) say over and over: you ask where the Buddha is; Mazu says "this very mind is the Buddha"—not "after practice, it can become so." So the hint of "future achievement" in these two *Jingde Record* verses must be read with special care: do not take "manifest before you" (現前) as "finally arriving at that moment"; take it as "I have always been right here, only earlier I kept missing it."

Misreading Five: Understanding "Neither United nor Separate" as a Middle Path of "Not Too Close, Not Too Distant"

「既然非合也非離，那我保持中等距離就好。」

*"Since it is neither united nor separate, I'll just maintain a medium distance."*

The root of this misreading is treating "not united" and "not separate" as two independent options and taking half of each. But the double negation (非……非……) in Chan syntax is never a compromise; it is the simultaneous cancellation of both concepts. That is to say, the categories "union" and "separation" themselves no longer apply—not a third path, but fundamentally no path to walk, because you have never left.

Clarification: Contemporary people very easily mistake Chan's ontological double negation for an interpersonal compromise. In fact it is an entirely different way of seeing things: you have not found some correct distance; you have seen that the axis of distance itself does not apply to this matter at all.

Misreading Six: Treating 親 as a Goal of Psychotherapy

「找回那個內在的自我」「與內在小孩和好」「建立自我價值感」——這些流行心理學語彙很容易被掛到「親」的標語下。

*"Finding the inner self," "making peace with the inner child," "building self-worth"—these popular psychological vocabularies are easily hung under the banner of 親.*

This level requires especially fine discernment: the work of psychology is helpful for returning a person to a relatively whole, stable functional self—very useful—but its object of work is the "narrative self," the "functional self," the "I" that is constantly telling itself stories. The original mind to which the Chan character 親 points is not an optimized version of the narrative self; it is the never-absent awareness beneath the narrative self itself.

The relationship is this: psychotherapy is often a meaningful prerequisite for meditation—a person whose emotions are too shattered to pay attention to the present moment will also find it difficult to directly contact the story of this character. But the two cannot be equated. If you force the Chan character into the goal column of psychotherapy, you turn "manifest before you" (現前) into a psychological repair task, and the character dies halfway.

Final Words

親 is a single character. The verses are only a few lines. But the entire power of the character lies in what it does not "want"—it does not want parents, does not want the Buddhas, does not want some future achievement, does not want the attainment of some state. What it ultimately points to is not a secret or a new discovery. It is: "the one reading these words right now has never been absent."

This is not a motto. It is simply the Chan tradition's repeated "original face," "whole body manifest before you," "this very mind is the Buddha," restated in a more colloquial character. So you do not need to remember it, do not need to say it to others, and certainly do not need to reach some state in order to understand it. In this very second of your "reading," it is there. It has never left, and you have never left.

What remains—whether it changes how you live, how you love, how you stop in this age of over-seeking—is between you and it. It does not make the decision for you.