Polishing the Mirror — Or Seeing There Is None?

Last night we explored one of the most iconic episodes in the life of Huineng (Eno), as told in the Platform Sutra — the moment of the two poems.

After his encounter with Hongren, Huineng is sent to work in the kitchen, pounding rice. No special status. No recognition. Just quiet practice in the background. When Hongren begins considering his successor, he asks the monks to compose a poem expressing their understanding of the Dharma. A simple task — and yet a profound test.

The senior monk, Shenxiu, writes:

The body is the bodhi tree.
The mind is like a bright mirror stand.
Always polish it diligently,
And let no dust alight.

Here practice is cultivation. The body is the tree; the mind is the mirror. Awakening requires effort, refinement, discipline. Dust — delusion, attachment, ignorance — must be removed. It is a sincere and committed vision of the path.

But it carries a subtle duality: someone polishing something, progressing toward something else.

Huineng responds:

Bodhi originally has no tree.
The mirror also has no stand.
Originally there is not a single thing —
Where could dust arise?

This is a radical shift. No tree. No mirror. No dust. No separate practitioner improving toward awakening. Just this moment — not two.

The contrast between the poems reveals something essential in practice: the tendency to solidify insight into identity. To polish an image of ourselves as practitioners. To cling to awakening as something we “have” or must “achieve.”

What some teachers call “the stink of Zen” is not Zen itself — it is the attachment to an idea of realization.

Kenshō is not the polishing of a separate self. It is the recognition that nothing was ever separate to begin with.

In our pair work, we explored two questions:

1. What belief or idea do you cling to that defines your practice or identity?
2. If you release that idea — even for a moment — who are you?

Not philosophically. Experientially.

What happens when there is no mirror to defend, no dust to remove, no story to maintain?

Perhaps what remains is not something mystical or dramatic — but something very simple: awareness before the grasping. A mind free to arise and pass.