The Mirror of Zen

19

There will eventually be a point in your practice when
you do not know you are walking even as you walk,
and do not know you are sitting even as you sit. In this
situation, Mara's legions of the 84,000 demons guarding
the gates of the six sense faculties will rise up and
attack you the moment any kind of mind appears.
But when any kind of mind does not appear, what
harm can they do?

Commentary

Mara is the name of a ghost or demon that actually relishes the
suffering of birth and death. Eighty-four thousand demons mean
the eighty-four kinds of suffering that beset sentient beings. Mara
originally has no self-nature, but appears only when practitioners
lose their fundamentally pure and clear moment-mind. Sentient
beings are attached to whatever appears, so they yield to
the circumstances of Mar. True students of the Way are not deluded
by appearances, so they confront Mara: they are not taken
in by delusive circumstances. This is why it is said, "The steeper
the path is, the more demons you will find."
When delusions appear in your mind, demons seem to appear
before you, too. A practitioner once hacked at his own leg during
meditation when he saw a mourner, and another encounterd a
pig and grabbed his own nose. If your mind does not move,
however, all the diabolical skills of Mara employed against your
mind will come to nothing, like someone trying to cut water with
a sword or to blow away a ray of sunshine. An ancient adage says,
"A crack in the wall will let the wind blow in, a crack in the mind
lets demons sneak in."