In the first place, when somebody is with many teachers and many masters one thing is certain – that he has not yet found the man to be with. Seeing someone, the bells of his heart do not start ringing. He is still searching. This is also because of the mind, which wants more and more. He has understood this teacher, now he wants something more. He goes to another teacher.

Ta Hui went on and on searching for teachers his whole life, but this too is in a strange way the same trip – it is not different. Yes, once in a while he had come across a master, but he had not the eyes to recognize him. So he collected his words, but mixed them with the words of those who didn’t know anything. His whole philosophy is a hodgepodge, but we can take out those beautiful diamonds that have fallen into the mud. A diamond is still a diamond although it may be covered with mud.

This sutra, There Is Nothing to Attain, he must have heard from someone who really knows. But he has not been able to understand exactly why there is nothing to attain. That is possible to understand only when you are enlightened. That is possible only when you see that all that you had wanted to attain is already given to you; it is intrinsic in your self nature – that’s why there is nothing to attain.

He says,

Gentlemen of affairs often take the mind, which assumes there is something to attain, to seek the dharma, wherein there is nothing to attain.

But he does not give the reason why there is nothing to attain. Truth has to be attained, bliss has to be attained, beauty has to be attained, immortality has to be attained: mind can think only in terms of attainment.

I have been talking to thousands of people and so many times people have come to tell me, “You insist on meditation, but you never say what we will attain by it. Even if we meditate, we have to be certain what we are going to attain.”

I said, “You don’t understand. Meditation is not for attainment; meditation is just to discover who you are. Whether you discover it or not, you are the same from eternity. It is not an attainment, only a discovery.”

Ta Hui, listening to the masters, starts talking against the mind, but in a way which only a man of mind can do. You can see it in his language, his way of stating

What do I mean by “the mind, which assumes there is something to attain”? It is the intellectually clever one, the one that ponders and judges. What do I mean by “the dharma, wherein there is nothing to attain”?

But he himself is not aware of why there is nothing to attain – because you already have it!