(39) It goes without saying the rule that “a practitioner needs to steer clear of all the possibilities which are to lure him into an evil practice and to strive to do anything that is beneficial to others” should govern a practitioner’s everyday thinking and behavior. Moreover it is undoubtedly correct to say that such a rule is intended for both purifying his psyche and normalizing his behavior. But the rule is intended for a practitioner to achieve more than just purifying his psyche and normalizing his behavior. Thorough adherence to the rule requires a practitioner to fulfill a very significant task. And the task can be delineated as follows: “In the course of observing the rule, his awareness of sunyata (meaning: “emptiness of self and dharmas”, or, “a rejection of the philosophical notion that there are the real existence of a self and the eternal nature of all compositional elements) should be deepened and consolidated”. If in the course of practicing the rule, a practitioner wants merely to purify his psyche and normalize his behavior, then he is bound to end only in a certain fruition derived from the Hinayana self-cultivation, because he would in this way win salvation simply for himself alone. As a sincere Chan votary, a practitioner ought, while pushing adamantly ahead with practicing the adage which requires him to steer clear of all the possibilities which are to lure him into an evil practice and to strive to do anything that is beneficial to others, to actively and firmly assume such a philanthropic frame of mind as is characteristic of all bodhisattvas. Every Chan practitioner should emulate the way Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva (地藏王菩萨) behaves. The latter is often referred to as the Bodhisattva of the Hell beings because of his vow to not achieve Buddhahood until “all the Hells are empty”. So far as the Chan tenets are concerned, being utterly unselfish or altruistic is not equivalent to performing philanthropic deeds to improve one’s karma. In being altruistic, a Chan practitioner actually means both to remove, from his psyche, all the constructs and roots of atma-graha (the attachment to the notion of an enduring and inherent ‘self’) and to experience the truth inherent in “no-self”. And from his experience of the truth inherent in “no-self”, he would proceed to gain an experiential grasp of the truth inherent not only in the concept of “emptiness of the entire mundane world” but also in the concept of “emptiness of the cosmos”. One of the major goals of self-cultivation pursued by a practitioner is that his psyche becomes devoid—  

*of an attachment to the notion of an enduring and inherent self,

*of an attachment to the notion of the real existence of mankind, and

*of an attachment to the notion of the real existence of objectively perceived, experiential things and situations.

Such a goal is otherwise known as “a nullification of the trinity of attachments”. To perceive the truthfulness of or to put into practice “a nullification of the trinity of attachments” in one instance or a limited number of instances is not a very difficult thing to do. For example, it is not very difficult for an individual to do somebody a favor not only gratis but even not out of the motive of seeking any reward, including a pecuniary recompense, and later he forgets all about it after he has done the good deed. Then we shall say that in this instance the individual has achieved “a nullification of the trinity of attachments”. But to achieve “a nullification of the trinity of attachments” in every instance throughout an individual’s life would be very difficult for him, because that calls for Samadhi Balai (a power of mind-control) in him. Therefore Samadhi Balai is exactly the quality a Chan practitioner needs to strain to acquire in the course of his self-cultivation.（From My Heart My Buddha）