(52) The basic dharma-gate of the Buddhist Chan Order can be epitomized in the following three sentences:

<1>“a separate tradition outside the scriptural teachings be established”,

<2>“self-cultivation should focus outright on informing a practitioner’s psyche”, and

<3>“a practitioner should seek to recognize the existence of Buddha-nature in his psyche by trimming its impurities”.

Chan denounces a mind that is deluded or defiled. A delusion or a deluded, or defiled, mind is the crucial obstruction to a practitioner’s access to awakening. But, as I see it, for a novice practitioner, it is necessary to let his or her mind be grossly deluded. He or she needs a whopping delusion. Then, what whopping delusion does he or she need? The multiple answers are as follows:

He or she needs a whopping obsession with Chan-oriented self-cultivation.

He or she needs to irreversibly cling to the desire of attaining Buddhahood.

He or she should never give up practicing correct self-cultivation until his or her attainment of Buddhahood.

I confess I have been consistently urging novice practitioners to adamantly cherish the aforesaid “delusion”, because such a “delusion”, or “obsession”, constitutes a very important momentum which impels not only the monastically-based but the secular practitioners—especially the novice practitioners—to sincerely and enthusiastically proceed with their self-cultivation. It is by dint of such a “delusion”, or “deluded” mind that the dynamic behind a practitioner’s self-cultivation can be steadily sustained. Otherwise diminution in self-cultivation intensity is bound to set in, and self-cultivation would be compromised with some camouflaged secularization. A practitioner, whether monastically-based or secular, who has an inexhaustible dynamic behind his or her self-cultivation would never relax in fulfilling his or her aspiration to attainment of Buddhahood and would try his or her utmost to pass every minute in a day in line with the requirements of self-cultivation.(From My Heart My Buddha)