Don’t dwell on anything. Dwell on nothing? Hum… that seems reasonable! When I watched a football match of two unfamiliar teams, I praised and enjoyed every fine goals or shootings, but if one of those teams happened to be “mine” (if I am their fan), then I’d be anxious, put out and annoyed with each shot, each player or referee! I’d curse, bellow or shout out then gloat over the success of my team, or grieve or bemoan if it lost the game. I’d have no desire to eat or to sleep because of that beloved… wretched team!
Two Zen students met a young girl at a deep bend of a river, and she was embarrassed, not knowing how to cross it. One of the student took on him to carry her on his back and crossed the river. On their way back to the temple, the other monk asked:

– How come that a monk can be so rash as to carry such a beautiful girl on his back?
– Dear me! I put her down long ago, why is that you are still carrying her?

There are many ways to carry. To carry a girl on one’s back is one of them, but to carry her in one’s mind is another. The girl was put down but the tantalizing thought of her still lingered on, may be would follow us well onto our dreams! The first monk saw a girl as a girl that needed help, so he helped her. But the second monk saw a … beautiful girl, worriedly wondered if it was proper to help her, if he’d thus break the rules, and who know, maybe he sadly wanted to know if it was the “fate” that brought them together! The longer one carries the wearier one feels, and the sooner one gets a hunched back. But it’s far from easy to put down! The younger sister Nghi Lâm (in one of Kim Dung’s martial novels) had carried the injured elder brother Lệnh Hồ just once but for a long time afterwards still carried him in her mind! Therefore, it is not easy to “Generate a mind that should not dwell anywhere”!

The Buddha taught that if one wants to “dwell on nowhere”, one must discard the forms, drop out all the complicated outward shows or go beyond the phenomenon’s appearance to reach the true nature inside. Discard all appearances and you are qualified to be called a Buddha. “If you can see that all forms are formless, then you’ve perceived the Tathagata!” But how to “discard”? Many go to seek refuge in caves on the mountains to discard worldly things! But they are not at peace because their minds are still disquieting. Clearly the point here is not to flee, because how can one run from one’s mind when it is all but pacified? But once it is, where is not a refuge, a cave? So one can say that if one can manage to “discard the form” from the outside to the inside, one achieves quite a transformation from quantity to quality.