The freedom which accompanies the awakening of Pristine Awareness is often confused with asceticism. But the ascetic is a spiritual athlete tying him or her self to a mental image, and successful asceticism is an achievement.
Of itself Pristine Awareness is free from the annoyance of achievement, and the categories of freedom peculiar to Enlightenment must remain unknown to the athletes of asceticism.
The tale of Niu-t'ou Fa-yung (d.657) is instructive in this regard.
The awakening of Pristine Awareness does not dispel the autonomous activity of the ancient imprinting of instinct. Like an old fashioned player-piano the air we breathe is used to play the timeless tunes of animal stimulus-response. The false self innocently hallucinated by the conscious mind dances to this tune and innocently imagines its self to be its author.
Meditation provides a foundation of silence making it possible for Pristine Awareness to awaken and to recognize that it is being played. This engenders an entirely new relationship with the Real, and with the vital energies of the animal.
The Mind becomes the Magic Gem, and the body the Magic Carpet.
The "self" of consciousness is an hallucination, and it is natural that this hallucination would say "I" to the antique bric-a-brac which are the accouterments of nature's press into the Universe's appetite for Self discovery.
The beauty of Zen is not just its unrelenting insistence on the awakening of Pristine Awareness. There is in the vast literature of and about Zen a preparation for the shock that accompanies an awakening from said hallucination.
Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise, and in the analects of Zen we find a treasure trove: the natal utterance of newly awakened beings. My personal favorite will always be that of Lin Chi (d.907) who's master was the legendary Huang Po (d.850)
"So after all, there is not much in the Buddhism of Huang Po"
He then returned to his master.
