Nothing there in the first place

The Fifth Patriarch asked his monks to write a verse showing their understanding. Whoever wrote the true one would inherit his robe.

Shenxiu, the senior monk and everyone's favourite, wrote on the wall: the body is a bodhi tree, the mind is a bright mirror's stand. Polish it diligently, and let no dust settle.

The whole monastery recited it. Then Huineng, an illiterate kitchen worker, asked someone to write his:

Bodhi isn't a tree. The bright mirror has no stand. Originally there's not a single thing. Where could dust settle?

The Fifth Patriarch gave him the robe, at night, quietly, and told him to leave.

Two poems, two whole approaches. Shenxiu's is the one people actually live by. You have work to do on yourself, so keep cleaning. It's not wrong, and it produces results in almost everyone.

But it has a cost that nobody mentions. If your self is a mirror you must keep polishing, then every flaw you find is a defect, and the work never ends, because there's always dust.

Huineng's line is not an invitation to stop improving. It's a claim that the thing you're trying to get clean was never dirty. Which is why the polishing looks increasingly like anxiety once you see it.

The difference in practice is a lighter one. You still practise. You no longer do it as a punishment.

MOJOWAY has no scoreboard, on purpose. The file accumulates what's true about you without converting any of it into a verdict, which is the only condition where someone will keep going.