摩訶止觀 1.3

1.3

Calming and contemplation is luminous and still, unheard of in previous generations. On the twenty-sixth day of the fourth month in the fourteenth year of the Kaihuang reign of the great Sui (594 CE), at Yuquan Monastery in Jingzhou, Zhizhe unfolded and propagated it throughout one summer retreat, pouring down the rain of compassion at the two times [of morning and evening]. Although his delight in expounding was inexhaustible, just as he reached the "realm of views," the wheel of the Dharma ceased to turn, and the latter portions were not proclaimed. Yet one must trace the flow to seek its source, and smell the fragrance to investigate the root. A treatise says: "My practice had no master or guardian." A sūtra states: "I received prediction from Dīpaṃkara." A text says: "Those born with knowledge are superior; those who learn it come next." Is this vast and wondrous Dharma gate a self-illuminating natural truth? Or is it like the blue that comes from the indigo? If a practitioner hears the Transmission of the Dharma Treasury, they will know its ancestral origin.