樂邦文類 4.66

4.66

Question: Seeing one's nature and awakening to the Way, one immediately transcends birth and death. What use is there in practicing buddha-mindfulness and seeking rebirth?
Answer: When one's penetrative knowledge is obscured regarding the minds of others, how can one fathom sage or commoner? Unless one is all-knowing, conferring a prophecy of awakening would surely be difficult. A true practitioner should examine this oneself. Good people! When you look at your own seeing of nature and awakening to the Way to enter the position of a master, can you match Aśvaghoṣa or Nāgārjuna? In attaining the great samādhi, can you match Nanyue or the Wise One? In being thoroughly versed in both the doctrine and the teachings, can you match National Preceptor Zhong or Chan Master Shou? All these masters clearly handed down oral teachings and deeply and earnestly urged people to go. How could they deceive people? Furthermore, the Buddha's golden mouth praised and enjoined this; the former worthies reverently received the Buddha's instructions, which are certainly not mistaken. Moreover, you should judge for yourself: at the end of life, can you depart or remain with complete ease? Will your beginningless bad karma fail to appear before you? Setting aside this recompense body, will you definitely escape saṃsāra? Can you appear and disappear at will in the perilous paths of the three destinies? Can you take birth without obstruction in heaven, among humans, and throughout the worlds of the ten directions? If you are clearly and fully confident that you can, what fortune could equal it! But if this is not yet so, by no means be arrogant and fail to cultivate the Pure Land.