樂邦文類 4.67

4.67

Question: The Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch says: 'The ordinary and foolish do not understand their self-nature and do not recognize the Western Land within their own bodies; wishing for the West when in the East, an awakened person finds it the same wherever they are.' Master Baozhi said: 'The wise know that mind is Buddha; fools love to go to the Western Land.' If this path is truly genuine, why did these two great beings reject it?
Answer: When the Buddha expounds the Dharma, there are the concealed and the revealed; his teachings have the provisional and the real; human faculties have the sharp and the dull; and ancestral masters have their censures and praises. For example, just as illnesses contracted are different, the prescriptions given are also distinct. Suppose someone is suffering from heatstroke and turning yellow, just when they are in a state of great frenzy: a good physician will surely treat them with cooling medicine. How could one instead praise mica, cassia, or aconite for having the efficacy of dispelling cold and reviving the debilitated? A person of biased views, hearing that cooling medicine has the efficacy to treat heat, then claims that mica, cassia, and aconite can never be used. Would that not be absurd? Bodhidharma transmitted solely the mind-seal; Master Baozhi had just begun to praise the Mahāyāna. People at that time did not yet have faith, so how could they have turned around and taught people buddha-mindfulness to seek rebirth in the Pure Land? Those of consummate capacity and thorough understanding are naturally free of doubt, whereas beginners seeking the Dharma will surely give rise to hesitation. If you simply grasp the meaning and forget the words, harmonizing and understanding thoroughly, there will naturally be no contradiction.