樂邦遺稿 2.31

2.31

Chan Master Zhenxie Liao addressed the assembly, saying: 'Awakening to the matter beneath the paper robe, one only understands how to depart thus. Clarifying the matter on the side of uniform reality, one has not yet understood the former master's intention. As for the rest, Yinfeng stood inverted, Guankxi walked home, Wuye asked the person following behind, Dadian spoke of the soundless samādhi, one heard a flying squirrel and was immediately emancipated, one returned again for the sake of the foolish, one raised a finger and ceased, or one overturned a boat and went forth—each dying while seated or transforming while standing, every single one displaying spiritual powers and manifesting superknowledges. In their manifestation, one directly confronts their upright appearance; in their mingling, they lose their traces and leave no footprint. Employing it with pure ripeness, their handling is spontaneous; light springs forth filling the path, utterly without dependence. This is merely the ordinary turnabout of a patched-robed monk, hardly something extraordinary. If one's own seeing is not yet clear, and the light of one's eyes falls to the ground, it is like a living turtle shedding its shell, like a square peg fitted into a round hole—hindered by the physical form, driven by fire and wind. Because throughout one's life, thought after thought was scattered and disordered, and mental consciousness flew apart, at the moment of death, wanting briefly to settle the mind and quiet thoughts, closing one's eyes, hoping the mind will not be ground to dust by illusory falsehood—how could this be easily attained? One must be vigorously alive, standing like a wall a thousand fathoms high, letting a single thought go thus—thoroughly coming to rest, completely breathless, finished on that other side, so that one walks as on a bird's path and sits like open space, where even thoughts of emptiness have no trace, and the numinous luminance is utterly elevated and transcendent, never undergoing change. Just as today, is there any fellow who, when light and shadow fall away, is not benighted about birth and death?' After a long pause, he said: 'While the five-aggregate body is still complete, you do not yet know; after the hundred bones are scattered, where will you seek it?'