廬山蓮宗寶鑑 10.24

10.24

The "three barriers" refers to the words with which Chan Master Doushuai Yue instructed the assembly. The first says: "Parting the grass and inquiring into the mystery is solely for seeing the nature; right now, where is the Venerable's nature?" The second says: "Knowing the fundamental nature, one must escape birth and death; when birth and death arrive, how will you escape?" The third says: "Having escaped birth and death, one must know where to go; when the four great elements separate, where will you go?" Therefore, one who passes through these barriers—how could they be constrained by birth and death? One who penetrates this Way—how could they be hindered by coming and going? Ever since then, senior masters and great monks throughout the monasteries of the world have all thoroughly investigated its source; thus they could strip away obscurations and manifest purity, the principle being completely clear without any divergent interpretations. Nowadays, there are foolish people who falsely identify the three cinnabar fields in the human body as the "internal three barriers," teaching people to circulate qi and blood and calling it "passing through the three barriers." They also say that the three points of pain from the feet to the waist are the "external three barriers," falsely using these locations to determine the moment of the end of life. This is widely transmitted and practiced in the world, completely entering heterodox paths. Examining the teaching of buddhānusmṛti in detail, it is a simple and direct Dharma gate: it merely requires the practitioner, throughout the twelve hours of the day, to maintain the single phrase "Amitābha Buddha." With thoughts focused and mental activity quieted, turn the light around to observe oneself: Which one is my Amitābha of one's own nature? When the four great elements separate, where will I go? Constantly maintaining this doubt, when one suddenly recognizes it, one will know the place of rest. This is the direct, effortless, and correct path of cultivation. Aside from this, if one is slightly involved with the slightest heterodox theory, one immediately falls into the forest of wrong views. Alas! How truly lamentable it is that foolish people turn their backs on the true and pursue the false. If one can have faith in this, cut off tangles of vines and creepers, fling open the eye that penetrates the earth and reaches to heaven, and see right through the mind of heterodox thoughts and deluded marks.