廬山蓮宗寶鑑 3.2

3.2

Master Mingjiao said: 'When the Benevolent One bequeathed his teachings, he necessarily took Chan as the lineage and the Buddha as the patriarch. The patriarch is the great exemplar of his teaching; the lineage is the great tradition of his teaching. If the great tradition is not clarified, the world cannot unify its destination; if the great exemplar is not rectified, the world cannot verify what it realizes. That Buddhist students throughout history have competed to surpass one another with what they learned has been an affliction brought about by the lineage not being clarified and the patriarchs not being rectified. Yet it is not that their patriarchs and lineages were originally unclear or unrectified; rather, later scholars failed to thoroughly examine the sūtras and treatises to collate and correct them. Thus there are those bound by the scriptures who do not understand that the Buddha's subtle intent marvelously lies outside of words, and various Chan practitioners who do not recognize that what the Buddha expounded is generally found within the scriptural teachings. Constantly arguing right and wrong amongst themselves from ancient times to the present, when have they ever paused even briefly? I have once explored the Great Canon, collating both sūtras and historical records, and what is called the Chan school is indeed the mind of the Buddha and the patriarchs. When the Buddha spoke the teachings of the entire Great Canon, he never failed to take the mind as the essential principle. Alas, the faculties and capacities of sentient beings differ, so how could one elucidate it through a single method? Our Buddha set forth his conversion impartially; thus, matching the medicine to the illness, he merely administered it accordingly. Furthermore, regarding the method of buddhānusmṛti in the Pure Land school, there are the real and the expedient, the sudden and the gradual; all serve to reveal the real principle realized by the Tathāgata and to expand the original source of sentient beings' own nature, gathering all people through the buddhānusmṛti-samādhi to clarify the mind, see the nature, and enter the Buddha's wisdom. Someone may ask: "Can buddhānusmṛti clarify the mind, see the nature, and enter the Buddha's wisdom?" I say to him: "The mind is the essential principle of the myriad dharmas; if one takes hold of it within oneself, then what path cannot be accomplished? Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāpta realized the forbearance of the non-arising of dharmas through buddhānusmṛti. Investigating his causal stage, he applied his efforts purely to buddhānusmṛti, thought after thought without interruption, fusing into one whole. Therefore it is said: 'Gathering in the six sense faculties, pure mindfulness continuously succeeding, obtaining samādhi—this is foremost.' For the Buddha is the mind; recollecting the Buddha is recollecting the mind, and mind and mind are not two. Since the mind is not two, then Buddha and Buddha are all alike; one thought penetrates through without prior or subsequent limits, and when the three periods of time are entirely severed, that is the true place of practice. In every dust mote it is displayed, and throughout all lands it is fully revealed; this is called entering the ocean of the Tathāgata's correct and universal knowledge, fully endowed with all the Tathāgata's knowledge of all modes. Such is roughly the purport of buddhānusmṛti. The ancestral master, Master Yuan, attained this samādhi, and with this samādhi instructed one hundred and twenty-three people to cultivate and realize it together, their thoughts concentrated and their mental activities stilled, reaching the ultimate. Our ancestor thus harboured far-reaching plans to greatly assist the multitude of beings; moreover, as the new sūtras had not yet arrived in the land of Jin, the nectar of the Chan teachings had never been heard in the realm, and people of the True-aspect school held differing views, he ordered his disciples to cross the Congling mountains to welcome Chan masters from afar and investigate sūtra manuscripts. Therefore, Master Mingjiao's Chart Establishing the Patriarchs states: 'The Qin monk Zhiyan, in the kingdom of Kaśmīra, earnestly requested [Guṇa]bhadra to come together to the land of Huaxia to transmit the Chan teachings. He first arrived in Chang'an and later at Mount Lu, whereupon he brought forth the Chan Sūtra and translated it together with Master Yuan. When the translation was completed, Master Yuan wrote a preface for it. Bhadra once said to Master Yuan: "The ancestral masters who transmitted the Dharma in the Western Realm, descending directly from Mahākāśyapa, number twenty-seven in all. The twenty-sixth patriarch recently passed into extinction, whose name was Punyamitra. His disciple succeeding to his generation is called Prajñātāra, who is currently carrying out conversion in South India. Successively transmitting this lamp of wisdom, Dharmatrāta later became the twenty-eighth patriarch; I now explain this meaning according to what I have heard."' Hearing Bhadra's words, Master Yuan thus stated in his preface: 'Dharmatrāta was an outstanding figure of the Western Regions, the ancestral model of Chan instruction.' What the Baolin zhuan describes as Bhadra having spoken with Master Yuan about the number of generations of the various patriarchs who transmitted the Dharma is indeed corroborated in the Chan Sūtra. Therefore, Zhang Ye's preface to Master Yuan's stupa inscription states: 'The various sūtras on the mind and Chan emerged from Mount Lu. The master often said that the Chan teaching is subtle and refined, not to be transmitted unless one has the capacity, and that the single gate of buddhānusmṛti alone is supreme in merit and easy of progress. Guiding them through śamatha-vipaśyanā and focusing them through pure karma, this avails of practice to concentrate the spirit, and accumulates habit to transform the nature; entering into the Tathāgata's inexhaustible Dharma gate truly proceeds from this.' Thus, when this teaching of the Pure Land reached Great Master Zhizhe of Tiantai, he then demonstrated the three contemplations realizing the one mind, generally marshaling the essential practices of the triyāna, universally gathering the capacities of the five spiritual families, directly conferring the true wealth of contemplative practice, and causing awakening and entry into the Tathāgata's knowledge and vision. Hence we know that the essential point of buddhānusmṛti is indicated by the Guan jing. This sūtra takes the pure realm of the Buddha land as its essential principle, the wondrous practice of contemplative wisdom as its aim, the real-aspect Amitābha as its substance, and eradicating evil and generating good as its function; from this we know that immeasurable merits jointly adorn it, diverse superior practices converge upon it, and discourse, questions, and answers delineate and distinguish it, like the multitude of stars revolving around the North Star, or the myriad streams flowing eastward to the sea. Therefore, Vaidehī suddenly realized the non-arising [of dharmas] without passing through the stages, and those of the five rebellious acts ascending to Sukhāvatī upon reciting the name for ten thoughts is precisely that which is subsumed by the round and sudden teaching. This Dharma gate of the buddhānusmṛti-samādhi—expedient and real, sudden and gradual, subjugating and gathering, awakening and delusion—completely encompasses everything, converging in the true lineage, like a cart having wheels or a bird having wings; the cause for entering the path may be called ultimate, may be called exhaustive. Therefore, collecting the methods of right absorption and demonstrating those essential principles of practice, it illumines the eyes of the mind and points directly to the root source, in the hope that those practicing buddhānusmṛti will clarify their lineage without obscuring their patriarchs. If a single phrase matches the capacity, the Mind-only Pure Land is revealed!"