鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄 1.49

1.49

「但有來求者，我即便出看渠，渠不識我，我便著數般衣，學人生解一向入我言句：『苦哉，瞎禿子無眼人把我著底衣認青、黃、赤、白，我脫却入清淨境中。』學人一見便生忻欲。我又脫却，學人失心，忙然狂走，言：『我無衣。』我即向渠道：『爾識我著衣底人否？』忽爾回頭，認我了也。『大德！爾莫認衣，衣不能動，人能著衣，有箇清淨衣、有箇無生衣、菩提衣、涅槃衣、有祖衣、有佛衣。大德！但有聲名文句，皆悉是衣變，從臍輪氣海中鼓激、牙齒敲磕成其句義，明知是幻化。大德！外發聲語業、內表心所法，以思有念，皆悉是衣。爾秖麼認他著底衣為寔解，縱經塵劫秖是衣通，三界循還輪回生死；不如無事，相逢不相識、共語不知名。今時學人不得，蓋為認名字為解，大策子上抄死老漢語，三重五重複子裹，不教人見，道是玄旨，以為保重。大錯，瞎屢生！爾向枯骨上覓什麼汁？有一般不識好惡，向教中取意度商量成於句義，如把屎塊子向口裏含了吐過與別人。猶如俗人打傳口令相似，一生虛過也。道我出家，被他問著佛法，便即杜口無詞，眼似漆突、口如楄檐，如此之類逢彌勒出世，移置他方世界寄地獄受苦。大德！爾波波地往諸方覓什麼物？踏爾脚板闊，無佛可求、無道可成、無法可得。外求有相佛，與汝不相似，欲識汝本心，非合亦非離。』

“Whenever someone comes seeking, I immediately go out to observe them. If they do not recognise me, I then put on various robes. The student generates an intellectual understanding and plunges straight into my words and phrases: ‘Alas! The blind baldhead, a sightless man, taking the robes I wear to be blue, yellow, red, or white!’ When I strip them off and enter a pure environment, the student sees this and at once produces delight and desire. When I strip that off again, the student loses his mind and runs about wildly in confusion, saying: ‘I have no robes!’ Then I say to him: ‘Do you recognise the person wearing the robes?’ Suddenly he turns his head and recognises me. ‘Virtuous monks! Do not recognise the robes! Robes cannot move; it is the person who can wear the robes. There is a pure robe, an unborn robe, a bodhi robe, a nirvāṇa robe, a patriarch robe, and a Buddha robe. Virtuous monks! All that has sound, name, words, and phrases are all changes of robes, stirred up from the ocean of qi at the navel-wheel, their phrases and meanings formed by the clicking of teeth. Know clearly that they are illusions and transformations! Virtuous monks! Outwardly emitting the karma of voice and speech, inwardly expressing the dharmas of mental factors—with thinking and having thoughts, these are all robes. If you merely recognise the robes he wears as real understanding, even after dust-like kalpas you will only have mastered robes, revolving in the three realms and transmigrating through birth and death. It is better to have nothing to do: meeting one another without recognising each other, speaking together without knowing names. Students these days fail to attain because they recognise names and words as understanding. In huge notebooks they copy down the words of dead old men, wrap them in three or five layers of cloth, and will not let others see them, declaring them to be the mystical purport and treasuring them. What a great mistake, you blind bald fools! What juice are you looking for on dry bones? There is a type that does not know good from bad: they take intellectual speculations from the teachings, discuss them, and form phrases and meanings—like taking a lump of shit, holding it in their mouth, spitting it out, and giving it to someone else! It is just like worldly people passing on passwords, wasting an entire life in vain. They claim, ‘I have left home,’ but when asked about the Buddha’s Dharma, they seal their mouths without a word, their eyes like pitch pots and their mouths like shoulder-poles. When people of this sort encounter Maitreya appearing in the world, they will be transferred to another world and deposited in hell to undergo suffering! Virtuous monks! Rushing about like that, what are you seeking in the various directions? You wear your soles flat, yet there is no Buddha to be sought, no Way to be realized, no Dharma to be attained. To seek an outward Buddha with marks bears no resemblance to you; if you wish to know your original mind, it is neither united nor separated.’