鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄 1.31

1.31

The master addressed the assembly, saying: "Followers of the Way! Above all you must seek true and correct insight and stride freely across the world, so that you avoid being deluded and confused by this sort of goblin. One who has nothing to do is a noble person; just do not engage in contrived action, but simply be ordinary. If you intend to look outside, going from door to door searching for maneuvers, you have made a mistake. If you just intend to seek the Buddha, 'Buddha' is a nominal phrase. Do you still recognize the one who runs about seeking? The Buddhas and patriarchs of the three times and ten directions appeared only to seek the Dharma; today's followers of the Way who practice and study are also only seeking the Dharma. Only when you obtain the Dharma are you finished; before you obtain it, you transmigrate as before through the five destinies. What is the Dharma? The Dharma is the mind-dharma. The mind-dharma is formless, penetrates the ten directions, and functions right before your eyes. Because people lack sufficient trust, they identify with names and phrases, seeking to fathom the Buddha-Dharma from written words—they are as far apart as heaven and earth! Followers of the Way! When this mountain monk explains the Dharma, what Dharma do I explain? I explain the mind-ground Dharma, which can enter the ordinary and the sacred, enter the pure and the defiled, enter the true and the conventional. Yet it is not your conventional, true, ordinary, or sacred that can assign names to all conventional, true, ordinary, and sacred—conventional, true, ordinary, and sacred cannot assign names to this person. Followers of the Way! Grasp it and immediately use it without attaching names; it is called the 'mysterious purport.' When this mountain monk explains the Dharma, it is different from everyone else in the world. Even if a Mañjuśrī or Samantabhadra were to appear, each manifesting a body before me to ask about the Dharma, as soon as they said 'May I ask, Reverend?', I would have already discerned them. When this old monk sits firmly and other followers of the Way come to meet me, I have discerned them completely. Why is this so? It is only because my view is different: externally I do not grasp the ordinary or sacred, and internally I do not abide in the root. Seeing through completely, I harbor no doubts or errors."