鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄 1.41

1.41

"Followers of the Way, when students come from various quarters and host and guest meet, [the student] will deliver a phrase: 'To discern the kalyāṇamitra before me, the student brings out an expedient verbal device and thrusts it right at the kalyāṇamitra's mouth, to see if you recognize it or not. If you recognize it as an objective sphere, taking hold of it you then fling it into a pit.' The student then behaves as usual, and afterwards demands the kalyāṇamitra's words, snatching them away just as before. The student says: 'O superior wisdom! A great kalyāṇamitra!' [The teacher] then says: 'You are utterly incapable of telling good from bad.' Or again, the kalyāṇamitra brings out a piece of an objective sphere and dangles it before the student; the student, discerning it, takes mastery at every step and is not deluded by the sphere. The kalyāṇamitra then reveals half his body, and the student immediately gives a shout. The kalyāṇamitra then enters into all manner of differentiating verbal devices and tosses them about; the student says: 'Old bald slave who knows neither good nor bad!' The kalyāṇamitra sighs and says: 'A true follower of the Way!' If a kalyāṇamitra in any quarter cannot distinguish between the false and the correct, and a student comes asking about bodhi, nirvāṇa, the three bodies, or objective spheres and wisdom, the blind old teacher will explain it to him; and when he is scolded by the student, he takes a stick and beats him, saying: 'You have no manners.' It is simply that you, the kalyāṇamitra, have no eyes; you must not be angry with him. There is a sort of bald slave who does not know good from bad, who points east and draws west—'fine weather,' 'fine rain,' 'fine lanterns and bare pillars'—'Look at your eyebrows, how many hairs are there?' When students who lack encounter occasions do not understand this, their minds run wild. All of this sort are wild-fox spirits, demons, goblins, and sprites; a good student merely chuckles and giggles at them, saying: 'Blind old bald slave, deluding and confusing everyone under heaven!' Followers of the Way, one who has left home must by all means study the Way. For instance, in days past, this mountain monk devoted attention to the Vinaya, and also investigated the sūtras and treatises. Only later did I realize they are medicines to save the world and expositions of appearances, whereupon I abandoned them all at once and visited teachers to practice Chan. Later, meeting a great kalyāṇamitra, my Dharma eye finally became clear and distinct, and only then did I come to recognize [the teachers of] the world. When an old monk knows the false and the correct, it is not that he understood it the moment he was born from his mother; rather, through investigation, tempering, and polishing, he woke up to it on his own one day.