筠州洞山悟本禪師語錄 1.2

1.2

The Way between East and West is remote; it was personally transmitted through only two or three, and as the transmission gradually spread, the true became mingled with the false. At a time when falsehoods arose together, who but the Patriarch of Dongshan alone remained purely authentic? From his early days questioning his master about having no eyes or ears, to his rise at Nanquan's memorial feast; from strangely hearing the insentient expound [the Dharma] with the eye, to his careful inquiry into Boyan's name; from his uninterrupted ease at Yunyan, to stamping out the reflection while crossing the water; from reproving Yunju over the path of heavenly offerings, to ultimately holding the foolish feast—these several events showing his coming and going truly make him a teacher and model rare in the world. His words, phrases, and passages were scattered among the collections of various houses, and occasionally there were anthologies, yet they were defective. During the Genbun era, the veteran Chan master Genkei painstakingly compiled them under the title Recorded Sayings of Dongshan and had the blocks carved at Baihualin, which may well be called rectifying the affairs of the ancestral lineage. However, the road to the capital is ten thousand li, making it difficult to pay reverence and request it due to lack of means. In the autumn of the past year Gengchen, the assembly of disciples at Jixiang Chan Monastery in Jiangdu urged me to collate it again, likewise not forgetting our ancestral house. Soon after, they requested a statement from this old monk, so I told them: 'Ah, Patriarch Dong! How true, how profound, how complete, without bias, and hitting the mark! Truly washed in the Yangzi and Han and sun-dried in the autumn sun, he can be seen only with the mind of the Way, not with the human mind. If one comes to that which cannot be fathomed, cannot be measured, cannot be displaced, standing independent without self, then beneath Shaolin there is indeed only this one person, as Zanning said!'