袁州仰山慧寂禪師語錄 1.48

1.48

The Master ascended the hall and said, "All of you, let each reflect their own light back upon themselves; do not memorize my words. For beginningless kalpas you have turned your backs on the light and cast yourselves into darkness; the roots of your delusive thoughts are deep, difficult to pull up all at once. Therefore expedients are provisionally established to take away your coarse consciousness. It is like using yellow leaves to stop a child's crying—what truth is there in it? It is also like a person who stocks a shop with a hundred kinds of goods along with gold and jewels, intending only to weigh out according to the capacity of customers who come. Therefore it is said that Shitou was a shop of pure gold, whereas mine here is a general merchandise shop. If someone comes seeking rat droppings, I also pick some up and give it to them; if someone comes seeking pure gold, I also pick some up and give it to them."
At that time, a monk asked, "I have no need for rat droppings; I ask the Upādhyāya for pure gold."
The Master said, "Biting the arrowhead while trying to open your mouth, you will not understand even in the year of the donkey."
The monk had no reply.
The Master said, "When people make requests, there is a transaction; when no one makes a request, there is none. If I were to speak of the Chan school, there would not be even a single person by my side to keep me company, let alone an assembly of five hundred or seven hundred! If I speak of this and that, you scramble forward to pick it up, like cheating a small child with an empty fist; there is nothing real in it at all. Now I speak clearly to you of matters on the side of the sages: for now do not apply your minds trying to grasp them, but simply cultivate in accordance with reality toward the sea of your own nature. Do not seek the three knowledges and six supernormal knowledges. Why? These are matters on the peripheral end of sainthood. Nowadays, you just need to recognize the mind and penetrate the source. If only you attain the source, do not worry about the branches; in later days, they will be complete of themselves. If you have not yet attained the source, even if you try to study others with intellectual sentiments, you cannot do so. Have you not seen what Upādhyāya Guishan said: 'When sentiments of ordinary and holy are exhausted, the substance reveals the true and constant. When phenomena and principle are non-dual, that is the Tathatā Buddha.'"