圓悟佛果禪師語錄 14.14

14.14

Ever since the patriarchs, they have solely aimed at the single transmission and direct pointing, disliking muddiness and water-dragging, issuing public notices, or setting up nests and burrows to dull and hinder people. Old Śākyamuni, in more than three hundred assemblies, established teachings according to people's capacities, setting worldly models that were excessively circuitous; therefore, at the very end, he directly and concisely received those of the supreme capacity. Although from Kāśyapa through twenty-eight generations, few dynamic traps were shown and much principle was revealed, when it came to the transmission, none failed to uphold it directly face-to-face: like knocking down the banner pole, dropping a needle into a bowl of water, displaying the circular light mark, holding the red banner, gripping the bright mirror, speaking the transmission gāthā like an iron stake, Bodhidharma refuting the six sects, establishing propositions with non-Buddhists, the world being at peace, or turning around 'I am heaven and you are a dog'—all were swift spiritual dynamics, not to be measured by hesitation or deliberate thought. By the time he reached Liang and travelled to Wei, he further made it explicit: a special transmission outside the teachings, singly transmitting the mind seal. What the six generations of transmitting the robe indicated was conspicuous; and when it reached Dajian of Caoxi, he demonstrated in detail the mastery of both teaching and lineage. After a long passage of time, lineage masters possessing the correct eye and great liberation transformed the general path, ensuring that students did not stagnate in names and characteristics, nor fall into intellectual discourse on principle. Releasing them with lively vitality, untrammelled and free, wondrous dynamic functions then appeared: applying the staff, delivering shouts, using words to dismiss words, using dynamics to seize dynamics, using poison to attack poison, and using function to shatter function. Therefore, transmitted for some seven hundred years, branches divided and schools split, each excelling in its own lineage style, bustling and thundering without measure. Yet when one examines their ultimate source, it does not go beyond directly pointing to the human mind. Once the mind ground is luminous, without a thread of obstruction, one casts off victory and defeat, self and other, right and wrong, intellectual views and conceptual understanding, penetrating through to the site of great rest and great peace; how could there be two different paths? As the saying goes, 'A hundred rivers flow differently, but all return to the sea.' One must be a vessel of transcendent capacity, endowed with high understanding and farsightedness, possessing the aspiration to inherit and exalt the buddhas and patriarchs; only then can one deeply enter the inner sanctum, have thorough faith, and hold fast directly under one's feet, before one can be certified and become fit to be seed grass. Other than this, one should strictly keep it treasured and secret, be cautious with words, and never grant easy passage.