圓悟佛果禪師語錄 15.18

15.18

Anciently, before Chan Master Huanglong Laonan saw Shishuang, he understood a whole bellyful of Chan. Cuiyan took pity on him and urged him to visit Ciming; merely by thoroughly investigating where Xuansha's words to Lingyun were not penetrating, his notions melted like ice and shattered like tiles on the spot, whereupon he received the seal of approval. For thirty years he simply used this seal to critique [teachings] throughout all quarters, opening roads and curing diseases, without resorting to donkey-loads of medicine. At the crucial point, how could there be so many Buddha-dharmas? When a great ancestral master acts for others, though he establishes no dens or wordy entanglements, in time the students mistakenly adopt [his words], and these too become dens and wordy entanglements. Because they make having no den into a den and make having no wordy entanglements into wordy entanglements, one must pursue them to exhaustion, not letting them wait by the tree trunk for a hare or mistake the finger for the moon. Discernment precedes the dynamic moment; even the stirring of grass in wind and dust is illumined at its first sign, not to mention amidst bustling interactions. If one's chest is not empty and quiet, without a single phenomenon confronting the mind, how could one respond fully without error and illumine things ahead of the dynamic moment? These are all the efficacy of the nāga residing in absorption.