圓悟佛果禪師語錄 16.6

16.6

An outstanding patch-robed monk harbors lofty insight and exceptional disposition, generously casts off worldly caps, and regards the body, world, and reputation as floating dust, clear clouds, or valley echoes. By virtue of being a vessel of great capacity from past lives, he knows that there is this matter of transcending life and death, cutting off sagehood and surpassing the mundane, which is the adamantine true body realized by the Tathāgatas of the three times and the wondrous mind directly transmitted by the ancestral masters through the ages. Taking strides like a fragrant elephant or a garuḍa, he seeks to gallop and soar above hundreds of millions of classes of beings, cutting off the current and brushing the heavens. How could he be willing to be a swan or a sparrow, cramped in high and low, victory and defeat, and weighing momentary interests within a spark of flint or a flash of lightning? For this reason, the great adepts of old did not mind petty matters or seek the shallow and near; they generated a single determination to transcend the Buddhas and ancestors, shouldered the heavy burden that all others cannot take on, universally ferried across the four modes of birth and nine classes of beings, pulled them from suffering and gave them peace, smashed the folly that obstructs the Way, broke the poisonous arrows of ignorance and mad frenzy, and plucked out the thorns of views from the Dharma-eye, causing the scenery of the original ground to become clear and cloudless, and the original face before the empty kalpa to be clearly revealed. Exerting mind and strength, unfearing of cold and heat, neglecting sleep and forgetting meals, diligently holding noble conduct and purifying the three actions, beneath the three rafters he puts to death the monkey of the mind and slays the horse of the intellect, making them thoroughly resemble dried wood, rotten stumps, and hard stones. When suddenly penetrated through, how could it be obtained from another? Revealing the great hidden treasury, lighting a bright torch in a dark room, positioning a warship at a crucial crossing, he realizes great liberation, instantly completing right awakening without giving rise to a single thought, and opens a gate of entering the principle. Then he ascends to the site of universal brilliance, occupies the seat of the Dharma-emptiness that is undefiled, pure, extraordinary, and peerless, his mouth's ocean surging with waves, rousing the four unimpeded eloquence; no sooner does he set up a device, utter a phrase, or manifest a sublime sign than he universally causes ordinary and sagely, sentient and insentient, to revere the majestic light and receive shelter together—yet this is not yet the place where merit is eradicated. Turning to that other side, the thousand sages cannot trap him, the myriad spirits have no way to look up to him, the devas have no path to offer flowers, and how could māras and non-Buddhists peer from the side? Letting go of views and understanding, casting off the profound and wondrous, throwing away function, he only eats when hungry and drinks when thirsty. At the outset he does not know of having mind or having no mind, gaining mindfulness or losing mindfulness; how much less would he cling to previous learned interpretations, definitive phrases, extraordinary words, divisions of principle and nature, and names and marks—shackled by views of Buddha and views of Dharma, and worldly intellect and clever eloquence that shake the earth and overturn the heavens—entangling and binding himself, entering the ocean to count the grains of sand? What reliance would he have? Being equally a great man, he should strive to overcome rivals and astound the crowd, fulfilling his own original aspiration; only then is he a true person of the Way of the fundamental lot, with great mind, great view, great liberation, non-action, and no affairs.