大慧普覺禪師語錄 13.2

13.2

The Master arrived at Xuefeng just as the Bodhi Assembly was being convened. Being requested to give a general sermon, after questions had concluded, he then said: "A veteran general of Bodhi sits amidst heavy encirclement; outside the kalpas, one constantly hears the neigh of the wooden horse. Without unsheathing an inch of blade, the marrow of Māra's heart is shattered; gazing upon the wind, already they have hoisted the white flag of surrender. Here in the Dharma cavern of Xuefeng, in the arena of Zhenxie, every person cherishes the intention to repay the Buddha and the Patriarchs, and each holds the strategy to pacify the state and secure the household. Their wisdom is like Śāriputra's, their eloquence like Pūrṇa's; for Yunmen to arrive here today, his only share can be to tie his tongue. Yet, though an official [post] does not admit a needle, private matters allow carts and horses. Having arrived here, it must not be in vain; borrowing a bit of the host's awe-inspiring radiance, I shall join the assembly for this occasion." He then picked up his staff and said: "Do you still understand thoroughly? The sky is high, and the celestial images are correct; the ocean is vast, and the hundred streams pay homage." Striking once, he said again: "Generally speaking, students of the Way must meet someone of the true capacity before they can succeed; if they do not meet someone of the true capacity, they are merely fellows snatching at emptiness. Just take the elder monk who earlier asked about Bajiao's staff: when answered from the true capacity, he was unable to grasp it. Nowadays, how many mistaken deliberations there are in various regions! When a student's eye is not clear and he steps forward to pose a question, the blind fellow on the meditation couch responds with rhyming clichés, saying: 'Guiding [him] across the waters of the broken bridge, accompanying [him] back to the village of the bright moon.' One phrase comes, another phrase goes, and he claims, 'I answered profoundly, I answered wondrously!' The student, unable to distinguish good from bad, stuffs it into his leather bag and carries it around to match with everything. If it happens to match, he turns around to give certification to the ancestral teachers; if it does not match, he harbors these unrefined and impure notions in his bosom, scorning good people and creating hellish karma. Look at how Zhenxie expounds Chan: he does not calculate at all. Depending on what the student asks, he speaks freely without hindrance, naturally like the wind blowing across water. It is simply because he speaks from actual seeing: just as Samantabhadra Bodhisattva arose from the Samādhi of the Ornamentation of the Buddha's Flowers, and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva poured out two thousand answers like water from a jar when Bodhisattva Puhui raised two hundred questions like rising clouds—when did he ever calculate or reflect? It is because he attained the Dharma with ease and spoke in accordance with the Dharma-nature. People nowadays have not personally witnessed or personally awakened; they do nothing but calculate in a hundred ways. When they are to ascend the seat tomorrow, they cannot sleep the whole night: remembering two lines from this notebook and two lines from that notebook, piecing and stitching them together to speak a patch of fine-sounding words like flowers and brocade. When seen through by a clear-eyed person from a quiet spot, it only becomes an object of ridicule. I earnestly urge you all: a clear-eyed ancestral teacher is hard to meet, hard to encounter. Having encountered one, it is just like leaning against Mount Sumeru. You must simply take a step back, let go of all this self-and-other and fundamental ignorance, cast aside everything memorized and learned from previous notebooks, and do not forcibly act as the master. In future days when old King Yama flogs the ghost-bones' buttocks, it will be precisely these ones who forcibly acted as master that he flogs. It is not that Yunmen is deceiving you all; these words have their proper transmission. Right before you are arrayed one thousand five hundred good friends as your witnesses; if I do not speak of it here, where else should I speak of it? Therefore, this matter definitely does not lie in words and phrases. If it lay in words and phrases, the entire great canon of teachings and the hundred schools of philosophers fill heaven and earth—how could they be without words? What need would there be for Bodhidharma to come from the West and point directly? In the final analysis, what place is the place of direct pointing? The moment you intend to think, it is already crooked. As when a monk asked Zhaozhou, 'What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?' Zhaozhou said, 'The cypress tree in the courtyard.' This is exceedingly direct. Again, a monk asked Dongshan, 'What is the Buddha?' Dongshan said, 'Three pounds of hemp.' Again, a monk asked Yunmen, 'What is the Buddha?' Yunmen said, 'A dry shit-stick.' This is exceedingly direct. If you intend to use your mind to match it, it turns all the more crooked. The Dharma is originally without crookedness; it is only because students learn with a crooked mind that, even if they learn what is profound beyond the profound and wondrous beyond the wondrous, in the end they cannot withstand birth and death, becoming merely the sort who mimic phrases. Originally an unconcerned person, one is instead hindered and obstructed by these vicious poisons in the mind-consciousness, unable to attain ease. Therefore the teaching says: 'The Dharma cannot be seen, heard, sensed, or known; if one practices seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, that is just seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, not seeking the Dharma.' It is like someone asking, 'Which way goes to the city?' and one points and says, 'Go from here.' If hearing this one immediately walks on, it is already crooked! How can this be learned with a mind of understanding through intellectual views, calculating gain and loss, the profound and the wondrous, right and wrong? If you truly want to practice, simply let go of everything, just like a person who has died the great death, knowing nothing and understanding nothing. Suddenly, toward that place of not knowing and not understanding, if you shatter this single thought, even the Buddha can do nothing to you. Do you not see what the ancients said: 'Letting go on the edge of the cliff, personally consenting to take it upon oneself; reviving after complete extinction, no one can deceive you.' Since you all have come to Xuefeng to practice Chan, you must never take it lightly. This is a clear-eyed ancestral teacher whom you can rely upon and who is worthy to be a standard for the Dharma. Some, seeing Zhenxie encourage people to bring forth the bodhi-mind, give rise to slander and discussion, saying: 'Since he is called a Chan master, he naturally has the intrinsic matter of the ancestral school; why does he constantly bustle about, resembling an ordinary lecturer?' Let me ask you: 'What is the intrinsic matter?' How lamentable! Being unable to practice good oneself, one turns around and mocks others for practicing good. With this kind of self-and-other, arising-and-ceasing, and jealousy uneliminated, while regarding oneself as right—if a good friend does not encourage people to bring forth the bodhi-mind, should he teach people to kill and set fires? This curved wooden chair is not a place for you to seek fame and profit or engage in the arising and ceasing of jealousy. Viewed with the eye of the Way, it is like a boiling cauldron, furnace coals, a forest of swords, and a mountain of blades. When the Dharma drum is struck, all the devas, dragons, and spirits assemble together; if the eye of the Way is not clear, when the devas, dragons, and spirits see black smoke spewing from your mouth, how could they not be terrified? Do you not see what the teaching says: 'Claiming to have attained what one has not attained is overweening pride; one who slanders the Great Prajñā cannot be granted repentance.' For example, a poor person falsely calling himself an emperor brings upon himself execution and destruction; how much more so for the Dharma King—how could one falsely usurp it? If the causal ground is not true, the fruition will invite crookedness; one must be genuine to succeed. One who is called a good friend guides all sentient beings to make them see their buddha-nature; one must observe the faculties and set forth the teaching, granting medicine in accordance with the illness. One cannot say to people of a three-house hamlet: 'The staff arrives in the Western Heavens in the morning and returns to the Eastern Land at dusk; the fan leaps up to the Heaven of the Thirty-Three and bumps the nostrils of Śakra; a single blow strikes the carp of the Eastern Sea, and the rain pours down like an overturned basin.' Although this is talk of the intrinsic matter, how can you expect them to understand it? Even you Chan monks cannot find a crack in this old fellow; how much less can those laypeople living in the net of dust with manifesting ignorance? If there are no skillful means to guide and bring them to maturity, how could they immediately understand? Those in this assembly have all cast aside their homes and traveled from ten or twenty stages away; if one person enters the association and turns his mind toward the north, when many people do good, how could there be no benefit? This is what a good friend ought to do as his intrinsic duty; how could it be forced action? This summer, I, Yunmen, opened a lampwick and Chinese honeylocust shop at Guangyin, speaking a bit of coarse Chan according to the household's wealth or poverty. In my quarters, when I asked a student a single phrase, if without thinking or calculating he could speak a phrase naturally and artlessly, I would give him another press; if he hesitated, a blow across the back, with no other subtlety. If by chance one or two were sent off, I had them come up to Xuefeng to approach the great forge, the matter being of one and the same family. Earlier, Zhenxie brought up: 'The World-Honoured One entered the great city of Śrāvastī to beg for food. Having eaten his meal, he put away his robes and bowl, washed his feet, and sat down on the prepared seat. Subhūti stepped forward from the assembly, bowed, and said, "How rare, World-Honoured One!"' Zhenxie said, 'Old Śākya was originally pitifully fine, but when Subhūti came forth and said "How rare," at that moment it melted like ice and shattered like tiles.' Good assembly! Old Śākya had not yet spoken a single word; what did Subhūti see that he immediately said 'How rare'? Do you all want to understand? Just look toward the place where Zhenxie speaks of melting like ice and shattering like tiles; if you suddenly see through it, the lifelong matter of practicing and studying will be completed. As for Zhenxie, seeing that students usually identify with the awareness right before their eyes, seeking views and searching for understanding without rest, he could not but teach people to take it upon themselves outside the kalpas. Speaking according to reality, this single phrase is already too much. This is a temporary expedient: like pointing at the moon to show someone, you must look at the moon and not identify with the finger. Nowadays people do not understand and think there really is such a thing. As the Patriarch said, they mistake it; when have they ever understood expedients? Since they do not recognize words of expedient means, they sit inside the belly of Dīpaṃkara Buddha, motionless inside the ghost cave under the black mountain, sitting until calluses grow on their buttocks, water drools from their mouths, and inside their bellies it remains as pitch-black as before—could they dream of it even in the year of the donkey? Tonight, before the assembly of humans and devas, I, Yunmen, accord with the words of all the sages; let each of you remember this well. Many words lead further away from the Way. Just earlier Zhenxie had an unfinished gong'an; Yunmen will conclude it for him. Anciently, an elderly venerable visited Linji. Just upon meeting, he lifted his sitting cloth and said, 'Is bowing correct, or is not bowing correct?' Linji shouted. The elder monk then bowed. Linji said, 'This thief!' The elder monk said, 'Thief, thief!' and left. Linji said, 'Do not say that nothing is the matter.' While the head monk was attending at his side, Linji said, 'Was there any fault or not?' The head monk said, 'There was.' Linji said, 'Did the guest have the fault, or did the host have the fault?' The head monk said, 'Both had the fault.' Linji said, 'Where was the fault?' The head monk then left. Linji said, 'Do not say that nothing is the matter.'" The Master said: "Linji lost a tally in the dark, but won a move in the light. Although there is losing and winning, light and dark, what can be done about the bystander seeing it as unsightly? Tell me, who is the bystander?" After a long pause, he said: "If you go to other places, do not quote this mistakenly."