大慧普覺禪師語錄 20.3

20.3

If you wish to study this Way, you must possess decisive faith, so that when encountering adverse and favorable circumstances, your mind does not waver; only then will you have a share in proceeding. The Buddha said: 'Faith can forever extinguish the root of afflictions; / Faith can direct oneself solely toward the Buddha's merits; / Faith is without attachment to realms; / Far removed from all difficulties, one attains freedom from difficulties.' He also said: 'Faith can transcend the paths of the hosts of māras, / and display the unexcelled path of liberation.' As stated above, there is clear textual evidence in the teachings; would the Buddha deceive people? If you are half-bright and half-dark, half-believing and half-doubting, then when contacting objects and meeting conditions, doubts arise in your mind. This is having attachment in the mind toward realms, being unable to have decisive freedom from doubt regarding this Way, to extinguish the root of afflictions, and to leave all difficulties far behind. As for 'all difficulties', because of lacking decisive faith, one is disturbed by one's own skandha-demons. If in a single thought conditioned arising is unborn, then without surpassing this thought, you instantly transcend the path of māras. The so-called 'path of māras' is also nothing else: it is obscuring this mind, falsely generating various differentiated views outside this mind, so that this mind turns around following differentiated false thoughts, thereby accomplishing the realm of māras. If you can directly believe that this mind is decidedly originally a buddha, and suddenly obliterate all views, then this very path of māras is the person's bodhi path of leaving birth and death.