大慧普覺禪師語錄 24.10

24.10

Master Dingguang Miaodao asked Yunmen, "How are delusion and awakening, conformity and opposition, regarding this mind and this nature? I beg for an instruction pointing out the essential shortcut." Yunmen remained silent for a long time. Miaodao asked again, and Yunmen smiled and said, "If we speak of the essential shortcut, it cannot be pointed out to others; if it could be pointed out, it would not be the essential shortcut." Miaodao said, "Is there no skillful means to cause students to tend toward it?" Yunmen said, "If we speak of skillful means, mind has no delusion or awakening, and nature has no conformity or opposition. It is only that people establish views of delusion and awakening and cling to understandings of conformity and opposition, wishing to clarify this mind and see this nature; and so this mind and this nature follow along with human inverted confusion and flow into deviant paths. Because of this, buddhas and demons are not distinguished, and the deviant and the correct are not divided. This is because they do not understand that this mind and this nature are a dream and an illusion, falsely setting up two kinds of names and words, taking conformity and opposition, delusion and awakening, as real, and mistaking this mind and this nature as true. They do not know at all that whether real or not real, whether false or not false, worldly or world-transcending, they are merely provisional words and statements." Therefore Vimalakīrti said, "The Dharma cannot be seen, heard, sensed, or known. If one practices seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, that is seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, not seeking the Dharma." Also an ancient worthy said, "If you take yourself and your own mind as ultimate, there will inevitably be other objects and other persons as antidotes." Furthermore, the Buddha said to Pūrṇa, "You, with matter and emptiness conflicting and usurping each other within the tathāgatagarbha, cause the tathāgatagarbha to pervade the dharmadhātu accordingly as matter and emptiness; I, with wondrous clarity unceasing and unborn, unite with the tathāgatagarbha, and the tathāgatagarbha only as wondrous awakened clarity completely illuminates the dharmadhātu." The tathāgatagarbha is just this mind and this nature. Yet the Buddha expediently pointed to the mutual conflict and usurpation of matter and emptiness as wrong, and took wondrous clarity unceasing and unborn as right. These two passages are medicinal words to cure the two sicknesses of delusion and awakening; they are not the Buddha's definitive meaning, but words uttered to break the clinging of those who grasp mind, nature, conformity, and opposition in delusion and awakening as real dharmas. Have you not seen Bodhisattva Vajragarbha say, "All the three times are merely words and speech; all dharmas have no resting place within words and speech; all words and speech also have no resting place within dharmas"? If the view of delusion and awakening is extinguished and the understanding of conformity and opposition is severed, then this mind is thoroughly clear like the bright sun, this nature is vast and open like empty space, and from beneath one's own feet light radiates, shaking the earth and illuminating the ten directions; those who behold this light all realize the forbearance of the non-arising of dharmas. When one arrives at such a time, one naturally tallies in silence with this mind and this nature. Only then does one know that originally there was no delusion in the past and originally there is no awakening in the present: awakening is delusion, delusion is awakening; conformity is opposition, opposition is conformity; nature is mind, mind is nature; buddha is demon, demon is buddha; a single path, pure and equal, without that which is equal or unequal—all this is the constant portion of our mind, not borrowing from other techniques. Having attained such a state, it is also said only out of necessity; one must not straightaway take it as real. If one takes it as real, then again one fails to recognize skillful means, clinging to dead words and further adding to vanity and falsehood, turning in confusion without an end. Arriving here, there is no place for you to apply your mind. You had better know this matter, push it aside, and then turn your head to look: Great Master Ma's 'Mind itself is Buddha', 'Neither mind nor Buddha', 'It is not mind, not Buddha, not a thing'; Zhaozhou's cypress tree in the courtyard; Yunmen's Mount Sumeru; Dayu's sawing open the steelyard weight; Venerable Yanyang's clod of earth; Fenyang's 'Do not give rise to false thoughts'; Juzhi's raising a finger—in the final analysis, what principle is this? This is Yunmen's skillful means. Miaodao, reflect upon it.