大慧普覺禪師語錄 28.11

28.11

In your youth you established yourself on your own and stood atop the heads of all people, not entrapped by wealth and rank. Were it not sustained by the power of vows over hundreds of eons and thousands of lives, how could this be achieved? Furthermore, you are able to apply yourself earnestly to this one great matter, unregressing from thought to thought, possessing decisive faith and endowed with decisive resolve. How could an ordinary fellow achieve this? Old Gautama said: 'Only this one matter is real; the other two are not true.' Please apply the whip and do not neglect it; worldly matters are just this. Did not the ancient sage say: 'If in the morning one hears the Way, in the evening one may die without regret'? I wonder what Way it was that was heard? Arriving here, how can blinking an eye be permitted? You must not go on quoting 'My way is bound together by a single thread.' You must believe in yourself and awaken for yourself; what can be spoken of is ultimately without proof. If you have seen it for yourself, awakened to it for yourself, and had faith in it reach to the end, then if it cannot be spoken of and cannot be described, that does not hinder anything. What is to be feared is only those who can speak semblances and describe semblances, yet do not see and do not awaken; Old Gautama pointed them out as persons of overweening pride, also called them slanderers of prajñā, also called them great liars, and also called them destroyers of the Buddha's wisdom-life—even if a thousand buddhas appear in the world, they cannot be granted repentance. If you penetrate the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature', this kind of talk will turn out to be false speech. For now, you must not immediately understand it as false speech. Recently I received two letters in succession from Lü Juren, in both of which he said: 'The letter in reply to Longli from mid-summer I always keep by my seat, taking attainment as my deadline.' I also heard: 'He once copied and presented it to you; noble sons of recent times like him are like the uḍumbara flower appearing once in a long time.' When previously on the mountain, whenever I spoke this kind of talk with you, seeing your eyes steady and motionless, you grasped ninety-nine percent of it, lacking only a sudden cracking sound. If you obtain that sudden cracking sound, then Confucianism is Buddhism, Buddhism is Confucianism; monk is lay, lay is monk; ordinary is sage, sage is ordinary; I am you, you am I; heaven is earth, earth is heaven; waves are water, water is waves. Clotted cream, butter, and ghee are stirred into a single flavor; bottles, plates, hairpins, and bracelets are melted into a single gold. It depends on me, not on others. Reaching this realm, it is commanded by me: as it is said, 'I am the Dharma King, sovereign in the Dharma.' How could gains and losses, right and wrong, be an obstruction? This is not forced; the Dharma is just so. This realm—except for the old fellow Wugou, how could other people have faith that reaches it? Even if their faith reached it, how could they gain entry? You have already had faith reach it, already caught sight of it, and already been able to distinguish what is heterodox and what is orthodox; it is only that you have not yet gained entry. When you gain entry, without distinguishing old from young, without depending on wise or foolish, it is like directly conferring the station of Brahmā upon an ordinary person, with no gradations or stages whatsoever. It is just as Yongjia said: 'In one leap, directly entering the Tathāgata-ground.' Just listen to me; I will certainly not mislead you.