大慧普覺禪師語錄 28.15

28.15

Your letter instructs: 'In responding to conditions day by day, I tread upon differentiated realms, yet I am never not within the Buddhadharma. Moreover, in the midst of daily demeanor and movement, I use the huatou "a dog has no buddha-nature" to smash and eliminate emotional defilements.' If you practice like this, I fear you will never attain awakening and entry in the end. Please look beneath your own feet: from where do differentiated realms arise? In the midst of movement, demeanor, and social intercourse, how can you use the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature' to smash and eliminate emotional defilements? And who is the one able to know about smashing and eliminating emotional defilements? Did not the Buddha say: 'Sentient beings are inverted; they delude themselves and chase after objects. Objects originally have no intrinsic nature; those who delude themselves simply chase after them of their own accord.' Realms originally have no differentiation; those who delude themselves simply differentiate them on their own. Since you tread daily in differentiated realms, you are also within the Buddhadharma; since you are within the Buddhadharma, then there are no differentiated realms; since you are within differentiated realms, then it is not the Buddhadharma. Picking up one and letting go of another—when will there ever be an end? When the butcher Broad Forehead was at the Nirvāṇa assembly, he laid down his butcher's cleaver and immediately became a buddha on the spot. How could there have been so much chattering and vexation? In daily life, where you respond to conditions, the moment you feel that you are treading in differentiated realms, simply right at the point of differentiation, bring up the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature.' You do not need to form thoughts of smashing and eliminating, you do not need to form thoughts of emotional defilements, you do not need to form thoughts of differentiation, and you do not need to form thoughts of the Buddhadharma. Just look at the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature'; just bring up the single word 'No' (wu). Neither do you need to harbor a mind waiting for enlightenment. If you harbor a mind waiting for enlightenment, then the realms will also be differentiated, the Buddhadharma will also be differentiated, emotional defilements will also be differentiated, the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature' will also be differentiated, the places of interruption will also be differentiated, the places without interruption will also be differentiated, the places where you suffer delusion and agitation from emotional defilements and body and mind are ill at ease will also be differentiated, and that which is able to know these many differentiations will also be differentiated. If you want to eliminate this sickness, just look at the single word 'No.' Just look at the butcher Broad Forehead laying down his butcher's cleaver and saying: 'I am one among the thousand buddhas.' Is this real or empty? If you deliberate over real or empty, you fall back into differentiated realms again. It is better to cut it in two with a single blow of the sword; you must not think of after and deliberate on before. If you think of after and deliberate on before, then there is differentiation once again. Xuansha said: 'This matter cannot be circumscribed. When the path of thought is severed, without relying on adornment it is originally true and tranquil; in movement, functioning, speech, and laughter, it is luminous everywhere, lacking nothing at all.' People today do not awaken to the principle within this; they blindly tread in affairs and dust of their own accord, contaminated and attached everywhere, bound fast at every turn. Even if they awaken, the dusty realms are chaotic and names and forms are unreal, so they intend to congeal the mind and gather their thoughts, collect affairs and return to emptiness, close their eyes and conceal their vision; whenever a thought arises, they repeatedly smash and eliminate it, and as soon as a subtle thought is born, they promptly suppress it. Such a view is an outsider fallen into empty annihilation, a dead man whose soul has not dispersed, dim and murky without sensation or awareness, plugging one's ears to steal a bell—vainly deceiving oneself. What your letter says is entirely the sickness rebuked by Xuansha, the pit in which heterodox teachers of silent illumination bury people; you cannot fail to know this. When bringing up the huatou, you do not need to use so many tricks at all; just in walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, do not allow it to be interrupted. In joy, anger, grief, and pleasure, do not produce distinctions. Bringing it up again and again, looking at it again and again, when you feel there is no path of reason, no flavor, and your mind is hot and stifled—that is precisely the place for you to surrender your life. Remember this! Remember this! Do not regress upon seeing such a realm; such a realm is precisely the message of becoming a buddha and becoming a patriarch. Nowadays, the cohorts of heterodox teachers of silent illumination merely take wordlessness and speechlessness as the ultimate principle, calling it the matter beyond King of Wonderful Voice, or calling it the matter before the empty kalpa. They do not believe there is a gate of enlightenment; they take enlightenment to be deception, take enlightenment to be a second head, take enlightenment to be an expedient expression, take enlightenment to be words for guiding beginners. People of this sort deceive others and deceive themselves, mislead others and mislead themselves; this too you cannot fail to know. In the four deportments of daily life, when treading in differentiated realms, the moment you feel it is effortless is precisely the place where you gain strength. The place where you gain strength is extremely effortless; if you use a single hair's breadth of strength to prop it up, it is definitely a heterodox dharma, not the Buddhadharma. Just muster a lasting determination to grapple closely with the huatou 'a dog has no buddha-nature.' Grappling back and forth until the mind has nowhere to go, suddenly it will be like waking from a dream, like a lotus flower opening, like parting the clouds to see the sun. When you reach such a time, it will naturally become a single whole. Just in the topsy-turvy places of daily life, only look at the single word 'No'; do not care whether you awaken or do not awaken, whether you penetrate or do not penetrate. The buddhas of the three periods are simply people with nothing to do; the successive generations of patriarchs are also simply people with nothing to do. An ancient worthy said: 'Just penetrate non-affair amidst affairs; seeing forms and hearing sounds, there is no need to be deaf.' Another ancient worthy said: 'The fool eliminates objects but does not forget the mind; the wise person forgets the mind and does not eliminate objects.' Being without mind in all places, the various differentiated realms will naturally vanish of themselves. Nowadays, scholar-officials are mostly impatient and want to understand Chan right away; they make reckonings and deliberations upon the scriptural teachings and in the sayings of the patriarchs, wanting to explain them with distinct clarity. Little do they know that the place of distinct clarity is precisely the matter without distinct clarity. If you can penetrate the single word 'No,' whether it is distinctly clear or not distinctly clear, there is no need to ask others. This old fellow's teaching scholar-officials to let themselves be dull is precisely this principle. Being the top graduate on the list of dullards is not bad either; I only fear drawing a blank, ha-ha!