大慧普覺禪師語錄 29.29

29.29

I do not know whether, after parting, in your daily responses to conditions, you are carried away by external objects or not? When viewing documents piled on the desk, are you able to brush them aside or not? When encountering things, can you remain unmoved or not? When staying in a quiet place, are you free from delusive thoughts or not? When investigating this matter, are you without mixed thoughts or not? Thus the yellow-faced old fellow said: 'The mind does not falsely grasp past phenomena, nor is it greedily attached to future matters; it does not abide anywhere in the present, fully comprehending that the three periods of time are entirely empty and serene.' For past matters, whether good or evil, there is no need to deliberate: deliberating obstructs the Way. For future matters, there is no need to calculate: calculating leads to frenzy and confusion. When present matters arrive before you, whether adverse or favorable, there is also no need to apply your mind: applying your mind agitates the square inch [of your breast]. Just attend to everything when the time comes, responding according to conditions, and you will naturally accord with this principle. Adverse circumstances are easy to strike down; favorable circumstances are difficult to strike down. For what goes against one's intent, it requires only the single character 'patience'; compose yourself for a short while and it passes. But in favorable circumstances there is truly nowhere for you to avoid: like a lodestone and iron meeting, neither realizes they have joined into one place. Even insentient things are like this; how much more so for one whose whole body makes a living within active ignorance! Facing such circumstances, if without wisdom one is unaware and unknowing, drawn into their net, and then tries to seek a way out from within—is that not difficult? Therefore the ancient sages said: 'Being able to enter the world, one transcends the world without remainder.' It is precisely this principle. In recent times there is a kind of practitioner who lacks skillful means: they often mistake active ignorance for 'entering the world', and then forcibly arrange supramundane dharmas to make the matter of 'transcending the world without remainder'. Is this not lamentable? Unless one has long had past vows, immediately breaks through it and acts as master, not being led along by it... Thus the *Vimalakīrti* states: 'For people of overweening pride, the Buddha spoke of leaving lust, anger, and delusion as liberation; for those without overweening pride, the Buddha spoke of the nature of lust, anger, and delusion as being itself liberation.' If you can avoid this fault and, within adverse and favorable circumstances, have no marks of arising and ceasing, only then can you be free of the label 'overweening pride'. Thus you may then enter the world, and be called a person of strength. What has been said above is all what Miaoxi has personally experienced in the past; even today in my daily activities, I only practice like this. I hope that while your physical strength is robust, you will also enter this samādhi. Beyond this, constantly use Zhaozhou's character *wu* to alert and stimulate yourself; after a long time it will become thoroughly ripe, and suddenly, without mind, you will smash the lacquer bucket: that is the place of thorough breakthrough.