大慧普覺禪師語錄 29.9

29.9

When scholar-officials study this Path, their affliction is not a lack of cleverness; their affliction is merely being too clever. Their affliction is not a lack of intellectual views; their affliction is merely having far too many intellectual views. Hence they constantly walk one step ahead of discriminatory consciousness, obscuring the news of cheerful ease and liberation beneath their feet. The higher among those with wrong views conflate seeing, hearing, perceiving, and knowing into the self, taking the sphere of direct perception as the mind-ground Dharma-gate. The lower ones toy with karmic consciousness, clinging to the entryway and household register, flapping their two lips, talking of the mysterious and speaking of the wondrous—some even go so far as raving madly without constraint of words, talking nonsense, pointing east and drawing west. The lowest of the low take silent illumination, wordlessness, vacuity, and quiescence, dwelling in the ghost cave, seeking ultimate peace and joy. Other various wrong interpretations can be known without speaking of them. When Chongmi and the others returned, I received the instruction you bestowed, and reading it brought unspeakable joy and solace. I shall no longer engage in conventional worldly social pleasantries; relying solely on your valiant resolve toward the Path, I will enter right into the entanglements. Chan has no distinction of Deshan or Linji, nor difference of Fayan or Caodong. It is only that students lack vast and resolute determination, while masters also lack vast and universally penetrating Dharma-gates; hence what they enter differs, while their ultimate resting place has no such differences at all. You instructed: 'I wish Miaoxi would indicate the shortcut essentials by letter.' Just this single thought of seeking an indication of the shortcut essentials has already plunged your head into a tub of glue; one must not add frost on top of snow. Even so, where there is a question there cannot be no answer. I ask you to put down all at once the scripture teachings and huatous you have customarily read yourself, or the places where you gained taste and delight from others' raising and indicating them. As before, knowing nothing and understanding nothing, just like a three-year-old child who has sensory consciousness but does not yet exercise it, look instead toward the front of that single thought seeking the shortcut essentials before it has arisen. Looking and looking, when you feel you have increasingly lost any hold, and your mind becomes increasingly unsettled, you must not slacken. This is the place where the crowns of the heads of a thousand sages are cut off; students of the Path often retreat at this point. If you can have faith in this, just look before the single thought of seeking an indication of the shortcut essentials has arisen. Looking and looking, you will suddenly awaken from the dream—this is no false matter; this is the effective effort Miaoxi has customarily practiced. Knowing that you possess a resolute determination, I drag myself through the mud and water, undertaking this total defeat. Other than this, there is nothing else to point out. If there were anything to point out, it would not be the shortcut essentials.