大慧普覺禪師語錄 30.11

30.11

If you are resolved to bring this matter to ultimate completion, simply keep your mind constantly open and clear, responding as things come; like someone practicing archery, after a long time they will hit the bullseye. Have you not seen that Bodhidharma said to the Second Patriarch: "You need only externally cease all conditions, inwardly have no panting of breath, and make your mind like a wall; then you can enter the Path." Nowadays, as soon as people hear this talk, they misinterpret it into a state of blunt ignorance, stiffly suppressing themselves, wishing to attain a mind like a wall. What the Patriarch called misapprehension—how can they understand expedient means? Yantou said: "The moment it is so, it is immediately not so." Affirmative phrases are cleared away, negative phrases are also cleared away—this is the very model of externally ceasing all conditions and having no panting of breath within. Even if you have not yet burst through with a sudden snap and pop, you will still not be turned around by words and phrases. When looking at the moon, cease gazing at the finger; upon returning home, stop asking about the road. When emotional consciousness is not yet broken through, the fire of the mind blazes. Just at such a moment, simply take up the huatou you doubt and keep holding to it. For example, a monk asked Zhaozhou: "Does a dog have buddha-nature or not?" Zhou said: "No (Wu)." Just keep bringing it up and calling it to awareness: it is wrong coming from the left, and it is wrong coming from the right. Moreover, you must not use your mind to wait for enlightenment; you must not take it upon yourself at the point where it is raised; you must not comprehend it as profound mystery; you must not deliberate over existence and non-existence; you must not calculate it as the "no" of true nothingness; you must not sit inside the armor of doing nothing; you must not understand it at the flash of sparks struck from stone or lightning. Keep going until there is no place to use the mind, and the mind has nowhere to go. Do not fear falling into emptiness; right here is the good spot. Suddenly, like a rat entering a bull's horn, you will see it cut off. This matter is neither difficult nor easy. Unless you have planted the seeds of prajñā-wisdom deeply in past lives, and have served true spiritual friends through vast and beginningless kalpas, perfuming right knowledge and right view into your luminous consciousness, so that when encountering situations and meeting conditions, you bump against it and stumble upon it in actual practice, like recognizing your own parents in a crowd of ten thousand people. At such a moment, without needing to ask others, naturally the seeking mind will not scatter. Yunmen said: "When it cannot be spoken, it is there; when it is not spoken, it is gone. When it cannot be deliberated, it is there; when it is not deliberated, it is gone." Then he brought it up himself, saying: "Tell me, when it is not deliberated, what is it?" Fearing again that people would not understand, he added himself: "What else could it be?" In recent years, Chan has had many paths: some take one question and one answer with an extra phrase at the end to be Chan; some gather together to deliberate over the ancients' conditions for entering the Path, saying, "Here is empty, there is solid; this phrase is profound, that phrase is wondrous," taking substitutions or alternative phrases to be Chan; some harmonize visual forms and sounds heard with the ear, taking it to be Chan based on "the three realms are mind-only, the myriad dharmas are consciousness-only"; some have no words and no speech, sitting in the ghosts' cave beneath the Black Mountain, closing their eyebrows and shutting their eyes, calling it news from the other side of King of Majestic Voice before one's parents were born, and also calling it silent illumination to be Chan. Such types do not seek wondrous awakening; they regard awakening as falling into the secondary; they regard awakening as deceiving people; they regard awakening as a contrivance. Since they themselves have never awakened, neither do they believe that there is any awakened one. Miaoxi often says to the patch-robed monks: "If one lacks awakening even in worldly crafts and arts, one still cannot attain their subtle wonder; how much less when wishing to be liberated from birth and death, yet only talking of quietude with the mouth and expecting to bring it to a close!" It is very much like putting one's head down and running east while wanting to grab things on the west: the more you seek, the further away it is; the more urgent you are, the more delayed it is. Such people are called objects of pity; in the teachings they are called those who slander great prajñā and sever the Buddha's wisdom-life; even if a thousand buddhas appear in the world, they cannot receive repentance. Though it began as a good cause, it turns around to bring an evil result. I would rather this body be pulverized like fine dust than treat the Buddhadharma as worldly sentiment. If you are resolved to confront birth and death, you must break through this lacquer tub before you can succeed. Strictly avoid having a false teacher stroke you smoothly and seal you with a winter-melon seal, whereupon you say that you are completely finished with everything. People of this sort are as numerous as stalks of rice, hemp, and bamboo. With your intelligence and insight, you will surely not swallow such foul poison; however, I also fear that through the earnestness of your application of mind and your desire for quick results, you may unknowingly and unconsciously be defiled by them. Therefore, letting my brush run on into such entanglements, if a person with clear eyes were to catch sight of this, it would be a total failure. I urge you ten thousand times to heed this: just take Zhaozhou's single word "No" (Wu) and bring it to awareness in the midst of daily response to conditions, never letting it be interrupted. An ancient worthy said: "To investigate the ultimate principle, take awakening as the criterion." If you speak so eloquently that heavenly flowers fall in confusion, yet are not awakened, it is all just the frantic running about of an insane person outside. Strive for it! Do not neglect it.