密菴和尚語錄 1.327

1.327

達磨未離西竺，便將一條斷貫索穿却天下人鼻孔，及乎遠泛孤舟，游梁歷魏，見武帝笑談間，不覺失却此索子，便乃無頓渾身處，直往嵩山九年面壁，求生不得求死不得，被人喚作「壁觀婆羅門」。那知深雪中有箇不識好惡漢拾得此索，返將穿却鼻孔，渠無面目得見人，復回熊耳峯前做許多鬼怪。而今學道人不原所以，將謂西來單傳心印，直指人心見性成佛實有恁麼事，晝三夜三[拚-ㄙ+云]却性命，抵死窮究，無乃錯之甚耶！殊禪人質直無偽，深知此索子不是口耳傳受而得之，朅來深山窮谷中道聚究研，要知落著分曉，誠不易得。回觀此山食指既多，常住不給，不忍坐視，發心為眾持鉢。余嘉其志不凡，臨行欲語，故書此以贈之。但向紅塵逆順堆裏默默提撕，驀地一齊失却，歸來與汝三十拄杖。

Before Bodhidharma had left Western India, he took a broken halter and pierced the nostrils of everyone under heaven. When he drifted far away in a solitary boat, roaming Liang and traveling through Wei, in the midst of laughing and talking upon seeing Emperor Wu, he unconsciously lost this halter, and then had nowhere to place his entire body. He went straight to Mount Song to face the wall for nine years, unable to seek life and unable to seek death, being called by others "the wall-gazing Brahmin". Who knew that in the deep snow there was a fellow who knew not good from bad, who picked up this halter and in turn pierced Bodhidharma's nostrils with it? Having no face with which to see people, he returned to the front of Bear Ear Peak to make many apparitions. Nowadays students of the Way do not trace the source, thinking that coming from the West with a special transmission of the mind-seal, pointing directly to the human mind and seeing nature to become a buddha, truly has such an affair; day and night they risk their lives, exhausting themselves to the death in investigation—is this not a great mistake? Chan Man Shu is upright and without falsity, deeply knowing that this halter is not obtained through oral and aural transmission. Having come to this deep mountain and remote valley to gather with us in the Way and investigate, wishing to know the clear outcome, it is truly not easy to attain. Looking back, the mouths to feed on this mountain are many, and the permanent property is insufficient; unable to bear sitting by and watching, he generated the resolve to carry the bowl for the assembly. I commend his extraordinary resolve, and as he was about to depart he asked for words, so I wrote this to present to him. Just silently bring it to awareness amid the heap of worldly dust, both adverse and favourable; if suddenly everything is lost all at once, when you return I will give you thirty blows of the staff.