佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 1.3

1.3

Ever since the Sūtra of Forty-two Chapters entered China, people first knew there was a Buddha. From Bodhidharma down to the Sixth Ancestor's transmission of the robe, words and phrases first emerged: 'Originally not a single thing exists' was the Southern School; 'constantly strive to wipe it clean' was the Northern School. Thereupon the Chan school's verse eulogies on antiquity circulated throughout the world. Its followers practiced the method of overturning cases: scolding the Buddhas and reviling the ancestral masters, there was nothing they would not do. At times there were those who deeply grasped the living methods of our poets. Yet as for the so-called paramārtha, what use could it have for words and phrases? Xuedou and Yuanwu were earnestly full of a grandmotherly heart; Dahui, however, consigned it all to a single flame. Zhang Wei, Mingyuan of Yuzhong, has now revived the dead ashes and recut the printing blocks—can he not also be called earnestly full of a grandmotherly heart? Prefaced by Fang Hui Wanli of Mount Ziyang on the eighth day of the fourth month, a guichou day, in the gengzi year, the fourth year of the Dade era [1300].