佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 10.27

10.27

After Zhaozhou demonstrated these three turning phrases, at the very end he went on to say, "The true Buddha sits inside the house." This single phrase was terribly unkempt. The ancient opened a single eye and let down his hands to receive people, briefly borrowing these words to convey a message and help others. If you completely uphold the authentic imperative all the way through, the grass in front of the Dharma hall would be ten feet deep. Xuedou disliked the leakiness and clumsiness of his final phrase, so he pared it away and only versified the three phrases. If a clay Buddha crosses water, it dissolves; if a golden Buddha crosses into a furnace, it melts; if a wooden Buddha crosses fire, it burns up. What is difficult to understand? Among Xuedou's one hundred verse eulogies on antiquity with their calculated entangling vines, only these three verses directly have the breath of a patch-robed monk. Yet these verses are also quite difficult to understand. If you can penetrate these three verses, I will allow you to end your study.