萬松老人評唱天童覺和尚頌古從容庵錄 6.49

6.49

師云。東北方有國。常覺無夢。中方有國。夢覺常半。以夢中所作為虛。以覺來所作為實。西南方有國。常夢五十日一覺。以覺者為虛以夢中為實。此覺夢虛實未易知也。龍牙頌。在夢那知。夢是虛。覺來方覺夢中無。迷時恰似夢中士。悟後還同睡起夫。教中以夢。為獨頭意識覽獨影境。仰山久無顛倒夢想。如何作這去就。法華云。常作是好夢。金光明十地菩薩。十種夢境。有夢益嘉。磁州大明詮大師。好俳諧談笑。仁山恒和尚。囑定侍者。常拘檢之。大師曰。人生一夢。快樂一世是好夢。拘檢一世是惡夢。我寧作好夢。次日侍者抽單。仰山雖夢中。猶與摩訶衍法游戲。亦聖眾之習氣。揵椎非惟白椎。凡鐘魚警眾。總為揵椎。譯為聲鳴。師子吼。證道經。師子吼無畏說。心安如海。法華經。其心安如海。我聞疑網斷。蜀志。尚書大將軍姜維。字伯約。世語斗膽。姜維天童。無一字無來歷。任昉述異記。南海鮫人。水居如魚。不廢機織。泣泪成珠。異聞續說。漢武帝幸瓠子河。有人長尺餘。献洞穴珠一枚。東方朔云。河底有穴。深數百丈。有赤㕩。腸生此珠。徑寸明耀絕世。仰山只知泪出痛腸。不覺舌在口外。酒陶真性。夢泄天機。四句百非一時吐出。僧問馬師父子離四句絕百非。前僧作西來意問頭。仰山下摩訶衍注脚。仰山。亦馬祖之重孫。為甚麼藥。病不同。出身猶可易。脫體道應難。

The Master said: In the northeast there is a realm where people are always awake and without dreams. In the middle realm there is a realm where dreams and waking are always half-and-half: what is done in dreams is regarded as empty, and what is done when awake is regarded as real. In the southwest there is a realm where people constantly dream and awaken once every fifty days: they regard waking as empty and what is in dreams as real. This emptiness and reality of waking and dreaming is not easily understood. Longya's verse says: “In a dream, how could one know the dream is empty? Only after waking does one realize nothing was in the dream. When deluded, one is just like a man in a dream; after awakening, one is like a man risen from sleep.” In the doctrinal teachings, dreams are considered the solitary mental consciousness perceiving solitary mental images. Yangshan had long been free of inverted dream-thoughts; why would he engage in such a performance? The Lotus Sūtra says: “He constantly has such auspicious dreams.” The Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra speaks of ten kinds of dream realms of tenth-stage bodhisattvas; dreams are all the more auspicious. Great Master Daming Quan of Cizhou was fond of joking and laughing. Venerable Ren Shan Heng instructed his attendant to constantly restrain and supervise him. The Great Master said: “Human life is a dream. To be happy for a lifetime is a good dream; to be restrained for a lifetime is a nightmare. I would rather have a good dream.” The next day the attendant took down his bedding. Although Yangshan was in a dream, he still sported with the Mahāyāna Dharma; this too is a habit-energy of the noble assembly. A sounding block (ghaṇṭā) does not refer only to striking the gavel; in general, bells and wooden fish that alert the assembly are all ghaṇṭā, translated as “sounding instrument”. “Lion’s roar”: The Zhengdao jing says: “The lion’s roar is the fearless preaching.” “Mind calm as the ocean”: The Lotus Sūtra says: “His mind is calm as the ocean; hearing it, my net of doubts was cut off.” The Annals of Shu says: Jiang Wei, Minister of the Secretariat and Senior General, courtesy name Boyue; the worldly saying calls him “bushel-gall [boldness]”. For Jiang Wei and Tiantong, not a single word lacks an antecedent. Ren Fang's Shuyi ji says: The merfolk of the South Sea dwell in water like fish, never abandoning weaving; their wept tears become pearls. The Continuation of Accounts of Strange Things says: When Emperor Wu of Han visited the Huzi River, a man more than a foot tall presented a pearl from a cavern. Dongfang Shuo said: “At the bottom of the river is a cavern several hundred fathoms deep, where there is a red mussel whose gut produces this pearl; an inch in diameter, its brilliance is peerless.” Yangshan only knew that tears sprang from an aching gut, unaware that his tongue was outside his mouth. Wine mellows the true nature; dreams leak the heavenly dynamic. The four propositions and hundred negations were spewed out all at once. A monk asked Master Ma and his son about departing from the four propositions and cutting off the hundred negations; the earlier monk used it as a query about the intention of coming from the West, while Yangshan used it as a footnote to the Mahāyāna. Yangshan was also a great-grandson of Mazu; why were their medicine and illness not the same? To step forward may still be easy; to shed the body and speak must be difficult.