無門關 1.30

1.30

Wumen said: To investigate Chan, you must pass through the barrier of the patriarchs. For sublime awakening, you must exhaust the road of the mind until it comes to an end. If you do not pass through the barrier of the patriarchs, and if the road of the mind does not come to an end, you are altogether a ghost clinging to grass and trees. Tell me: what is the barrier of the patriarchs? Just this single word "wu" is the one barrier of the school. Thereupon it is named the Gateless Barrier of the Chan School. Those who can pass through will not only see Zhaozhou in person, but can also walk hand in hand with the successive generations of patriarchs, their eyebrows tangled together, seeing with the same eyes and hearing with the same ears. How could that not be joyous and invigorating! Is there anyone who wishes to pass through the barrier? Bring your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand pore-openings to raise a single mass of doubt throughout your whole body, and investigate this word "wu". Rouse it day and night! Do not understand it as nothingness; do not understand it in terms of being and non-being. It is like having swallowed a hot iron ball: you try to spit it out, but cannot spit it out. Purge away all your past faulty knowledge and faulty perceptions. When it is thoroughly seasoned over a long time, naturally inside and outside will become one piece. Like a mute person having a dream, it is only known to oneself. Suddenly it bursts open, shaking heaven and earth—like seizing General Guan's broadsword into your hands: meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha; meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch! At the brink of birth and death, you attain great freedom; amidst the six destinies and four modes of birth, you sport in samādhi. And how do you rouse it? Exhaust the strength of your whole life to raise this word "wu". If there is no interruption, it will be fine—like a Dharma candle that catches fire at a single touch.