人天眼目 6.131

6.131

When Bodhidharma came from the west, he faced the wall for nine years. Only Shenguang, standing in the snow and severing his arm, attained self-realization. Skillful words could not reach it; only the mind-to-mind transmission was allowed. When those of superior capacity had already accorded with it, he wished to return west. Yet pitying those of intermediate and lower capacities, he reluctantly left behind twenty characters, termed the Gāthā on the True Nature. Read forward and backward, it forms forty rhymes, each possessing its own purport. This was indeed out of grandmotherly kindness, leaving no small mess behind, in the hope that descendants of later generations might see the moon by pointing at the finger. If there should be a fellow who comprehends it before the character "nature" has even formed, its brilliance will manifest of itself, not attained from another. One would then laugh that the old barbarian was rightly given a sound beating with a staff.