黃檗山斷際禪師傳心法要 1.11

1.11

Someone asked: "Heretofore, so many words have all been defensive speech; there has never been a real dharma pointed out to people." The Master said: "The real Dharma has no inversion. In the very asking you yourself give rise to inversion; what real Dharma are you seeking?" The questioner said: "Since in the asking I myself give rise to inversion, what about the Upādhyāya's answer?" The Master said: "You just take something to look at your own face; do not mind other people." He also said: "You are just like a foolish dog: seeing something move, it barks, not even distinguishing between the wind blowing the grass and trees." He also said: "In this Chan school of ours, transmitted from of old, we have never taught people to seek knowledge or seek understanding. Merely saying 'study the Way' is already words to guide and receive. Yet the Way cannot be studied; if emotional clinging to study and understanding remains, it turns into delusion about the Way. The Way has no location; it is called the Mahāyāna mind. This mind is not inside, outside, or in between; it truly has no location. Above all, do not produce intellectual understanding! It is only speaking of where your emotional reckoning is right now; if emotional reckoning is exhausted, the mind has no location. This Way is naturally pure and originally has no name. It is only because worldly people do not recognize it and are deluded in emotion that the Buddhas appeared to expose this matter. Fearing that you people would not understand, they provisionally established the name 'Way'. You must not adhere to the name and produce understanding. Hence it is said: 'Catch the fish and forget the trap.' When body and mind naturally reach the Way and know the mind, reaching the original source, one is called a śramaṇa. The fruit of a śramaṇa is accomplished by resting thoughts; it is not obtained through study. Now, you use mind to seek mind, leaning against another's house merely intending to learn—when will you ever attain it? The ancients had sharp minds; as soon as they heard a single word, they abandoned study. Therefore they were called 'leisurely people of the Way, beyond study and without action.' People nowadays only want to gain much knowledge and much understanding, extensively seeking text and meaning, calling it cultivation. They do not know that much knowledge and much understanding on the contrary become obstructions. It is like only knowing to give a child butter and milk to eat, without knowing at all whether it is digested or not. Students of the Way in the three vehicles are all like this; all are called those whose food is not digested. What is called undigested intellectual understanding all becomes poison. They all grasp within arising and ceasing; within tathatā there is no such thing. Hence it is said: 'In my royal storehouse there is no such sword.' All points of understanding from before must be discarded entirely and made empty, with no further discrimination—this is the empty tathāgatagarbha. In the tathāgatagarbha, not even a speck of dust can exist; this is the Dharma King who destroys existence appearing in the world. It is also said: 'In the presence of Dīpaṃkara Buddha, there was not the least dharma that I attained.' These words are only to empty your emotional reckoning and intellectual understanding. Simply dissolve the outside and inside; when emotion is exhausted, having no reliance or clinging at all, one is a person of no affairs. The net of teachings of the three vehicles is merely medicine responding to capacities, spoken according to suitability and provisionally arranged, each being different. If you can only understand this, you will not be deluded. Above all, do not adhere to the letter and fabricate understanding regarding a single capacity or a single teaching. Why is this? There is truly no fixed dharma that the Tathāgata could speak. Our school does not discuss this matter; simply knowing to rest the mind is enough, with no need to deliberate over the past or anticipate the future."