黃檗山斷際禪師傳心法要 1.9

1.9

Someone asked: "What is the Way? How does one cultivate it?" The Master said: "What kind of thing is the Way, that you want to cultivate it?" The questioner asked: "How is it that lineage masters everywhere transmit investigating Chan and studying the Way to one another?" The Master said: "Those are words to guide and receive people of dull faculties; they cannot yet be relied upon." The questioner said: "If these are words to guide and receive people of dull faculties, I wonder what Dharma is spoken to receive people of sharp faculties?" The Master said: "If one is a person of sharp faculties, where would one go to seek it from others? Even oneself cannot be found, let alone having some other dharma facing the mind! Have you not seen it said in the teachings: 'What shape do dharmas have?'" The questioner said: "If so, then one should not seek at all?" The Master said: "If it is like that, it saves mental effort." The questioner said: "If it is like this, it completely becomes an annihilation; it cannot be nothingness!" The Master said: "Who tells it to be nothing? Who is 'it' that you intend to seek?" The questioner said: "Since you do not permit seeking, why do you also say not to annihilate it?" The Master said: "If you do not seek, you simply stop; then who told you to annihilate it? Look at the empty space before your eyes: how could you annihilate it?" The questioner said: "Can this Dharma be identical to empty space?" The Master said: "When has empty space ever told you that it is identical or different? I spoke like that provisionally, and you immediately gave rise to understanding based on it!" The questioner said: "Should one not allow people to give rise to understanding?" The Master said: "I have never obstructed you. In the final analysis, understanding belongs to emotion; when emotion arises, wisdom is blocked." The questioner said: "Should one not give rise to emotion regarding this?" The Master said: "If you do not give rise to emotion, who says it is so?"