禪源諸詮集都序 1.6

1.6

Chan Master Xuetang was grand in wisdom and discernment, and fully penetrated both practice and understanding. He delighted in cultivation and rejoiced in giving. One day he told me: 'I have often been distressed that worldly students of Buddhism fail to investigate the Buddha’s reasons for establishing the doctrinal teachings. They falsely cling to emptiness or existence, and vie over distinguishing Great and Small vehicles, sudden and gradual, Chan and vinaya. For over a thousand years they have wrangled and disputed endlessly, just like guarding a father's foot only to make him suffer disease all over. Although I have met one or two like-minded persons who offered instruction, I regret that it cannot be made known to every house and every door. Fortunately, I obtained the Collected Writings on the Source of Chan composed by Guifeng. Its text is erudite and refined, its purport pertinent and precise; it fully explains the former predicaments and relates their underlying causes. Furthermore, it provides a chart showing that the one true reality of the mind contains the three great principles: ignorance conditions defilements, so marks arise falsely; relying on the methods of cultivation and cessation, one attains realization and enters the truth. It grasps the outlines and raises the essentials as clearly as pointing to one's palm. Formerly, in the first month of spring in the twelfth year of the Zhiyuan era, during a pause in his myriad affairs of state, Emperor Shizu held court on Qionghua Island and invited the Imperial Preceptor; the Grand Protector Duke Liu Wenzheng was also present. Thereupon he summoned senior masters residing in the capital to inquire into the mutually conflicting tenets of Chan and doctrine. My late teacher Duke Xi'an Yun and eight others answered using the text of Guifeng's Collected Writings on the Source of Chan. It fully satisfied the imperial mind. At that time, my late teacher entrusted his junior fellow Shuangquan Duke Tai to record it, and additionally ordered Xuetang to carve the printing blocks for circulation. Because I was traveling around inquiring at various quarters, I had no leisure to attend to this. Previously, in Yunzhong, I obtained one copy each at Pu'en and Xingguo monasteries. Later, in the abbot's quarters of Wanshou Monastery in the capital, I again obtained the authoritative edition printed and distributed throughout the empire in the eighth year of the Qingning era by the Grand Empress Dowager Chongtian of the Liao dynasty. Collating it with scholars, I intended to carve the printing blocks to transmit it perpetually. Please write a few words to express my late teacher's dying wish.' Hearing this, I rejoiced and said: 'Your present intention is precisely Master Guifeng's mind of concern for the world! Yet without this text, there would be no means to dispel their confusion; without perpetuating its transmission, there would be no means to benefit the multitude. If learners behold it without casting off sentiment and generating understanding, what benefit would there be? Among the four difficulties spoken of by the ancients, of the three difficulties today, not one is lacking. If those practicing and studying in all quarters can live up to the two masters' purpose of propagating the Dharma and benefiting humanity, reading and pondering it with all their hearts, sentiments will be dispelled and understanding generated. Just as Wang Liang gathered the six reins to race along the thoroughfare, or the venerable monk boarded the vessel of prajñā to reach the other shore, how could they fail to arrive?' Preface by Jia Ruzhou, Hanlin Waiting Official, Grand Master of Court Splendor, and Joint Compiler