宗鏡錄 42.5.4

42.5.4

一人在下。 持針迎之。 中有旋嵐猛風吹縷。 難入針孔。 人身難得。 甚過於是。 又菩薩處胎經偈云。 盲龜浮木孔。 時時猶可值。 人一失命根。 億劫復難是。 海水深廣大。 三百三十六。 一針投海底。 求之尚可得。 又偈云。 吾從無數劫。 往來生死道。 捨身復受身。 不離胞胎法。 計我所經歷。 記一不記餘。 純作白狗形。 積骨億須彌。 以利針地種。 無不值我體。 何況雜色狗。 其數不可量。 吾故攝其心。 不貪著放逸。 伏自祖教西至。 賢聖交馳。 皆為明心。 決擇生死。 生死所起。 不出根塵。 因不覺而妄念忽生。 迷法界而幻境潛現。 從此執人執法。 立自立他。 隨對待而逆順牽情。 逐分別而愛憎關念。 遂乃竛竮五趣。 匍匐四生。 今欲反究妄原。 須明起處。 故首楞嚴經云。 佛告阿難。 如汝所說。 真所愛樂。 因于心目。 若不識知心目所在。 則不能得降伏塵勞。 譬如國王。 為賊所侵。 發兵討除。 是兵要當知賊所在。 使汝流轉。 心目為咎。 故知心為群妄之原。 目是諸見之本。 是以生死之始。 起惑之初。 因迷自心而作外塵。 為執妄識而為內我。 由我而強為主宰。 從想而建立自他。 抱幻憑虛。 遂成顛倒。 顛倒之法。 略說有三。 一心顛倒。 二見顛倒。 三想顛倒。 心如停賊主人。 見是賊身。 想如賊脚。 根塵是賊媒。 內外搆連。 劫盡家寶。 是以見劫眼根。 善聲劫耳根。 善香劫鼻根。 善味劫舌根。 善觸劫身根。 善法劫意根。 善法財傾竭。 智藏空虛。 如怨詐親。 誰有知者。 如或識賊。 賊無能為。 若了境識心。 終不更為外塵所侵。 內結能縛。 且如心王八法。 乃至六種無為。 撮要一百法門。 並是眾生日用。 無一時而不具。 無一念而不生。 以此校量。 故非閑事。 若不能深濟生死。 危苦急難。 則往聖古賢。 虛煩製作。 為有深益。 方可施為。 聖不誑凡。 真焉惑偽。 今所錄者。 略證此宗。 尋萬丈而未得毫釐。 指百分而纔言一二。 請不厭繁。 息志。 子細披尋。 覽之如登寶山。 信之似遊海藏。 又此雖假文言。 一一示其真實。 不可隨語生著。 昧我正宗。 如經云。 刀輪害閻浮人頭。 其失猶少。 有所得心說大乘者。 其罪過彼也。 大智度論云。 執有與無諍。 乃至非有非無與有無諍。 如牛皮龍繩。 俱不免患。 中觀論云。 諸佛說空法。 本為化於有。 若有著於空。 諸佛所不化。 若定言諸法非有非無者。 是名愚癡論。 若失四悉檀意。 自行化他。 皆名著法。 若得四悉檀意。 自他俱無著也。 又論云。 佛法中不著有。 不著無。 有無亦不著。 非有非無。 非非有非非無亦不著。 不著亦不著。 如是則不容難。 譬如以刀斫空。 終無所傷。 為眾生故。 隨緣說法。 自無所著。 故般若燈論序云。 觀明中道。 而存中失觀。 空顯第一。 而得一乖空。 然則司南之車。 本示迷者。 照膽之鏡。 為鑒邪人。 無邪則鏡無所施。 不迷則車不為用。 斯論破申。 其由此矣。 若如斯者。 寧容執教隨言語之所轉乎。 是以若未遇宗鏡大錄。 祖佛微細正意。 內得見性。 但外學多聞者。 則身雖出家。 心不入道。 故大涅槃經云。 佛言。 汝諸比丘。 身雖得服袈裟染衣。 其心猶未得染大乘清淨之法。 汝諸比丘。 雖行乞食經歷多處。 初未曾乞大乘法食。 故云。 雖有勝意之通。 善星之辯。 若不知實相之理者。 不免沒魂於裂地之患。 如首楞嚴經云。 如第四禪。 無聞比丘。 妄言證聖。 天報已畢。 衰相現前。 謗阿羅漢。 身遭後有。 墮阿鼻獄。 又云。 善星妄說一切法空。 生身陷入阿鼻地獄。 故知若未入宗鏡。 先悟。 實相真心。

[and] one person below holding a needle to receive it, with fierce whirling storm winds blowing the thread between them, it would be difficult for it to enter the eye of the needle. To obtain a human body is far more difficult than this. Furthermore, a verse in the Bodhisattva Garbhastha Sūtra says: / 'A blind turtle [encountering] a floating piece of wood with a hole in it / may still meet with it from time to time; / once a person loses the life-faculty, / for a hundred million kalpas it is again difficult [to gain] this [human state]. / The ocean waters are deep and vast— / three hundred and thirty-six [yojanas]; / if a single needle were cast to the bottom of the sea, / one might still find it by searching.' / Another verse says: / 'From countless kalpas past, / I have come and gone along the path of birth and death, / discarding bodies and receiving bodies again, / never departing from the way of the womb. / If I reckon what I have passed through, / recording one and not the rest, / simply taking the form of a white dog, / my bones would pile up into a hundred million Mount Sumerus. / If one sowed the earth with sharp needles, / none would fail to strike my body; / how much more so with dogs of variegated colors! / Their number is immeasurable. / Therefore I gather my mind / and am not greedily attached to heedlessness.' / Ever since the ancestral teachings came from the West and the sages and worthies traversed back and forth, it has all been to illumine the mind and discern birth and death. The arising of birth and death does not go beyond the sense faculties and sense objects. Because of un-awareness, deluded thoughts suddenly arise; bewildered about the dharmadhātu, illusory realms secretly appear. From this, one grasps at persons and grasps at dharmas, establishing self and establishing other; following dualities, agreeable and disagreeable circumstances tug at the feelings; pursuing distinctions, love and hate concern the mind. Consequently, one stumbles through the five destinies and crawls through the four modes of birth. Now, wishing to investigate back to the origin of delusion, one must understand the place of its arising. Therefore the Śūraṅgama Sūtra says: 'The Buddha told Ānanda, "As you have said, that which is truly cherished and loved is due to the mind and eyes. If you do not know the location of the mind and eyes, you cannot subdue the afflictions of sense-dust. For example, when a king's country is invaded by bandits and he dispatches an army to suppress and eliminate them, the army must know where the bandits are. That which causes you to transmigrate has the mind and eyes as its fault."' Hence we know that the mind is the origin of the host of delusions, and the eyes are the root of all views. Therefore, at the beginning of birth and death and the initial arising of confusion, because of being bewildered about one's own citta, one makes external sense-dust; because of grasping at the deluded consciousness, one takes it as an inner self. From the self, one forcibly acts as a master; from conception, one establishes self and other. Clinging to illusion and relying on emptiness, inversion is consequently formed. The methods of inversion, briefly stated, are three: first, inversion of mind; second, inversion of view; third, inversion of thought. The mind is like the host who harbors the bandits; views are the bandits' bodies; thoughts are like the bandits' feet; sense faculties and sense objects are the bandits' go-betweens. Conniving inside and outside, they plunder all the family treasures. Therefore, sights plunder the eye faculty; pleasant sounds plunder the ear faculty; pleasant fragrances plunder the nose faculty; pleasant tastes plunder the tongue faculty; pleasant tangibles plunder the body faculty; pleasant dharmas plunder the mental faculty. The wealth of wholesome dharmas is exhausted and the treasury of wisdom is emptied. Like an enemy feigning friendship, who can know it? If one recognizes the bandit, the bandit can do nothing. If one understands objects and recognizes the mind, one will ultimately no longer be invaded by external sense-dust or bound by internal knots. Moreover, take for example the eight dharmas of the mind-king and up to the six unconditioned [dharmas]—the condensed summary of the one hundred dharmas—all are the daily functioning of sentient beings; there is no time when they are not complete, no single thought in which they do not arise. Estimating by this, it is indeed no trivial matter. If it could not profoundly rescue from birth and death, perils, suffering, and urgent crises, then the past sages and ancient worthies would have vainly labored in their compositions. It is because there is profound benefit that it could be put into practice. The sages do not deceive the ordinary person; how could the true bewilder with the false? What is recorded now briefly proves this source. Searching ten thousand fathoms, one has not yet obtained a hair's breadth; pointing to a hundred parts, one has barely spoken of one or two. I ask that you do not weary of its prolixity, [but] quiet your intentions and examine it in detail: reading it is like climbing a treasure mountain; having faith in it is like roaming the ocean treasury. Furthermore, although this relies on written words, each and every one points to its true reality. One must not give rise to attachment following the words and obscure our correct source. As a sūtra says: 'A wheel of knives severing the heads of the people of Jambudvīpa—that offense is still small; but to speak the Mahāyāna with a mind of gain—its sin surpasses that.' The Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa says: 'Grasping at existence disputes with non-existence, and even non-existence-and-non-non-existence disputes with existence and non-existence; like the cowhide and the dragon rope, neither avoids calamity.' The Madhyamakaśāstra says: 'The Buddhas taught the Dharma of emptiness originally to transform those [attached to] existence; if there are those who attach to emptiness, the Buddhas do not transform them.' If one definitively says that all dharmas are neither existent nor non-existent, this is called the treatise of the foolish. If one loses the meaning of the four siddhāntas, one's own practice and transforming others are both called attachment to dharmas. If one obtains the meaning of the four siddhāntas, self and other are both without attachment. That treatise also says: 'In the Buddha-Dharma, one does not attach to existence, nor does one attach to non-existence; one also does not attach to existence-and-non-existence; one also does not attach to neither-existence-nor-non-existence or not-neither-existence-nor-non-existence. One also does not attach to non-attachment. In this way, objections find no entry. It is like striking empty space with a knife: ultimately nothing is harmed. For the sake of sentient beings, one teaches the Dharma in accord with conditions, while oneself being without attachment.' Therefore the preface to the Prajñāpradīpaśāstra says: 'Contemplating and illuminating the middle way, yet holding to the middle loses contemplation; emptiness reveals the foremost, yet grasping at the one violates emptiness. Thus a south-pointing chariot was originally to show those who are lost; a mirror that reflects the gall bladder is to scrutinize the crooked. Without the crooked, the mirror has nowhere to be applied; without being lost, the chariot is not used. The refutations and expositions of this treatise indeed stem from this.' If it is like this, how could one be permitted to grasp at the teachings and be turned about by verbal expressions? Therefore, if one has not yet encountered the Great Record of the Mirror of the Source, the subtle and fine correct intent of the ancestors and Buddhas, and gained insight into the nature within, but merely learns externally through extensive hearing, then although the body has left household life, the mind has not entered the Way. Therefore the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra says: 'The Buddha said, "You monks, although your bodies have been able to don the dyed robes of the kāṣāya, your minds have not yet been able to be dyed by the pure Dharma of the Mahāyāna. You monks, although you have practiced begging for food and traversed many places, you have never yet begged for the Mahāyāna Dharma-food."' Therefore it is said: 'Even if one has the supernormal powers of Viśeṣacinti and the eloquence of Sunakṣatra, if one does not know the principle of the true mark, one cannot avoid the calamity of having one's soul sink into the split earth.' As the Śūraṅgama Sūtra says: 'Like the unlearned monk of the fourth dhyāna, who falsely claimed to have realized sagehood; when his heavenly retribution was exhausted and the signs of decay appeared, he slandered the arhats, underwent further existence in the body, and fell into the Avīci Hell.' It also says: 'Sunakṣatra falsely preached that all dharmas are empty, and in his living body sank into the Avīci Hell.' Hence we know that if one has not entered the Mirror of the Source, one must first awaken to the true mind of the true mark.