宗鏡錄 29.11

29.11

Answer: "If one traverses phenomena and broadly differentiates them, speech exceeds an infinite ocean of teachings; if one gathers their profound import, principle is exhausted in essential texts of a hundred fascicles. A single word has already reached their origin, not to mention ten cases. For the immeasurable teachings of the sūtras are all the one mind. Therefore, the Lotus Sūtra says: 'With various words and expressions, I expound the one Dharma.' As Great Master Fu's 'Hard Journey' says: / 'Do you not see: / The characteristics of mind are subtle and most marvelously refined, / Neither created, nor conditioned, nor form, nor name. / Though serene and without characteristics, / In both ordinary beings and sages, it is one's own spiritual essence. / This spiritual essence has no form yet always responds; / Though it always responds, it is truly formless. / The mind-nature neither comes nor goes; / Running thoughts circulate without ever stopping. / Perfect enlightenment awakens to this truly constant awakening; / In the Deer Park, with expedients, the revered sūtras were established.' / It also says: / 'If one can know this mind is without obstruction, / The unrealities of birth and death cannot bind one. / And this one mind is completely endowed with / All eighty-four thousand moral codes.' / The Viśeṣacintābrahma-paripṛcchā-sūtra says: 'Just as with a great fire, all flames have the characteristic of burning; even so, good sons, the dharmas expounded all enter into the dharma-nature.' Therefore, we know that all speech of ordinary beings and sages enters into the Mirror of the Source, and in the end there is no different dharma. Hence, a sūtra verse says: 'Rough words and subtle speech / All return to the ultimate truth.' / Down to teachings given before and after, horizontally and vertically, extensive and abridged texts—each and every one is meant to lead into the ultimate truth. If one truly enters it, the Buddha-Dharma will appear evenly and plainly before one. There is no need to memorize a single character, yet one finishes reciting all sūtras; no need to comprehend a single dharma, yet one understands boundless meanings; no need to speak a single phrase, yet one constantly turns the wheel of the true Dharma; no need to take a single step, yet one visits everywhere friends across the dharmadhātu. Why? If one can memorize it, that is the boundary of conceptual thought. If one can comprehend it, it falls into the manas-faculty. If one can explain it, it is a gate of eloquence. If one can visit, it drops into the sphere of external learning. None of these pertain to one's own affair; they are not gathered within the Mirror of the Source. It is like taking a handful of empty space: one's mental effort is entirely wasted. Therefore, meet it and you will not see its front; follow it and you will not see its back. Affirm it, and each and every one is empty; dissolve it, and everywhere it fully exists. Hence, Venerable Zhigong said: 'The words of Buddhas and ancestors are external affairs; grasping and attaching to them turns out to be wrong after all. Searching with deliberate intention will truly yield no trace; let the demons of birth and death come to test you as they will.' A past virtuous master said: 'First of all, you must not stick to the text and construct understandings based on a single capacity or teaching; truly there is no fixed Dharma that the Tathāgata could preach. In our ancestral school, we do not discuss this matter; simply knowing your own mind is enough, with no further need to deliberate beforehand or worry afterward.' Another verse says: / 'A thousand comparisons cannot match it; / Ten thousand analogies cannot succeed. / The wise cannot know it; / Even the highest worthy cannot recognize it.'"