宗鏡錄 42.5.4

42.5.4

[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.