宗鏡錄 6.20

6.20

Answer: In recent times, scholars nowadays mostly cling to the text and turn their backs on the purport; they are blind to the substance and acknowledge [only] the name. How could one who acknowledges the name while forgetting the substance ever fathom the real ground? How could one who follows the text while missing the purport ever accord with the source of the Way? Thus, 'citta' is the name, and it takes awareness as its substance. This is numinous awareness; by nature it possesses spiritual understanding of itself. It is not like deluded consciousness, which relies on conditions, depends on objects, and knows through mental application. Nor is it like the vast emptiness of space, which is sheer annihilation without awareness. Therefore, the Zhao lun says: 'Prajñā being without knowledge means that it has no knowledge that grasps at characteristics.' Ordinary people all say that prajñā is wisdom, and wisdom implies knowing. If there is knowing, then there is grasping; if there is grasping, then one does not accord with the unproduced. Now it is explained that the true wisdom of prajñā is without characteristics and without conditions; although it illuminates the ultimate truth, it does not grasp at characteristics. Therefore it is said to be without knowledge. Thus a sūtra says: 'The sage's mind is without knowledge, yet there is nothing it does not know.' Another sūtra says: 'True prajñā is pure like empty space; it is without knowledge and without vision, without action and without conditions.' This means that awareness is of itself without knowledge; how could it wait for reflective illumination before becoming free of knowledge? This very nature of awareness is of itself without knowledge; it does not wait to be forgotten. Because this true awareness does not fall into the realms of existence or non-existence, the Buddhas have their secret teachings, and the ancestral masters have their source transmitted in silence and conferred in secret. It is only personally realized and matched; it cannot be expressed by verbal formulations. If one understands the source, it is clearly known and not obscured, quiescent and constantly aware. Brilliantly filling the eyes with radiance, what need is there for the display of supernatural powers? Dazzlingly penetrating every dust-mote, why labor over the expounding of wondrous eloquence? For those who have not attained it, expedient gates are opened to enable them, relying on this awareness, to exhaust every hidden depth.