宗鏡錄 74.45

74.45

Answer: This is subsumed merely under the body of fundamental existence. Some say: because this person possesses karma, they merely falsely perceive King Yama, ghosts, bailiffs, and the like upon their own conscious mind; these arise as personal transformations on solitary shadow images, and apart from consciousness there is no seeing. Therefore, a verse on Consciousness-Only says: 'Objects turn following the karmic consciousness; / Therefore, it is said to be Mind-Only.' Thus we know that consciousness is the origin of good and evil, and citta is the root of suffering and pleasure. Worldly people only know how to pursue the stream and follow the branches, losing the root and straying from the source. To cultivate practices and vainly complete three asaṃkhyeya kalpas leaves one ever farther from the true; to accumulate merit and pass through eternal kalpas in vain leaves one still remote from the Way. Therefore, when noble ones who have attained the fruits encounter this, they willingly profess to have no share in it; when great beings emerging from provisionality face this, they have not yet attained the realization of the true. How much less could devious and confused heretics, non-Buddhists [clinging to] primordial darkness, arrogant officials of the Lacquer Garden, or frantic and wild scholars hope to faithfully accept it! Thus we know that the Mirror of the Source is difficult to believe, and those who awaken to it are rare wonders. Not only do they attain the source, but they can also deeply penetrate cause and effect. Therefore it is said: 'Deeply believing in the Mahāyāna, one does not slander cause and effect.' Thus, all conscious beings create wholesome and unwholesome causes solely with their own minds, incurring fruits of suffering and pleasure. Or when dwelling in intermediate existence, those who made wholesome causes are bathed in pure white light, while those who gave rise to unwholesome causes see dark black colour. Or on the day of residing in the womb, those who gathered white karma ascend towers and palaces, while those who created black karma cast themselves into weeds and thorns. And when emerging into the world as humans, their circumstantial and direct recompenses are also divided into superior and inferior: if endowed with merit, they display the features of a swallow's jaw and a dragon's visage, enjoying the glory of splendid halls and golden chambers; if scant of virtue, they present the diminutive form of the five exposures, residing in the squalor of jar-windows and mat-doors. This can indeed be called: 'when the wind is gentle, the echo is harmonious; when the form is straight, the shadow is upright.' Cause and effect are simultaneous; when conditions meet, nothing is lost. Thus one should contemplate the nature of the dharmadhātu: everything is created by citta alone. The Neide lun says: 'The Hīnayāna regards circumstantial recompense as karmic existence; the Mahāyāna regards the myriad objects as created by consciousness. Following illusory karma, it displays heaven and earth; pursuing the deluded mind, it manifests soil and grass. Like cataract-clouded eyes beholding flowers in the sky, or a sleeping dream manifesting birth and old age. If one awakens to it within mind and karma, then one hears solely the Buddha-Way.'