宗鏡錄 98.47

98.47

Master Damei initially asked Mazu: 'What is the Buddha?' [Mazu] answered: 'It is your very mind.' He asked: 'What is the Dharma?' [Mazu] answered: 'It is also your very mind.' He asked: 'Has the Patriarch no other intention?' [Mazu] answered: 'You just need to recognize your own mind; there is no dharma that is not complete [within it].' Later, dwelling on Mount Mei, he instructed the assembly, saying: 'All of you should each illumine your mind and reach the root; do not pursue the branch tips. Just attain the root, and the branch tips will come naturally. If you wish to attain the root, just recognize your mind. This mind is originally the root of all worldly and world-transcending dharmas. As long as the mind does not arise adhering to any good or evil, you will know that the ten thousand dharmas are originally suchness.' At that time a student asked: 'Is there no other dharma outside the mind?' He answered: 'Patriarchs and buddhas are merely born from your mind. The mind is the root of the ten thousand dharmas; how could there be another dharma surpassing the mind?' The interpretation says: As the Sixth Patriarch said, 'Do not deliberate on good or evil, and you will naturally enter the substance of the mind, clear and constantly quiescent, with wondrous functions as numerous as the sands of the Ganges.' Because the buddhas are the utmost boundary of good and sentient beings are the utmost boundary of evil, and good and evil encompass all dharmas, it is said that if one does not deliberate, all returns to the substance of the mind. Even the tiniest dharma is born from the thinking mind. As Han Shanzi's verse says: 'When the ten thousand workings all vanish their traces, only then does one see the original person.' The single word 'vanish' does not necessarily mean having to eliminate them; for originally there is not a single dharma outside the mind, and what is seen is only the mind. It is like an echo answering its own sound, or a mirror reflecting one's own image. It is merely because sentient beings do not understand that they stir the mind's workings, establishing the dust of objective differentiation like flowers rising and vanishing in the sky, and weaving boundless false thoughts like galloping mirage-water, failing to return to the original source of the one mind; therefore they are made to vanish and be cut off. If one enters the substance of the mind, although it is said to be clear and quiescent, it does not fall into annihilation; naturally it gives rise to function from substance, pervasively filling the sands of the Ganges. Moreover, Damei said: 'This Dharma door of the mind is the wondrous principle of tathatā, neither increasing nor decreasing. With various skillful means, it can aptly apply its functions. You should know that all of this is originally complete within this nature, neither arising nor ceasing, able to know all functions of the three periods of time. Therefore it is said: "I look upon the distant past as if it were today; I constantly dwell within it, walking, sitting, and lying down."'