宗鏡錄 98.61

98.61

The late Venerable Caoshan said: “That the mind of the ancient buddhas is walls, tiles, and rubble—this is also called the nature-ground, also called complete merit of the substance, and also called insentient things expounding the Dharma. If you know its existence, here you attain the place without dispute. The lands of the ten directions, the mountains, rivers, and great earth, stone walls, tiles, and rubble, space and non-space, the sentient and the insentient, grasses, trees, groves, and forests—all together form a single body. This is called ‘receiving prophecy’; it is also called the ‘single-syllable Dharma gate’; it is also called the ‘dhāraṇī Dharma gate’; it is also called ‘a single dust mote and a single thought’; it is also called ‘traveling the same rut.’ If one does not know its existence in the nature-ground, the buddhas cannot illustrate it with a thousand metaphors, nor can they portray it with ten thousand comparisons. The thousands of sages and ten thousand holy ones all emerge from here, and from the beginning it has never changed. Therefore it is said: ‘The Bhagavans of the ten directions [travel] one single path through the gate to nirvāṇa.’”