真心直說 1.25

1.25

Someone asked: "I have heard that people who see their nature transcend saṃsāra. Yet the patriarchs of the past were all people who saw their nature, and they all underwent birth and death. At present, we see people in the world who cultivate the Way undergoing matters of birth and death. Why is it said that they transcend saṃsāra?"
I answered: "Saṃsāra is originally non-existent; it is falsely conceptualized as existent. It is like a person with diseased eyes who sees flowers in the sky; if a person without disease says there are no sky-flowers, the diseased person does not believe it. If the eye disease is cured, the sky-flowers will naturally vanish, and only then will he believe there were no flowers. Even when the flowers have not yet vanished, the flowers are still empty; it is merely that the diseased person falsely grasps them as flowers—they do not exist in reality. It is like a person who falsely takes saṃsāra to be existent; if someone free of saṃsāra tells him, 'Saṃsāra is originally non-existent,' and one day that person's delusions cease, saṃsāra will naturally be eliminated, and only then will he know that saṃsāra was originally non-existent. Even when saṃsāra has not yet ceased, it is still not real; it is merely because one falsely takes saṃsāra to be existent. A sūtra says: 'Good sons, from the beginningless past all sentient beings have had all kinds of inversions, like a confused person who confuses the four directions, falsely taking the four great elements to be the characteristic of their own bodies, and the conditioned shadows of the six sense-objects to be the characteristic of their own minds. It is like those diseased eyes that see flowers in the sky... up to: just as many sky-flowers vanish in space, it cannot be said that they have a fixed place of vanishing. Why? Because there is no place of arising. All sentient beings, within the unarisen, falsely see arising and ceasing; therefore it is called revolving in saṃsāra.' According to this sūtra passage, have faith and know that the completely awakened true mind fundamentally has no saṃsāra. As for those who now know there is no saṃsāra yet cannot escape saṃsāra, it is because their practice has not reached its culmination. Therefore, the teaching says: Anāthapiṇḍika's daughter asked Mañjuśrī, 'Clearly knowing that birth is an unarisen dharma, why is one swept away by saṃsāra?' Mañjuśrī said, 'Because one's strength is not yet sufficient.' Later, Director Jin asked Director Xiu, 'Clearly knowing that birth is an unarisen dharma, why is one instead swept away by saṃsāra?' Xiu said, 'A bamboo shoot will ultimately become bamboo; can it be used right now to make bamboo strips?' Therefore, knowing there is no saṃsāra is not as good as embodying the absence of saṃsāra; embodying the absence of saṃsāra is not as good as tallying with the absence of saṃsāra; tallying with the absence of saṃsāra is not as good as functioning in the absence of saṃsāra. People today do not even know there is no saṃsāra, much less embody the absence of saṃsāra, tally with the absence of saṃsāra, or function in the absence of saṃsāra! Thus, that those who grasp at saṃsāra do not believe in the dharma of no saṃsāra—is that not only to be expected?"