禪林寶訓 4.46

4.46

After Huo'an entered the monastery, a donor requested an informal sermon. He said: 'The Way is constant and does not change; affairs have abuses and must alter. In the past, the various ancestral masters of Jiangxi and Nanyue, as if examining antiquity for instruction, checked whether things were appropriate, maintained the middle way, and made efforts to accord with human minds, taking awakening as the standard; therefore their pure style was exalted and has not perished down to the present. If we speak according to the gate of patch-robed monks, to understand before words wrongs our lineage style, and to be clear under the phrase buries the buddhas and patriarchs. Although it is like this: / "I walk to where the waters end, / And sit to watch when clouds arise."' / From this, monastics and laypeople were delighted by what they had never heard, and those who turned to him gathered like a marketplace." (The recorded sayings differ from this)