緇門警訓 2.59

2.59

In the gate of studying the Way, there is nothing extraordinary. It is only necessary to cleanse the sense faculties and sense objects of the karmic-consciousness seeds [accumulated] over immeasurable kalpas. If you can simply eliminate emotional thoughts, cut off delusional conditions, and have a mind like wood and stone regarding all worldly realms of love and desire, then even if you have not yet clarified the eye of the Way, you will naturally achieve a pure body. If you meet a genuine guide, you must diligently draw close to them. Even if you inquire and do not penetrate, or study and do not accomplish, what passes through your ear will forever become a seed of the Way: in world after world you will not fall into bad destinies, and in life after life you will not lose a human body. As soon as you emerge, hearing one thing you will awaken to a thousand. You must believe that a true kalyāṇamitra is the greatest condition among human beings, able to transform sentient beings so they behold their Buddha-nature. How deeply I lament this latter-day world! Who preaches the singular Chan? People only study hollow pretensions, completely lacking genuine understanding. At every step they walk in existence, while with every breath they talk of emptiness; not blaming what their own karmic power drags along, they further teach people to repudiate cause and effect, claiming that drinking wine and eating meat does not obstruct bodhi, and committing theft and sexual misconduct poses no hindrance to prajñā. In life they meet with the king's law; at death they plunge into Avīci. Once their hell karma is exhausted, they enter into the animals and hungry ghosts, with no time of release for hundreds of thousands of myriads of kalpas, unless in a single thought they turn the light back upon themselves and immediately overturn the perverse into the correct. If you do not repent and reform on your own, deliver and cultivate yourself, even when all the Buddhas appear, there will be no way to save you. If carving up your heart and liver is just like [cutting] wood and stone, then you may eat meat. If drinking wine is just like consuming feces and urine, then you may drink wine. If seeing handsome men and beautiful women is just like seeing dead corpses, then you may engage in sexual misconduct. If seeing your own wealth and others' wealth is just like dung and dirt, then you may commit theft. Even if you have refined yourself to such a stage, you still must not indulge your own desires; only when you realize an immeasurable holy body may you engage in the worldly acts of non-compliance and compliance. Did the ancient sages make their provisions with any other mind? It was only because the monks and nuns of the latter-day Dharma seldom uphold the prohibitions, and out of fear that they would lead astray the commoners who turn to the good, causing many to regress in their bodhicitta, that they broadly instituted barriers and protections. It is stated in a thousand sūtras and set forth in ten thousand treatises: if you do not abandon sexual misconduct, you cut off all seeds of purity; if you do not abandon wine, you cut off all seeds of wisdom; if you do not abandon theft, you cut off all seeds of blessings and virtue; if you do not abandon meat, you cut off all seeds of compassion. The Buddhas of the three periods proclaimed this with one mouth; the Chan lineage throughout the realm expounded it with a single voice. Why do later students fail to heed it even slightly, destroying the correct cause on their own and acting contrary to it according to demonic preachings? It is only because their karmic seeds from past habituations have led them to encounter perverse teachers in this life; wholesome power is easily dissipated, while evil roots are hard to pull up. Have you not seen that the ancient sages said: 'Beholding a single demonic matter is like ten thousand arrows piercing the heart; hearing a single demonic sound is like a thousand awls stabbing the ears'? You must quickly stay far away; do not look upon or listen to them! Each of you examine your own mind; take care not to treat this lightly!