緇門警訓 3.9

3.9

Chan methods originated in the Qin era. Dharma Master Sengrui prefaced the Chan scriptures produced in Guanzhong, the text of which elucidated the essentials of understanding the mind and penetrating principle. However, it was like just possessing the prescription without yet having compounded the medicine: not having heard of curing illness, it was merely called a medical book. What is more, once the great teaching was disseminated, the various talents divided it into lectures; those who annotated it boasted of its phrasing and meaning, while those who parsed it showed off their divisions. Holding the whisk and shaking the pine branch, they only esteemed adapting to conditions, responding to changes, resolving entanglements, and blunting sharpness. Looking solely at the blades of their intellect and the tips of their rhetoric, they completely forgot its purport and did not seek liberation. Huiyuan of the region south of the Yangzi lamented that the Chan methods were not yet spread, and thereupon sought them out with bitter effort and obtained them. Patriarch Bodhidharma observed the capacities and conditions of this land and addressed the tangled confusion of that period by proclaiming: 'Do not establish words and letters,' to dispel their attachment to texts and their pursuing after them; and 'Directly point to the human mind,' to elucidate sudden awakening to the unproduced. His dynamic was sharp and his principle was complete; therefore, it was inevitable that followers of gradual cultivation would intensely heap slander and reproach upon him. The transmission of Chan methods began with Bodhidharma. Directly succeeding one another, the robe was transmitted for six generations, and branches emerged laterally beyond counting, as explained in the Baolin Record of Caoxi. (Master Daofa's annotated edition excised the characters below 'directly point to the human mind'; we now restore them according to the old edition).