緇門警訓 5.12

5.12

In the Buddhadharma there is no place for you to understand; in birth and death there is no place for you to escape. A body of a single retribution is like a wind-blown lamp or sparks of flint; thought after thought is like saving your head when it is on fire. You still have no place where you have settled and completed it; what desperate urgency drives you to seek out so much bustling chaos on flat ground? In the blink of an eye, you are already forty or fifty years old! What do you call the Buddhadharma? Even if you, with your hundred and thousandfold cleverness, were from beginning to end to explain and annotate the teachings of the three vehicles and twelve divisions of scriptures, and down to the one thousand seven hundred cases of rotten old entanglements, as well as the hundred schools and various philosophers, so tightly that water could not leak through, it would all still be beating about outside the gate; when speaking you seem awakened, but facing objects you are still deluded. Regarding this matter, it has been said to you: there is no place for you to understand. The more you want to understand, the less you will correspond. Do not, upon hearing such speech, plan to produce some other intellectual understanding. Even if you have another path of vitality where thousands and tens of thousands cannot squeeze in, it still does not go beyond the delusive thought of wanting to understand. Only by possessing great roots of faith and truly investigating and actually awakening within your own person can you shoulder it. If you generate the thought of shouldering it, you still have no connection with it. Therefore, an ancient teaching states: 'Even if the entire world were full of beings like Śāriputra, exhausting their thoughts together to measure it, they could not fathom the Buddha's wisdom.' Nowadays there are people who pick up a piece of orange peel and consider it to be fire, everywhere engaging in loud and lofty talk to advocate their own school, saying, 'I understand the Buddhadharma,' wanting people to respect them—what advantage is gained from this? For thirty or forty years this illusory one has applied effort to this matter, shifting and turning, yet still does not correspond to the two words 'Buddhadharma'; this is why day and night I harbour shame, and how could I dare improperly occupy the master's seat? Usually, when encountering sweet words and generous gifts, it is no different from a poisonous arrow entering the heart; repeatedly trying to avoid them, it has proved impossible. This is caused by conditions and karma from many lifetimes, and is an illusion; fundamentally it is not brought about by the power of the Path. I often see people of the Path, when it is not essential, encounter some slight disagreeable matter, and with a spark of ignorance they indulge their karmic consciousness, acting with wild minds and toxic conduct, framing and trapping people on flat ground, calling it 'holding to public justice.' Little do they know that from beginningless kalpas, they have been bound by ignorance through such 'public justice,' and there has never been a single matter where by means of 'public justice' they met with the thought of the Path. Moreover, regarding the 'public justice' held today, do you know how many people behind your back do not even have time to cover their noses? In birth and death there is no place for you to escape. One's own great matter of birth and death adheres to the skin and connects to the bones, thought after thought without interruption. From beginningless kalpas, the hundreds and thousands of tricks have all been played out completely; it is only that this mind refuses to rest. In vain before thousands of Buddhas and myriads of ancestors you have repeatedly made heavy vows, dragging on until today, bumping into the three robes and being called a person of the Path. Yet, alas, you still do not break through the consciousness before your eyes; whenever you move, you produce thoughts and give rise to notions—is not all this nourishing the fetters of birth and death, forgetting the initial resolve of your pravrajyā? In such frantic agitation, lasting for thousands and myriads of births, in vain you lengthen the wheel of karma; what benefit is there in principle? Let me instruct you clearly: the fetters of sentient beings are thick and heavy; there is nothing you can do about them. If you have no strength, then in being among the assembly simply let go of your entire body, and in a half-room thatched hut, cool, indifferent, withered, and still, beg for food in patched robes, striving for the time being to liberate yourself, and also avoiding treading upon others' sprouts and crops and becoming a person without shame. Therefore know that in the Buddhadharma there is no place for you to understand, and in birth and death there is no place for you to escape. Since you cannot understand and cannot escape, just persevere and hold on right in the place where you cannot. Nor ask whether it takes thirty years or twenty years; if suddenly in the place where you cannot, you abruptly break through, only then will you believe that my words have not deceived you.