勅修百丈清規 2.20

2.20

Each person sacrifices to their ancestors, honoring the origin of their physical birth. Physical birth originates from emotional attachment; yet form dissolves in time, and attachment ends in time. Only the spiritual and unobscured nature does not rely on birth to exist, nor does it perish along with death. Therefore the Buddha taught people that they must understand their nature. Yet later scholars again clung to textual words and failed to grasp their essential aim, just like a physician skilled in recipe books who dispenses with medicines and needles—what benefit is there? When our ancestor Bodhidharma arrived, he revealed the way of direct pointing, and people then began to see clearly the wonder of their own nature, not seeking in written words nor relying on speech or silence, but attaining it beyond coughs, gestures, sounds, and forms. Thus, for those of our school who transmit the ancestral Way and succeed to the ancestral seat, like fire to firewood or water to a vessel, there is not the slightest difference between past and present. Is this not even more important than the origin of physical birth? Later, Chan Master Baizhang Dazhi created pure rules to house our fellows, and the Chan grove began from this. Venerable Haihui Duan remarked that it is proper to sacrifice to Bodhidharma in the center, with Baizhang accompanying on the right, and the founding ancestors of the respective monasteries flanking them, as seen in the preface to the Ancestral Hall Regulations.