景德傳燈錄 1.119

1.119

The fourteenth patriarch, the Venerable Nāgārjuna, was a person of the land of Western India. He was also called Nāgajaya (Longsheng). He first attained the Dharma from the Venerable [Kapi]mimala. Later he went to Southern India. The people of that country mostly believed in the karmic merit of fortune. Hearing the Venerable preaching the wondrous Dharma, they said to one another, "When a person possesses the karmic merit of fortune, it is foremost in the world. Merely speaking of Buddha, who can see it?" The Venerable said, "If you wish to see the Buddha-nature, you must first eliminate arrogance." Those people said, "Is Buddha-nature large or small?" The Venerable said, "It is neither large nor small, neither broad nor narrow; it has neither fortune nor retribution, neither dying nor being born." Hearing this superior principle, they all turned their initial minds around. The Venerable then manifested an unobstructed body on his seat like the disk of the full moon. The entire assembly only heard the sound of the Dharma and did not see the master's physical form. In that assembly there was the son of an elder named Kāṇadeva. He said to the assembly, "Do you recognize this sign?" The assembly said, "Our eyes have never seen it; how could we distinguish and recognize it?" Deva said, "This is the Venerable manifesting the substance and sign of Buddha-nature to show us. How is this known? Because the formless samādhi has a shape like the full moon, and the meaning of Buddha-nature is vast, empty, and luminous." When he finished speaking, the circular sign disappeared, and [the Venerable] sat on his original seat again, speaking a verse: