景德傳燈錄 28.12

28.12

Upādhyāya Guichen of Luohan in Zhangzhou ascended the hall. The assembly stood for a long time. The Master said: "Sthaviras, there is no need to hang your heads and deliberate. Deliberation falling short, you immediately say there is no need to make distinctions. Do you understand where to open your mouth? Where will you direct your mouth? Try to say! Is there still any phenomenon that can come near to you? Is there still any phenomenon that can remain distant from you? Can it be the same as you or different from you? Since it is like this, why do you go out of your way to make it difficult? It is simply because you are not manly men, but meek and evasive, without a bit of majestic radiance, mournfully shielding your sense-faculty of mind, afraid that someone will question you. I often say: if you have had an awakening, simply cast aside other and self, disclose it and bring it forward, and I will test it with you. Right now, what are you doing? Refusing to acknowledge it, do not take the water in a cow's footprint to be the great ocean! The Buddha-Dharma pervades the worlds as numerous as grains of sand; do not mistakenly set up perceptions and views upon the physical heart of flesh and take that to be the boundary. These perceptions, hearings, awarenesses, cognitions, thoughts, conceptualizations, and emotional conditions—indeed, they are not not it. But if you nod your head here and say, 'I am real and true,' that will not do. Just as an ancient said, 'This matter only I can know'—what realm is this? Do you recognize it? Could it be that your seeing me and my seeing you is it? Do not misunderstand! If it is this 'I', the 'I' follows birth and death; when the body exists, it exists; when the body is absent, it is absent. Therefore the ancient Buddha said for the sake of you people of today: 'Because distinct phenomena exist, distinct phenomena arise; because distinct phenomena are absent, distinct phenomena are extinguished.' Do not treat this lightly. The matter of birth and death is great; if this lump is not thoroughly dissolved, wherever you are it will be discordant, with no small amount of sights and sounds. If you do not break through feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness, it will likewise work your bones to exhaustion. Do not say, 'The five aggregates are fundamentally empty'; it is not by your mouth that they come to be understood as empty! Therefore it is said: you must personally penetrate it, you must be genuine. It is not that only today has this old teacher come to speak like this; the ancient sages of that time proclaimed: you call it the adamantine, secret, inconceivable treasury of radiance, which covers heaven and earth, giving birth to ordinary mortals and nurturing sages. From ancient times to the present day, who does not have a share? Since it is like this, upon whom else do you rely? Therefore, seeing that you are helpless, the Buddhas out of compassion opened the gate of skillful means and manifested the true mark. I now also use skillful means; do you understand? If you do not understand, do not fabricate strange ideas in the sense-faculty of mind." A monk asked: "From the ancestral lineage from above, I beg the master for skillful means." The Master said: "Skillful means is not absent. What do you call the ancestral lineage?" The monk said: "If so, then I have posed this question in vain." The Master said: "What fault do you have?" The monk asked: "Does the Buddha-Dharma also admit of being carved and polished, or not?" The Master said: "Why would it not admit of it?" The monk asked: "How is it carved and polished?" The Master said: "Buddha-Dharma." The monk asked: "'All conditioned things are impermanent; they are the phenomena of birth and death.' What is the phenomenon of non-birth and non-extinction?" The Master said: "What use do you have for non-birth and non-extinction?" The monk asked: "The moment one intends, there is an error; how is it when one does not intend?" The Master said: "What error is there in intending?" The monk said: "If so, then naturally there is no wound." The Master said: "Shut your mouth." The monk asked: "Among all realms, what is taken as master?" The Master said: "Which one is 'all realms'?" The monk said: "Could it be the place of doubt?" The Master said: "Bring the place of doubt here!" The monk asked: "Right at this moment, what is it?" The Master said: "When not at this moment, what is it?" The monk said: "I cannot say." The Master said: "What is clogging your mouth?" The Master also said: "You people coming up and going down like this morning and evening are merely deluded by a bit of sounds and forms, so that body and mind are uneasy. If sounds, forms, and names are not the Buddha-Dharma, what else do you doubt about them? If it is the Buddha-Dharma and not sounds, forms, and names, how do you intend to make your body and mind harmonize with it? If it is sounds, forms, and names, it is entirely sounds, forms, and names. If it is the Buddha-Dharma, it is entirely the Buddha-Dharma. Do you understand? Distinct sounds have no sound; distinct forms have no form; separated from characters there is no name; separated from names there are no characters. Try moving your tongue to inspect: how many sounds, forms, and names are there? From where is it form, and by what is it named? The three realms are imposing like this, and still one cannot find a way out; why do you go out of your way to make it difficult? It is only because you people produce your own inversions, taking the eternal to be annihilation, awakening to the false and being deluded about the real, errantly chasing outwardly, and forcibly fabricating divergent views. Conferring with others all day long, there is Buddha-Dharma; not conferring with others, you are idle people of the world. Coming to this point in the talk, as soon as the Buddha-Dharma is brought up, you immediately say, 'To intend with the mind is an error; to stir a thought is contrary.' Ordinarily, in other places, your mouths are originally like spinning wheels, yet none of it is in error! The matter of the Buddha-Dharma is not an intermittent fever; it is all due to your wild consciousness and ordinary sentiments producing understandings of error and non-error. Suddenly seeing me pick up a mallet to pound my back, you immediately deliberate and look attentively; otherwise, seeing me hold a broom and sweep east and west, you each pay close attention. When you ordinarily gather firewood, why do you not look attentively, summon it, and immediately awaken? Sthaviras, do not set up standards and measures for the Buddha-Dharma in the sense-faculty of mind or inside the skin bag; you will only end up deceiving yourselves. I dare not entangle beginners in nets or overshadow junior students. Each of you go investigate on your own, free from concerns. Take care!"