景德傳燈錄 28.2

28.2

National Preceptor Huizhong of Nanyang asked a visiting meditation monk, "Where do you come from?"
The monk replied, "I come from the south."
The Master asked, "What kalyāṇamitras are there in the south?"
The monk said, "There are quite a few kalyāṇamitras."
The Master asked, "How do they instruct people?"
The monk said, "The kalyāṇamitras in that quarter directly instruct students that this mind itself is the Buddha; 'Buddha' means awareness. You now fully possess the nature of seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing. This nature can well raise the eyebrows, blink the eyes, come and go, operate, and pervade throughout the body. Touch the head and the head knows; touch the foot and the foot knows. Therefore it is called right and universal knowledge. Apart from this, there is no other Buddha. This body has birth and death, but the mind-nature from beginningless time has never had birth and death. The birth and death of the body is like a dragon shedding its bones, a snake sloughing its skin, or a person leaving an old house: the body is impermanent, but its nature is eternal. What is taught in the south is roughly like this."
The Master said, "If it is so, then there is no difference from that Śreṇika non-Buddhist. He said, 'Within this body of mine there is a spiritual nature. This nature can know pain and itch. When the body breaks apart, the spirit goes out, just as when a house is burned, the master of the house goes out. The house is impermanent, but the master of the house is eternal.' If it is carefully examined like this, how can heterodoxy and orthodoxy be distinguished? Which is correct? When I recently traveled about, I often saw this sort of thing, and lately it has flourished even more. Gathering three to five hundred people, with eyes gazing at the clouds and Milky Way, they say this is the southern tradition. They have altered and changed his Platform Sūtra, adding and mixing in vulgar talk, excising the sacred intention, and misleading later followers. How can that constitute oral teaching? How bitter! Our school is ruined. If seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing are the Buddha-nature, Vimalakīrti should not have said, 'The Dharma is free from seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing. If one practices seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, that is seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, not seeking the Dharma.'"
The monk also asked, "The Lotus Sūtra's definitive teaching reveals the Buddha's knowledge and vision; what about this?"
The Master said, "It says, 'opening the Buddha's knowledge and vision'; it does not even mention bodhisattvas or the two vehicles. How could sentient beings in their delusions and inversions be equal to the Buddha's knowledge and vision?"
The monk also asked, "Which one is the Buddha-mind?"
The Master said, "Walls, tiles, and rubble are it."
The monk said, "This greatly contradicts the sūtras. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra says, 'Apart from walls and insentient objects, it is named Buddha-nature.' Now you say they are the Buddha-mind. I wonder whether mind and nature are different or not different?"
The Master said, "In delusion they are different; in awakening they are not different."
The monk said, "A sūtra says, 'Buddha-nature is eternal; mind is impermanent.' Now you say they are not different; why is this?"
The Master said, "You merely rely on words and do not rely on meaning. For example, in the cold months water freezes into ice; when the warmth arrives, the ice melts into water. When sentient beings are deluded, nature congeals into mind; when sentient beings are awakened, mind melts into nature. If one insists that the insentient have no Buddha-nature, the sūtra should not say, 'The three realms are mind only.' This is completely you yourself contradicting the sūtras; I do not contradict them."
[The monk] asked, "Since the insentient have the mind-nature, do they also understand expounding the Dharma?"
The Master said, "They blaze forth constantly expounding it without interruption."
[The monk] said, "Why does this person not hear it?"
The Master said, "You yourself do not hear it."
[The monk] asked, "Who gets to hear it?"
The Master said, "The Buddhas get to hear it."
[The monk] said, "Do sentient beings have no share in it?"
The Master said, "I speak for sentient beings; I do not speak for the noble ones."
[The monk] said, "I am deaf and blind, not hearing the insentient expound the Dharma; you, Master, ought to hear it."
The Master said, "I also do not hear it."
[The monk] said, "Since you, Master, do not hear it, how do you know the insentient understand expounding it?"
The Master said, "If I were to hear it, I would be equal to the Buddhas, and you would not hear the Dharma I expound."
[The monk] said, "Can sentient beings ultimately get to hear it?"
The Master said, "If sentient beings hear it, they are not sentient beings."
[The monk] said, "What textual authority is there for the insentient expounding the Dharma?"
The Master said, "Have you not seen the Avataṃsaka Sūtra say, 'Lands expound, sentient beings expound, all in the three times expound'? Are sentient beings only the animate?"
[The monk] said, "The Master only says that the insentient have Buddha-nature; what about the sentient?"
The Master said, "The insentient are even so; how much more the sentient?"
[The monk] said, "If it is so, then the previously cited southern kalyāṇamitra who said seeing and hearing are Buddha-nature should not be judged identical to non-Buddhists."
The Master said, "I do not say he has no Buddha-nature. How could non-Buddhists have no Buddha-nature? But because of mistaken views, they give rise to two views within a single dharma; therefore they are wrong."
[The monk] said, "If both have Buddha-nature, killing the sentient forms karma that incurs mutual retribution and harm, while for the insentient we do not hear of retribution."
The Master said, "The sentient are direct retribution: clinging to 'I' and 'mine' and harboring enmity, there is sinful retribution. The insentient are their dependent retribution: having no mind of harboring enmity, therefore retribution is not spoken of."
[The monk] said, "In the teachings, we only see the sentient becoming Buddhas; we do not see the insentient receiving prediction [of Buddhahood]. Moreover, among the thousand Buddhas of the Auspicious Eon, which one is an insentient Buddha?"
The Master said, "It is like a crown prince before ascending the throne: he is only one single body. After he ascends the throne, all the lands of the realm belong to the king. Would the lands receive accession separately? Now, merely at the time when the sentient receive prediction and become Buddhas, the lands of the ten directions are all the body of Vairocana Buddha. How could there be separate predictions received by the insentient?"
[The monk] said, "All sentient beings dwell entirely upon the Buddha's body, defecating and urinating to defile the Buddha's body, excavating and trampling upon the Buddha's body—is there no sin in this?"
The Master said, "Sentient beings in their entirety are the Buddha; who would commit a sin against whom?"
[The monk] said, "A sūtra says, 'The Buddha's body is without obstruction.' Now, taking conditioned, obstructive physical objects to be the Buddha's body—does this not go against the sacred intention?"
The Master said, "The Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra says, 'One cannot depart from the conditioned to speak of the unconditioned.' Do you believe that form is emptiness?"
[The monk] said, "These are the Buddha's sincere words; how would I dare not believe?"
The Master said, "Since form is emptiness, how could there be obstruction?"
[The monk] said, "Since the Buddha-nature of sentient beings is identical, if only one Buddha practiced, all sentient beings should be liberated immediately. Now since that is not so, where is the meaning of identity?"
The Master said, "Have you not seen the Avataṃsaka's doctrine of the six characteristics, which says, 'Within identity there is difference, within difference there is identity; integration and disintegration, totality and particularity—all are analogous to this'? Although sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same one nature, that does not obstruct each cultivating for oneself and obtaining for oneself. One has never seen another person eat and oneself become full."
[The monk] said, "There is a kalyāṇamitra who instructs students: 'Just recognize your nature yourself. At the time of impermanence, cast aside the shell to one side; the luminous platform's cognitive nature departs far away—this is called liberation.' What about this?"
The Master said, "This was already explained before; it is still the measure of the two vehicles and non-Buddhists. The two vehicles loathe birth and death and rejoice in nirvāṇa. Non-Buddhists also say, 'I have a great calamity because I have a body,' and so they head toward the Pradhāna. Stream-enterers abide in absorption for eighty thousand eons, the other three fruits for sixty, forty, and twenty thousand, and pratyekabuddhas for ten thousand eons. Non-Buddhists also abide for eighty thousand eons in [the sphere of] neither-perception-nor-non-perception. When the eons are complete, the two vehicles can still turn their minds toward the Great [Vehicle], while non-Buddhists return again to saṃsāra."
[The monk] asked, "Is Buddha-nature of one kind, or is it different?"
The Master said, "It cannot be of one kind."
[The monk] said, "Why?"
The Master said, "Some are entirely without birth and death; some are half birth-and-death and half without birth-and-death."
[The monk] said, "Who holds this understanding?"
The Master said, "The Buddha-nature here with me is entirely without birth and death. The Buddha-nature in your south is half birth-and-death and half without birth-and-death."
[The monk] said, "How are they distinguished?"
The Master said, "Here, body and mind are suchness; outside the mind there is nothing else. Therefore it is entirely without birth and death. In your south, the body is impermanent and the spiritual nature is eternal. Therefore it is half birth-and-death and half without birth-and-death."
[The monk] said, "How could the Upādhyāya's physical body immediately be identical to the Dharmakāya, without birth and death?"
The Master said, "How have you entered into a heterodox path?"
[The monk] said, "When did this student enter a heterodox path?"
The Master said, "Have you not seen the Diamond Sūtra: 'Seeking me through form, seeking me through sound, one walks a heterodox path'? Is not what you see now just like that?"
[The monk] said, "I have read the teachings of the Great and Small Vehicles, and have also seen passages speaking of the true nature of the Middle Way, neither arising nor ceasing; and I have also seen texts speaking of this skandha perishing and that skandha arising, where the body undergoes alternation while the spiritual nature does not perish. How can they all be rejected as identical to the non-Buddhist dual views of annihilation and permanence?"
The Master said, "Are you studying the unexcelled, truly authentic path of transcending the world, or are you studying the worldly dual views of birth-and-death, annihilation and permanence? Have you not seen Master Zhao say, 'Speaking of the real opposes the worldly; following the worldly violates the real. Violating the real, one is deluded about nature and does not return; opposing the worldly, one's words are bland and tasteless. People of middling capacity hold it as if present yet absent; inferior persons clap their hands and pay no heed.' Do you now wish to emulate the inferior person laughing at the Great Way?"
[The monk] said, "You, Master, also say that this mind itself is the Buddha, and the southern kalyāṇamitras do so too. Where is the difference? The Master should not affirm himself and negate others."
The Master said, "Sometimes names differ while the substance is the same; sometimes names are the same while the substance differs. Confusion arises because of this. Just as bodhi, nirvāṇa, tathatā, and Buddha-nature have different names but the same substance, the true mind, the false mind, Buddha-wisdom, and worldly wisdom have the same name but different substances. Because the south mistakenly takes the false mind to be the true mind, they recognize a thief as their child; some take worldly wisdom and call it Buddha-wisdom, like fish eyes confusing bright pearls. They cannot be lumped together; they must be distinguished."
[The monk] said, "How can one be free from this error?"
The Master said, "You just examine carefully in reverse the aggregates, sense fields, and elements, investigating each one thoroughly: is there the slightest trace to be found?"
[The monk] said, "Examining carefully, I do not see a single thing to be found."
The Master said, "Do you destroy the marks of body and mind?"
[The monk] said, "Body and mind are intrinsically apart [from marks]; what is there to destroy?"
The Master said, "Outside body and mind, is there any further thing?"
[The monk] said, "Body and mind have no outside; how could there be any thing?"
The Master said, "Do you destroy worldly marks?"
The monk said, "Worldly marks are themselves markless; what need is there to destroy them further?"
The Master said, "If it is so, then you are free from error."
The meditation monk obediently accepted the instruction.
Monk Lingjue of Changzhou asked, "Generating the mind to leave household life, I originally intended to seek the Buddha. I wonder: how should one use the mind to attain it?"
The Master said, "Having no mind to use, one immediately attains Buddhahood."
[Lingjue] said, "With no mind to use, who becomes a Buddha?"
The Master said, "No-mind itself becomes Buddha; Buddha also has no mind."
[Lingjue] said, "The Buddha has great inconceivable power because he can deliver sentient beings. If there is also no mind, who delivers sentient beings?"
The Master said, "No-mind is the true deliverance of sentient beings. If one sees sentient beings that can be delivered, that is having a mind, distinctly arising and ceasing."
[Lingjue] said, "Now since there is no mind, when Śākyamuni appeared in the world and expounded so many traces of teachings, how could they be empty words?"
The Master said, "The Buddha expounding teachings also had no mind."
[Lingjue] said, "Expounding the Dharma without mind should mean there is no expounding."
The Master said, "Expounding is itself nothingness; nothingness is itself expounding."
[Lingjue] said, "If expounding the Dharma is without mind, is creating karma with mind?"
The Master said, "No-mind is no-karma. Now since there is karma, the mind arises and ceases; how could there be no-mind?"
[Lingjue] said, "No-mind immediately becomes Buddha. Has the Upādhyāya become a Buddha right now?"
The Master said, "Mind itself does not exist; who speaks of becoming a Buddha? If there is a Buddha that can be become, that is still having a mind. Having a mind is having outflows; where can one attain no-mind?"
[Lingjue] said, "Since there is no Buddha that can be become, does the Upādhyāya still possess the Buddha's function?"
The Master said, "Mind itself does not exist; from where could function exist?"
[Lingjue] said, "Vaguely having nothing at all—does this not fall into the view of annihilation?"
The Master said, "Originally there is no view; who speaks of annihilation?"
[Lingjue] said, "If originally there is nothing, does it not fall into emptiness?"
The Master said, "Since emptiness is nothingness, from where can falling be established?"
[Lingjue] said, "Subject and object are both absent. If suddenly someone comes holding a blade to take your life, is that existent or non-existent?"
The Master said, "It is non-existent."
[Lingjue] said, "Does it hurt?"
The Master said, "Pain also does not exist."
[Lingjue] said, "Since pain does not exist, into what realm will you be born after death?"
The Master said, "There is no death and no birth, nor is there any realm."
[Lingjue] said, "Having attained having no things and being at ease, when hunger and cold press upon you, how do you use the mind?"
The Master said, "When hungry, eat rice; when cold, put on clothes."
[Lingjue] said, "Knowing hunger and knowing cold should be having a mind."
The Master said, "I ask you: if there is a mind, what form and substance does the mind have?"
[Lingjue] said, "The mind has no form and substance."
The Master said, "Since you know it has no form and substance, then originally there is no mind. How can you say it exists?"
[Lingjue] said, "Encountering tigers and wolves in the mountains, how do you use the mind?"
The Master said, "Seeing as if not seeing; coming as if not coming. If you are without mind, evil beasts cannot do harm."
[Lingjue] said, "Still and without affairs, solitary, free, and without mind—what is this called?"
The Master said, "It is called a Vajra Great Being."
[Lingjue] said, "What form and substance does a Vajra Great Being have?"
The Master said, "Originally there is no shape or substance."
[Lingjue] said, "Since there is no shape or substance, what thing is called a Vajra Great Being?"
The Master said, "It is called a Vajra Great Being without shape or substance."
[Lingjue] said, "What merit does a Vajra Great Being have?"
The Master said, "A single thought corresponding with the Vajra can extinguish grave sins of birth and death of Ganges-sands of eons, and allow one to see Ganges-sands of Buddhas. That Vajra Great Being's merit is immeasurable, not to be spoken by mouth nor set forth by intellect. Even if one were to dwell in the world for Ganges-sands of eons expounding it, it could not be exhausted."
[Lingjue] said, "What is a single thought of correspondence?"
The Master said, "Forgetting both memory and cognition is correspondence."
[Lingjue] said, "If both memory and cognition are forgotten, who sees the Buddhas?"
The Master said, "Forgetting is nothingness; nothingness is Buddha."
[Lingjue] said, "Nothingness is called nothingness; how can it be called Buddha?"
The Master said, "Because nothingness is also empty, and Buddha is also empty."
[Lingjue] said, "Nothingness is Buddha, Buddha is nothingness."
[Lingjue] said, "Since not the slightest trace can be found, what is it named?"
The Master said, "Originally it has no name."
[Lingjue] said, "Is there anything similar to it?"
The Master said, "There is nothing similar; the world calls it Incomparable, Solely Honored. Strive to cultivate in accordance with this, and no one can destroy it. There is no further need to ask; roam at will, solitary, free, and fearless. You will constantly be sheltered and protected by sages and worthies as numerous as the sands of the Ganges; wherever you are, you will constantly be revered by devas, dragons, and the eight classes as numerous as the sands of the Ganges; good spirits as numerous as the sands of the Ganges will come to protect you, and there will never be obstacles or difficulties. Where could you fail to be carefree?"
[Lingjue] also asked, "When Kāśyapa was beside the Buddha listening, did he hear or not hear?"
The Master said, "Not-hearing hearing."
[Lingjue] said, "What is not-hearing hearing?"
The Master said, "Hearing not-hearing."
[Lingjue] said, "When the Tathāgata spoke, was it not-hearing hearing, or when he did not speak was it not-hearing hearing?"
The Master said, "The Tathāgata expounded without expounding."
[Lingjue] said, "What is expounding without expounding?"
The Master said, "Words fill all under heaven, yet there is no oral fault."