景德傳燈錄 28.7

28.7

National Preceptor Dada Wuye of Fenzhou ascended the hall. A monk asked, "The twelve divisions of the teaching have flowed into this land, and those who attained the fruits of the Way have not been just one or two. Why did the ancestral master come east to teach and separately proclaim the profound school, directly pointing to the human mind to see its nature and become a Buddha? Could it be that when the World-Honoured One preached the Dharma, there was something left unexpressed? Take, for instance, the virtuous and eminent monks of previous generations: all of them mastered the nine schools of thought and clearly penetrated the Tripiṭaka. Daosheng, Sengzhao, Daorong, and Sengrui were all singularly gifted figures appearing in an epoch. How could they not know the depths and limits of the Buddha's Dharma? I am ignorant and dim; I pray the master will instruct me." / The master said, "The Buddhas never appeared in the world, nor is there a single dharma given to people; they merely dispensed prescriptions according to the ailment. Thus there are the twelve divisions of the teaching, like swapping a bitter gourd for a honeyed fruit to scour out your karmic roots, yet none of it constitutes real entities. With supernatural transformations and hundreds of thousands of samādhi-gates, they converted those heavenly demons and non-Buddhists; with the two adornments of merit and wisdom, they broke through the views of clinging to existence and stagnating in emptiness. If you do not understand the Way or the ancestral master's intention in coming, what is the point of discussing Daosheng, Sengzhao, Daorong, and Sengrui? Nowadays throughout the empire, those who claim to understand Chan and the Way are as numerous as the sands of the Ganges; those who speak of the Buddha and the mind number hundreds of thousands of myriads. If a fine speck of dust is not removed, you cannot avoid saṃsāra; if conceptual thoughts do not cease, all must sink and plunge. Those of this sort are not even able to recognize their own karmic fruits, yet they falsely claim to benefit themselves and benefit others, calling themselves superior practitioners equal to the virtuous ones of the past. They merely say that whatever meets the eye is nothing other than Buddhist affairs, and every step taken is an awakening-site (bodhimaṇḍa). Tracing back what they practice, it is not equal to that of an ordinary person with the five precepts and ten virtuous deeds. Observing their speech, they disparage the two vehicles and the bodhisattvas of the ten grounds. Furthermore, the supreme flavor of ghee is the world's rare treasure, yet encountering people of this kind, it turns instead into poison. Nanshan itself did not allow them, calling them the sort who merely ape the words of the Great Vehicle, contending for supremacy with tongue and lips, stirring up discourse on formless matters, and ranking themselves with the virtuous ones of the past. How truly bitter! Consider the lofty hermits of the wilds: they still know how to pillow their heads on rocks, rinse their mouths with flowing water, and cast aside gain and emolument; there are also those with strategies for pacifying the state and governing the people who, when summoned, do not take office. How much more so is the path of our Chan school quite different! Look at those ancient virtuous men of the Way: after attaining the meaning, beneath thatched roofs or in stone chambers, in a broken-legged cooking pot, they cooked rice and ate it for twenty or thirty years. Fame and gain did not concern their minds; wealth and treasure were not in their thoughts. Completely oblivious to the human world, they concealed their tracks in crags and thickets; when kings commanded them, they did not come, and when feudal lords invited them, they did not go. How could they be like our sort, greedy for fame and fond of gain, sinking and drowning in worldly paths, like petty merchants with trivial desires, forgetting the great fruit? Could those sages of the ten grounds not understand the Buddha's principles, such that they were inferior to a commoner on ordinary ground? Truly there is no such principle. When they preached the Dharma like clouds and rain, they were still rebuked by the Buddha, who said: 'Seeing the nature is like looking through gossamer gauze.' It is only because sentiments remain in the holy measures, and their views dwell in cause and effect, that they have not been able to transcend holy sentiments and surpass all shadows and traces. Past sages and ancient virtuous ones, eminent scholars and lofty figures, were broadly versed in ancient and modern times and thoroughly clear about the net of teachings; yet because they discerned scholarship and interpreted texts, like water and milk it was difficult to separate them. Failing to clarify their own principle, they took quietude to seek the real. Alas! Those who obtain a human body are like the dirt on a fingernail; those who lose a human body are like the soil of the great earth. How truly lamentable! Suppose someone who has awakened to the principle has a single insight or a single understanding: not knowing that this is the standard within awakening and the gate of entry into principle, he immediately claims to have forever transcended worldly gain, roving through the mountains and along the ravines, disparaging superior practitioners. Consequently, the outflows of his mind are not exhausted and the ground of principle is not clarified; in vain he reaches old age and death without accomplishment, spending his months and years to no purpose. Furthermore, cleverness cannot counter karma; dry wisdom cannot escape the wheel of suffering. Even if your talent equaled Aśvaghoṣa and your understanding matched Nāgārjuna, it would only be for one or two lifetimes that you would not lose a human body. Having faculties and thoughts purified from past lives, upon hearing [the teaching] one immediately understands; yet how is someone like Master Daosheng worth envying? He was completely distant from the Way. With you brothers I discuss the real, not the vain. These mouth-feedings and body-clothings of yours are entirely deceiving the worthy and defrauding the holy. When seen with the divine eyes and wisdom eyes of the future, eating them is just like eating pus and blood; all of it must be repaid before you are done. Which of you possesses the fruit of the Way such that you can naturally attract the offerings of the faithful without having to suffer the consequences? A bodhisattva learning prajñā must not deceive himself; it is like walking on thin ice, like treading on a sword's edge. At the time of approaching death, if the slightest sentiment or measure of ordinary and holy is not exhausted, if the slightest speck of conceptual thought is not forgotten, according to those thoughts one takes rebirth in the five aggregates, light or heavy. Depositing your form in a donkey's womb or a horse's belly, or boiled and fried once in the cauldrons of Niraya, all previous memorization, recollections, conceptual views, and intellectual wisdom will be completely lost all at once; as before, you will again become an ant, and from the start become a mosquito or midge once more. Although having good causes, you suffer bad fruits; what are you brothers seeking after? It is only because craving has become your nature, and the twenty-five states of existence are tied beneath your heels, that there is no time of completion. The ancestral master saw that the sentient beings of this land had the capacity for the Great Vehicle, so he solely transmitted the mind seal to point out their deluded sentiments. Those who attain it make no distinction between ordinary and holy, between foolish and wise. Furthermore, much vanity is not as good as a little reality. Great men, right now step back directly and rest! Suddenly extinguish all conditions, cross the flow of birth and death, and transcend ordinary measures by far. Let your spiritual light shine alone, unhindered by the burdens of things; majestically and grandly, stride alone through the three realms. What need is there for a body sixteen cubits tall, shining with purple-gold luster, a circular halo worn around the neck, and the mark of a broad and long tongue? 'If one sees me by form, this person practices a deviant path.' Even if there are retinues and adornments, without seeking they are naturally attained; mountains, rivers, and the great earth do not obstruct the eye's vision; you attain the great dhāraṇī, hearing once and awakening to a thousand things, not even seeking the price of a single meal. If you people are not like this, the ancestral master's coming to this land will have had extraordinary harm as well as extraordinary benefit. For those who benefit, out of hundreds of thousands of people, one or half a person is fished out who is worthy of being a Dharma vessel. For those who suffer harm, it has already been clarified above. If left to practice according to the teachings of the three vehicles, it would not hinder them from gaining the four fruits and three stages of sagehood, having their share of progressive cultivation. Therefore, the virtuous ones of the past said: 'When one is awakened, karmic obstacles are fundamentally empty; when unawakened, one must still repay one's past debts.'"