景德傳燈錄 5.100

5.100

Chan Master Xuance of Wuzhou was a native of Jinhua in Wuzhou. He left home and traveled widely, arriving in Heshuo. There was a Chan Master Zhihuang who had once visited the Fifth Patriarch of Huangmei and lived in a hermitage for twenty years, considering himself to have attained correct reception (samādhi). The Master knew that what Huang had attained was not genuine, so he went and asked: "What are you doing sitting here?" Huang said: "Entering absorption." The Master said: "You speak of entering absorption: is it with mind or without mind? If it is with mind, all wriggling and crawling creatures should also attain absorption. If it is without mind, all sorts of grasses and trees should also attain absorption." Huang said: "Just when I enter absorption, I do not see the existence of a mind of existence or nonexistence." The Master said: "Since you do not see the mind of existence or nonexistence, that is constant absorption; what exiting or entering could there be? If there is exiting and entering, it is not the great absorption." Huang was speechless for a long time. He asked whom the Master had succeeded. The Master said: "My teacher is the Sixth Patriarch of Caoxi." Huang asked: "What does the Sixth Patriarch consider to be dhyāna absorption?" The Master said: "My teacher says: 'Wondrously serene and completely quiescent, substance and function are suchlike. The five aggregates are fundamentally empty, and the six dusts do not exist. Neither exiting nor entering, neither concentrated nor distracted. The nature of dhyāna has no abiding; it is free from abiding in dhyāna quiescence. The nature of dhyāna is without birth; it is free from giving birth to dhyāna thoughts. The mind is like empty space, yet there is no measure of empty space.'" Hearing this explanation, Huang went to Caoxi to request the resolution of his doubts and obscurations. The Patriarch's mind secretly tallied with the Master's words. Huang then first opened into awakening. The Master later returned to Jinhua and greatly opened a Dharma assembly.