景德傳燈錄 5.43

5.43

Chan Master Zhidao of Guangzhou was a native of Nanhai. When he first visited the Sixth Patriarch, he said, 'Since leaving home, I have read the Nirvāṇa Sūtra for barely more than ten years, yet I have not understood its great meaning. I pray that the Upādhyāya will deign to instruct me.' The Patriarch said, 'Where are you not yet clear?' He replied, ''All conditioned things are impermanent; they are phenomena of arising and ceasing. When arising and ceasing have ceased, the extinction of quiescence is bliss.' I have doubts regarding this.' The Patriarch said, 'How do you doubt it?' He replied, 'All sentient beings have two bodies: namely, the physical body and the Dharma body. The physical body is impermanent, having arising and ceasing; the Dharma body is permanent, having no knowledge and no sensation. The sūtra says: 'When arising and ceasing have ceased, the extinction of quiescence is bliss.' I do not know which body undergoes extinction of quiescence and which body experiences bliss. If it is the physical body: when the physical body ceases, the four great elements disperse, which is entirely suffering, and suffering cannot be called bliss. If the Dharma body undergoes extinction of quiescence, it would be identical to grasses, trees, tiles, and stones—who would then experience bliss? Furthermore, the Dharma-nature is the substance of arising and ceasing, and the five aggregates are the function of arising and ceasing. With one substance and five functions, arising and ceasing are constant: upon arising, function emerges from substance; upon ceasing, function is gathered back to substance. If another birth is allowed, then sentient kinds would never be cut off or extinguished. If another birth is not allowed, then they would forever return to quiescence and extinction, being identical to insentient things. If this were so, all dharmas would be restrained and suppressed by nirvāṇa; they would not even be able to arise, so what bliss could there be?' The Patriarch said, 'You are a son of Śākya; why do you study the non-Buddhist heterodox views of annihilation and permanence to critique the supreme vehicle? According to your understanding, outside the physical body there is separately a Dharma body, and apart from arising and ceasing you seek quiescence and extinction. Moreover, inferring that nirvāṇa is permanent bliss, you say there is a body that experiences it—this is merely clinging stubbornly to birth and death and indulging in worldly pleasures. You must know now: because all deluded people mistake the confluence of the five aggregates for the mark of their own substance, and discriminate all dharmas as marks of external dust, loving life and hating death, their thought-moments shifting and flowing, unaware of the dreamlike, illusory falsehood [of existence], they vainly undergo saṃsāra, turning the constant bliss of nirvāṇa instead into a mark of suffering and running about seeking it all day long. Pitiful of this, the Buddha demonstrated the true bliss of nirvāṇa: in an instant there is no mark of arising; in an instant there is no mark of ceasing; there is no further arising and ceasing to be ceased. This is the presence of quiescence and extinction before your eyes. In this moment of presence, there is also no measure of presence; it is called constant bliss. This bliss has no one who experiences it, nor anyone who does not experience it. How could there be the designation of one substance and five functions? How much less should one say that nirvāṇa restrains and suppresses all dharmas so that they never arise again? This is slandering the Buddha and defaming the Dharma. Listen to my verse:'