Dead or awake.

Swampland Flowers: 69 Open Talk at the Invitation of Ch'ien Chi-yi

The Dharma cannot be seen, heard, perceived, or known. If you employ seeing, hearing, perception, or knowing, then this is seeing, hearing, perception or knowing -- it's not seeing the Dharma. Since it's outside of seeing, hearing, perception, and knowing, what then will you call "the Dharma"? When you get here, it's like a man drinking water -- he knows for himself whether it is cold or warm. Only if you personally witness it and awaken to it can you see the Dharma. For a person who has really witnessed and awakened, when a single hair is picked up, he at once can understand the whole great earth.

These days not only Ch'an people but even gentlemen of affairs, intelligent, quick-witted, deeply learned men, all have two diseases. Not to pay attention, not to attach the mind (to things) -- this is "forgetting concerns." When they forget concerns, they tumble down beneath the black mountain (of oblivion), into the ghost cave. In the Teachings they call it "dark torpor." When they do pay attention and attach the mind (to things), the mind's discriminating consciousness flies around in confusion, one thought after another, the next thought continuing even before the previous thought has ended. In the Teachings they call this "excitation." (People caught in torpor/-excitation) do not realize that right where each and every person is, is One Great Matter that's neither sunk in torpor nor roused in excitation, like the universal cover of the sky, like the universal support of the earth. This Great Matter existed before there was a world, and when the world is destroyed, this Great Matter won't stir a hairsbreadth.

Usually gentlemen of affairs are roused in excitation, so these days in all localities there's a certain perverted "silent illumination" Ch'an: seeing that gentlemen of affairs are obstructed by sensory afflictions, so their hearts are not at peace, they teach them to be "cold ashes, a dead tree," or "a single strip of bleached white cloth," or "an incense brazier in an ancient shrine," to act sad and coldly indifferent. But tell me, the man who takes this rest -- can he rest too? They don't realize at all: how can you rest if this monkey isn't dead? How can you rest if the one that comes as the vanguard and leaves as the rearguard isn't dead?

Last year on the road to Fukien, this ("silent illumination" teaching) style was extremely prevalent. When I went to Fukien in the 1130s to dwell (alone) in a hut, I tried to dispel it, saying it cuts off enlightenment's life of wisdom, saying that even if a thousand Buddhas appeared in the world, (the "silent illumination" people) wouldn't know repentance. Among them there was the gentleman Cheng Shang-ming. Being very intelligent, he could understand rationally the Buddhist Teachings and the Taoist Canon, and Confucianism of course. One day he came to my room holding a stick of incense. His anger was palpable, his tone and demeanor stern. He said, "I have a stick of incense not yet burned: I want to get a certain matter understood with you. You have freely denounced (the idea that) wordless silence is the highest resting place among the Dharma's methods. I suspect you are unable to believe this because you have never reached this stage. What about Old Shakyamuni closing his door and not making a soundn for twenty-one days back in Magadha -- wasn't this the silence of a Buddha? When the thirty-two bodhisattvas each expounded the Dharma-gate of Nonduality, and at the end (when it came his turn_ Vimalakirti had no words to say and Manjusri praised him -- wasn't this the silence of bodhisattvas? When Subhuti was sitting quietly on the cliff, wordless, without speaking -- wasn't this the silence of shravaka? When Indra saw Subhuti sitting quietly on the cliff and so showered down flowers as an offering, also without speaking -- wasn't this the silence of ordinary being? When Bodhidharma went from Liang to Wei and sat impassively for nine years -- wasn't this the silence of an ancestral teacher? As soon as Lu Tsu saw a monk, he would face the wall -- wasn't this the silence of a teacher of the Ch'an School? Why then do you struggle to displace 'silent illumination' and consider it false and wrong?"

I said, Shang-ming, it's good you asked; now wait while I tell you. If I can't explain it satisfactorily, then I'll burn the incense and pay homage to you with three bows. If I can explain, then I'll accept your respects.

I'm not going to talk to you about old Shakyamuni or the sayings of the past worthies (of Ch'an). I'm going to go right into your house to explain -- as it's called, borrowing an old lady's shawl to visit an old lady. So I'll ask you, Have you ever read Chuang Tzu?

"Of course."

Chuang Tzu said, "Neither words nor silence are sufficient to convey the ultimate of the Tao or of things: their meaning culminates in neither words nor silence." I haven't read Kuo Hsiang's (standard) commentary or the explanations of the various schools -- I'm just going by my own interpretation to refute this silence of yours. In essence the ultimate of the Tao and of things lies neither in speech nor in silence -- words cannot convey it, nor can silence. So what you've said doesn't even accord with Chuang Tzu's meaning -- how could you be in accord with the intent of great teachers like old Shakyamuni and Bodhidharma?

Do you want to know the meaning of Chuang Tzu's "Their meaning culminates in neither speech nor silence"? It's this: The Great Master Yun Men lifted up a fan and said, "This fan leaps up into the thirty-third heaven and taps on Indra's nostrils. One blow to a carp in the Eastern Sea, and the rain pours down."

If you can understand, these words that Yun Men said are the same as what Chuang Tzu said.

At this point he didn't make a sound; I said to him, Though you don't speak, in your heart you still haven't submitted. Nevertheless, the men of old definitely didn't understand by sitting. You just brought up Shakyamuni closing his door and Vimalakirti's silence. Well, look at this: In olden times there was a lecturer called Dharma Master Chao, who explained that wordlessness to people saying, "Shakyamuni closing his door in Magadha, Vimalakirti keeping his mouth shut at Vaisali, Subhuti chanting without speaking to reveal the Path, and Indra without hearing showering down flowers -- all these are to be understood as spiritual visitations. Thus when the mouth takes them up it falls silent. How could one say they had no discernment? Actually, they discerned what cannot be said." When this truth suddenly collides with one's spirit, and he arrives unawares where speaking is impossible, though he doesn't speak, his voice is like thunder. That's why Seng Chao said, "How could one say they had no discernment, since they discerned what cannot be said?"

Here, worldly intelligence and talents cannot be used at all. When you reach such a stage, this at last is the place to abandon your body and your life. This kind of realm requires each person to experience and awaken for himself. Therefore the Hua Yen Scripture says, "The Tathagata's palace is boundless: naturally those who awaken are within it." This is the gate of great liberation of all the sages since antiquity, boundless and immeasurable, without gain or loss, without silence or speech, without going or coming: So in every atom of dust, So in every land, So in every moment, So in every phenomenon.

Since the capacity of sentient beings is (often) narrow and meager, they don't get to the realms of the sages of the Three Teachings. Therefore they distinguish this and that: far from knowing that the world is this vast, instead they go sit in silence under the black mountain, inside the ghost cave. Thus the former sages decried this as the deep pit of liberation, a place to be feared. Seen with the eye of penetrating spiritual powers, it's the same as sitting on a mountain of knives or in a forest of swords, in a boiling cauldron or in the coals of a furnace. If lecturers don't even get stuck in silence, how can members of the School of Ancestral Teachers? If you say, "As soon as you open your mouth, you fail," right now, this has nothing to do with it.

Shang-ming bowed without realizing it. I said, Though you bow, there's still something the matter: Come to my room tonight. (When he came) I asked how old he was this year. He said sixty-four. Again I asked, Where did you come from sixty-four years ago? He couldn't open his mouth, and I drove him out with blows across the back with a bamboo rod. The next day he came to my room again and said, "Sixty-four years ago I didn't even exist -- how then can you ask me where I came from?" I said, Sixty-four years ago, you couldn't have always been in the Cheng family. This one perfectly clear solitary light, listening to and expounding the Dharma right now -- ultimately, where was it before you were born? He said, "I don't know." I said, If you don't know, then birth is a big thing. But this life is limited to a hundred years. Until you fly beyond the cosmos, you'll have to go into the coffin with it. At that time, as the four elements and five skandhas all at once disperse, though you have eyes you don't see things, though you have ears you don't hear sounds, though your heart is there as a lump of flesh discrimination doesn't operate, though you have a body you can be burned with fire or cut with knives without feeling pain. When you get here, after all, where does the clear solitary light go to? He said, "I don't know that either." I said, If you don't know, then death is a big thing. Thus it's said, "Impermanence is swift, the matter of birth and death is great" -- it's the same principle. Here, intelligence cannot be used, nor memories held. Again I'll ask you: Your whole life you've made up so many little word games, when the last day of your life arrives, which phrase are you going to use to oppose birth and death? To succeed you must know clearly where we come from at birth and where we go at death. If you don't know, you're a fool. At last his heart submitted. After this I taught him not to sit in wordlessness, and he agreed to come here to meditate.

~ To Tseng T'ien-yu

Submitted August 09, 2016 at 03:37PM by preludefanguy http://ift.tt/2bg592b