Other people noted hongzhi’s emphasis on meditation. in the preface to a collection of sermons by hongzhi dated 1137, Feng Wenshu writes: “the master instructs the congregation to practice stillness and to sit erect like withered trees.”24 in the biography of hongzhi by Wang Boxiang, Wang tells of a visit he made to tiantong in 1138 and notes that those who had come to study with hongzhi “sit silently on the meditation platforms, and no one makes a sound or coughs.”25
In his sermons, hongzhi often seems to have emphasized that meditation should be engaged in for long hours at a time. “[You should engage] in the great rest and the great cessation so that white mold starts growing at the corners of your mouth and grass growing out on your tongue; in this way, you become completely emptied out, washed sparkling clean, polished to a bright shine.”26 the imagery here of white mold growing at the mouth brings to mind a corpse; hongzhi, in fact, employed this image a number of times. this kind of description would seem to confirm dahui’s worst fears and support his accusations that the Caodong silent illumination style of meditation was a passive, quietistic, and thought-suppressing practice. Based on a passage like this, hongzhi could well be understood as having advocated a pure quietism, or total inaction.
But as the “mozhao ming” makes clear, hongzhi did also acknowledge that some kind of effort in meditation is needed and that although we all are enlightened from the beginning, some kind of awakening to this fact is necessary. at times, hongzhi also stressed the investigative effort involved in meditation: “With a clear mind, sitting silently, you roam into subtle [emptiness] at the center of the circle. it is necessary to probe and investigate in this way.”27 and, further, “the realm of true activity is just quietsitting and silent investigation.”28 and just as hongzhi was clearly aware of the dangers of sitting with an empty mind, he also warned against the idea that the mind is something to be got rid of. thus, he said: “the myriad dharmas all originate as shadows of deluded thinking in the mind. it is like clear water that the wind causes to become waves. When only the wind is extinguished, the movements will disappear, and it is not that the water is annihilated. in your minds, there exist many concepts of good and bad and so on. they are just like the waves on the water. When the wind stops, the waves disappear, but not the water. [Likewise], when the concepts of good and bad are extinguished, it is not the mind that is annihilated.”29 Water and waves as metaphors for the mind and its activity are often found in Chan writings. interestingly, hongzhi here seems to have drawn upon the Qixin lun, the apocryphal treatise that dahui also used to justify his insistence on an actualized enlightenment.30 this passage is perhaps as close as hongzhi ever came to speaking in his own defense or in response to criticism.
A few Excerpts:
The Genuine Field
The primal mind transcends conditioning, the primal dharma does not speak, but all buddhas and all ancestors are not detained here. In the second gate of meaning [that of phenomena and of speech], they engage in dialogue and energy is aroused, which is instantly extracted and dispensed both to the first class practitioner and to the dull per son.61 Therefore Deshan says that our school has no language and also has not a single dharma for anyone.62 Originally the people arrived at the truth themselves and affirmed it themselves. Then they began to discuss it only in order to straighten up and clean out forthrightly obsessive thinking and distraction. If such contamination is purified, then vast radiance without barriers has no middle or edge. Circling and spreading out, the light is glistening white, its illumination per vading the ten directions. Sit in meditation and entirely cut off caus es and conditioning, and language of the three times. Reaching this you cannot attach to a single dust mote. Only in silent serenity is the self known, full-spirited in its own glory, no stranger to sages, not diminished with worldly people. From the beginning only this is the single affair of the old home. How can you possibly attain anything outside yourself? This is called the genuine field where awakened peo ple immediately can respond to the ten thousand changes and enter every realm. Wondrous function and spiritual penetration naturally are without any obstruction at all.
Casting Off All Duality
Purity without stain is your body; perfect illumination without con ditioning is your eyes. The eye inside the body does not involve sense gates; the body inside the eye does not collect appearances. So it is said that there is no wisdom outside suchness that can awaken suchness. Moreover, there is no suchness outside wisdom that can be awakened by wisdom. This may be called, buddha is the dharma family's bud dha, dharma is the buddha family's dharma. Patch-robed monks arrive here and then know that to follow buddha's utterances and to follow dharma's blossoming is to attain buddhadharma. Restoring upright reality, they all sit and cut off any duality. Only this is what people from ancient to present times have needed to celebrate fully.
The Liberating Eye's Authentic View
Monks of our house must have a dried body and cool mind in order to leap over and cast away birth and death. Discern the mirror's utter depths, vacant and intense, perfectly illuminated. Break out from the four elements and five skandhas.6O When causes and conditions are not yet in effect, the sense gates not yet matured, the embryo not yet fully developed, and emotions and consciousness not yet flowing, if you still exercise your eye even then, how can suffering not be fin ished? Realize this fully. The ancestral masters' nostrils and patch robed monks' life pulse consist of holding firmly and then releasing in activity so that we all discover our own freedom. So it is said that false [thinking] is stopped and stillness necessarily arises, stillness aris es and wisdom appears, wisdom arises and stillness necessarily disap pears [in wisdom's active functioning]. Clear and distinct, this is the only authentic view.
QuOATS
When Zen practice is completely developed, there is no center, no extremes; there are no edges or corners. It is perfectly round and frictionless. It is also necessary to be empty, open, and unpolluted, so "the clear autumn moon cold, its shining light washes the night. Brocade clouds flower prettily, the atmosphere turns into spring."
The state before the beginning of time - a turtle heads for the fire. The one phrase specially transmitted outside of doctrine - the lip of a mortar bears flowers. Now tell me, is there any "accepting and upholding, reading and reciting" in this?
The mind originally is detached from objects, reality basically has no explanation. This is why a classical Zen master said, "Our school has no slogans, and no doctrine to give people." Fundamentally it is a matter of people arriving on their own and finding out for themselves; only then can they talk about it.
Submitted August 13, 2016 at 03:15AM by ChanZong http://ift.tt/2bpibP2
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