Followers of the Way, make no mistake! All the dharmas of this world and of the worlds beyond are without self-nature. Also, they are without produced nature. They are just empty names, and these names are also empty.
All you are doing is taking these worthless names to be real. That’s all wrong! Even if they do exist, they are nothing but states of dependent transformation, such as the dependent transformations of bodhi, nirvana, emancipation, the threefold body(1), the [objective] surroundings and the [subjective] mind, bodhisattvahood, and buddhahood. What are you looking for in these lands of dependent transformations!(2) All of these, up to and including the Three Vehicles’ twelve divisions of teachings, are just so much waste paper to wipe off privy filth. The Buddha is just a phantom body, the patriarchs just old monks.
But you, weren’t you born of a mother? If you seek the Buddha, you’ll be held in the grip of Buddha-Māra(3). If you seek the patriarchs, you’ll be bound by the ropes of Patriarch-Māra. If you engage in any seeking, it will all be pain. Much better to do nothing.
There are a bunch of shavepate monks who say to students, ‘The Buddha is the Ultimate; he attained buddhahood only after he came to the fruition of practices carried on through three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas.’(4) Followers of the Way, if you say that the Buddha is the ultimate, how is it that after eighty years of life the Buddha lay down on his side between the twin śāla trees at Kuśinagara and died? Where is the Buddha now? We clearly know that his birth and death were not different from ours.
You say, ‘The thirty-two [primary] features and the eighty [secondary] features indicate a buddha.’(5) Then must a cakravartin(6) also be considered a tathāgata(7)? We clearly know that these features are illusory transformations.
A man of old said:
The Tathāgata’s various bodily features
Were assumed to conform with worldly sensibilities.
Lest men conceive annihilist views,
He provisionally provided unreal names.
Temporarily we speak of the ‘thirty-two,’
The ‘eighty,’ also, are but empty sounds.
The mortal body is not the awakened body,
Featurelessness is the true figure.
...
(1) The threefold body is a doctrine that deals with Buddhism's rejection of any self and the Buddha's realization of non-duality. Thus, when someone awakens to their true nature, their body is the Dharma-kaya (body of the Law, or the teaching), that is formless, limitless, and encompasses all things. However, the Buddha still had a physical form that said and did things, which is said to be Nirmana-kaya (apparition body); this physical form is not the Buddha's self, it is basically a skillful mean for enlightening beings. The Sambogha-kaya (reward or merit body) is what a bodhisattva attains upon setting out on his quest to liberate all beings; this body is the one with all the cool magic powers.
(2) Pratityasamutpada (dependent origination): the doctrine that all phenomena in reality have no real existence of their own, because they are all compounded things based on smaller parts, or dependent on other things for their existence. Those parts, in turn, have other things that they depend on for their existence. Thus, dependent origination is recognition of both the interconnectness and ultimate unreality of all compounded things.
(3) Māra (Death, or The Evil One): Since Buddhism teaches that the way to the deathless is by ceasing in pursuit of one's desires, Māra is a sort of anti-Buddha who wants to get beings to chase their desires in order to lead them into death. A Māra is a being who has accumulated excellent karma, such that they have a lot of karma to burn.
(4) From wikipedia: An asaṃkhyeya (Sanskrit: असंख्येय) is a Hindu/Buddhist name for the number 10140... as it is listed in the Avatamsaka Sutra... The word "asaṃkhyeya" literally means "innumerable" in the sense of "infinite" in Sanskrit.
A kalpa is a very long span of time in Hindu cosmology; one could polish a mountain with a silk scarf once every 1000 years and when the mountain has been worn into dust the kalpa still won't be over. So, three sets of 10140 of those? I guess becoming a samyaksambuddha takes a lot of practice!
(5) The Buddha is said to be recognizable by thirty-two attributes, such as elongated earlobes, a sauvastika on the chest, etc. The Diamond Sutra, a text of central importance to the Zen lineage, makes great use of the attributes as a teaching method. Ultimately, it is said that the Buddha is known by attributes that are no attributes, and he who tries to see the Buddha by means of finding attributes sees him not. The Dharma-kaya is said to be free of any attribute or limitation.
(6) A cakravartin is a 'wheel-turning king'; this is a ruler whose chariot is stopped at no border, implying that he rules everywhere he goes either because it is already his or because no one can challenge him. There is also a comparison that could be made in the metaphor of 'wheel-turning' in that the Buddha is said to have 'turned the wheel of the Dharma'. Gautama's father supposedly had a vision that his son would either become a cakravartin or a great spiritual teacher - which is why he tried to immerse Gautama in the pleasures of the world, since he desired the former.
(7) The cakravartin was said to be known by the same attributes as that of the Buddha. The term tathāgata means 'thus-gone' and is one of the Buddha's many, many, many names (and incidentally, it is the name primarily used in The Diamond Sutra). This contrast is used in that sutra also, to distinguish the fruits of Buddhist practice - immeasurable merit which is non-karmic - from the merits one might seek from worldly affairs, or karmic action. A cakravartin may well be a great king who does charitable and meritorious deeds, but, as Bodhidharma said to the Emperor - this merit is truly 'no merit', because it only continues you in the wheel of birth and death.
[OP from the Record of Linji; trans. Sasaki; notes mine]
...
The Diamond Sutra says:
As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space
an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble
a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this.
This final gatha in The Diamond Sutra doesn't do much to explain the sutra; some scholars don't even agree that it belongs there. But it is a nice bit of poetry, and that sort of thing can be a skillful way to show us the beauty in the fragility of things (mono no aware, as the Japanese call it). Reverend Linji is really hitting us hard with the impermanence (fire) and no-self (brimstone) in this sermon of his. Like the man said elsewhere - this world is a house on fire, not somewhere where you can stay for a long time. The Zen masters got people to enlightenment in the course of a bit of conversation - they made it seem so urgent to get it. Why is that?
-es
Submitted December 01, 2017 at 04:19AM by essentialsalts http://ift.tt/2BnHNmY
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