Recorded Sayings of Yangshan: "The sudden enlightenment of zen school, what is key to eventually entering its door?"

My translation of an excerpt from Yangshan's Recorded Sayings (taken from my comment in the stickied post):

僧恩[益+(邰-台)]问。禅宗顿悟。毕竟入门的意如何。师云。此意极难。若是祖宗门下。上根上智。一闻千悟。得大总持。其有根微智劣。若不安禅静虑。到这里总须茫然。

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Monk En asks:

"The sudden enlightenment of zen school, what is key to eventually entering its door?"

Teacher (Yangshan) replies:

"The key to this is extremely difficult. If it's a [person] of this Ancestral clan, with superior capacity and superior wisdom, upon hearing it once, [he/she] would be enlightened to everything, attaining the great dharani¹ .

"For those with weak capacity and poor wisdom, if they don't [practise] calm meditation and quiet contemplation, they would necessarily be lost and confused when they are here."

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1. A dharani is considered a Buddhist chant, incantation, mantra or some sort of magical phrase/formula.

Submitted May 29, 2019 at 05:14AM by chintokkong http://bit.ly/2KaWyRZ