The fact is that the ancients never rationalized. They were uniformly simple, unseemly in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand; it’s just that they were extraordinarily awake inside. That is because they focused solely on the Way.

The masters of the school since ancient times were the people foremost in letting go. As soon as they showed up, they overturned the heavens and wrapped up the earth. Ultimately, how were they like this? It was just that they were after all single-mindedly correct—when false teachers, demons, and outsiders couldn’t trap them, they had the spirit to transcend religion and go beyond convention, and didn’t form random associations. When it came to worldly fluctuations, they didn’t have any dependency at all; they only made life and death foremost, and when they made it foremost they didn’t see that there was anything that died or didn’t die.
This is what the ancients worked on. Here you definitely need penetrating clarity, expanding it and making it complete, after which you can endure harsh methods. When you reach the point where you can change in a thousand ways, transform in ten thousand ways, you still may not be able to find your brains; how much less if you are half in the darkness, half in light, half clear and half raining—if you want to walk alone in the universe then, you cannot.
When it comes to this attainment, from ancient times to the present the one or a half who have managed to penetrate it were like hawks catching sparrows, like falcons catching pigeons—what effort did it take? Looking back on what they had found out, what they had realized, what they had learned, what they had become immersed in, it just totally embarrassed them.
That is how we know the masters of the school since time immemorial were foremost in letting go; only then did they get this handle that enabled them to overturn the heavens and wrap up the earth. So-called exceptional people who appear generations apart are not beyond this.
Followers of the Way in recent times don’t work on the fundamental; they just value memorizing a lot in their guts to have something to say to government officials, supplying themselves with topics of conversation to be quick-witted, and call this the Way of Chan. This is a big lie. The grave consequences it calls could not be absolved even if a thousand Buddhas appeared in the world. The fact is that the ancients never rationalized. They were uniformly simple, unseemly in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand; it’s just that they were extraordinarily awake inside. That is because they focused solely on the Way. One day they suddenly bit through the five-colored rope, leaped out of the deep pit of liberation, passed through beyond enlightenment and illusion, no doubt inexpressibly joyful. In olden times National teacher Zhong taught students, “Body and mind are one; there is nothing else outside the body.” Yunmen said, “Where are mountains, rivers, and land?” See how he added a footnote far and away transcendent. With a single blow of the hammer he required you to walk calmly in the blue sky. Even so, even if you do so, this is still lingering in the grass and sticking to the trees.

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Submitted October 19, 2019 at 03:20AM by atomicmustardseed https://ift.tt/32vnylp