Is Zen really Buddhism? Is "Buddhism" really Buddhism?
I don't know but I can tell you one thing: Zen is something else!
~ | ~ LINJI ~ | ~
Good people, the real Buddha is formless; the real Dharma has no marks. The way you are acting is to erect models and patterns based upon the illusory transformations [which were provisionally put forward in the Buddhist teachings]. Even if you get something from this, you are all wild fox spirits. This is not real Buddhism at all, but the view of outsiders.
People who study the Path genuinely do not grasp buddhas or bodhisattvas or arhats; they do not grasp attainments of special excellence within the triple world. They are transcendent and free and on their own—they are not constrained by things. Even if heaven and earth turn upside down, they are not in doubt. If all the buddhas of the ten directions appear before them, they feel no joy. If [all the torments of] the hungry ghosts, the animals, and the beings in hell appear before them, they feel no fear. Why are they like this? They see the emptiness of all phenomena, which exist through transformation and don’t exist without it. They see that the triple world is only mind, and the myriad things are only consciousness. Therefore, why bother to grasp [what are really] dreamlike illusions and apparitions?
There is only the person in all of you right here and now listening to the Dharma. This person enters fire without being burned and water without being drowned. This person enters the mires of hell as if strolling in a garden sightseeing. This person enters the planes of the hungry ghosts and animals without being subject to their suffering. Why so? Because for this person there is nothing to reject, nothing to avoid.
If you love the holy and hate the ordinary, you float and sink in the sea of birth and death. Affliction exists because of mind: if you have no mind, how can affliction hold you? If you do not try to discriminate and grasp forms, naturally you find the Path that instant.
If you try to learn as a shallow adherent running busily here and there, then through three immeasurable eons you will always return in the end to birth and death. Far better to go into the Zen forest without concerns, fold up your legs on a meditation bench, and sit. [Note: "Far better"; not "the best" ... at the same time ... there the words are.]
All over the country there are students who come [to teachers with the wrong attitude]. As soon as host and guest meet, these students bring out a phrase to test the teacher they are facing. These students bring up some teaching device or provisional formulation and throw it down as a challenge to the teacher to see if he knows it or not. If the teacher recognizes the scene, these students hold fast and throw him into a pit. If the students are the ordinary type, after this they seek for a saying from the teacher, which they appropriate as before [to take elsewhere to test other teachers], and exclaim how wise the teacher is. I say to such students: ‘You know nothing of good and bad!’
[Redacted: Super Secret Zen Classified]
Everywhere there are [supposed] teachers who cannot tell wrong from right. When students come to ask them about bodhi and nirvana and the wisdoms of the three bodies of buddha, these blind teachers immediately give them explanations. If they are rebuked by the students, they give them a beating and say they have no sense of etiquette. But since these [supposed] teachers have no eyes, they should not get mad at other people.
There are phony monks who do not know good from bad, who point to the east and call it the west, who entertain contradictory desires and love inscrutable sayings. Look and see if they do not bear the telltale marks of false teachers. They know some enlightenment stories [but not when to use them]. When students do not understand [such random instructions’], the pretended teachers soon lose their tempers. This type are all wild fox spirits and hideous monsters. They are laughed at by good students, who say to them: ‘Blind old bald-pate slaves, you are confusing everyone in the world.’
You people of the Path, those who leave home must learn the Path. Take me for example. In the past I was concerned with the vinaya, and I also researched the sutras and sastras. Only later did I realize that these are medicines to cure the world, openly revealed explanations. But then I put them aside for a time and went travelling to study Zen. Later I met a great enlightened teacher [Huangbo] and only then did the eye of the Path become clear for me. I began to understand the world’s teachers, and to know who was misguided and who was correct. If you do not understand immediately when your mama gives birth to you, then you need direct experiential research, refining and polishing, until one morning there’s spontaneous insight.
Submitted December 28, 2019 at 11:57AM by GreenSage45 https://ift.tt/2EX4UJ2
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