The Perfected Man

The Perfected Man was decrepit and seemed unable to maintain any [teaching], but his Way is manifest [everywhere] under heaven. Pre- sumably, he cultivated with correct cultivation and was enlightened with correct enlightenment. In this regard [there are those who] say, “there is no cultivation and no enlightenment, no cause and no result,” boring away at trivia and vying to offer their own explanations; [such people are] mistaken as to the teachings of the Perfected Man. Ah, they abandon the precepts, meditation, and wisdom and hence necessarily drift off into murky space, and there is nothing I can do about them!

How utterly unfortunate, those sentient beings who inundate their minds and float along with their consciousness, consciousness and action driving each other, following the various directions (i.e., modes of existence) with no stop from the [very] beginning. They become phenomena, they become forms, they are born along with humans and [the myriad] things, rampant throughout heaven and earth, so numerous they could never be counted. Those who attain human form are truly only one in a hundred million, and those who as humans are able to become enlightened are virtually nil. The Sage [Śākyamuni] pondered this and generated a great variety [of teachings], but there are still those under heaven who have not attained wisdom. The Sage, in order to save such as these, used many methods to heal them, but there are still those under heaven who have not awoken. The clever have disrupted themselves with wisdom, the fools have hung themselves with stupidity, and the average people have beclouded themselves in blankness. They are moved to respond to things, becoming happy at them and angry at them, sad about them and pleased about them, and their impediments increase by the myriad. Like [those] walking in the dark of night, they know not where they go. Hearing the words of the Sage, they speculate upon them and become aggrieved by them, as if they are trying to look afar through a fog. They talk about being and talk about nonbeing, they talk about not being and talk about not nonbeing, [and then] they talk about being again and talk about nonbeing again. But they only become more obscured by their improper views, and until the end of their days they never understand. The ocean is what it is because there is water, and the fish and dragons who live and die in the ocean do not see the water. The Way is what it is because of the mind, and such persons speak of the Way all the time but never see the mind. How sad!

• The Platform Sutra

Comment: We’ve all been there, getting happy or angry at things or people. But is it any different from where the Buddha stands?

Submitted December 28, 2019 at 06:16AM by ArgesAwoken https://ift.tt/2shOhVX