When the Master was in Leh-t'an, he met Head Monk Ch'u, [1] who said, "How amazing, how amazing, the realm of the Buddha and the realm of the Path! [2] How unimaginable!"
Accordingly, the Master said, "I don't inquire about the realm of the Buddha or the realm of the Path; rather, what kind of person is he who talks thus about the realm of the Buddha and the realm of the Path?"
When, after a long time, Ch'u had not responded, the Master said, "Why don't you answer more Quickly?"
Ch'u said, "Such aggressiveness will not do."
"You haven't even answered what you were asked, so how can you say that such aggressiveness will not do?" said the Master.
Ch'u did not respond. The Master said, "The Buddha and the Path are both nothing more than names. Why don't you Quote some teaching?"
"What would a teaching say?" asked Ch'u.
"When you've gotten the meaning, forget the words," [3] said the Master.
"By still depending on teachings, you sicken your mind," said Ch'u.
"But how great is the sickness of the one who talks about the realm of the Buddha and the realm of the Path?" said the Master.
Again Ch'u did not reply. The next day he suddenly passed away. At that time the Master came to be known as "one who Questions head monks to death."
Notes
-
Leh-t'an was in Nan-chang hsien of Hung-chou, modern Kiangsi. "Head monk" (shou-tso), literally translates as "chief seat." Ch'u's identity is unknown.
-
"Path" here is the Chinese Tao, which can be understood in one of two ways. It can be read as the pre-Buddhist notion of the Way, e.g., the source of everything (as it sometimes appears in the Tao Te Ching) or the way of something such as Heaven, Nature, or man (as it occurs in both the Tao Te Ching and the Analects of Confucius). Or it can be read as a translation of the technical term for the Buddhist Path (Skt., marga*). Given the latter reading, one can understand this passage as praising the path and its fruit, Buddhahood, or simply as variations on a single theme, Buddhism.
-
"When you've gotten the meaning, forget the words" is a quotation from the "External Things" (Wai wu) chapter of the Chuang-tz (Watson, p. 302).
Comment
Is it the path or the way? Are either of these worthy of worship? If you had a magic formula to make people good, would you bow down to that formula? Or would you simply embarrass those who use the same words as you do? If people can get high on escape from their lives, does that turn you into a drug dealer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIKzReNDF4 The Boiler Room Ben Affleck Speech
Submitted January 25, 2020 at 11:15PM by dabfad https://ift.tt/2Gm5ReP
No comments:
Post a Comment