Master Xuansha said to an assembly,
The true school of the ancient Buddhas always manifests in response to people, adapting with dignity, shedding light everywhere, even-minded in concealment as in the open, thoroughly aware of high and low.
This is why the eye of the Way is primary; merge with the fundamental and clarify the mind, for this alone is the end.
Myriad forms are one body, from the same source: when you open up, there is no boundary - who speaks of getting stuck?
The phenomena of countless ages are all in the immediate present, but people of the time have developed opposition to the eternal essence over the course of long years. Perceiving things with confused minds, they thereby turn away from the true source, fixated on being or stuck on emptiness.
Failing to meet good friends, or companions on the Way, they only go by their own subjective interpretations; even if they hold discussions, it is all speculative.
Even when it comes to finding out the ground of principle, you do not distinguish true from false - of course you have never fished out your self in everyday life.
As for the ancient worthies, sages of yore, they knew their own times. Mastering themselves, pressing on with their work, they lived in mountain caves.
An ancient worthy said, 'If your feelings retain a sense of holiness, you still fall into religious materialism. If your view of self hasn't been forgotten, it turns into affliction.'
It cannot be said that you will hit the mark by fasting, discipline, constant sitting without reclining, stopping the mind, meditating on emptiness, freezing the spirit, or entering concentration - what connection is there?
Cultists in India can go into trances lasting eighty thousand eons, freezing the spirit in utter silence, closing their eyes, mortifying their bodies and annihilating their intellects; but when that period is up, they cannot escape repeating mundane routines, all because their perception of reality is not clear and they have not broken through the root source of birth and death.
The unattached are not like this. They cannot be the same as those cultists; all of them truly understand and have great knowledge and vision, able to penetrate like the Buddhas, silently aware, forgetting conceptual knowledge, taking in myriad forms without resistance.
Right now, where is not you? Where is not clear? Where is not evident?
Why don't you understand this way?
Without this state, what can you do about the various kinds of impulse? It all turns into falsehood - where is your everyday empowerment?
If you really haven't had an awakening yet, then you need to be urgent about it at all times, even if you forget to eat and lose sleep, as if you were saving your head from burning, as if you were losing your life.
Concentrate deeply to liberate yourself - cast aside useless mental objects, stop mental discrimination, and only then will you have a little familiarity.
Otherwise, one day you will be carried away by consciousness and emotion - what freedom is there in that?
Now there's no compare to the clarity of the exposition of inanimate objects. The earth, the trees, the stones - they expound the teaching with exceptional veracity; it's just that few people can hear it.
If you do hear this exposition, only then can you discuss it.
But tell me, how do you discuss the teaching expounded by the inanimate? Let's see you try to say. Don't tell me they have 'no speech, no explanation, no seeing, no hearing.' And don't tell me they 'explain without being asked, lauding their own course.'
Haven't you read [in the Flower Ornament Scripture] how the youth Sudhana visited fifty-three advisers, finally meeting Maitreya? In a finger- snap he gained entry through the door; once he had entered the door, it shut by itself.
Inside the tower he saw the past deaths and reincarnations of a hundred thousand Buddhas, and one hundred and twenty advisers on whom he called, as projected scenes inside the tower, all appearing at the same time, witnessing and testifying to enlightenment for him. Sudhana's doubts ceased all at once.
Anyone who has this discovery of true reality can discuss it. Then being in the rough and tumble of the ordinary world is the same as being in the pure lands of the Buddhas. What birth and death would you fear anymore?
Who knows that all the teachings have no real substance?
Even Kasyapa's inner hearing at the assembly on Spiritual Peak was like talking about the moon.
The saying of the ancient worthy, 'Don't think good or bad at all' is the same as pointing at the moon.
All the practices and stages of the three vehicles, liberation, bodhisattvas, nirvana, holy virtues, and sanctification are all like flowers in the sky, horns on a rabbit.
Haven't you heard it said, 'When you come back and observe the world, it's like something in a dream.' Contrived mental states are not to be relied upon; over the long run, they are of no benefit.
It is just because you veer away from reality and abandon the root that you try to detach from ordinary feelings and break down your mind on a religious path. If you entertain views like this, you will not get out of their limitations, and won't be able to dispense with their mental and physical elements.
Haven't you heard it said: 'All activities are impermanent - this is the law that whatever is originated passes away.' You just try to forge ahead - how can you understand what's right here?
Only when you have penetrated can you know this.
If you have not yet found out, you should know they are all vain, mundane, unbelievable things. Only if you have great basic capacity can you understand them.
If you can just penetrate now, it'll be thus forever. An ancient worthy said, 'You should finish in this life - who can take on leftover misfortune for eons on end?'
No comment needed. Zen is ever enlightening.
Submitted September 23, 2020 at 03:35AM by CultAwarenessNetwork https://ift.tt/3hVPqpA
No comments:
Post a Comment