The buddhas and ancestral teachers transmitted mind by mind. In this transmission, teacher and disciple were both supremely enlightened. Both had penetrated through to liberation, and so they acted like two mirrors reflecting each other. This is not something that words and images can capture.
When you far transcend all patterns and assessments, and the arrow points meet, without ever having any objective other than Truth, then you receive the marvel of the Way. become a successor of the ancestral teachers, and continue the transmission of the Lamp. You cut off the path of ideation and go beyond thinking and escape from emotional conciousness, to reach a clear, open state of ffreedom that sweeps all before it.
When it comes time to select people o whom you will impart the bequest, it is neccessary to pick those of unique spirit whose enlightened perception is fully mature. Then they will not let the family reputation decline, and they will attain the teeth and claws that have always marked the Zen school since time immemorial. Only then will they be in accord with and truly assist in the transmission of Truth by Truth.
It is by this means taht the Zen transmission has continued for many centuries, becoming more and more illustrious the longer it lasts. As the saying goes, "When the source is deep, the stream is long."
Nowadays many have lost the old way, and many try to usurp the style of Zen, setting up their own sects, keepin to cliches, and concocting standardized formulas and slogans. Since they themselves are not out of the rut, when they try to help other people, it is like a rat going into a hollow horn that grows narrower and narrower until the rat is trapped in a total impasse. Under such circumstances, how can the universal teaching not decline?
In the old days, when I first met my teacher Wuzu, I blurted out my realization and presented it to him. It was all words and phrases and intellectual points, all empty talk of "buddhadharma" and "essence of mind" and "mystic marvels."
What I got in return was my old teacher citing a couple of dry phrases: "The verbal and the nonverbal are like vines clinging to a tree." At first I shook this saying back and forth, using my verbal cleverness. Then I began to theorize and expound principles. There were no lengths to which I did not go in the end, as I tried to escape the dilemma he had posed: everything I brought up was included in it. Eventually I began to weep without realizing it. Still, I was never able to get into this saying at all. Again and agains I earnestly tried to concentrate on it.
At that point my teacher told me, "You should just put an end to all your arbitrary views and understandings and judgments. When you have cleansed them away all at once, you will naturally gain insight." Then he said, "I have already explained it all for you. Now go."
I sat in my place and investigated the matter thoroughly until there was no seam or gap. Then I wen into my teacher's room, and I spoke freely in a confused way. So he scolded me, saying, "Why are you babbling?" At that point I admitted to mystelf that a man whose eyes were truly clear was seeing into hat was in my heart. In the end, I wasn't able to enter into it, so I left the mountain.
Two years later I returned.
Finally, "the bottom fell out of the bucket" for me as I was contemplating the saying: "She calls to her maid again and again, though there's nothing the amtter, because she wants her lover to hear her voice." Then at last I saw that what my teacher had told me before was real medicine. It's just that I was deluded at the time and could not penetrate into it.
Somebody once told me
Submitted July 28, 2017 at 02:36AM by WildFoxBuddha http://ift.tt/2v3srEw
No comments:
Post a Comment