Cultivation after realizing the fundamental

Another valuable contribution of the Kuei-yang House is that on the one hand it sticks firmly to the axiom of instantaneous enlightenment, but on the other hand it insists upon the necessity of gradual cultivation. Once a monk asked Kuei-shan: “After a man has attained an instantaneous enlightenment, must he still cultivate his spiritual life?” Kuei-shan’s answer to this important question is the locus classicus of the union of instantaneous enlightenment and gradual cultivation, which has since become the prevailing doctrine among Buddhist philosophers. It is therefore worth quoting at length:

If a man is truly enlightened and has realized the fundamental, and he is aware of it himself, in such a case he is actually no longer tied to the poles of cultivation and non-cultivation. But ordinarily, even though the original mind has been awakened by an intervening cause, so that the man is instantaneously enlightened in his reason and spirit, yet there still remains the inertia of habit, formed since the beginning of time, which cannot be totally eliminated at a stroke. He must be taught to cut off completely the stream of his habitual ideas and views caused by the still operative karmas. This (process of purification) is cultivation. I don’t say that he must follow a hard-and-fast special method. He need only be taught the general direction that his cultivation must take. What you hear must first be accepted by your reason; and when your rational understanding is deepened and subtilized in an ineffable way, your mind will of its own spontaneity become comprehensive and bright, never to relapse into the state of doubt and delusion. However numerous and various the subtle teachings are, you know intuitively how to apply them—which to hold in abeyance and which to develop—in accordance with the occasion. In this way only will you be qualified to sit in the chair and wear your robe as a master of the true art of living. To sum up, it is of primary importance to know that Ultimate Reality or the Bedrock of Reason does not admit of a single speck of dust, while in innumerable doors and paths of action not a single law or thing is to be abandoned. And if you can break through with a single stroke of the sword without more ado, then all the discriminations between the worldly and the saintly are annihilated once for all, and your whole being will reveal the truly eternal, in which reigns the nonduality of universal Reason and particular things. This is indeed to be the Bhutatathata Buddha (Emphasis is mine). — John C. H. Wu, The Golden Age of Zen, pp. 162–63

Submitted November 18, 2017 at 08:04PM by Dhammakayaram http://ift.tt/2mE31e5