William Huangbo - To work hard or not to work hard, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against kalpas of troubles, and by no-mind end them?

My translation of Huangbo's 'Essential Dharma of Mind Transmission':

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然證此心有遲疾。有聞法一念便得無心者。有至十信十住十行十迴向乃得無心者。長短得無心乃住。更無可修可證。實無所得。真實不虛。一念而得。與十地而得者。功用恰齊。更無深淺。秖是歷劫枉受辛勤耳。

To verify this mind [of no-mind], [some people] are fast and [some people] are slow. There are those who upon hearing the dharma, attain to no-mind in an instant. And there are those who go through the ten stages of faith, the ten stages of dwelling, the ten stages of conduct, the ten stages of transference¹ to attain no-mind. Yet regardless of how long or short it took, attainment ceases with no-mind, with nothing actually practised or verified. Because there is nothing actually attained, which is the real unfalsified truth. [Thus] attaining it in an instant and attaining it through the ten bhumis² , the efficacy is exactly the same. There is no difference of depth and shallowness at all, except the needless experience of kalpas³ of hard work.

1. These four sets of ten stages can be found in several Mahayana (great vehicle) Buddhist scriptures, like the Surangama Sutra and the Avatamsaka Sutra.

2. Bhumi means ‘ground’ or ‘stage’. The ten bhumis refer to the ten stages of bodhisattva development in Buddhism. There is a detailed description of each of these bhumis in the Avatamsaka Sutra.

3. One kalpa is the period of time spanning the formation of a world/universe through to its destruction.

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努力努力。此門中千人萬人。只得三箇五箇。若不將為事。受殃有日在。故云。著力今生須了卻。誰能累劫受餘殃。

Work hard, work hard. Of the thousand and ten thousand people in this [zen] school, only three or five attain. If this matter is not regarded seriously, the day of calamitous suffering awaits. Therefore it is said: Put strength in settling it within this lifetime, for who can undergo the extraneous calamities throughout consecutive kalpas¹ ?

1. How many lifetimes do you think there are in consecutive kalpas?

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Well, at least we've got some statistics here of the success rate of zen school. It ranges from 0.03% to 0.5%.

Submitted October 31, 2018 at 12:23PM by chintokkong https://ift.tt/2qixzkt