Excerpts from BCR case three and Instant Zen (all Cleary). Ordering, formatting and (plenty of) emphasis added.
Can you tell me what is not discriminatory?
Master Ma is dead.
Yuanwu's pointer:
One device, one object; one word, one phrase--the intent is that you'll have a place to enter; still this is gouging a wound in healthy flesh--it can become a nest or a den. The Great Function appears without abiding by fixed principles--the intent is that you'll realize there is something transcendental; it covers the sky and covers the earth, yet it cannot be grasped.
This way will do, not this way will do too--this is too diffuse. This way won't do, not this way won't do either--this is too cut off. Without treading these two paths, what would be right?
What is not too diffuse, not too cut off? How do you strike the balance?
Foyan (p.74):
"No delusion, no enlightenment"--only when you have arrived at such a state are you comfortable and saving energy to the maximum degree. But this is simply being someone without delusion or enlightenment; what is there deluding you twenty-four hours a day? You must apply this to yourself and determine on your own. ...
Think about it independently. Other people do not know what you are doing all the time; you reflect on your own--are you in harmony with truth or not? Here you cannot be mistaken; investigate all the way through.
I cannot be mistaken. Sometimes harmonious... sometimes a continued scattering and scattering.
A bit more Foyan (p.82):
People may sleep on the same bed, under the same covers, yet their individual dreams are not the same. ...
...within the single reality of life and death, there are those who can enter into life and death without being bound by life and death, and there are those who are bound by life and death in the midst of life and death. In the midst of the same common reality, one person is bound while another is freed; is this not the individual differences in the dreams?
You usually make birth and death into one extreme, and absence of birth and death into another extreme; you make thinking into one extreme and nonthinking into another extreme; you make speech into one extreme and nonspeech into another extreme.
And then, a place to enter; no place to rest, no time to waste.
Here I have neither the business of Zen monks, nor anything transcendental; I just talk about getting out of birth and death. This is not a matter of simply saying this and letting the matter rest at that; you must see that which has no birth or death right in the midst of birth and death.
What is it, treading the path of neither birth or death nor absence of birth and death? How do you strike the balance?
Thinking in one extreme, nonthinking in the other;
I think about this and wonder
in the middle.
The gong then sounds.
Now it is time to check in on Great Master Ma.
Finally, the case:
Great Master Ma was unwell. The temple superintendent asked him, "Teacher, how has your venerable health been in recent days?" The Great Master said, "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha."
Of this answer, Yuanwu remarks,
How fresh and new! Sustenance for his fledgeling.
What does it sustain?!
Foyan, one final time (p.82):
The great master Yongjia visited the Sixth Patriarch of Zen and said, "The matter of birth and death is serious; transitoriness is swift."
The Sixth Patriarch said, "Why not comprehend the birthless and realize what has no speed?"
Yongjia said, "Comprehension itself is birthless; realization of the fundamental has no speed."
No speed, no movement, no change, no birth to comprehend. Were you ever born? Will you ever die? For what do we work, for whom do we eat?
Yuanwu:
The Great Master replied, "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha." If the patriarchal teachers had not dealt with others on the basis of the fundamental matter, how could we have the shining light of this Path?
If you know what this public case comes down to, then you walk alone through the red sky; if you don't know where it comes down, time and again you'll lose the way before the withered tree cliff.
I don't know where it comes down to.
Cleary notes,
According to the Buddha Name Scripture, a Sun Face Buddha lives in the world for eighteen hundred years whereas a Moon Face Buddha enters extinction after a day and a night. Tenkei Denson says, "But is everyone's own Sun Face Buddha Moon Face Buddha something long or short?"
What is Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha?
Submitted November 13, 2018 at 05:59AM by i-dont-no https://ift.tt/2PWFCSr
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