From Instant Zen, Cleary, and The Record of Linji, Sasaki
(p.4-5)
Foyan:
[...] I tell you that you need to be free from sickness to attain realization.
In my school, there are only two kinds of sickness.
1
One is to go looking for a donkey riding on the donkey.
2
The other is to be unwilling to dismount once having mounted the donkey.
3
You say it is certainly a tremendous sickness to mount a donkey and then go looking for the donkey.
I tell you that one need not find a spiritually sharp person to recognize this right away and get rid of the sickness of seeking, so the mad mind stops.
Not sharp, not dull, no frustration. Not making promises.
Once you have recognized the donkey, to mount it and be unwilling to dismount is the sickness that is most difficult to treat.
I tell you that you need not mount the donkey;
you are the donkey!
Get off.
The whole world is the donkey; how can you mount it?
Get on.
If you mount it, you can be sure the sickness will not leave! If you don’t mount it, the whole universe is wide open!
When the two sicknesses are gone, and there is nothing on your mind, then you are called a wayfarer. What else is there?
Leaving the recipe behind.
This is why when Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the path?” Nanquan replied, “The normal mind is the path.”
Now Zhaozhou suddenly stopped his hasty search, recognized the sickness of “Zen Masters” and the sickness of “Buddhas,” and passed through it all.
How momentous!
After that, he traveled all over, and had no peer anywhere, because of his recognition of sicknesses.
One day Zhaozhou went to visit Zhuyou, where he paced back and forth brandishing his staff from east to west and west to east.
Zhuyou asked, “What are you doing?” Zhaozhou replied, “Testing the water.”
Zhuyou retorted, “I haven’t even one drop here; what will you test?”
Zhaozhou left, leaning on his staff.
Decisive.
See how he revealed a bit of an example, really quite able to stand out.
Who does Foyan reveal?
Zen followers these days all take sickness for truth. Best not let your mind get sick.
Immunity comes with interaction. Movement! Get back off.
Linji's remark from p.8 of the record:
Students today can’t get anywhere. What ails you? Lack of faith in yourself is what ails you. If you lack faith in yourself, you’ll keep on tumbling along, following in bewilderment after all kinds of circumstances and being taken by them through transformation after transformation without ever attaining freedom.
Seeking faith, or freedom?
Bring to rest the thoughts of the ceaselessly seeking mind, and you will not differ from the patriarch-buddha. Do you want to know the patriarch-buddha? He is none other than you who stand before me listening to my discourse. But because you students lack faith in yourselves, you run around seeking something, that something would be nothing more than fancy descriptions in written words; never would you gain the mind of the living patriarch.
Alive, over and over!
Make no mistake, worthy Chan men! If you don't find it here and now, you'll go on transmigrating through the three realms for myriads of kalpas and thousands of lives, and, held in the clutch of captivating circumstances, be born in the wombs of asses or cows.
(p.36)
Foyan:
When people today studying Zen learn it wrongly, it is because of no more than two sicknesses.
Hallucinations wouldn't change me... whose house has the ghost?
One sickness is speechless, formless motionlessness in the haunt of the mind-body complex, where you say, “Even if the Buddhas and Zen Patriarchs came forth, I would still just be thus.” This is one sickness.
A real old dog! Has it a Buddha-nature?
Next is to give recognition to that which speaks, hears, works, acts, walks, stands, sits, and reclines.
Messing up the ventilation.
This is also a sickness. Do you know that activity is the root of suffering, sustained by the power of wind?
Mount the donkey, race the wind!
The wind knocks me off the donkey
First quarter.
[...]
There are also two kinds of benefactors who speak bitterly as an expedient for two kinds of students.
Students of one type make up rationales on their own and express things on their own, advancing and withdrawing, raising their fists and joining their palms, thinking this to be the way of Zen. Benefactors, seeing them this way, speak bitterly to them, saying,
“You have misunderstood. Why is your attention so fixated when there is really no problem?” This is one kind of benefactor.
Stretch it out... drink some tea. No need to keep claiming the ground.
Another type of student says, “I do not understand, I do not know. Why? Because I am not tuned in at all.” Therefore benefactors, seeing people thus, tell them,
“There is nothing the matter with you; why do you seek to understand and tune in?” This is another kind of benefactor.
Take a look at yourself before you cause your worry.
If both the former and latter types of students hear benefactors speaking like this, and are able to turn their attention around and study through experience, they will inevitably attain clarification.
If they just say they don’t understand, they are creating their own stagnation; even after a thousand years they would just be the same.
Fortunately, you are in its very midst; if you go on saying you do not understand and seek to tune in to it, when will you ever be done?
At the centre is expedience. I'm not in a rush!
Do you want to understand? You must not set up limited measurements; you must apprehend it directly before you can get it.
(p.35)
The last bit:
How do you explain the logic of just being there? It's unavoidably hard to clarify. If you can clarify this, you will finally know that true reality is always there.
[...]
[...] a seeker asked Deshan, "Where have the ancient sages gone?"
Deshan said, "What? What?"
Does that mean that "what" is itself the sages?
What?
You people either interpret literally or else fall into conventional echoes of what is said. If you don't fall into echolike expressions, then you fall into wordlessness and speechlessness.
At the top of an incline.
This reality you actually cannot figure out by conceptual interpretations; if you keep any of that on your mind, it turns into an inclination, alienating you from your self. Even if you try to attain harmony by means of mystic devices and wondrous doctrines, you will certainly be unable to do so.
Rules and instruments, politics and music. Nothing to gather.
If you do not think at all, though, that won't work either. You must personally experience it before you will attain clear vision with no doubt.
Calm music, busy street; quiet north, clouds blown through the peaks.
Awake at the point of a journey.
When I say chop wood and carry water, what is meant to you?
Submitted December 15, 2018 at 07:18PM by i-dont-no https://ift.tt/2rByrBl
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