Bodhidharma asks Huike to bring it forward:
Huike: "My mind is anxious. Please pacify it."
Bodhidharma: "Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it."
Huike: "Although I've sought it, I cannot find it."
"There," Bodhidharma replied, "I have pacified your mind."
Huike asks Sengcan to bring it forward:
Sengcan: I am riddled with sickness. Please absolve me of my sin.
Huike: Bring your sin here and I will absolve you.
Sengcan (after a long pause): When I look for my sin, I cannot find it.
Huike: I have absolved you. You should live by the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
Sengcan asks Daoxin to bring it forward:
Daoxin: I ask for the Master’s compassion. Please instruct me on how to achieve release.
Sengcan: Is there someone who constrains you?
Daoxin: There is no such person.
Sengcan: Why then seek release when you are constrained by no one?
What sort of word does Master Daoxin give when he finds that his hands are empty and there was nothing to bring forward?
“The Buddha causes beings who have dull capacities to face toward the West, but he does not teach people with keen abilities to do so. Bodhisattvas who have profound practice enter the stream of birth and death in order to save beings, and yet do not drown in desire. If you have the view that ‘beings are in samsara and I am able to save them, and these beings are capable of being saved,' then you are not to be called a Bodhisattva. ‘Saving beings' is similar to ‘saving the empty sky'. How could the sky ever have come or gone!"
What about what Daoxin told Farong?
Farong asked, "If Awareness is complete in itself, then what is Buddha, and what is mind?" The Fourth Ancestor answered, "If not for this mind, there is no asking about Buddha; in asking about the Buddha, it is nothing but this mind." Farong continued, "If there is no meditation, what do you do when mental states emerge?" The Ancestor replied, "Mental states are originally neither good nor bad; what emerges is due to your mind. If your mind is free from fabrication or conception, how could illusions occur? When illusions do not occur, actual awareness will freely be aware of everything. Just act in accordance with this Awareness as it is. Do not look for ways to manage it. This is called continuously abiding in the essence of things, the Dharmakaya which is motionless. I have received the teachings of sudden enlightenment from the Third Ancestor, Sengcan, and now I give them to you.
Submitted February 13, 2019 at 10:10PM by NorthStarIV http://bit.ly/2Svy8YI
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