To present a framework for correct understanding, a kind of litmus test for correct Zen (Chan) practice that is in accord with Buddhist teachings and principles, Yanshou presents ten questions. Affirmative responses to the following indicate that one’s Zen practice is faithful to Buddhas teaching.
1. Do you thoroughly understand seeing one’s nature, as if delineating and contemplating phenomenal forms similar to someone like Mañjuśrī (the embodiment of gentleness)?
2. In everything you do—whether encountering situations or dealing with externals, seeing phenomenal forms or listening to sounds, raising a foot or lowering a foot, opening the eyes or closing the eyes—do you illuminate the implicit truth and comply with it?
3. Do you read the teachings of each age and the statements of former patriarchs and masters, listening deeply and unafraid, completely understanding the truth in all of their teachings and not doubting it?
4. In response to different types of difficult questions and all manner of trivial queries, are you able to provide answers according to the four kinds of eloquent responses and completely resolve the doubts that others have?
5. At all times and in all situations, does wisdom shine forth unhindered and does thought after thought pass perfectly, without encountering a single dharma (phenomena) that is able to cause obstruction, or being interrupted for even a single instant?
6. In all the occasions that present themselves to you in the external realm, whether contrary or agreeable, good or bad, do you resist the desire to elude them on the one hand and are you always conscious of destroying any attachment to them on the other?
7. Within the realm of the mind and its objects comprised of a series of one hundred dharmas (phenomenas), do you get to see the extremely subtle essence-nature being remembered at the original point of the rising of each and every dharma (phenomena), without confusing them with the circumstances of birth and death and the organs of sense and their objects?
8. Regarding the four types of behavior—walking, standing, sitting, and lying, do you address others respectfully and exercise restraint when replying? And when wearing clothes and eating food, performing and carrying out tasks, do you understand the true reality of each and every grade in rank?
9. When listening to claims that there are Buddhas or there are no Buddhas, there are sentient beings or there are no sentient beings, do you sometimes applaud them and sometimes refute them, sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, with a firm unwavering mind?
10. When you hear about how all the different kinds of wisdom are able to clearly fathom how nature and form complement each other, how action and non-action are unhindered, how nonexistence and existence are one and the same phenomena and do not reflect the origin of phenomena itself, and how the thousand sages appear in the world, can you avoid doubting it?
-Yanshou [Conception of Chan (Zen)]
May this serve you all. 🙏
Submitted May 15, 2019 at 03:57AM by HoboSteveIrwin http://bit.ly/2E5mmuH
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