Take the whole universe all at once and put it on your eyelashes.

YUN-MEN
Translated by Thomas Cleary
In: The five houses of Zen, 1997

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Take the whole universe all at once and put it on your eyelashes.

When you hear me talk this way, you might come up excitedly and give me a slap, but relax for now and examine carefully the question of whether such a thing exists or not and what it means.

Even if you understand this, if you run into a member of a Zen school you’ll probably get your legs broken.

If you are an independent individual, when you hear someone say that an old adept is teaching somewhere, you will spit right in that person’s face for polluting your ears and eyes.

If you do not have this ability, as soon as you hear someone mention something like this, you will immediately accept it, so that you have already fallen into the secondary. Don’t you see how Master Te-shan used to haul out his staff the moment he saw monks enter his gate, and chase them out? When Master Mu-chou saw monks come through his gate, he would say, “The issue is at hand; I ought to give you a thrashing!”

How about the rest? The general run of thieving phonies eat up the spit of other people, memorizing a bunch of trash, a load of garbage, then running off at the mouth like asses wherever they go, boasting that they can pose questions on five or ten sayings. Even if you can pose questions from morning till night and give answers from night till morning, on until the end of time, will you ever even dream of seeing? Where is the empowerment for people? Whenever someone gives a feast for Zen monks, people like this also say they’ve gotten food to eat. How are they worth talking to? Someday, in the presence of death, your verbal explanations will not be accepted.

One who has attained may spend the days following the group in another’s house, but if you have not attained, don’t be a faker! It will not do to pass the time taking it easy; you should be most thoroughly attentive.

The ancients had a lot of complex ways of helping out. For example, Master Hsueh-feng said, “The whole earth is you!” Master Chia-shan said, “Find me in the hundred grasses; recognize the emperor in the bustling marketplace.” Luo-p’u said, “As soon as a single atom comes into existence, the whole earth is contained within it. There’s a lion in every hair, and this is true of the whole body.” Take these up and think them over, again and again; eventually, after a long, long time, you will naturally find a way to penetrate.

No one can do this task for you; it is up to each individual alone. The old masters who emerge in the world just act as witnesses to your understanding. If you have penetrated, a little bit of reasoning won’t confuse you; if you have really not attained yet, then even the use of expedients to stimulate you won’t work.

All of you have worn out footgear traveling around, having left your mentors and elders, your fathers and mothers. You must apply some perceptive power before you will attain realization. If you have no penetration, if you should run into someone with really effective methods who ungrudgingly devotes life to going into the mud and water to help others, someone who is worth associating with and who disrupts complacency, then hang up your bowls and bags for ten or twenty years to attain penetration.

Don’t worry that you might not succeed, because even if you don’t get it in the present life, you will still not lose your humanity in the future life. Thus you will also save energy in this quest; you will not betray your whole life in vain, nor will you betray those who supported you, your mentors and elders, your fathers and mothers.

You must be attentive. Don’t waste time traveling around the countryside, passing a winter here and a summer there, enjoying the landscape, seeking enjoyment, plenty of food, and readily available clothing and utensils. What a pain! Counting on that peck of rice, you lose six months’ provisions. What is the benefit in journeys like this? How can you digest even a single vegetable leaf, or even a grain of rice, given by credulous almsgivers?

You must see for yourself that there is no one to substitute for you, and time does not wait for anyone. One day the light of your eyes will fall to the ground; how can you prevent that from happening? Do not be like lobsters dropped in boiling water, hands and feet thrashing. There will be no room for you to be fakers talking big talk.

Don’t waste the time idly. Once you have lost humanity, you can never restore it. This is not a small matter. Do not rely on the immediate present. Even a worldly man said, “If you hear the Way in the morning, it would be all right to die that night”—then what about ascetics like us—what should we practice? You should really be diligent. Take care.

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My comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyd7CZBBLgs

Submitted October 06, 2019 at 12:15AM by Fallen1331 https://ift.tt/2ANN1KO