Understand Immediately

Foyan says:

At other places, they either put you through changes, or abruptly fixate you. Here, I neither put you through changes nor abruptly fixate you. This saves energy and is easy to comprehend; so why don’t you understand? Because of your millions of rationalizations; these make it hard for you to understand.

Huangbo says "...those who seek the Way must enter it with the suddenness of a knife-thrust."

 

Foyan:

Buddhahood is an easily comprehended state, comfortable and pleasant. But even though it is easily understood, nevertheless it is hard to enter into and hard to work on. At other places, if they abruptly fixate you, then you have something to work on; if they put you through changes, then you have something to chew on.

You could be given endless volumes to read, aeons worth of meditations to try out, enough lectures to last until your ears fall off your skull. The ZM says if you work you eat. How fast is that?

 

People come here and declare that they do not dare to say they are right. So why don’t you dare say you are right? Then how should you be? Why not look at it in this way?

I was laughing the other day with someone; we were talking about how it is held up as a proof of profundity amongst a lot of contemporary Buddhists that their Master is soft-spoken, and congenial, until they preach the Dharma to students. Then the have the lion's roar.

 

I’m just afraid you will misunderstand here and get the wrong idea. I just want to have you understand immediately, without stirring a single thought.

Expedient.

 

Then again, there are those who say, “According to my view, everything is all right.” They are like scorched sprouts, like rotten seed, which will never grow. When you have declared you’re right, then how can you be helped out any more? This is why it is said that ordinary people may still evolve.

I don't understand. Prove me wrong! Ha!

 

I am a fellow seeker with you; if I comprehend, you must comprehend too. If you don’t comprehend, I don’t comprehend either.

When the student is blind, the teacher is blind.

 

One of my fellow students, one Elder Li, saw my late teacher for a year and a half; every time he went in for a personal interview, the teacher would just say to him, “Elder, have you distinguished black and white at all?” Every time he went, this is what happened. How do you interpret talk like this? How do you work?

Emptiness is form, form is emptiness. At one time, this was as far as I would ever get.

 

Nowadays there are no adepts like this helping people. There are no elders who seek like this either. Anyone else would have gotten upset. One day he heard the teacher say in a lecture, “Going in and out the same door— hereditary enemies,” and suddenly his previous understanding turned out to be like flowers in the sky, and he now saw the truth.

The most common argument I get is everything is void. What is this nonsense? People trying to convince me I'm stupid for not knowing an incense stand is an incense stand. Ridiculous!

 

You should work in this way and realize enlightenment in this way. Zen should be studied this way. As none of you have found awakening, you should look straight into your vital spirit. If no one told you and no one instructed you, it would be hard to work. Now that you have met someone, you should work. You must distinguish black and white before you can do it.

Since you admit you haven't awakened, why don't you look! Foyan recommends twenty four hours a day!

Submitted September 20, 2020 at 12:41AM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/2EkaWa0