All day long you seek fields of blessings only; you do not try to get out of the bitter sea of birth and death.
-Huangmei, the Fifth Chinese Patriarch
Now, many who "study Zen" see no purpose in getting out of the "bitter sea of birth and death." They decide, alone, according with emotions and biases, that self-nature is whatever. These people are like animals, with no agency.
The Fifth Patriarch held a poetry contest to see who could express this self-nature. Shenxiu had doubts, but felt that if he attempted, he may come to understand. He wrote:
The body is a Bodhi tree,
The mind like a bright mirror stand.
Time and again brush it clean,
And let no dust alight.
Huangmei read it, saying to leave it where it is, to be recited and upheld—that cultivating according to these words, people will avoid evil paths and attain great merit. His disciples were told to light incense and prostrate themselves there and, in this way, they were enabled to see their own nature.
Shenxiu's verse took the place of a painting from the Lankavatara Sutra which the Fifth Patriarch had commissioned. The last chapter of this Sutra is a long poem summarizing its contents; perhaps Huangmei would have had painted something like this:
Hallowed doctrines are dogmatic,
the Great Vehicle is nondogmatic;
it starts from people’s inclinations,
it is no business of those with false views.
Submitted March 11, 2022 at 01:18AM by surupamaerl2 https://ift.tt/pWaevHK
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