A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace Page 6
及證道時 秖證本心佛 歷劫功用 並是虛修 如力士得珠時 秖得本額珠 不關向外求覓之力故 佛言 我於阿耨菩提 實無所得 恐人不信故 引五眼所見 五語所言 真實不虛是 第一義諦
If you want to teach, teach those who are wise. If you teach those who are ignorant, they will be unable to digest what you impart, and to make matters worse, they might even make the mistake of understanding your teaching in their own ways. Therefore do not speak recklessly! Buddhist practitioners who listen to this type of instruction will find peace of mind. Nonpractitioners, on the other hand, seek only the intellectual pleasure that comes from satisfying their own curiosity and thereby miss the genuine pleasure that comes from liberation.
The Buddha’s statement here comes from the Diamond Sūtra, where he speaks of the five eyes and five types of speech.26 The five eyes refer to the physical eye, divine eye, wisdom eye, dharma eye, and buddha eye; the five types of speech mean speaking the truth, speaking in accordance with reality, speaking of things as they are, speaking without deception, and speaking without prejudice.
4. Wise Nourishment
Practitioners of the Way, have no doubt that the four great elements constitute the body, that these four great elements have no self, and that the self has no master.
學道人莫疑 四大為身 四大無我 我亦無主.
The four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, which constitute materiality, temporarily coalesce to form the body. However, there is no basis for presuming a self controls this body. Even though there is no self, Seon teachers tell you to find the “master” or “owner” (zhurengong/juin’gong 主人公) because you would otherwise not attempt to solve the fundamental problem of existence. While considering this issue, however, it is problematic if you simply memorize the words or repeat the question “Who is the master?” without actually rectifying your thoughts. Do not just memorize the words without being evaluated by someone who has real insight.
Open your eyes to that root, the true characteristic of things, so that you firmly grasp the unchanging fundamental reality of your life, a life in which everything else is otherwise changing. Only then will you not be deluded, and at the same time will you not delude others.
Know that this body has no self and no master. The five aggregates are mind, but the five aggregates have no self and no master.
故知此身 無我亦無主 五陰為心 五陰 無我亦無主.
This body seems to be ours, but it really isn’t. There is nothing there that can be called a “self.” The five aggregates (skandha) of material form, sensations, perception, volitional factors, and consciousness are the mind, but none of those constitute a “self.”
What, then, makes you move? Seon masters encourage you to raise the question “Who is dragging around this corpse?” in order to push you to see your original form for yourself. If you only inquire into this question intellectually, you will continue to analyze it and end up living a benighted life, spending your whole life searching in vain for the answer.
What I explain here is Master Linji’s teaching of the three phrases, the mysterious gates of the “mystery in the essence,” “mystery in the word,” and “mystery in the mystery.” It is said that you cannot even save yourself if you realize only the first of the three phrases. This is because the first phrase is only concerned with doctrinal concepts and intellectual thinking. When you move on to the live word of the meditative topic (huatou/hwadu) and realize the second phrase, the mystery in the word — that is, such hwadus as “Who is dragging around this corpse?” — you can become a master of both humans and divinities. However, when, thanks to a master’s blows and shouts, your whole body and mind become one with your doubt on the hwadu, it can be said that you have now opened your eyes to the third phrase, the mystery in the mystery.27
When someone asks, “Without using your mouth, describe the ineffable fundamental reality that has no beginning and no end,” only those who have no further traces of attachment to speech will be able to digest this question and answer it. Others will just be confused, with no clue about what is what.
Know therefore that this mind has no self and no master. The six sense bases, six sense objects, and six sense consciousnesses come into contact with each other and become subject to production and cessation, so this is also the case with them as well. Since these eighteen elements of cognition are empty, everything is empty. There is only the original mind, which is serene and pure.
故知此心 無我亦無主 六根六塵六識 和合生滅 亦復如是 十八界既空 一切皆空 唯有本心 蕩然清淨.
“No” here in “no self” and “no master” is different from “no” as we usually understand it. Since purity and cleanliness in general are different from their religious counterparts, even though the word may be the same, this “no” is totally different in content. If you understand this difference, then you probably understand Zhaozhou Congshen’s 趙州從諗 (778–897) “no” (wu/mu 無), one of the most widely used hwadus in the Seon tradition.
If you turn one thought around, you will realize that the eighteen elements of cognition (dhātu), which consist of the six sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind), the six sense objects (forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile objects, and mental phenomena), and the six sense consciousnesses (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and mental) are all mirages. They are originally empty.
There is the nutriment of consciousness and the nutriment of wisdom.28 The body consisting of the four great elements is tormented by hunger and disease. Nurturing this body with only what it needs, without generating greed and craving, is called the nutriment of wisdom. Self-indulgently clinging to what is tasty, mistakenly giving rise to discrimination, seeking out only what pleases your taste buds, and without generating any sense of loathing — this is called the nutriment of consciousness.
Śrāvakas are called “auditors” because they attain awakening by hearing [the dharma].
有識食有智食 四大之身 飢瘡為患 隨順給養 不生貪著 謂之智食 恣情取味 妄生分別 惟求適口 不生厭離 謂之識食.
聲聞者 因聲得悟故 謂之聲聞.
Śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas belong to the Lesser Vehicle, the Hīnayāna. They are awakened by practicing for their own salvation, and they enjoy enlightenment for themselves. You should instead strive to become a bodhisattva of the Great Vehicle, the Mahāyāna, who helps others attain enlightenment; such a bodhisattva has the capacity to save others. Bodhisattvas, in particular, excel in applying expedients thanks to their vows. Their expedients are as different from those of śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas as heaven is from earth.
Therefore, although you open your own eyes, if you spend your time practicing the Great Vehicle so that you develop a firm foundation for helping others attain awakening, you cannot help but advance in your training.
If you become a bodhisattva, you will have the power to share your merit, even though you may inadvertently resist doing so. If you intentionally try to share your merit with others, you will merely end up generating more karma. We can find this kind of sharing everywhere around us. We see people who do not fear self-sacrifice, donating funds, and performing charitable activities. But sharing the path to liberation is superior to sharing material goods. From a soteriological perspective, you should transform your very foundation in order to be better able to share benefits with others.
But [śrāvakas] are unable to comprehend their own minds, so they generate understanding by listening to the teachings. Due to supernatural powers in some cases, due to auspicious signs, language, or actions in other cases, they hear about there being bodhi and nirvāṇa, and after three asaṃkhyeya kalpas [incalculable eons], their practice leads to the attainment of the path to buddhahood. But since they are all still involved with the śrāvaka path, so they are called śrāvaka buddhas.
但不了自心 於聲教上 起解 或因神通 或因瑞相言語運
動 聞有菩提涅槃 三僧秖劫修成佛道 皆屬聲聞道 謂之聲聞佛.
Śrāvakas keep practicing in order to draw on the power of that practice, thinking there is always something more to be developed. But however much one practices and however much karma one creates, one’s original nature remains ever the same; it simply appears in various forms according to the functioning of consciousness.
Once you realize this fact, you have only to let everything follow its own natural flow. Śrāvakas think that they have to remove the conceptualizing consciousness through practice. But intentionally trying to do so merely reveals their own misunderstanding.
If you suddenly realize right here and now that your own mind is originally a buddha, there is no dharma that needs to be attained and no practice that needs to be cultivated. This is the unsurpassed Way. This is the buddha of true suchness.
唯直下 頓了自心 本來是佛 無一法可得 無一行可修 此是無上道 此是真如佛.
Although the waves on the ocean of the Buddhadharma take various forms, their nature has never changed. The buddha’s wisdom, which is like a great round mirror, reflects everything just as it is.
There is nothing to remove from or add to the mind. Because the conceptualizing consciousness arises, it is said that the mind is tainted, but it is, in fact, a misunderstanding to presume that the mind is tainted; it has never been tainted. Mirages unwittingly appear and coalesce. Beings seem to repeatedly live through the cycle of birth and death, but in fact they have never been born.
If you are deluded by the appearances of rebirth, you become an ignorant sentient being. If you open your eyes to the true reality of the original cessation that is nirvāṇa, you will realize that you have never been born, and you will live undaunted even in this chaotic world.
You practitioners of the Way need only fear the existence of a single thought — that is what it means to become estranged from the Way. Thought after thought remaining free from characteristics and thought after thought remaining uncompounded — that is buddhahood.
學道人 秖怕一念有 即與道隔矣 念念無相 念念無為 即是佛.
You never think, though you think all day long, because the original place transcends causes and conditions. There is no trace of anything that can be called causes or conditions. There, a breeze suddenly arises and creates a form. This is how space and time appear. We create a cause and receive a consequent karmic fruit. We repeat this process over and over again, appearing and disappearing in a constant cycle of birth and death.
There is no exception but one. The buddha realizes this one single exception and reveals it to us in a way that we can understand easily. This is the sublime dharma. The teaching of this sublime dharma has been revealed in its entirety. Since you do not know it yet, you mistake it to be something esoteric. To those who do not yet know, it seems wondrous; but to those who do know, there is nothing wondrous about it, since they continually possess and draw on it.
If you practitioners of the Way wish to attain buddhahood, you need not study any teachings of the Buddha. You need only learn to be free from seeking and clinging. If you are free from seeking, then the mind will not be produced. If you are free from clinging, then the mind will not cease. Neither production nor cessation — that is buddhahood.
學道人 若欲得成佛 一切佛法 總不用學 唯學無求無著 無求即心不生 無著即心不滅 不生不滅即是佛.
If you stop seeking, abiding, and clinging, you will always be associated with what is unchanging. The concept of “stop seeking” is difficult to explain and digest. If you understand this to mean “do not do anything,” then you will fall into a state of blankness. In order for students to avoid this state, masters say, “do everything while doing nothing,” or “do not abide or cling to anything.”
5. The Dharma Body Is Like Empty Space
The 84,000 dharma gates that counter the 84,000 defilements are just gates intended to edify and guide. Originally, there are no such dharmas. Relinquishment is in fact the dharma, and those who know relinquishment are buddhas.
八萬四千法門 對八萬四千煩惱. 秖是教化接引門 本無一切法 離即是法 知離者是佛.
Originally, there is not a single dharma that has been established, but the 84,000 dharma gates have been opened as expedients for saving deluded people. You may reference those dharma gates all day long, but none of them can actually be referenced. Although clouds may billow up one after another, no source can be found from which they are generated. In the same way, dharmas have no fixed characteristics. Although worldly dharmas are dharmas intended to be guarded, in this passage, “dharmas” means something that should be neither guarded nor relinquished.
If you simply abandon all defilements, there will be no dharmas that can be ascertained.
但離一切煩惱 是無法可得.
If you hear this sort of statement, you may keep trying to relinquish all defilements. But dharmas and defilements are identical from the start and, at the same time, dharmas are able to transform or overcome defilements. However, neither dharmas nor defilements have any fixed basis, so even though defilements may arise all day long, none has ever truly been generated.
Has empty space ever changed in past, present, or future? While space may not change, the shapes of clouds appear and disappear in the sky, just coming and going.
If you practitioners of the Way want to know the essential acroamata [for attaining enlightenment], simply add not a single thing to the mind. The statement “The true dharma body of the buddha is like empty space” is an analogy for this.29
學道人 若欲得知要訣 但莫於心上 著一物. 言佛真法身 猶若虛空 此是喻.
Do not cling to these words either. You must awaken to verify these words. Do not get stuck at the level of understanding this statement conceptually. From a worldly perspective, you may be considered smart if you have exceptional knowledge and learning. But though you may convince others and satisfy their intellectual curiosity, it cannot be said that you know the real characteristic of things.
Empty space that embraces all appearances is similar to the dharma body (dharmakāya). This dharma body has no fixed form. The “dharma body” is that which is able to assume various forms while simultaneously assuming no form at all and embracing everything.
The dharma body is empty space; empty space is the dharma body. People always say that the dharma body pervades empty space and empty space subsumes the dharma body. They are not aware that the dharma body is empty space and empty space is the dharma body.
法身即虛空 虛空即法身 常人謂法身 遍虛空處 虛空中 含容法身 不知法身即虛空 虛空即法身也.
The descriptions “alertness and quiescence” (xingxing jiji / seongseong jeokjeok 惺惺寂寂) and “void and quiescent numinous awareness” (kongji lingzhi / gongjeok yeongji 空寂靈知) are often deployed to depict the dharma body. Forms may be empty space, but empty space does not feel warmth and cold; it is the dharma body that feels warmth and cold.
If you definitively claim that empty space exists, then empty space is not the dharma body. If you definitively claim that the dharma body exists, then the dharma body is not empty space. Do not develop an intellectual understanding of empty space: empty space is the dharma body. Do not develop an intellectual understanding of the dharma body: the dharma body is empty space. Empty space and the dharma body do not have different characteristics. The buddhas and sentient beings do not have different characteristics. Birth and death do not have different characteristics. Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa do not have different characteristics. Defilements and bodhi do not have different characteristics. Leaving far behind all characteristics — that is buddhahood.
若定言有虛空 虛空不是法身 若定言有法身 法身不是虛空 但莫作虛空解 虛空即法身 莫作法身解 法身即虛空 虛空與法身無異相 佛與眾生無異相 生死與涅槃無異相 煩惱與菩提無異相 離一切相即是佛.
Ordinary people cling to sense objects; practitioners of the Way cling to the mind. To forget both the mind and sense objects is the true dharma.
凡夫取境 道人取心 心境雙忘 乃是真法.
You should be able to let go not only of sense objects but also of the mind. You should know that, even though you let go, there has never been anything to let go of, whether you let go of it or not. If you try to let go selectively, that will be a big mistake!
It is relatively easy to forget sense objects but extremely difficult to forget the mind. People do not dare to forget the mind because they fear that they will fall into emptiness, where there will be nothing to hold onto. They do not understand that emptiness is originally not empty: it is simply the one true dharma realm, that’s all.
忘境猶易 忘心至難 人不敢忘心 恐落空無撈摸處 不知空本無空 唯一真法界耳.
It is more difficult to abandon the subjective mind than objective sensory experiences. This is because people think that they will die if the subjective mind vanishes. Since people tend to think egocentrically, it is really hard for them to let go of this subjective sense of “I.”