Shōbōgenzō (selections)

Let go, and it fills the hands: how could it be bounded by one or many? Speak, and it fills the mouth: vertically and horizontally it has no limit. The buddhas always dwell in it and maintain it, yet leave no trace of awareness in any quarter. Sentient beings forever use it, yet no quarter appears in their awareness. The effort and pursuit of the way that I now teach lets the ten thousand dharmas be on the ground of realization, and practices oneness on the road of going beyond. When one passes the barrier and drops off, how could one be bound by these knots and joints?note

After that, at the beginning of the Shaoding era of the Great Song (1228), I returned to my homeland. From then on I made it my aim to spread the dharma and save beings. It was like carrying a heavy load on my shoulders. Yet I would set aside the intention of spreading it, to wait for a time when it could be vigorously raised up. For a while I would drift like clouds and duckweed, and so make the ways of the former sages heard. But there may be true students who, of themselves unconcerned with fame and gain, put their aspiration for the way first.

Led astray in vain by false teachers, they would recklessly cover over right understanding, be drunk to no purpose on their own madness, and sink long in the land of delusion. How could they nurture the true seed of prajñā and reach the time of attaining the way? Since this poor monk is now given to drifting like clouds and duckweed, what mountains and rivers would they visit to find me? Out of compassion for them, I am writing down and gathering what I saw and heard firsthand of the customs and rules of the Zen monasteries in the land of the Great Song, and the profound teaching of the teachers that I received and keep, to leave it to people who study and are at ease in the way, so that they may know the true dharma of the buddha house. This may indeed be the true secret.

As these two lines spread, five gates opened: the Fayan school, the Guiyang school, the Caodong school, the Yunmen school and the Linji school. In the Great Song at present, only the Linji school is found everywhere under heaven. Though the five houses differ, there is only the one seal of the buddha mind. In the land of the Great Song too, from the Later Han onward, scriptural texts left their traces and spread through the whole realm, but which was the stronger had not yet been settled. After the ancestor came from the west, the root of the tangled vines was cut directly, and the pure, unmixed buddha-dharma spread. We should earnestly wish that it may be so in our country too.

Moreover, beings of every kind in the dharma realms of the ten directions, in the three evil paths and the six paths, all at once become bright and clear in body and mind and realize the ground of great liberation. When the original face appears, all dharmas realize and comprehend right awakening, and the myriad things all make use of the buddha body. They swiftly leap at once beyond the bounds of realization, sit upright beneath the king of trees of awakening, at a single time turn the great dharma wheel that is equal to the unequaled, and expound the profound prajñā, ultimate and unconditioned.

Because these equal and right awakenings in turn come back, and there is a path by which they intimately and invisibly assist one another, the person sitting in zazen firmly drops off body and mind, cuts off the mixed and defiled views and thoughts of the past, and realizes and comprehends the heaven-true buddha-dharma. In every place of practice of the buddhas, the thus-come ones, as countless as specks of dust, this person assists and brings forth buddha work, lets it reach widely those capable of going beyond buddha, and vigorously raises up the dharma of going beyond buddha. At this time, since the earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles of the dharma realms of the ten directions all do buddha work, those who receive the benefit of the wind and water they raise are all invisibly assisted by the buddha’s teaching, most wondrous and inconceivable, and manifest the realization close at hand.note

For all those who receive and use this water and fire circulate the buddha’s teaching of original realization. Those who live together with them and speak with them also all mutually possess inexhaustible buddha virtue, and, unfolding it widely in turn, spread the buddha-dharma, inexhaustible, unbroken, inconceivable, immeasurable, inside and outside the whole dharma realm. Yet that all this is not mixed into the awareness of the persons themselves is because, in stillness, it is uncontrived and is direct realization.

If, as ordinary people think, practice and realization were two stages, each would be aware of the other. What mixes with awareness is not the mark of realization, for deluded feeling does not reach the mark of realization. Again, although in stillness both mind and its objects enter in realization and come forth in awakening, because this is the sphere of self-fulfilling activity, it does not move a single speck of dust or break a single form, yet it does vast buddha work and the most profound and subtle buddha teaching. The grasses, trees and earth that this teaching reaches all emit a great light and expound the profound and wondrous dharma, without ever ending.

Grasses, trees, fences and walls proclaim it for ordinary people, sages and all living beings; ordinary people, sages and living beings in turn expound it for grasses, trees, fences and walls. The sphere of awakening oneself and awakening others is from the beginning endowed with the marks of realization and lacks nothing, and the mark of realization is carried out without ever lapsing. Therefore, even if it is only the zazen of one person for one time, because it is invisibly at one with all dharmas and passes perfectly through all times, it does the constant, eternal work of the buddha’s teaching in past, future and present within the inexhaustible dharma realm. Each and every one is the same practice, of one equality; the same realization.

It is not only practice while sitting. It is like striking space and making a sound: before and after the striker, the wondrous sound goes on and on. How could it be limited to this moment alone? The hundred heads are all endowed, in their original face, with original practice, beyond all measuring. Know that even if the buddhas of the ten directions, countless as the sands of the Ganges, all exerted their strength and tried with buddha wisdom to measure, know and exhaust the merit of one person’s zazen, they would never reach its edge.

Your delusion is very deep; it is like saying there is no water while sitting in the middle of the great ocean. You are already, gratefully, sitting at ease in the samādhi of self-fulfilling activity of the buddhas. Is this not accomplishing vast merit? How pitiable that your eyes are not yet open and your mind is still drunk. On the whole, the sphere of the buddhas is inconceivable; consciousness cannot reach it. How much less could those without faith and of inferior wisdom know it?

Only those of great capacity with right faith can enter it. People without faith, even if taught, find it hard to accept. Even on Vulture Peak there were those of whom it was said, “It is also good that they withdraw.” On the whole, if right faith arises in your mind, you should practice and study. If not, you should stop for a while, and regret that from the past you have lacked the moisture of the dharma. Further, do you know the merit gained from such observances as reading sutras and reciting the buddha’s name? To think that merely moving the tongue and raising the voice is the merit of buddha work is utterly futile.note

Compared with the buddha-dharma, it is ever farther and more remote. Further, one opens the sutras in order to understand clearly the rules of sudden and gradual practice that the Buddha taught, so that by practicing as taught one will surely attain realization. It is not in order to waste thought and reflection and take that for the merit of attaining bodhi. To try foolishly to reach the buddha way by piling up the verbal action of thousands and tens of thousands of recitations is like pointing the shafts of one’s carriage north and thinking to go to Yue.note

It is also the same as trying to put a square peg into a round hole. To look at the words while remaining in the dark about the way of practicing them is like reading a medical prescription and forgetting to compound the medicine: what use is it? Keeping the voice going without pause is like the frogs in the spring paddies croaking day and night: in the end, again, no use. How much more do those deeply confused by fame and gain find these things hard to give up, for their greed for gain runs very deep.

It was so in the past; how would it not be so in the present age? This is most pitiable. Just know this: the wondrous dharma of the seven buddhas is correctly transmitted when a student whose mind accords with it and who realizes it follows a master who has attained the way and clarified the mind; then its exact meaning appears and is received and kept. It is not something that dharma teachers who study letters can know or reach. So put an end to these doubts and confusions, rely on the teaching of a true teacher, pursue the way in zazen, and realize the samādhi of self-fulfilling activity of the buddhas.

Answer: Know that in the buddha house we do not debate the superiority or inferiority of teachings, nor choose between the shallowness and depth of the dharma. We should only know whether practice is true or false. There have been those drawn into the buddha way by grasses and flowers, mountains and waters. There are those who receive and keep the buddha seal by grasping earth, stones, sand and pebbles. Still more, the vast letters overflow the myriad forms and are yet abundant; the turning of the great dharma wheel is contained in a single speck of dust. That being so, the words “this very mind is buddha” are still the moon in the water, and the principle of “becoming buddha in this very sitting” is again a reflection in a mirror.

One should not be caught up in skill with words. In now recommending the practice that directly realizes bodhi, I wish to show the wondrous way singly transmitted by the buddhas and ancestors and let you become true people of the way. Further, in transmitting the buddha-dharma one must take as one’s master a person who has realized and accorded with it. A scholar who counts letters is not sufficient as a guide; that would be like one blind man leading a crowd of blind men. Now, under the gate of the correct transmission of the buddhas and ancestors, all revere wise masters who have attained the way and realized and accorded with it, and have them maintain the buddha-dharma.

For this reason the gods of the unseen and the seen worlds come and take refuge, and arhats who have realized the fruit come and ask about the dharma, and to every one of them is given a hand that opens and clarifies the mind-ground. This is something not yet heard of in other gates. Disciples of the Buddha should simply learn the buddha-dharma. Know also that we are from the beginning not lacking in unsurpassed bodhi. Though we receive and use it forever, because we are unable to accept it as our own, we are in the habit of recklessly raising views and chasing it as a thing; and so the great way is missed in vain.

Through these views, flowers in the sky appear of every kind. Some think of the twelvefold turning wheel and the spheres of the twenty-five existences; views of the three vehicles and the five vehicles, of there being buddha and there being no buddha, never end. One should not learn these views and take them for the right path of buddha-dharma practice. Yet now, truly relying on the buddha seal, when one lets go of all affairs and sits in zazen single-mindedly, one passes beyond the bounds of delusion and awakening, feeling and calculation, is unconcerned with the paths of ordinary and sage, swiftly wanders at ease beyond all standards, and receives and uses great bodhi. How could those caught in the fish-traps and snares of letters stand shoulder to shoulder with this?note

At first, during the nine years that the great teacher Bodhidharma faced the wall at Shaolin monastery on Mount Song, monks and laypeople did not yet know the Buddha’s true dharma and called him a brahmin who made sitting meditation his teaching. Later the ancestors of generation after generation all constantly devoted themselves to zazen. Foolish laypeople who saw this did not know the truth and carelessly called it the “zazen school.” In the present age the word za, “sitting,” has been dropped, and it is simply called the Zen school. Its meaning is clear in the extensive sayings of the ancestors. It should not be spoken of on a par with the meditative concentration of the six perfections and the three studies.

That this buddha-dharma is the direct intent of the transmission is hidden from no one in this age. When the thus-come one long ago, in the assembly on Vulture Peak, entrusted the dharma solely to the venerable Mahākāśyapa with the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvana, the unsurpassed great dharma, there were gods, now present in the heavens, who saw the ceremony with their own eyes; there is no reason to doubt it. On the whole, the buddha-dharma is something those gods protect forever, and their efforts have not yet grown old. Know truly that this is the whole way of the buddha-dharma; there is nothing to speak of alongside it.

Therefore, even in giving instruction on the attitude of practice, we teach: do not think to wait for realization outside practice. This must be because it is original realization directly pointed out. Since it is already the realization of practice, realization has no bound; since it is the practice of realization, practice has no beginning. Thus Śākyamuni, the thus-come one, and the venerable Mahākāśyapa were both received and used by practice on the ground of realization; the great teacher Bodhidharma and the high ancestor Dajian were likewise drawn along by practice on the ground of realization. The traces of maintaining the buddha-dharma are all like this. There is already practice not separate from realization.

We have fortunately received, in single transmission, a share of wondrous practice; our pursuit of the way with a beginner’s mind is itself the attainment of a share of original realization on the unconditioned ground. Know that, in order not to defile the realization that is not separate from practice, the buddhas and ancestors constantly teach that practice must not be slackened. Let go of wondrous practice, and original realization fills the hands; step free of original realization, and wondrous practice is carried out through the whole body. Further, as I saw with my own eyes in the land of the Great Song, the Zen monasteries everywhere had all built zazen halls, housed five or six hundred, and even one or two thousand, monks, and encouraged zazen day and night.

When I asked the masters who presided over them, transmitters of the seal of the buddha mind, about the great meaning of the buddha-dharma, I heard the principle that practice and realization are not two stages. Therefore they urged not only the students under their gate, but also noble seekers of the dharma and people who seek the true within the buddha-dharma, without choosing between beginners and the advanced and without discussing ordinary people or sages, to follow the teaching of the buddhas and ancestors, follow the way of the masters, and pursue the way in zazen. Have you not heard? An ancestor said, “It is not that there is no practice and realization; only, it cannot be defiled.” And again, “One who sees the way practices the way.” Know that one must practice within the attainment of the way.note

The mind is permanent; in past, future and present it does not change. To know this is called being free of birth and death. For one who knows this principle, the birth and death of the past end forever, and when this body ends, one enters the ocean of the nature. When one flows into the ocean of the nature, one is endowed with wondrous virtues like the buddhas, the thus-come ones. Now, even if one knows it, because one’s body was made by deluded karma from past lives, one is not equal to the sages. One who does not yet know this principle will long revolve in birth and death.

So one should simply hurry to understand that the mind-nature is permanent. What could one be waiting for by sitting idly and spending one’s whole life? Is what is said like this truly in accord with the way of the buddhas and ancestors? Answer: The view you speak of is not the buddha-dharma at all. It is the view of the non-Buddhist Śreṇika. That is, the view of that non-Buddhist is this: within one’s body there is a spiritual intelligence. When that intelligence meets conditions, it discerns good and bad and discerns right and wrong; it knows pain and itching, knows suffering and pleasure.note

All this is the power of that spiritual intelligence. And that spiritual nature, when this body perishes, slips out like a cicada from its shell and is born elsewhere. Therefore, though it seems to perish here, since there is birth there, it never perishes and is permanent: so they say. The view of that non-Buddhist is like this. To learn this view and take it for the buddha-dharma is even more foolish than grasping tiles and pebbles and thinking them gold and jewels. The shamefulness of such folly has no comparison. National Teacher Huizhong of the Great Tang strongly warned against it.note

Now to hold the false view that the mind is permanent while its forms perish, to equate it with the wondrous dharma of the buddhas, and to think one has left birth and death while raising the very root cause of birth and death: is this not foolish? It is most pitiable. Know that this is simply the false view of non-Buddhists; do not let it touch your ears. Since there is no help for it, if I am still to extend compassion and save you from your false view: know that the buddha-dharma has from the beginning taught that body and mind are one and nature and form are not two. This is known alike in India and China and must not be contradicted.

Still more, in the gate that speaks of permanence, the ten thousand dharmas are all permanent; body and mind are not divided. In the gate that speaks of quiescent extinction, all dharmas are quiescent extinction; nature and form are not divided. How then can you say that the body perishes and the mind is permanent? Does that not go against right principle? Not only that: you should fully awaken to the fact that birth and death is nirvana; nirvana has never been spoken of outside birth and death. Still more, even if you falsely suppose that the understanding that the mind is permanent apart from the body is the buddha wisdom that has left birth and death, this mind that understands and is aware still arises and perishes and is not permanent at all.

Is this not futile? Try to contemplate it. That body and mind are one is what the buddha-dharma always teaches. How then, when this body arises and perishes, could the mind alone leave the body and not arise and perish? If there were times when they are one and times when they are not one, the Buddha’s teaching would naturally be false. Further, to think that birth and death is a dharma to be got rid of is the fault of rejecting the buddha-dharma; should you not be careful? Know that what the buddha-dharma calls the dharma gate of the mind-nature as the great comprehensive form embraces the whole great dharma realm, does not divide nature and form, and does not speak of arising and perishing.

Down to bodhi and nirvana, there is nothing that is not the mind-nature. All dharmas, the myriad forms in their dense array, are just this one mind; there is nothing it does not include and embrace. To teach that all these dharma gates are the one equal mind, without any difference at all: this is how the buddha house knows the mind-nature. How then, within this one dharma, could one distinguish body and mind, or separate birth and death from nirvana? You are already a child of the Buddha; do not let the babble of a raving man who speaks the views of non-Buddhists touch your ears.

Minister Li and Minister Fang, both serving as ministers assisting the throne, the arms and legs of the whole realm, pursued the way in zazen and entered realization of the great way of the buddhas and ancestors. It depends simply on whether one has the aspiration or not; it has nothing to do with whether one lives at home or has left home. Further, one who deeply discerns what is superior and inferior will naturally come to faith. Still more, those who think that worldly affairs hinder the buddha-dharma know only that there is no buddha-dharma in the world, and do not yet know that there are no worldly dharmas within buddha.

Recently in the Great Song there was one called Minister Feng, a high official who excelled in the ancestors’ way. Later he wrote a poem speaking of himself, which says: “In the leisure after public affairs I like to sit in zazen; seldom have I laid my side on a bed to sleep. Though I appear in the form of a minister, the name of elder spreads across the four seas.” He was a man with no leisure from official duties, yet because his aspiration for the buddha way was deep, he attained the way. Reflect on yourself through others, and look at the present in the mirror of the past. In the land of the Great Song, the kings, ministers, officials, laypeople, men and women of the present age all without exception set their minds on the ancestors’ way.note

Military houses and literary houses alike aspire to practice Zen and study the way. Of those who aspire, many open and clarify the mind-ground. From this it is naturally known that worldly duties do not hinder the buddha-dharma. When the true buddha-dharma spreads in a nation, the buddhas and the gods protect it without pause, so the king’s rule is at peace. When the sage ruler’s reign is at peace, the buddha-dharma gains its strength. Further, when Śākyamuni was in the world, people who had committed grave offenses and held false views attained the way. In the assemblies of the ancestors, hunters and old woodcutters opened realization, to say nothing of other people. Just seek the teaching and guidance of a true teacher.

Answer: These words are most futile. If it were as you say, who with a mind would fail to know this principle when taught it? Know that the buddha-dharma is studied precisely by putting an end to views of self and other. If knowing that oneself is buddha were the attainment of the way, Śākyamuni would not have troubled himself long ago with guiding others. Let me prove this with a wondrous case of the ancients. Long ago a monk, the director Xuanze, was in the assembly of Chan Master Fayan. Chan Master Fayan asked him, “Director Xuanze, how long have you been in my assembly?”note

Xuanze said, “I have been in your assembly, Master, for three years now.” The master said, “You are a junior. Why do you never ask me about the buddha-dharma?” Xuanze said, “I must not deceive you, Reverend. When I was formerly with Chan Master Qingfeng, I fully understood the place of ease and joy in the buddha-dharma.” The master said, “Through what words were you able to enter?”

Xuanze said, “I once asked Qingfeng, ‘What is the self of this student?’ Qingfeng said, ‘The Bingding boy comes seeking fire.’” Fayan said, “Good words. But I fear you did not understand them.” Xuanze said, “Bing and ding belong to fire. I understood it to mean that seeking fire with fire is like seeking the self with the self.” The master said, “Now I truly know that you did not understand.”note

“If the buddha-dharma were like that, it would not have been transmitted to this day.” At this Xuanze, troubled and upset, got up and left. Halfway along the road he thought: “The master is a good teacher for the whole realm, and the great guide of five hundred people. His admonishing me for my error must surely have some merit.” He returned to the master, repented, bowed in thanks, and asked, “What is the self of this student?” The master said, “The Bingding boy comes seeking fire.” At these words Xuanze greatly awakened to the buddha-dharma.

It is clearly known that the understanding that the self is buddha is not knowing the buddha-dharma. If the understanding that the self is buddha were the buddha-dharma, the master would not have guided him with those earlier words, nor admonished him as he did. Just, from the time you first meet a good teacher, ask about the rules of practice, pursue the way single-mindedly in zazen, and do not keep a bit of knowledge or half an understanding in your mind. Then the wondrous means of the buddha-dharma will not be in vain.

Answer: It is as you say. The people of our country are not yet widely benevolent and wise, and people are also crooked. Even if one shows them the upright dharma, the nectar may turn into poison. They readily go after fame and gain, and their deluded attachments are hard to dissolve. Even so, entering realization of the buddha-dharma does not necessarily take the worldly wisdom of humans and gods as the boat for crossing beyond the world. While the Buddha was in the world, one realized the four fruits through a ball, and one clarified the great way by putting on a monk’s robe; both were dull and ignorant people, foolish and deluded creatures.note

It was only that, helped by right faith, there was a way for them to leave delusion. Again, a laywoman who was offering a meal saw a foolish old monk sitting in silence and opened realization. This was not through wisdom, not through texts; it did not wait for words, did not wait for speech. It was only that she was helped by right faith. Again, the spread of Śākyamuni’s teaching through the three thousand worlds has taken only some two thousand years. The lands are of many kinds; they are not necessarily lands of benevolence and wisdom.

Nor are the people necessarily all sharp and clever. Even so, the true dharma of the thus-come one is from the beginning endowed with the great power of inconceivable merit, and when the time comes it spreads in that land. If people practice with right faith, they attain the way equally, without distinction of sharp or dull. Do not think that because our land is not a land of benevolence and wisdom and its people are dull in understanding, they cannot grasp the buddha-dharma. Still more, all people have the true seed of prajñā in abundance. It is only that few have accepted it as their own, and they have not yet received and used it.

The foregoing questions and answers, going back and forth, guest and host interchanging, have been disorderly. How many flowers have I made appear in a flowerless sky? Even so, in this country the essential teaching of pursuing the way in zazen has not yet been transmitted. Those who aspire to know it are to be pitied. Therefore I have gathered a little of what I saw and heard in a foreign land and recorded the true secrets of clear-eyed teachers, so that those who wish to study may hear them. Beyond this, the rules of the monastery and the regulations of temples I have no time to show now; nor should they be treated hastily.

To carry the self forward and practice and verify the ten thousand dharmas is delusion; that the ten thousand dharmas advance and practice and verify the self is realization. Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there are people who attain realization on top of realization, and people who are deluded within delusion. When buddhas are truly buddhas, they have no need to be aware that they are buddhas. Yet they are verified buddhas, and they go on verifying buddha. When one takes up the whole body and mind and sees forms, takes up the whole body and mind and hears sounds, one grasps them intimately. Yet it is not like a mirror holding an image, not like water and the moon: when one side is verified, the other side is dark.

If the dharma fills body and mind, one feels that one side is lacking. For example, when one boards a ship and goes out into the middle of the sea where there are no mountains, and looks in the four directions, it appears only round; no other form appears at all. Yet this great ocean is neither round nor square; its remaining qualities as ocean are inexhaustible. It is like a palace; it is like a jeweled necklace. Only as far as my eyes reach does it appear, for the moment, round. As with that, so it is with the ten thousand dharmas.note

Only, when the use is great, the use is great; when the need is small, the use is small. In this way, though there is no point at which it does not reach its limits, and no place where it does not tread and turn, if the bird leaves the sky it dies at once; if the fish leaves the water it dies at once. Know that water is taken as life; know that sky is taken as life. There is bird taken as life, there is fish taken as life; it must be life taken as bird, life taken as fish. Beyond this there must be further steps forward.

There is practice and realization, and that there is a life span and a living one is like this. Yet if there were a bird or fish that meant to go through water or sky only after exhausting the water or the sky, it would find no way and no place in water or in sky. If one finds this place, this activity accordingly realizes the kōan. If one finds this way, this activity accordingly is the kōan realized. This way, this place, is neither large nor small, neither self nor other; because it neither existed from before nor manifests now, it is thus.

In the same way, when a person practices and verifies the buddha way, to attain one dharma is to penetrate one dharma; to meet one practice is to practice one practice. Here there is a place, and the way has been passed through; and that the bounds of what is known are not known is so because this knowing is born together with, and studies together with, the full exhaustion of the buddha-dharma. Do not learn that what has been attained must become one’s own knowledge and be known by discursive thought. Though the verified exhaustion is at once realized, the intimate being is not necessarily manifest; manifestation is “why necessarily?”

Though the long stretches and short spans of the twelve hours have never yet been measured, we call them the twelve hours. Because the traces of their going and coming are clear, people do not doubt them; but though they do not doubt them, this is not knowing them. Since sentient beings’ doubting of each thing and each matter they do not know is never fixed, the course of their earlier doubts does not necessarily accord with their present doubt. It is only that doubt itself is, for the moment, time.

We set the self out in array and make it the whole world. Each and every thing of this whole world, one should see as each and every time. Things do not hinder one another, just as times do not hinder one another. Therefore there is arousing the mind at the same time, and there is arousing the time with the same mind; and so too with practice and attaining the way. We set the self out in array, and the self sees this. Such is the principle that the self is time. Because the principle is so, there are ten thousand forms and a hundred grasses throughout the whole earth, and one should study that each grass and each form is throughout the whole earth.

Going back and forth like this is the first step of practice. When one arrives at such a field, it is just one grass, one form; it is understanding the form and not understanding the form, understanding the grass and not understanding the grass. Because there is only the very time of just this, being-time is all of it the whole of time, and being-grass and being-form are both time. In time upon time there is all being, the whole world. Consider for a while whether there is any all-being, any whole world, that has leaked out of the present time, or not.

Since I am already here, time cannot go away. If time is not a mark of going and coming, the time of climbing the mountain is the very now of being-time. If time maintains a mark of going and coming, then that there is in me the very now of being-time: this is being-time. Does not that time of climbing the mountain and crossing the river swallow this time of the jeweled palace and vermilion tower? Does it not spit it out? Three heads and eight arms are yesterday’s time; sixteen feet or eight feet are today’s time. Yet the principle of this yesterday and today is just the time of going straight into the mountains and looking out over a thousand peaks, ten thousand peaks. It has not gone by.

Three heads and eight arms pass at once as my being-time; though they seem to be over there, they are the very now. Sixteen feet or eight feet pass at once as my being-time; though they seem to be over there, they are the very now. So the pine is time, the bamboo is time. One should not understand time only as flying away; one should not study flying away only as what time does. If time were left wholly to flying away, there would be gaps. Not to have passed through and heard the way of being-time comes from studying it only as having gone by.

Since self and other are already time, practice and realization are the times; entering the mud and entering the water are likewise time. The present view of ordinary people, and the conditions of that view, are what ordinary people see, but they are not the dharma of ordinary people; the dharma has only for the moment taken ordinary people as its conditions. Because one learns that this time and this being are not the dharma, one takes it that the sixteen-foot golden body is not oneself. Trying to escape by saying “I am not the sixteen-foot golden body” is also, in turn, a fragment of being-time, the looking and looking of one who has not yet verified it.

The horse and the sheep now arrayed in the world: that they are made to be is the rising and falling, up and down, of just thus abiding in its dharma-position. The rat is time, the tiger is time; beings are time, buddhas are time. This time verifies the whole world as three heads and eight arms, verifies the whole world as the sixteen-foot golden body. To world-exhaust the whole world by the whole world is what is called fully exhausting it. To sixteen-foot-golden-body the sixteen-foot golden body by the sixteen-foot golden body, realized as arousing the mind, practice, bodhi and nirvana: this is being, this is time. It is only fully exhausting the whole of time as the whole of being; there is no surplus dharma.note

Because a surplus dharma is a surplus dharma, even half-exhausted being-time is the full exhaustion of half being-time. Even a form that seems to have slipped past is being. Further, if one leaves it to that, both before and after the slipping-past is realized, it is the abiding position of being-time. Abiding in its dharma-position, vividly alive: this is being-time. One must not shift it into nonbeing; one must not force it into being. One reckons time only as passing on in one direction and does not understand it as not yet arrived. Though understanding is time, there is no condition by which it is drawn by another.

Taking it as going and coming, no skin bag has seen through to being-time in its abiding position, still less is there a time of passing through the barrier. Even if one recognizes the abiding position, who can express the maintaining of having already attained thus? Even if one has long expressed it as thus, there is no one who is not still groping for the face to appear. If it is left wholly to the being-time of ordinary people, even bodhi and nirvana are being-time that is merely a mark of going and coming. On the whole, no net or cage holds it: it is being-time realized. The heavenly kings and heavenly hosts now realized in the right-hand world and realized on the left are also, now, the being-time of my full exertion.

The being-time of the hosts of water and land beyond them is realized now by my full exertion. All the kinds and all the beings that are being-time in the dark and in the light are all my full exertion realized, my full exertion’s passage. One should study that unless it were my full exertion and passage now, not a single dharma, not a single thing, would be realized, would pass. Passage is not to be studied as like wind and rain moving east and west. The whole world is not unmoving and unchanging, nor without advance and retreat; it is passage.

Passage is like spring, for example. Spring has many and various aspects; this is called passage. One should study that it passes with nothing outside it. For example, the passage of spring always passes through spring. Passage is not spring, but because it is the passage of spring, passage has now attained the way at the time of spring. Study this in detail, coming and going. In speaking of passage, to think that the sphere is outside, and that the dharma that passes moves east through hundreds of thousands of worlds and goes on through hundreds of thousands of kalpas, is not to devote oneself single-mindedly to the study of the buddha way.

Not arriving is hindered by not arriving and not hindered by arriving. Meaning blocks meaning and sees meaning; words block words and see words; hindrance blocks hindrance and sees hindrance. Hindrance hinders hindrance: this is time. Though hindrance is employed by other dharmas, there has never been a hindrance that hinders other dharmas. I meet a person; a person meets a person; I meet myself; going out meets going out. If these did not get time, they would not be thus. Again, meaning is the time of the kōan realized; words are the time of the pivot beyond; arriving is the time of the body slipped free; not arriving is the time of “one with this, apart from this.”

Discern and affirm it like this; be being-time with it. Though the venerable elders up to now have all spoken thus, is there nothing further to say? We should say: “Meaning and words half arriving is also being-time; meaning and words half not arriving is also being-time.” There should be investigation like this. “Having him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes is also half being-time; having him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes is also mistaken being-time; not having him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes is also half being-time; not having him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes is also mistaken being-time.” Studying, coming and going like this, studying, arriving and not arriving: this is the time of being-time.

Whether one says sentient beings, or beings with feeling, or the mass of the living, or the multitude of kinds, it is sentient beings, it is the multitude of beings. That is, all being is buddha-nature; one “all” of all being is called sentient beings. At just such a time, the inside and outside of sentient beings is the all-being of buddha-nature. It is not only the skin, flesh, bones and marrow singly transmitted, because it is “You have attained my skin, flesh, bones and marrow.” Know that the being now made all-being by buddha-nature is not the being of being and nonbeing. All being is the Buddha’s words, the Buddha’s tongue, the eyes of the buddhas and ancestors, the nostrils of patch-robed monks.note

The word “all being” is not being that begins, not original being, not wondrous being or the like, still less conditioned being or deluded being. It has nothing to do with mind and object, nature and form and the like. So the body and the environment of sentient beings’ all-being are not at all the increasing power of karma, not deluded dependent arising, not things as they naturally are, not supernatural power or practice and realization. If sentient beings’ all-being were the increase of karma, or dependent arising, or things as they naturally are, then the verified way of the sages, the bodhi of the buddhas, and the eyes of the buddhas and ancestors would also be the increasing power of karma, or dependent arising, or things as they naturally are. That is not so. The whole world has no adventitious dust at all; right here there is no second person, because “Cutting straight to the root source, people have not known it; busy, busy, karmic consciousness, when will it rest?”

It is not the being of deluded dependent arising, because “the whole world has never been hidden.” “The whole world has never been hidden” does not necessarily mean “what fills the world is being.” “The whole world is my being” is the false view of non-Buddhist teachers. It is not the being of original being, because it spans all past and all present. It is not the being of beginning-arising, because it does not admit a single speck of dust. It is not being strand by strand, because it is gathered together. It is not the being of beginningless being, because “What thing is it that thus comes?” It is not the being of being that arose at a beginning, because “the ordinary mind is the way.” Know indeed that within all being, sentient beings, swift and nimble, are hard to meet.

When all being is grasped like this, all being is the body passed through and dropped off. Hearing the word buddha-nature, many students wrongly conceive it as like the self of the non-Buddhist Śreṇika. This is because they have not met a person, have not met themselves, have not seen a teacher. They idly take the mind, intention and consciousness set moving by wind and fire to be the awareness and clear awakening of buddha-nature. Who said that buddha-nature has awareness and clear awakening? Even if those who are aware and those who know are buddhas, buddha-nature is not awareness and clear awakening. Still less does the awareness by which buddhas are called aware ones and knowers take the false understandings you go on about as awareness; it does not take the movement and stillness of wind and fire as awareness. Only one or two buddha faces, ancestor faces: this is awareness.

Again and again old masters and former worthies, some who went to India and back, some who taught and guided humans and gods, as numerous from the Han to the Song dynasty as rice, hemp, bamboo and reeds, have mostly taken the movement of wind and fire to be the awareness of buddha-nature. How pitiable! Because their study of the way grew ever looser, there is this present error. Now, latecomers and beginners in the buddha way should not be like this. Even if one studies awareness, awareness is not movement. Even if one studies movement, movement is not thus.

If one ever grasps real movement, one must grasp real awareness and clear awakening. Buddha and nature: reaching that, reaching this. Buddha-nature is always all being, because all being is buddha-nature. All being is not a hundred fragments; all being is not one bar of iron; because it is a raised fist, it is neither large nor small. Since it is already called buddha-nature, it must not stand shoulder to shoulder with the sages; it must not stand shoulder to shoulder with buddha-nature. One group thinks that buddha-nature is like the seed of plants and trees: when the moisture of the dharma rain soaks it again and again, sprouts and stems grow, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit flourish, and the fruit in turn bears seeds.

To see it like this is the sentiment and measure of ordinary people. Even if one sees it like this, one should investigate that the seed and the flowers and fruit are each, strand by strand, the bare heart. In the fruit there is a seed; though the seed is not seen, it produces roots, stems and the rest. Though no one gathers them, so many branches grow to a great girth. This is not a discussion of inside and outside; it is not empty in the times of past and present. So even if one leaves it to the views of ordinary people, roots, stems, branches and leaves must all be buddha-nature that is born together, dies together, and is all being together.

“You should observe” has nothing to do with observer and observed, and is not to be measured by right observing or wrong observing; this is “you should observe.” Because it is “you should observe,” it is not observing oneself, not observing another; it is the voice of times and conditions, it is beyond conditions; it is the voice of buddha-nature, it is buddha-nature with the body slipped free; it is the voice of buddha upon buddha, the voice of nature upon nature. As for the words “if the time arrives,” people past and present have often thought they mean waiting for a time to come later when buddha-nature will manifest.

They say: as one goes on practicing like this, one naturally meets the time when buddha-nature manifests; if the time does not arrive, it does not manifest, even if one visits teachers and asks about the dharma, even if one makes effort in pursuing the way. Seeing it like this, they idly return to the red dust and vainly gaze at the Milky Way. This kind are probably of the stream of the naturalist non-Buddhists. “If you wish to know the meaning of buddha-nature” is like saying “you should know the meaning of buddha-nature.” “You should observe times and conditions” means “you should know times and conditions.” That is, if you wish to know buddha-nature, know that it is times and conditions.

“If the time arrives” means: the time has already arrived; what is there to doubt? Let doubts about the time be as they may: “Give me back my buddha-nature!” Know that “if the time arrives” is not passing the twelve hours in vain. “If it arrives” is like saying “it has already arrived.” If the time arrives, buddha-nature does not arrive. So, since the time has already arrived, this is the manifesting of buddha-nature, or “its principle is self-evident.” On the whole, there has never been a time in which the time did not arrive, and there is no buddha-nature in which buddha-nature does not manifest.

“All dependent” is grasped, and not grasped, as whole dependence, as dependence on the whole. “Samādhi and the six powers appear from it”: know that the appearing and arriving of all samādhis is likewise all in dependence on buddha-nature; the whole six powers’ “from it” and “not from it” are both all in dependence on buddha-nature. The six spiritual powers are not merely the six spiritual powers spoken of in the Āgama teachings. “Six” means that “three three before, three three after” is called the perfection of the six spiritual powers. So do not investigate the six spiritual powers as “clear, clear, the tips of the hundred grasses; clear, clear, the intention of the buddhas and ancestors.” Though one lets it be held up in the six spiritual powers, it is what hinders the rivers’ flowing home to the ocean of buddha-nature.note

The master answered, “Because buddha-nature is empty, it is called ‘no.’” The ancestor recognized him as a vessel of the dharma, made him his attendant, and later entrusted to him the treasury of the true dharma eye. He lived on the East Mountain of Huangmei and greatly spread the profound wind. So, when we investigate the ancestors’ words: the Fourth Ancestor’s “What is your surname?” has its essential meaning. Of old there were people of what country, there were surnames of what surname; he is expounding “you are what surname.” It is like saying, “I too am thus, you too are thus.” The Fifth Ancestor said, “A surname I have, but it is not an ordinary surname.” That is: “being is just surname” is not an ordinary surname; an ordinary surname “is not” “just being.”note

The Fourth Ancestor’s “What surname is it?” means: “what” is “is”; it has made “is” into “what”; this is surname. What makes it “what” is because of “is”; what makes it “is” is the power of “what.” Surname is “is” and “what.” This is steeped into mugwort tea, steeped into tea as well, and made into the everyday tea and rice of the household. The Fifth Ancestor said, “It is buddha-nature.” The essential meaning of these words is that “is” is buddha-nature. Because of “what” it is buddha. Has “is” been fully investigated only as “what surname”? When “is” is already “is not,” it is buddha-nature.

So, though “is” is “what” and is buddha, once it has dropped off and passed through, it is always surname, and that surname is Zhou. Yet he did not receive it from a father, did not receive it from ancestors, and it does not resemble his mother’s; how could it stand shoulder to shoulder with onlookers? The Fourth Ancestor said, “You have no buddha-nature.” These words set forth that “you” are not anyone, and though it is left wholly to “you,” it is no-buddha-nature. Know it and study it: at what time now is it no-buddha-nature? Is it no-buddha-nature at the head of buddha? Is it no-buddha-nature beyond buddha?

Do not block up the seven paths; do not grope about the eight directions. There is also practicing no-buddha-nature as a samādhi of one time. One should ask, one should say: when buddha-nature becomes buddha, is it no-buddha-nature? When buddha-nature arouses the mind, is it no-buddha-nature? Have the pillar ask too; ask the pillar too; have buddha-nature ask too. So the words no-buddha-nature are heard far off from the ancestral room of the Fourth Ancestor: seen and heard at Huangmei, circulated by Zhaozhou, raised up by Dagui.note

In the words no-buddha-nature one must surely strive; do not skip over them. Though one must feel one’s way along no-buddha-nature, there is a standard that is “what,” a time that is “you,” a meeting of minds that is “is,” a shared surname that is Zhou: it goes straight on. The Fifth Ancestor said, “Because buddha-nature is empty, it is called ‘no.’” He says clearly that emptiness is not “no.” In saying that buddha-nature is empty, he does not say half a catty, does not say eight taels; he says “no.”note

He does not say “empty” because it is empty, nor “no” because it is no; he says “no” because buddha-nature is empty. So each fragment of “no” is a signpost for saying “empty,” and “empty” is the strength to say “no.” The emptiness spoken of here is not the emptiness of “form is emptiness.” “Form is emptiness” does not mean forcing form to be emptiness, nor splitting emptiness to fashion form; it must be the emptiness of “emptiness is emptiness.” The emptiness of “emptiness is emptiness” is a single stone within emptiness. So buddha-nature-no, buddha-nature-empty and buddha-nature-being: the Fourth and Fifth Ancestors ask them and say them.

“How could you become a buddha?” means “What kind of becoming a buddha do you expect?” On the whole, few forerunners have clarified the principle of buddha-nature. It is not something the Āgama teachings or the masters of sutras and treatises could know; only the descendants of the buddhas and ancestors singly transmit it. The principle of buddha-nature is this: buddha-nature is not fully present before becoming a buddha; it is fully present after becoming a buddha. Buddha-nature always studies together with becoming a buddha. This principle should be investigated and worked at thoroughly; work and study at it for twenty or thirty years. It is not what the ten sages and three worthies clarify.

To say “sentient beings have buddha-nature” and “sentient beings have no buddha-nature” is this principle; to study it as a dharma fully present since becoming a buddha is the right mark. Not to study it like this would not be the buddha-dharma; had it not been studied like this, the buddha-dharma could never have come down to today. If one does not clarify this principle, one does not clarify becoming a buddha, nor see or hear it. Therefore the Fifth Ancestor, speaking to him, says, “A man of Lingnan has no buddha-nature.” What is hard to attain and hard to hear at the very first, in seeing the Buddha and hearing the dharma, is “sentient beings have no buddha-nature.” Whether from a teacher or from the scriptures, what one should rejoice to hear is “sentient beings have no buddha-nature.”

Those who have not been fully filled with “all sentient beings have no buddha-nature” in seeing, hearing, perceiving and knowing have not yet seen, heard, perceived and known buddha-nature. When the Sixth Ancestor single-mindedly sought to become a buddha, the Fifth Ancestor, well able to make the Sixth Ancestor become a buddha, had no other words and no skillful means; he only said, “A man of Lingnan has no buddha-nature.” Know that saying and hearing no-buddha-nature is the direct way to becoming a buddha. So the very time of no-buddha-nature is becoming a buddha. Those who have not yet seen, heard or said no-buddha-nature have not yet become buddhas.

The Sixth Ancestor said, “People have north and south, but buddha-nature has no north and south.” Taking up these words, one should work at what is within the phrase. The words “north and south” should be reflected on with a bare heart. In the phrase the Sixth Ancestor spoke there is an essential meaning; it has hold of one corner, namely that people become buddhas but buddha-nature cannot become a buddha. Did the Sixth Ancestor know this or not? Receiving one corner of the far-reaching strength to hinder that is in the words no-buddha-nature spoken by the Fourth and Fifth Ancestors, the buddhas, Kāśyapa Buddha, Śākyamuni Buddha and the rest, in becoming buddhas and turning the dharma, have the strength to say “all being is buddha-nature.”

How could the being of “all being” not succeed to the dharma of the “no” of “no-no”? So the words no-buddha-nature are heard far off from the rooms of the Fourth and Fifth Ancestors. At that time, if the Sixth Ancestor were that very person, he should have worked at these words no-buddha-nature. Setting aside for now the “no” of being and no, he should have asked, “What is buddha-nature?” He should have inquired, “What thing is buddha-nature?” People today too, when they hear “buddha-nature,” do not go on to ask “What is buddha-nature?” but seem to talk about the meaning of buddha-nature’s being or no and the like. This is hasty.

So the “no” of all the nos should be studied through the “no” of no-buddha-nature. The Sixth Ancestor’s words “people have north and south, buddha-nature has no north and south” should be dredged and gathered up again and again for a long time; there must be strength in the dredging net. The Sixth Ancestor’s words “people have north and south, buddha-nature has no north and south” should be quietly taken up and let go. Foolish people think that, because humans are solid and obstructed, they have north and south, but buddha-nature is empty and fluid and beyond any talk of north and south; to guess that this is what the Sixth Ancestor said is the ignorance of those who have no share in it. Throw away this false understanding, and you must simply study diligently.

The permanent sage is impermanent; the ordinary person is impermanent. If ordinary people and sages were permanent, that could not be buddha-nature. It would be a foolish view of small measure, the narrow view of conjecture. Buddha would be a body of small measure, and nature would be a working of small measure. Therefore the Sixth Ancestor says, “Impermanence is buddha-nature, permanence is not-yet-turned.” “Not-yet-turned” means this: even if it changes into what cuts off, even if it transforms into what is cut off, it is not necessarily bound to the traces of coming and going. Therefore it is permanent.

So it is that the impermanence of grasses, trees and thickets is itself buddha-nature. The impermanence of the bodies and minds of people and things is buddha-nature. This is because the impermanence of lands, mountains and rivers is buddha-nature. Unsurpassed, complete and perfect awakening is impermanent because it is buddha-nature. The great nirvana is buddha-nature because it is impermanent. The narrow views of the two vehicles, and the masters of sutras and treatises and of the threefold canon, will be startled, doubtful, afraid and fearful at these words of the Sixth Ancestor. Those who are startled and doubt are of the kind of demons and non-Buddhists.

The assembly said, “What is here now is what our eyes have never seen, what our ears have never heard; our minds have nothing to know it by, our bodies have nowhere to abide.” Deva said, “This is the venerable one manifesting the form of buddha-nature to show us. How do we know it? Through formless samādhi, the shape is like the full moon. The meaning of buddha-nature is vast, empty and bright.” When these words were finished, the disc-form at once vanished. Again sitting on the original seat, the venerable one spoke a verse: “The body manifested as the round-moon form expresses the body of all buddhas. Expounding the dharma has no form of its own; its functioning is not sound or form.” Know this: true functioning is not the immediate manifesting of sound and form. True expounding of the dharma “has no form of its own.” The venerable one once expounded buddha-nature widely, beyond counting. Here, for now, only one corner is briefly raised.

“If you wish to see buddha-nature, you must first remove self-conceit”: the essential point of this expounding must be discerned and affirmed without passing it by. It is not that there is no seeing. That seeing is removing self-conceit. The self is not one, conceit is of many kinds, and the ways of removing must also differ in ten thousand ways. Yet all of these are seeing buddha-nature. Learn it as seeing with the eyes and observing with the eyes. Do not liken the words “buddha-nature is not large and not small” and the rest to those of ordinary worldlings and the two vehicles. They have stored up the false thought, lopsided and withered, that buddha-nature must simply be vast.

Not large and not small: the principle of being hindered by the words of exactly this very time must be thought through just as we now hear it. Because we make use of a hearing that is thinking, let us for now listen to the verse the venerable one spoke. It says: “The body manifested as the round-moon form expresses the body of all buddhas.” Because it is a body-manifestation that has already expressed the body of all buddhas, it is the round-moon form. So it is that all long and short, square and round, must be studied in this body-manifestation. To grow distant from “body” and from “manifesting” is not only to be in the dark about the round-moon form; it is not to be the body of all buddhas.

Fools think that the venerable one provisionally manifested a transformation body and that this is called the round-moon form. Such thinking is the false thought of a faction that has not inherited the buddha way. In what place, at what time, could it be a manifestation of something other, not the body? Know this: at that time the venerable one was simply sitting on the high seat. The manner of the body-manifestation was just like anyone today sitting. This body is the round-moon form manifesting. Body-manifestation is not square or round, not being or nonbeing, not hidden or revealed, not the eighty-four thousand aggregates; it is just body-manifestation.

The round-moon form is the moon of “What place is this, here, to speak of the fine and speak of the coarse?” Because this body-manifestation is “you must first remove self-conceit,” it is not Nāgārjuna; it is the body of all buddhas. Because it expresses, it passes through and beyond the body of all buddhas. Therefore it is not bound up with the side of buddha. Though there is the empty brightness that is “the shape like” the full moon of buddha-nature, it is not a lining-up of round-moon forms. Still less is the functioning sound and form. Body-manifestation is not the physical body either; it is not the aggregates, sense-fields and elements. Though it closely resembles the aggregates, sense-fields and elements, it is expressing; it is the body of all buddhas. This is the aggregate of expounding the dharma; it “has no form of its own.”

When “having no form of its own” is, further, formless samādhi, it is body-manifestation. Though the whole assembly now gazes at the round-moon form, that it is “what our eyes have never seen” is the turning moment of the aggregate of expounding the dharma. It is the not-sound-and-form of “manifesting a body of freedom.” “At once vanishing, at once manifesting” is the stepping forward and stepping back of the disc-form. Exactly at the very time of “again, on the seat, manifesting a body of freedom,” “the whole assembly hears only the sound of the dharma”; it is “not seeing the master’s form.” The venerable one’s rightful heir, the venerable Kāṇadeva, clearly “recognized this” full-moon form, “recognized this” round-moon form, “recognized this” body-manifestation, “recognized this” buddha-nature of all buddhas, “recognized this” body of all buddhas.

Though many entered the room and received the teaching as water poured from vase to vase, none could stand shoulder to shoulder with Deva. Deva was the honored one of the half-seat, the guide of the assembly, the one with whom the whole seat was shared. Deva’s receiving the correct transmission of the treasury of the true dharma eye, the unsurpassed great dharma, was like the venerable Mahākāśyapa’s being head seat at Vulture Peak. Before Nāgārjuna turned the mind, while still in the dharma of the non-Buddhist teachers, there were many disciples, but all of them were sent away. When Nāgārjuna had become a buddha and ancestor, Deva alone, as the rightful heir to whom the dharma was entrusted, received the correct transmission of the great treasury of the dharma eye. This is the single transmission of the unsurpassed buddha way.note

Yet false and presumptuous groups sometimes call themselves “we too are dharma heirs of the great being Nāgārjuna.” The treatises they compose and the doctrines they collect often borrow Nāgārjuna’s hand; they are not Nāgārjuna’s works. This is the crowd of followers who were cast off long ago, confusing humans and gods. Disciples of the Buddha should know, without wavering, that whatever is not transmitted by Deva is not Nāgārjuna’s way. This is true faith reaching it. Yet many receive these works while knowing them to be false. The folly of sentient beings who slander the great prajñā is to be pitied and grieved.

Because they do not know that body-manifestation is buddha-nature, they do not say it. It is not that the ancestors begrudge it. Rather, their eyes and ears are blocked and they cannot see or hear. Body-consciousness has not yet arisen, so they cannot discern it. Gazing at and bowing to the formless samādhi that is “the shape like the full moon,” their eyes have not yet met it intimately. “The meaning of buddha-nature is vast, empty and bright.” So it is that the body-manifestation that expounds buddha-nature is empty brightness; it is vastness. The body-manifestation that is expounding buddha-nature is “expressing the body of all buddhas.” What one buddha, what two buddhas, would not take this expressing as buddha-body?

Buddha-body is body-manifestation. There is a buddha-nature that is body-manifestation. Even the measure of buddhas and the measure of ancestors that speak of and understand the four elements and five aggregates are, on the contrary, a passing moment of body-manifestation. Since it is called the body of all buddhas, the aggregates, sense-fields and elements are like this. All merits are this merit. The merit of buddha exhausts and wraps up this body-manifestation. The coming and going of all limitless, boundless merits is a single passing moment of this body-manifestation. Yet since the master and disciple Nāgārjuna and Deva, those in every quarter of the three countries, in earlier and later ages, who have now and then studied buddha, have never yet spoken as Nāgārjuna and Deva did.note

How many masters of sutras and treatises have stumbled past the way of the buddhas and ancestors! In the land of the Great Song, from long ago, people tried to paint this episode. They could not paint it in the body, paint it in the mind, paint it in the sky, paint it on the wall. Painting it to no purpose with the tip of a brush, they drew on the dharma seat a single disc like a mirror and took it to be Nāgārjuna’s body manifested as the round-moon form. The frost-flowers of several hundred years have already bloomed and fallen, and though it is becoming gold dust in people’s eyes, no one says it is a mistake. How pitiable that all things go astray like this!note

If you understand the body manifested as the round-moon form to be a single disc, it is truly one painted rice-cake. To toy with it like this would be laughable—laughable enough to make one die laughing. How sad that of all the lay people and monastics in the whole land of the Great Song, not a single one has heard or known Nāgārjuna’s words, or penetrated or seen Deva’s way. Still less are they intimate with body-manifestation. They are in the dark about the round moon and have let the full moon wane. This is carelessness in studying the ancients; their longing for the ancients falls short. Old buddhas and new buddhas, meet the true body-manifestation, and do not prize painted rice-cakes.note

Know this: to paint the form of the body manifested as the round-moon form, there must be a body-manifested form on the dharma seat. Raising the eyebrows and blinking the eyes must be upright. The skin, flesh, bones and marrow, the treasury of the true dharma eye, must sit immovably. Breaking into a smile must be transmitted, because this is becoming buddha and becoming ancestor. While this painting is not yet the moon form, there is no “shape like,” no expounding of the dharma, no sound and form, no functioning. If you seek body-manifestation, draw the round-moon form. If you draw the round-moon form, draw the round-moon form, for it is the body manifested as the round-moon form. When you would paint the round-moon form, draw the full-moon form; manifest the full-moon form.note

Yet they do not paint body-manifestation, do not paint the round moon, do not paint the full-moon form. They do not draw the body of all buddhas, do not embody expressing, do not draw expounding the dharma. To no purpose they draw a single painted rice-cake. What use is it? Look at it sharply: who is there who, right up to now, is “full and not hungry”? The moon is a round shape; roundness is body-manifestation. When you study roundness, do not study it like a single coin; do not make it resemble a single rice-cake. The body-form is the round-moon body; “the shape like the full moon” is shape. A single coin and a single rice-cake must be studied in roundness.

The guest master burst out laughing, but in the laughter there was no blade; it could not break the painted rice-cake. Then, while the guest master and I went to the relic hall, the six excellent sites and so on, I raised it several times, but it never rose even to a doubt. Of the monks who offered a word of their own accord, most were all wrong. I said, “Let me ask the abbot.” At that time the abbot was the priest Daguang. The guest master said, “That one has no nostrils and could not answer. How would he know?” So I did not ask old Guang. Though I spoke this way, brother Gui could not understand it, and none of the skin-bags who heard it had anything to say. The heads of gruel and rice, earlier and later, saw the painting without finding it strange, and did not correct it.note

Again, a dharma that cannot be painted should not be painted at all. If it is to be painted, it should be painted upright. Yet body-manifestation as the round-moon form has never once been painted. In general, because people do not wake from the view that buddha-nature is our present thinking, knowing, recollecting and perceiving, they seem to have lost the thread for penetrating both the words “have buddha-nature” and the words “no buddha-nature.” Those who learn that it must be spoken are rare.

Know that this negligence comes from abandonment. Among the heads of gruel and rice in every quarter there are even those who have ended their whole lives without ever speaking the words “buddha-nature.” Some say that those who listen to the teachings discuss buddha-nature, but the cloud-robed monks who practice Zen should not speak of it. People like this are truly beasts. What band of demons is this, trying to mingle with and defile the way of our buddha, the thus-come one? Is there such a thing as “listening to the teachings” in the buddha way? Is there such a thing as “practicing Zen” in the buddha way? Know that there has never yet been any such thing as “listening to the teachings” or “practicing Zen” in the buddha way.