The Fourfold Scheme, and Seeking Nothing Outside

Giving evening instructions to the assembly, the master said: "Sometimes I take away the person but not the surrounding circumstance; sometimes I take away the circumstance but not the person; sometimes I take away both person and circumstance; sometimes I take away neither." At that time a monk asked: "What is taking away the person but not the circumstance?" The master said: "The warm sun rises and spreads its brocade across the earth; a babe's hanging hair is already white as silk." The monk asked: "What is taking away the circumstance but not the person?" The master said: "The king's command has already gone out through all the world; the general beyond the frontier has cut off every trace of smoke and dust." The monk asked: "What is taking away both person and circumstance together?" The master said: "Bing and Fen have severed all word from each other, each standing alone in its own quarter." The monk asked: "What is taking away neither person nor circumstance?" The master said: "The king ascends his jeweled hall; the old rustic sings his song."

The master then said: "Students of the Buddhadharma today need above all to seek a true and correct understanding. Once you have it, birth and death cannot stain you, and you come and go in complete freedom — you need not seek anything extraordinary, for the extraordinary arrives of itself. Followers of the Way! Every eminent teacher since ancient times has had some way of leading people out. As for what this mountain monk points out, I want only that you not be deceived by others: use it the moment you need it, and hesitate no further. Students today cannot manage this — where does the sickness lie? It lies in not believing in yourselves. If you cannot trust yourselves, you rush about, turned this way and that by every circumstance you meet, exchanged and switched about by ten thousand circumstances, never free. But if you can bring to rest this mind that runs after one thing after another, moment by moment, you will be no different from the patriarchs and buddhas. Do you want to recognize the patriarchs and buddhas? It is simply you, right in front of me, listening to this Dharma. Because the student cannot believe this, he runs after something outside himself. Even if what he sought were found, it would be nothing but words and superior-seeming forms — never the living intent of the patriarchs. Do not make this mistake, Chan worthies: miss this chance now, and you will spin through ten thousand kalpas and a thousand lifetimes in the three realms, dragged off by whatever pleasant circumstance you chase, to be born in the belly of a donkey or an ox. Followers of the Way! As I see it, I am no different from Śākyamuni. Today, in all my various activities, what am I lacking? The spiritual light of the six paths has never once ceased. See it this way, and you are simply a person with nothing to do for the rest of your life.

"Worthies! The three realms have no peace — they are like a burning house; this is no place for you to stay for long. The killer-demon of impermanence arrives in a single instant, choosing neither the noble nor the lowly, neither the old nor the young. If you want to be no different from patriarchs and buddhas, simply stop seeking outside yourself. The pure light in a single thought of your mind is the dharma-body buddha in your own house; the light of non-discrimination in a single thought of your mind is the reward-body buddha in your own house; the light of non-differentiation in a single thought of your mind is the transformation-body buddha in your own house. These three bodies are you yourself, right now, in front of me, listening to this Dharma; only because you do not run after something outside yourself do they have this function at all. The scholars of the sūtras and treatises take these three bodies as the ultimate standard, but as I see it this is not so — these three bodies are mere names and phrases, and also three kinds of reliance. The ancients said: 'The body is established by way of meaning; the land is discussed by way of substance.' The dharma-nature body and the dharma-nature land are clearly known to be nothing but reflections of light. Worthies!

You should recognize that the one who plays with these reflections of light is the very source of all buddhas, and that every single place is where you, followers of the Way, truly belong. It is not your four great elements, this physical body, that can expound or hear the Dharma; not your spleen, stomach, liver, or gallbladder; not empty space either. What is it, then, that expounds and hears the Dharma? It is you yourself, standing vividly clear before me right now, without a single shred of form, solitary and bright — this is what expounds and hears the Dharma. See it this way, and you are no different from patriarchs and buddhas. Only, in every moment, do not let this break off; whatever meets your eye is exactly this. It is only because feeling arises that wisdom becomes obstructed, and thought shifts so that substance seems to differ, that you spin through the three realms and undergo every kind of suffering.

As I see it, there is nothing that is not utterly profound, nothing that is not already liberated. Followers of the Way! The dharma of mind has no form, and runs through all ten directions: in the eye it is called seeing, in the ear it is called hearing, in the nose it smells fragrance, in the mouth it converses, in the hand it grasps, in the foot it walks and runs. Fundamentally it is a single luminous essence, only divided into six harmoniously functioning gates. Once you know that this one mind does not exist as a fixed thing, you are liberated wherever you stand. Why do I put it this way? Only because you, followers of the Way, run after everything without your minds ever coming to rest, and so climb onto the idle devices of the ancients. Followers of the Way, take up my own way of seeing, and cut clean through even the heads of the reward-body and transformation-body buddhas: the bodhisattva whose mind is full at the tenth ground is like a hired hand; one at the stage of Equal or Wondrous Enlightenment wears a cangue and chains; arhats and pratyekabuddhas are like filth in a latrine; bodhi and nirvāṇa are like a hitching post for tethering a donkey. Why is this so? Only because you, followers of the Way, have not penetrated the emptiness of the three incalculable kalpas, and so this obstruction remains. If one is a truly genuine person of the Way, it is never like this: he simply exhausts his old karma as circumstances bring it, puts on his clothes as they come to hand, walks when he needs to walk, sits when he needs to sit, without a single thought that hopes for the fruit of buddhahood. Why is this so? The ancients said: "If you wish to perform deeds in order to seek the Buddha, the Buddha is the great omen of birth and death."

"Worthies! Time is precious. Yet you insist on running about from house to house learning Chan, learning the Way, recognizing names, recognizing phrases, seeking a buddha, seeking a patriarch, seeking a good teacher — do not misjudge your own intent. Followers of the Way! You have only the one set of parents — what more do you seek? Turn the light back upon yourself and look. The ancients said: 'When Yajñadatta thought he had lost his head, it was only in the place where the seeking mind came to rest that there was nothing the matter.' Worthies! You need above all to be ordinary — do not put on airs and postures. There is a type of shave-pated fool who cannot tell good from bad, and who goes about seeing spirits and seeing ghosts, pointing east and gesturing west, delighting in fine weather, delighting in rain. People of this kind will all have to pay their debts one day, swallowing red-hot iron pellets before old King Yama. Sons and daughters of good families, taken in by this kind of wild-fox spirit, go about play-acting strange states — blind fools! — and the day will come when they are asked to pay for the rice they have eaten."

The master gave instructions to the assembly, saying: "Followers of the Way! You must urgently seek a true and correct understanding, and walk boldly across the whole world, so as to avoid being confused and led astray by this kind of spirit-possession. To have nothing to do is to be a person of true worth — only do not manufacture anything further; simply be ordinary. You intend to go seeking outside, from house to house, looking for hands and feet to use — this is already a mistake. You merely intend to seek the Buddha, but "Buddha" is only a name and a phrase. Do you even recognize the one who is doing the running and seeking? The buddhas and patriarchs of the three times and ten directions appear in the world only for the sake of seeking the Dharma; you, followers of the Way, studying here today, likewise study only for the sake of seeking the Dharma. Only once you have attained the Dharma are you truly finished; until then, you spin through the five paths as before. What, then, is the Dharma? The Dharma is the dharma of mind, which has no form, and runs through the ten directions, manifesting its function right before your eyes; but people cannot believe this, and so they go recognizing names and phrases, seeking the meaning of the Buddhadharma inside written words — as far removed from it as heaven from earth. Followers of the Way! When this mountain monk expounds the Dharma, what dharma do I expound? I expound the dharma of the ground of mind, which enters the ordinary and enters the sage, enters the pure and enters the impure, enters the true and enters the conventional. But none of these — the true, the conventional, the ordinary, the sage — can fix a name upon this person; rather, they are quite unable to fix any name upon him at all. Followers of the Way! Seize it and use it at once, without attaching any name to it — call this the mysterious purport. This mountain monk expounds the Dharma differently from everyone else in the world: if Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra themselves came forward, each manifesting a body to ask about the Dharma, the moment either said "I address the master," I would already have taken his measure. This old monk sits here at ease, and whenever another follower of the Way comes to meet me, I have already taken his measure entirely. Why is this so? Simply because my own way of seeing is different: outwardly I do not grasp at the ordinary or the sage, inwardly I do not dwell in any root or foundation — I see all the way through, and am no longer subject to doubt or error."

The master gave instructions to the assembly, saying: "Followers of the Way! In the Buddhadharma there is no place to apply effort — it is simply being ordinary, with nothing to do: relieving yourself, urinating, putting on clothes, eating food, lying down when tired. The foolish laugh at me for saying this, but the wise understand. The ancients said: 'One who makes an effort looking outward is nothing but a foolish, stubborn fellow.' You need only become master of yourself wherever you stand, and every place you stand becomes true; then no circumstance that comes your way can turn you around, and even the habitual tendencies accumulated from the past, even the five deeds of unbroken retribution, become of themselves a great ocean of liberation. Students today altogether fail to recognize the Dharma — they are like a goat nosing about, taking whatever it meets into its mouth, unable to distinguish master from servant, guest from host. People of this kind, entering the Way with a crooked mind, cannot enter wherever there is noise and confusion; called "true home-leavers," they are in fact true householders still at home. Now, one who has truly left home must be able to discern an ordinary, true and correct understanding — discerning Buddha from Māra, the genuine from the false, the ordinary from the sage. Discern this way, and it is called truly leaving home. Fail to discern Māra from Buddha, and it is exactly leaving one household only to enter another — called a being who creates karma, not yet worthy of the name "true home-leaver." Suppose, right now, there were a single Buddha-and-Māra sharing one body, indistinguishable — like water mixed with milk, which only the king goose can drink apart from the water. A follower of the Way with clear eyes strikes down Buddha and Māra alike. If you love the sage and hate the ordinary, you will still float and sink in the sea of birth and death."

Someone asked: "What is Buddha? What is Māra?" The master said: "The place where a single thought of doubt arises in your mind — that is Māra. If you can penetrate the fact that the ten thousand dharmas are unborn, that mind is like an illusion, with not one speck of dust, not one dharma remaining, and that everywhere is already pure — that is Buddha. Yet Buddha and Māra are simply two states, defiled and pure. As I see it, there is no Buddha, no sentient being, no past, no present; whoever attains, attains at once, without passing through any period of time — no cultivation, no realization, no gain, no loss; in every moment there is no other dharma whatsoever. Were there even one dharma surpassing this, I would say it too is like a dream, like a transformation. Everything this mountain monk has said amounts to exactly this. Followers of the Way! The one who, right now, right in front of me, listens to this teaching — solitary, bright, vividly distinct — this person is unobstructed wherever he goes, passes freely through all ten directions, is at ease in the three realms, enters every differentiated circumstance without being turned by any of them, and in a single instant penetrates the entire dharma-realm: meeting a buddha, he speaks of buddha; meeting a patriarch, he speaks of patriarch; meeting an arhat, he speaks of arhat; meeting a hungry ghost, he speaks of hungry ghost. Traveling everywhere, teaching sentient beings, he never once departs from this single thought; wherever he stands he is pure, his light penetrating the ten directions, the ten thousand dharmas all one and the same. Followers of the Way! Only today does the great man come to know that fundamentally there has never been anything the matter — it is only because you cannot believe this that you run about moment after moment, throwing away your own head to go searching for your head, unable of yourselves to come to rest. Like the bodhisattva of the perfect and sudden teaching, who manifests a body entering the dharma-realm and, in the Pure Land, wearies of the ordinary and delights in the sagely — people of this kind still have a mind of taking and rejecting, and have not yet forgotten the distinction between defiled and pure.

"The understanding of the Chan school, however, is not like this at all — it is simply the present moment, with no other time involved whatsoever. Everything this mountain monk says is only medicine matched for the moment to a particular sickness; there is no real, fixed dharma in any of it. See it this way, and this is true home-leaving, worth ten thousand taels of gold spent in a single day. Followers of the Way! Do not go about carelessly having your face stamped with approval by teachers everywhere, saying 'I understand Chan, I understand the Way,' debating as fluently as a river in flood — all of this only creates the karma of hell. If you are a person truly studying the Way, you do not go looking for faults in the world; what matters urgently is to seek a true and correct understanding. Only once you have attained a true and correct view, with understanding perfect and complete, are you at last finished."

Someone asked: "What is a true and correct understanding?" The master said: "You need only enter everywhere — into the ordinary, into the sage, into the defiled, into the pure, into every buddha-land, into Maitreya's tower, into Vairocana's dharma-realm — and everywhere see lands arise, abide, decay, and become empty; buddhas appearing in the world, turning the great wheel of the Dharma, and then entering nirvāṇa, with no appearance of coming or going to be seen anywhere; seeking their birth and death, you will find them ultimately unobtainable, and so you enter the unborn dharma-realm, traveling everywhere, entering the Flower Treasury World. You will see that all dharmas are marked with emptiness, that none of them is a real, fixed thing — there is only the person of no reliance who listens to the Dharma, who is the mother of all buddhas; and so the Buddha is born from no reliance. Awaken to no reliance, and even "Buddha" is nothing to be attained. See it this way, and this is a true and correct understanding. Students fail to grasp this because they cling to names and phrases, obstructed by the very names "ordinary" and "sage," so their eye of the Way is blocked and cannot see clearly. Even the twelve divisions of the teachings are nothing but statements that point things out; students who fail to understand this form their view right on top of these pointing-out phrases, which is nothing but reliance and dependence, falling into cause and effect, never escaping birth and death in the three realms. If you want to be free to leave and stay, to put on and take off birth and death, then recognize right now the person who is listening to this Dharma: without shape, without form, without root, without foundation, without any dwelling place — vividly alive, responding with ten thousand kinds of activity, yet its very functioning is precisely nowhere at all. That is why the more you seek it, the further it recedes, and the more you pursue it, the more it eludes you; hence it is called 'the secret.' Followers of the Way! Do not mistake this dream-and-illusion companion of yours for what is real — sooner or later, it returns to impermanence. What is it you are looking for in this world to serve as liberation? You seek only a mouthful of food, a robe to patch out your days, while what you truly need is to go seeking out a good teacher, not drifting along chasing pleasure out of habit. Time is precious; every thought is impermanent — in its coarse aspect you are pressed by earth, water, fire, and wind; in its subtle aspect you are pressed by the four marks of arising, abiding, changing, and ceasing. Followers of the Way! What you need right now is to recognize the four kinds of formless realm, so as to avoid being tossed about by circumstance."

Someone asked: "What are the four kinds of formless realm?" The master said: "When a single thought of doubt arises in your mind, you are obstructed by earth; when a single thought of craving arises, you are drowned by water; when a single thought of anger arises, you are burned by fire; when a single thought of joy arises, you are blown about by wind. Discern things this way, and you will not be turned by circumstance, but will put circumstance itself to use everywhere — rising in the east and vanishing in the west, rising in the south and vanishing in the north, rising in the center and vanishing at the edge, rising at the edge and vanishing in the center, walking on water as if it were solid ground, walking on solid ground as if it were water. Why can this be so? Because you have penetrated the fact that the four great elements are like a dream, like an illusion. Followers of the Way! You who are listening to the Dharma right now are not something your four great elements are able to make use of. See your own four great elements this way, and you will come and go in complete freedom. As I see it, there is not a single dharma to be rejected. If you love the sage — 'sage' is merely the name of a sage. There is a type of student who goes to Mount Wutai to seek Mañjuśrī — already a mistake, for there is no Mañjuśrī on Mount Wutai. Do you want to recognize Mañjuśrī? It is simply your own activity right in front of you now, never different from beginning to end, doubted nowhere at all — this is the living Mañjuśrī. The light of non-differentiation in a single thought of your mind — that, everywhere, is the true Samantabhadra. Your own mind's ability, in a single thought, to untie its own bonds, liberated wherever it stands — this is Avalokiteśvara. These three act as host and guest for one another: when they appear, they appear all at once; one is three, and three are one. Only once you understand this in this way are you fit to study the scriptures at all."

The master gave instructions to the assembly, saying: "Students of the Way today need above all to trust themselves, and not go seeking outside, climbing up onto every idle speck of dust and circumstance, unable to distinguish the crooked from the correct at all. Even talk of 'there is a patriarch, there is a buddha' is only something within the traces of the teaching. The moment someone raises up a single phrase, whether it emerges veiled or plain, doubt springs up at once — casting about to heaven, casting about to earth, running from house to house asking questions, in a great fluster. A great man should not spend his days merely debating host and thief, right and wrong, form and wealth, and idle chatter. In this place of mine, I make no distinction between monastic and layperson — whoever comes, I recognize him completely, no matter where he comes from; whatever reputation or words of praise he carries are nothing but a dream and an illusion. What I do see is that the person who rides upon circumstance is himself the mysterious purport of all buddhas — a buddha-realm cannot itself proclaim 'I am a buddha-realm'; it is only this very person of no reliance who rides forth upon the circumstance. If someone comes forward and asks me to seek the Buddha, I respond by manifesting the circumstance of purity; asks about the bodhisattva, I respond by manifesting the circumstance of compassion; asks about bodhi, I respond by manifesting the circumstance of pure subtlety; asks about nirvāṇa, I respond by manifesting the circumstance of stillness. The circumstances themselves are ten thousand kinds of difference, but the person is not different at all — hence he responds to things and manifests form, like the moon reflected in water. Followers of the Way! If you want to attain what accords with the Dharma, you must be a great man to do it — go about limp and hesitant, and it cannot be done. A cracked vessel is not fit to hold ghee. One who is truly a great vessel need only refuse to be deceived, becoming master of himself wherever he stands, so that every place he stands becomes true; then whatever comes cannot be accepted by him at all. The instant a single doubt arises in your mind, Māra has entered your heart — just as, when a bodhisattva doubts, the demon of birth and death seizes the opportunity. You need only bring your thoughts to rest, and seek nothing further outside yourself; when something comes, simply illuminate it. Only trust in what is functioning right now — there is not even a single thing besides this to trust in. A single thought of your mind gives rise to the three realms, and, following conditions, is divided by circumstance into the six sense-objects. What is lacking in your own present activity, right now? In a single instant you enter the pure and enter the impure, enter Maitreya's tower and enter the land of the three eyes, traveling everywhere — yet you see only empty names."