The Perfection of Wisdom
般若品第二
The day after his own life story, Huineng turns to teaching directly: what mahā-prajñā-pāramitā actually is, why self-nature is like empty space — vast enough to contain everything, stained by nothing — and why an empty mind sitting in blank silence is not that space at all, only a counterfeit of it. The discourse closes with the first of three Verses of Formlessness that recur across this sūtra, twenty couplets meant to be memorized and lived by, not merely admired.
- This part covers
- The definition of mahā-prajñā-pāramitā; self-nature as vast as empty space, and the warning against mistaking a blank, thought-emptied mind for that vastness; the meanings of prajñā and pāramitā themselves; "the ordinary person is the buddha, affliction is bodhi"; the rain parable distinguishing great and small spiritual faculties; scriptures existing only because of people, and Huineng's own awakening cited as proof; the definition of no-thought; and the first Verse of Formlessness.
- Why it matters
- This chapter is where the sūtra states its central claims about mind and practice directly, in doctrinal language rather than through biography — the source that every later chapter's teaching on self-nature, no-thought, and formlessness draws back on.
1. Purify the Mind, and What "Mahā" Means
次日，韋使君請益。師陞座，告大眾曰：「總淨心念摩訶般若波羅蜜多。」復云：「善知識！菩提般若之智，世人本自有之；只緣心迷，不能自悟，須假大善知識，示導見性。當知愚人智人，佛性本無差別，只緣迷悟不同，所以有愚有智。吾今為說摩訶般若波羅蜜法，使汝等各得智慧。志心諦聽！吾為汝說。善知識！世人終日口念般若，不識自性般若，猶如說食不飽。口但說空，萬劫不得見性，終無有益。善知識！摩訶般若波羅蜜是梵語，此言大智慧到彼岸。此須心行，不在口念。口念心不行，如幻、如化、如露、如電；口念心行，則心口相應，本性是佛，離性無別佛。何名摩訶？ 摩訶是大。心量廣大，猶如虛空，無有邊畔，亦無方圓大小，亦非青黃赤白，亦無上下長短，亦無瞋無喜，無是無非，無善無惡，無有頭尾。諸佛剎土，盡同虛空。世人妙性本空，無有一法可得。自性真空，亦復如是。善知識！莫聞吾說空，便即著空。第一莫著空，若空心靜坐，即著無記空。善知識！世界虛空，能含萬物色像，日月星宿，山河大地，泉源谿澗，草木叢林，惡人善人，惡法善法，天堂地獄，一切大海，須彌諸山，總在空中。世人性空，亦復如是。善知識！自性能含萬法是大，萬法在諸人性中。若見一切人、惡之與善，盡皆不取不捨亦不染著，心如虛空，名之為大，故曰摩訶。善知識！迷人口說，智者心行。又有迷人，空心靜坐，百無所思，自稱為大。此一輩人，不可與語，為邪見故。善知識！心量廣大，遍周法界，用即了了分明，應用便知一切。一切即一，一即一切。去來自由，心體無滯，即是般若。善知識！一切般若智，皆從自性而生，不從外入。莫錯用意，名為真性自用，一真一切真。心量大事，不行小道。口莫終日說空，心中不修此行，恰似凡人自稱國王，終不可得，非吾弟子。
The next day Prefect Wei asked for further teaching. The Master ascended his seat and told the great assembly: "Together, purify your minds and recite mahā-prajñā-pāramitā." He continued: "Good friends! The wisdom of bodhi-prajñā is something people of this world already possess of themselves; it is only because the mind is deluded that they cannot awaken to it by themselves, and must rely on a great good friend to point the way and guide them to see their own nature. You should know that between a foolish person and a wise one, buddha-nature itself is fundamentally no different — it is only because delusion and awakening differ that there comes to be foolishness and wisdom. I will now teach the Dharma of mahā-prajñā-pāramitā, so that each of you may attain wisdom. Listen closely and attentively — I will teach you. "Good friends, people of this world recite the word prajñā all day long, without recognizing the prajñā of their own self-nature — it is like speaking of food without ever being fed. Merely speaking of emptiness with the mouth, you will not see your own nature in ten thousand kalpas — it is of no benefit at all. Good friends, mahā-prajñā-pāramitā is a Sanskrit phrase, meaning in Chinese 'great wisdom that reaches the far shore.' This must be carried out in the mind — it does not lie in reciting with the mouth. To recite with the mouth while the mind does not carry it out is like a phantom, like a transformation, like dew, like lightning; but when the mouth recites and the mind carries it out together, then mind and mouth answer one another — one's own nature is itself the buddha, and apart from this nature there is no other buddha to be found. What is meant by mahā? "Mahā means great. The capacity of the mind is vast and broad, like empty space, without any border or edge, and without square or round, large or small; it is not blue, yellow, red, or white, and it has no above or below, no long or short; it has no anger and no joy, no right and no wrong, no good and no evil, and no beginning or end. The lands of all the buddhas are, every one, the same as empty space. The subtle nature of people is fundamentally empty in just this way, with not a single thing to be found within it — and the true emptiness of self-nature is exactly the same. Good friends, do not, on hearing me speak of emptiness, at once become attached to emptiness. Above all, do not become attached to emptiness — if you empty your mind and sit still, this is only attachment to a blank, indeterminate emptiness. Good friends, the emptiness of the world is able to contain the forms and images of the ten thousand things — the sun, moon, and stars, the mountains, rivers, and the great earth, springs and streams, grasses and forests, wicked people and good people, wicked teachings and good teachings, the heavens and the hells, every ocean, and all the mountains of Sumeru — all of them are contained within that emptiness. The emptiness of people's own nature is exactly the same. Good friends, that self-nature is able to contain the ten thousand things is what makes it great — the ten thousand things exist within every person's own nature. If, seeing all people, whether wicked or good, you neither seize nor reject any of them, and are stained by none of them, so that your mind is like empty space, this is what is called great — and this is why it is called mahā. Good friends, the deluded merely speak of this with their mouths, while the wise carry it out in mind. There are also deluded people who empty their minds and sit still, thinking of nothing at all, and call this greatness — such people are not to be spoken with, for theirs is a mistaken view. Good friends, the capacity of the mind is vast and broad, pervading the entire dharma-realm; when put to use, it is utterly clear, and its application makes everything known at once. All things are one, and one is all things; coming and going freely, the substance of the mind is without hindrance — this is itself prajñā. Good friends, all the wisdom of prajñā arises from self-nature itself, and does not enter from outside. Do not misapply your intent — this is called the true nature putting itself to its own use: one thing true, all things true. The mind's capacity is a great matter, not to be practiced as some small path. Do not speak of emptiness all day with your mouth while failing to cultivate this practice in your mind — this is exactly like an ordinary person who calls himself a king, and can never actually become one. Such a person is no disciple of mine."
Hanshan reads this entire opening as building toward one careful distinction: between true emptiness (真空) and what he calls "blank, indeterminate emptiness" (無記空) — a state that looks identical from the outside, an unmoving mind sitting in silence, but is fundamentally different in kind. True emptiness, on his reading, is defined by its capacity: like space itself, it contains mountains, rivers, and every kind of person and teaching without being altered by any of them. A mind that has simply stopped thinking contains nothing at all, and Hanshan is blunt that this is not the same achievement — "such people are not to be spoken with, for theirs is a mistaken view" is Huineng's own verdict on it, not a minor caveat.
Hanshan also flags a wordplay worth preserving in translation: 大 (great) is the ordinary Chinese word being glossed by the Sanskrit loan mahā, and the passage's real argument is that greatness here means capacity to contain, not size or emptiness of content. Self-nature is called "great" for the same reason space is called great — not because it excludes everything, but because it excludes nothing, and remains itself regardless of what passes through it.
2. Prajñā, Pāramitā, and "The Ordinary Person Is the Buddha"
「善知識！何名般若？般若者，唐言智慧也。一切處所，一切時中，念念不愚，常行智慧，即是般若行。一念愚即般若絕，一念智即般若生。世人愚迷，不見般若，口說般若，心中常愚。常自言：『我修般若。』念念說空，不識真空。般若無形相，智慧心即是。若作如是解，即名般若智。何名波羅蜜？此是西國語，唐言到彼岸，解義離生滅。著境生滅起，如水有波浪，即名為此岸；離境無生滅，如水常通流，即名為彼岸，故號波羅蜜。善知識！迷人口念，當念之時，有妄有非。念念若行，是名真性。悟此法者，是般若法；修此行者，是般若行。不修即凡；一念修行，自身等佛。善知識！凡夫即佛，煩惱即菩提。前念迷即凡夫，後念悟即佛。前念著境即煩惱，後念離境即菩提。 「善知識！摩訶般若波羅蜜，最尊最上最第一，無住無往亦無來，三世諸佛從中出。當用大智慧，打破五蘊煩惱塵勞。如此修行，定成佛道，變三毒為戒定慧。善知識！我此法門，從一般若生八萬四千智慧。何以故？為世人有八萬四千塵勞。若無塵勞，智慧常現，不離自性。悟此法者，即是無念，無憶無著，不起誑妄。用自真如性，以智慧觀照，於一切法不取不捨，即是見性成佛道。善知識！」
"Good friends, what is meant by prajñā? Prajñā, in Chinese, means wisdom. In every place, at every moment, if thought after thought is never foolish, and one constantly practices wisdom, this is itself the practice of prajñā. One foolish thought, and prajñā is cut off; one wise thought, and prajñā arises. People of this world, foolish and deluded, do not see prajñā; they speak of prajñā with their mouths while their minds remain constantly foolish, always saying to themselves, 'I am cultivating prajñā,' speaking of emptiness thought after thought without recognizing true emptiness. Prajñā has no form or mark — the very mind of wisdom is itself prajñā. To understand it in this way is what is called the wisdom of prajñā. "What is meant by pāramitā? This is a word from the western regions, meaning in Chinese 'reaching the far shore,' and its sense is the departure from arising and ceasing. When attached to circumstances, arising and ceasing occur, like water that has waves — this is called the near shore; when free of circumstances, there is no arising and ceasing, like water that flows constantly on — this is called the far shore, and hence it is named pāramitā. Good friends, the deluded merely recite this with their mouths, and at the very moment of reciting there is still falsehood and error present. If it is carried out thought after thought, this is called the true nature. One who awakens to this teaching possesses the Dharma of prajñā; one who cultivates this practice carries out the practice of prajñā. Not to cultivate it is to remain ordinary; with a single thought of true cultivation, one's own person becomes equal to a buddha. Good friends, the ordinary person is the buddha, and affliction is bodhi. The former thought, deluded, is the ordinary person; the latter thought, awakened, is the buddha. The former thought, attached to circumstances, is affliction; the latter thought, free of circumstances, is bodhi. "Good friends, mahā-prajñā-pāramitā is the most honored, the most supreme, the very first — without dwelling, without going, and without coming, the buddhas of the three times all arise from within it. One should use great wisdom to break through the dust and toil of affliction found in the five aggregates. Cultivating in this way, one is certain to accomplish the buddha-path, transforming the three poisons into precept, samādhi, and wisdom. Good friends, this teaching of mine gives rise to eighty-four thousand kinds of wisdom from a single prajñā. Why is this so? Because people of this world have eighty-four thousand kinds of dust and toil. Where there is no dust and toil, wisdom is constantly present, never departing from self-nature. One who awakens to this teaching is thereby without thought, without recollection, without attachment, and gives rise to no falsehood or deceit; using one's own suchness-nature, contemplating with the light of wisdom, one neither seizes nor rejects any single thing — this is itself seeing one's own nature and accomplishing the buddha-path. Good friends!"
Hanshan reads the near-shore-and-far-shore image carefully against a common misreading: pāramitā does not describe two different places, one left behind and one arrived at, but two states of the very same water. Waves and calm, current and stillness, are not different substances — the water attached to wind and obstruction becomes waves, and the same water, once free of what disturbs it, simply flows. This is why he glosses pāramitā's "departure from arising and ceasing" as a change of condition, not a journey — nothing is added to reach the far shore, and nothing is subtracted; only what was obstructing the water's own nature falls away.
On "the ordinary person is the buddha, affliction is bodhi," Hanshan resists any reading that would treat these as consoling generalities. His point is temporal and exact: it is the same mind, one thought later, that turns an ordinary person into a buddha — "the former thought, deluded, is the ordinary person; the latter thought, awakened, is the buddha." Nothing about the person's history, training, or circumstances needs to change between those two thoughts; only the attachment or freedom of the thought itself does. This is the same claim, Hanshan notes, already dramatized once in this sūtra by an illiterate woodcutter who went from splitting firewood to reciting a verse that unseated a monastery's senior teacher inside a single winter — the doctrine and the story are the same event, described twice.
3. The Rain Parable: Great and Small Faculties
若欲入甚深法界及般若三昧者，須修般若行，持誦《金剛般若經》，即得見性。當知此經功德無量無邊，經中分明讚歎，莫能具說。此法門是最上乘，為大智人說，為上根人說。小根小智人聞，心生不信。何以故？譬如大龍下雨於閻浮提，城邑聚落，悉皆漂流如漂棗葉。若雨大海，不增不減。若大乘人，若最上乘人，聞說《金剛經》，心開悟解。故知本性自有般若之智，自用智慧，常觀照故，不假文字。譬如雨水，不從天有，元是龍能興致，令一切眾生、一切草木、有情無情，悉皆蒙潤。百川眾流，却入大海，合為一體。眾生本性般若之智，亦復如是。善知識！小根之人，聞此頓教，猶如草木根性小者，若被大雨，悉皆自倒，不能增長。小根之人，亦復如是。元有般若之智，與大智人更無差別，因何聞法不自開悟？緣邪見障重、煩惱根深。猶如大雲覆蓋於日，不得風吹，日光不現。般若之智亦無大小，為一切眾生自心迷悟不同，迷心外見，修行覓佛；未悟自性，即是小根。若開悟頓教，不能外修，但於自心常起正見，煩惱塵勞常不能染，即是見性。善知識！內外不住，去來自由，能除執心，通達無礙。能修此行，與般若經本無差別。
"If you wish to enter the profoundly deep dharma-realm and the samādhi of prajñā, you must practice the conduct of prajñā and uphold and recite the Diamond Prajñā Sūtra, and you will attain seeing your own nature. You should know that this sūtra's merit is immeasurable and boundless; the sūtra itself praises it clearly, more than can ever be fully told. This teaching is the highest vehicle, spoken for those of great wisdom, spoken for those of the highest faculties. Those of small faculties and small wisdom, hearing it, give rise to disbelief in their hearts. Why is this so? It is like a great dragon sending down rain upon Jambudvīpa — the cities, towns, and villages are all swept away and set adrift like floating jujube leaves; but if that same rain falls upon the ocean, the ocean neither rises nor falls. If a person of the Great Vehicle, or of the very highest vehicle, hears the Diamond Sūtra taught, their mind opens and awakens to understanding. Thus it is known that self-nature already possesses the wisdom of prajñā of itself, and by constantly contemplating with its own wisdom, it has no need to rely on the written word. It is like rainwater, which does not originate in the sky itself but is summoned into being by the dragon, so that every sentient being, every plant and tree, whether possessed of feeling or not, are all alike moistened by it; and the many rivers and streams all flow at last into the ocean, becoming one single body — the prajñā of sentient beings' own fundamental nature is exactly the same. "Good friends, when a person of small faculties hears this sudden teaching, it is like a plant or tree of small root and nature — if struck by a great rain, it is entirely beaten down of itself, and unable to grow any further. A person of small faculties is exactly the same: they already possess the wisdom of prajñā, no different at all from a person of great wisdom — so why, on hearing the teaching, do they not awaken to it themselves? It is because their obstruction of wrong views is heavy and the root of their afflictions runs deep, just as a great cloud covers over the sun, and until the wind blows it away, the sunlight cannot appear. The wisdom of prajñā itself has no large or small — it is only because the minds of all sentient beings differ in delusion and awakening. Those whose minds are deluded and look outward, cultivating practice in search of a buddha elsewhere, and who have not yet awakened to their own self-nature, are exactly what is meant by small faculties. But one who has awakened to the sudden teaching does not cultivate anything outside themselves; simply by constantly giving rise to right view within their own mind, so that the dust and toil of affliction can never stain it, this is itself seeing one's own nature. Good friends, not dwelling within or without, coming and going freely, able to remove the grasping mind, and penetrating everywhere without obstruction — one who can practice in this way is, at root, no different from the Prajñā Sūtra itself."
Huineng's own life story, told one chapter earlier, is the Diamond Sūtra's role in it made concrete: a single overheard line in a marketplace, and later a private exposition ending at the same sūtra's most famous sentence, are what this chapter is now generalizing into doctrine. Hanshan's gloss stays exact on one point that is easy to misread: "small faculties" never means possessing less prajñā — the passage says outright that small-faculty and great-faculty people possess the same wisdom of prajñā "with no difference at all." What differs is the depth of the obstruction covering it, glossed here as a cloud over the sun, elsewhere in this same passage as a shallow root unable to hold against a heavy rain. The rain does not create anything the ocean lacked; it only meets a shallow-rooted plant with more than its roots can hold.
Hanshan reads the parable's final image — countless rivers all flowing into one ocean, becoming a single body — as the passage's real point, easy to miss beneath the more vivid rain-and-drowning image before it. Sentient beings' prajñā-nature is not many different quantities finally added together; it was already one thing, expressed through countless different paths, the way one ocean is fed by countless rivers without ever being more than one ocean to begin with.
4. Scriptures Exist Because of People
「善知識！一切修多羅及諸文字，大小二乘，十二部經，皆因人置。因智慧性，方能建立。若無世人，一切萬法本自不有，故知萬法本自人興。一切經書，因人說有。緣其人中有愚有智，愚為小人，智為大人。愚者問於智人，智者與愚人說法。愚人忽然悟解心開，即與智人無別。善知識！不悟即佛是眾生，一念悟時眾生是佛，故知萬法盡在自心。何不從自心中，頓見真如本性？《菩薩戒經》云：『我本元自性清淨，若識自心見性，皆成佛道。』《淨名經》云：『即時豁然，還得本心。』善知識！我於忍和尚處，一聞言下便悟，頓見真如本性。是以將此教法流行，令學道者頓悟菩提。各自觀心，自見本性。若自不悟，須覓大善知識、解最上乘法者，直示正路。是善知識有大因緣，所謂化導令得見性。一切善法，因善知識能發起故。三世諸佛、十二部經，在人性中本自具有。不能自悟，須求善知識指示方見；若自悟者，不假外求。若一向執謂須他善知識方得解脫者，無有是處。何以故？自心內有知識自悟。若起邪迷、妄念顛倒，外善知識雖有教授，救不可得。若起正真般若觀照，一剎那間，妄念俱滅。若識自性，一悟即至佛地。 善知識！智慧觀照，內外明徹，識自本心。若識本心，即本解脫。若得解脫，即是般若三昧，即是無念。何名無念？若見一切法，心不染著，是為無念。用即遍一切處，亦不著一切處。但淨本心，使六識出六門，於六塵中無染無雜，來去自由，通用無滯，即是般若三昧、自在解脫，名無念行。若百物不思，當令念絕，即是法縛，即名邊見。善知識！悟無念法者，萬法盡通；悟無念法者，見諸佛境界；悟無念法者，至佛地位。」
"Good friends, every sūtra and every piece of writing, the two vehicles great and small, and the twelve divisions of the scriptures, all exist because of people. It is only through the nature of wisdom that they can be established at all. If there were no people in the world, the ten thousand things would not, of themselves, exist at all — and so it is known that the ten thousand things fundamentally arise because of people, and that every scripture exists only because people speak of it as existing. This is because among people there are the foolish and the wise; the foolish are small persons, the wise are great persons. The foolish ask the wise, and the wise teach the Dharma to the foolish; when the foolish person suddenly awakens to understanding and their mind opens, they become no different at all from the wise. Good friends, if unawakened, then the buddha is a sentient being; the moment a single thought awakens, a sentient being is the buddha. Thus it is known that the ten thousand things all lie within one's own mind — why not, from within your own mind, suddenly see your own true suchness-nature directly? The Bodhisattva Precepts Sūtra says, 'My own fundamental self-nature is originally pure; if one recognizes one's own mind and sees one's own nature, all alike accomplish the buddha-path.' The Vimalakīrti Sūtra says, 'In that very instant, one opens wide and regains one's own fundamental mind.' "Good friends, when I was at Venerable Hongren's place, the moment I heard his words, I was awakened, and suddenly saw the true suchness of my own nature directly. It is for this reason that I now spread this teaching abroad, so that students of the Way may suddenly awaken to bodhi — let each of you contemplate your own mind, and see your own nature for yourself. If you cannot awaken by yourself, you must seek out a great good friend, one who understands the teaching of the highest vehicle, to point out the correct path directly. Such a good friend has a great karmic connection with you, for they are able to guide and transform you so that you come to see your own nature; every wholesome teaching is able to arise only because a good friend can call it forth. The buddhas of the three times and the twelve divisions of the scriptures are, from the very beginning, already complete within people's own nature; if you cannot awaken to this by yourself, you must seek a good friend to point it out before you can see it — but if you awaken by yourself, you have no need to seek it from outside at all. If you insist, one-sidedly, that liberation can only be attained by relying on some other good friend, there can be no such thing. Why is this so? Because within your own mind there is already a good friend by which you can awaken yourself. But if wrong views and delusion arise, and false thoughts turn everything upside down, then even though a good friend outside may offer instruction, there is no way to save you. If, instead, true and right contemplation by prajñā arises, then in a single instant every false thought is entirely extinguished; and if you recognize your own self-nature, that single awakening carries you at once to the very ground of buddhahood. "Good friends, contemplating by wisdom, illuminated clearly within and without, you come to recognize your own fundamental mind. If you recognize your own fundamental mind, this is itself the root of liberation. If you attain liberation, this is itself the samādhi of prajñā, and this is itself no-thought. What is meant by no-thought? If, seeing every single thing, the mind is stained by none of them, this is no-thought. Put to use, it pervades every place, and yet is attached to no place at all. Simply purify your own fundamental mind, so that the six consciousnesses, passing out through the six gates, remain, within the six kinds of sense-objects, neither stained nor mixed with them, coming and going freely, functioning everywhere without obstruction — this is itself the samādhi of prajñā, liberation at ease and free, called the practice of no-thought. But if you think of nothing at all, and force every thought to a stop, this is itself a bondage to the Dharma, and is itself called a one-sided view. Good friends, one who awakens to the teaching of no-thought penetrates the ten thousand things entirely; one who awakens to the teaching of no-thought beholds the very realm of every buddha; one who awakens to the teaching of no-thought arrives at the ground of buddhahood itself."
Hanshan reads Huineng's turn to his own case — "when I was at Venerable Hongren's place, the moment I heard his words, I was awakened" — as doing real argumentative work, not offering a personal aside. The chapter has just claimed that every scripture exists only because a person put it there, and that the twelve divisions of the canon are already "complete within people's own nature." Rather than leave that as an abstract claim, Huineng cites the one case in the room no one can dispute: his own transmission, narrated in full one chapter earlier, is the proof exhibit for the doctrine being taught here.
On the definition of no-thought, Hanshan is emphatic that this passage rules out a specific, tempting misunderstanding: no-thought does not mean thinking of nothing. He points to Huineng's own later warning elsewhere in this sūtra that forcing all thought to stop is "a bondage to the Dharma" and, taken to its extreme, indistinguishable from death — a mind stained by nothing is not the same achievement as a mind that has stopped functioning. No-thought, on this reading, describes contact without residue: the six senses still meet their six objects, thought still moves, but nothing sticks — "coming and going freely, functioning everywhere without obstruction." A stone has no thoughts either, Hanshan notes elsewhere, and no one mistakes a stone for an awakened mind.
5. The Verse of Formlessness
「善知識！後代得吾法者，將此頓教法門，於同見同行，發願受持。如事佛故，終身而不退者，定入聖位。然須傳授從上以來默傳分付，不得匿其正法。若不同見同行，在別法中，不得傳付。損彼前人，究竟無益。恐愚人不解，謗此法門，百劫千生，斷佛種性。 善知識！吾有一無相頌，各須誦取，在家出家，但依此修。若不自修，惟記吾言，亦無有益。聽吾頌曰： 「說通及心通， 如日處虛空， 唯傳見性法， 出世破邪宗。 法即無頓漸， 迷悟有遲疾， 只此見性門， 愚人不可悉。 說即雖萬般， 合理還歸一， 煩惱闇宅中， 常須生慧日。 邪來煩惱至， 正來煩惱除， 邪正俱不用， 清淨至無餘。 菩提本自性， 起心即是妄， 淨心在妄中， 但正無三障。 世人若修道， 一切盡不妨， 常自見己過， 與道即相當。 色類自有道， 各不相妨惱， 離道別覓道， 終身不見道。 波波度一生， 到頭還自懊， 欲得見真道， 行正即是道。 自若無道心， 闇行不見道， 若真修道人， 不見世間過。 若見他人非， 自非却是左， 他非我不非， 我非自有過。 但自却非心， 打除煩惱破， 憎愛不關心， 長伸兩脚臥。 欲擬化他人， 自須有方便， 勿令彼有疑， 即是自性現。 佛法在世間， 不離世間覺， 離世覓菩提， 恰如求兔角。 正見名出世， 邪見是世間， 邪正盡打却， 菩提性宛然。 此頌是頓教， 亦名大法船， 迷聞經累劫， 悟則剎那間。」 師復曰：「今於大梵寺說此頓教，普願法界眾生，言下見性成佛。」 時韋使君與官僚道俗，聞師所說，無不省悟。一時作禮，皆歎：「善哉！何期嶺南有佛出世！」
"Good friends, whoever in later generations obtains my Dharma should take up this teaching of the sudden gate, make their vow, and uphold it together with those of the same view and the same practice, serving it as they would serve the Buddha, never retreating from it for the rest of their life — such a one is certain to enter the rank of the sages. But this must always be transmitted in the silent, hand-to-hand manner passed down from the beginning, without ever hiding the true Dharma. If it is not to one of the same view and the same practice, in a different teaching altogether, it must not be transmitted — this would harm the one who came before, and in the end benefit no one at all. I fear that foolish people, failing to understand, would slander this teaching, and so cut off the buddha-seed within themselves for a hundred kalpas and a thousand lifetimes to come. "Good friends, I have a Markless Verse — each of you should learn to recite it. Whether at home or gone forth from home, simply practice according to it. If you do not cultivate it yourself, but only remember my words, this too will be of no benefit at all. Hear my verse: "Mastery in explanation, and mastery in the mind — like the sun set in open space; only this teaching of seeing one's nature transcends the world and breaks every false school. The Dharma itself has no sudden or gradual — only delusion and awakening are slow or swift; only through this very gate of seeing one's own nature can the foolish never fully grasp it. Though what can be said takes ten thousand forms, in principle they all return to one; within the dark house of affliction, one must constantly give rise to the sun of wisdom. When wrong comes, affliction arrives; when right comes, affliction departs; when wrong and right are both set aside entirely, purity reaches its very limit, with nothing left over. Bodhi is fundamentally one's own nature; the moment a thought stirs, it is already false. A pure mind exists even within falseness itself — hold only to what is right, and the three hindrances vanish. If people of this world wish to cultivate the Way, nothing at all stands in the way of it; constantly see your own faults for yourself, and this alone is what fits the Way. Every kind of being has its own way, and none obstructs or troubles any other; to leave the Way and search for some other way is never, in one's whole life, to see the Way at all. Toiling and struggling through an entire life, one comes in the end only to one's own regret; if you wish to see the true Way, simply act rightly — this itself is the Way. If you yourself lack the mind of the Way, you walk in darkness and do not see the Way at all; if you are truly a person who cultivates the Way, you do not even see the faults of the world. If you see the faults of another, your own fault already lies in this very seeing; when another is wrong and I am not, that is well — but when I myself am wrong, then the fault is already my own. Simply cast away this fault-finding mind of your own, and you strike down and break through affliction itself; let neither love nor hatred concern your mind, and stretch out both legs and lie at ease. If you wish to guide and transform another person, you must yourself have some skillful means for it; do not let doubt arise in them, and this itself is self-nature made manifest. The Buddha-dharma exists within the world itself, and is never apart from awakening within the world; to leave the world and search for bodhi elsewhere is exactly like searching for a hare's horns. Right view is called transcending the world; wrong view is called remaining within the world. Strike down both right and wrong entirely, and the nature of bodhi stands revealed, just as it is. This verse is itself the sudden teaching, and is also called the great Dharma-boat; hearing the scriptures while deluded takes kalpa after kalpa, but awakening comes in a single instant." The Master said further: "Today, teaching this sudden gate here at Dafan Temple, I wish only that every being throughout the entire dharma-realm may see their own nature and become a buddha the very moment they hear these words." At that time Prefect Wei, together with his officials and all the monks, nuns, and laypeople, hearing what the Master had taught, were every one of them awakened to understanding. All together they bowed in homage, and praised him, saying: "How excellent! Who could have expected that a buddha would appear in the world here in Lingnan!"
Hanshan traces "mastery in explanation, and mastery in the mind" to a distinction drawn in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra between two kinds of mastery a buddha possesses: fluency in adapting the teaching to whatever a listener's own capacity can receive, and direct mastery of self-nature itself, transmitted mind to mind. Both, the verse says, are "like the sun set in open space" — not because they are equally common, but because both are equally beyond ordinary reach. Hanshan reads this line as a corrective aimed in two directions at once, against those who mistake eloquence for realization and against those who mistake silence for it.
Of the twenty couplets, Hanshan lingers longest on "if you are truly a person who cultivates the Way, you do not even see the faults of the world" — not, he stresses, because a practitioner becomes unable to notice wrongdoing, but because attention that is genuinely turned toward one's own faults has none left over for cataloguing everyone else's. He reads the following couplets on love, hatred, and "fault-finding mind" as the verse's most practical instruction, closer to a daily discipline than to abstract doctrine: the same energy spent adjudicating who is right and who is wrong is, on his account, energy stolen directly from self-examination, and the verse's plainest advice — "stretch out both legs and lie at ease" — is what becomes available the moment that energy is returned.