Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — First Collection, Part 2

Someone asked: "Do ghosts and spirits exist, or do they not?" I said: "They exist." "Should they be revered and served, or should they not?" I said: "Both — and neither." "What do you mean by that?" I said: "Did Confucius not say, 'Revere ghosts and spirits, but keep them at a distance'? That single line settles every twist of the question. The word 'revere' tells you they exist. The word 'distance' tells you to serve them and yet not serve them. Make offerings at the proper season, treat them with due ceremony, and that is all there is to it. To believe in them to excess, and to flatter and court their favor, hoping they will report good and ill fortune, send down blessings, or grant supernatural powers — that is to slide, step by step, into deviant practice. Ah, but there is one class of being that should be revered and yet never kept at a distance: the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Why does no one think of that?"

Hong Juefan held that Su Dongpo's writing and virtue shine brilliantly across the ages, and that he had also penetrated deeply into the Buddha-dharma — yet he could never let go of his attachment to the Daoist arts of immortality, which not only brought him no benefit but in the end contributed to the illness that killed him. If even Dongpo fell into this, how much more should the rest of us be on guard! There are people today who speak with their mouths of the unborn nature of all things, while their hearts still long for immortality; and others who begin by studying the unborn, only to switch before long to the pursuit of immortality instead. This all comes from knowing something without truly knowing it, and seeing something without any settled conviction. A person of the Way must not lose right knowledge and right view even for a single instant.

Master Yuan wrote to Dongpo: "People these days simply fear that you, Zizhan, will become prime minister. Even thirty years of merit, fame, and riches pass before the eyes and come to nothing — why not cut the whole matter off in one decisive stroke?" He also wrote: "Your mind, Zizhan, holds ten thousand volumes, and your brush leaves not a speck of worldly dust on the page — why is it, then, that you have no idea where your own life and death are headed?" With Dongpo's own keen intelligence, and a good friend like this to spur him on, how could he have failed to make daily progress? Officials and scholars today who keep company with monks would do well to take up this same kind of friendship.

A saying goes: "Love the person, and you love even the crow on his roof." This describes love carried to its furthest extreme. But let circumstances suddenly shift and feeling change along with them, and love turns to hatred — hatred piled upon hatred — and where, then, has that former love gone? The reverse, hatred turning to love, works exactly the same way. And so being loved need not bring joy, and being hated need not bring anger: both are like a dream, like flowers seen in empty air — never real to begin with.

In the daytime there are matters one cannot resolve or decide clearly; but sleep through to the fourth or fifth watch of the night, rise, and sit — and suddenly all the rights and wrongs of it become plain of themselves, and every error made during the day shows itself clearly here. From this one comes to know that our failure, up to now, to see our own mind-nature clearly comes entirely from busyness and confusion covering over its original substance. The ancients said: "In stillness, one sees one's true suchness-nature." And again: "When the water of one's nature grows clear and still, the mind's pearl reveals itself." Are these empty words?

In this world, strong vinegar and rich, pure wine grow only finer the longer they are stored away, and this is entirely because they are sealed tight and airtight, letting nothing escape. The ancients said: "Go twenty years without opening your mouth to speak, and afterward even the buddhas will be unable to do anything with you." How profound these words are!

A Song-dynasty Confucian once said: "Reading the entire Avataṃsaka Sūtra is not as good as studying a single Gèn hexagram." Anyone of real intelligence recognizes this remark's error at once, but the mediocre and the dull believe it without a shred of doubt. It opens a door to deviant views and blocks the road to the perfect vehicle — one truly cannot be careless in what one says. Even to claim that reading the entire Yijing is not as good as studying a single Gèn hexagram would already be wrong — how much more so when the comparison is made against the Buddha-dharma! And how much more so still against the Avataṃsaka Sūtra within the Buddha-dharma! The Avataṃsaka contains an immeasurable number of Dharma-gates; every other Mahāyāna sutra is merely one gate among the Avataṃsaka's immeasurable gates. The Avataṃsaka is like the Son of Heaven; the other Mahāyāna sutras are like enfeoffed lords; the Hīnayāna sutras are like the vassal states of those lords. Everything else follows from this.

Han Xin of Huaiyin helped the Han dynasty destroy Chu, and once he had been made king, he summoned the washerwoman who had once fed him and gave her a thousand pieces of gold; he also summoned the young man who had once humiliated him, and gave that man a thousand pieces of gold as well. Repaying kindness is ordinary human feeling — but to repay a grudge not with revenge but with kindness in return, this can truly be called the bearing of a great man, the manner of a noble and mature gentleman! And yet, in the end, he did not live out his natural span of years, and even a thousand years later, one still clenches one's fist over it in regret. And yet the reason for it is twofold: first, his benevolence exceeded his wisdom; second, having killed so many men in his lifetime, he could not, in the end, escape being killed himself. This is simply how the principle works out, and nothing to be surprised at.

The general Lord Qi habitually recited the Diamond Sūtra. While he was garrisoned at Sanjiang in Yue, a deceased soldier appeared to him in a dream and said: "Tomorrow I will send my wife to see you, my lord, to beg you to recite one scroll of scripture on my behalf, to assist me on the dark path." The next day, sure enough, a woman came weeping and asking to see him. When questioned, her account matched exactly what the soldier had said in the dream. Lord Qi agreed to her request, and rose the next morning to chant the sutra. That night he dreamed of the soldier again, who said: "I am grateful for your great kindness, my lord — but I have received only half a scroll's worth of merit, because in the middle of it two words, 'not needed,' got mixed in." Lord Qi thought back over what could have happened, and realized: his wife had sent a maidservant to bring him tea and cakes while he chanted; seeing her approach from a distance, he had waved her away — and though he said nothing aloud, in his heart the thought had been, "Not needed." The next morning he shut his door fast and chanted the sutra again. That night he dreamed the soldier came to thank him: "I have already been delivered."

I heard this myself from the monk Donglin of Sanjiang, a man of great sincerity and real spiritual attainment, who does not speak falsely. Ah — how can a monk who chants sutras for others afford to be careless!

In the prefecture of Hangzhou, among its many commemorative arches, stands the Dongping Shrine. A poor man of the city died, and appeared to his wife in a dream, saying: "I know you have no means to arrange a proper funeral rite for me. Even if you managed one by every possible expedient, it would not equal simply having the master of the Dongping Shrine offer a single platform of food for the hungry spirits — that alone would be enough." His wife went to the shrine-master to make the request. The master said: "I already have seven engagements to perform Daoist rites at this time — what am I to do? And yet, I would rather turn those seven away and attend to you instead." So he performed the food-offering rite. That night the wife dreamed of her husband, who said: "I have already been delivered."

This shrine-master habitually kept an image of the god Wang Linggong on a low table by his bed, and in front of the image placed a jar: whatever donations he received for performing rites, he never even looked at, but simply dropped straight into the jar, drawing from it as needed, never troubling to calculate whether the amount given was generous or meager. It was this single thought of impartiality that let the departed spirit find deliverance through him. Ah — a single evenly-balanced thought already carries this much power; how much more, then, one whose mind is truly empty! Buddhist disciples ought to take this to heart and strive.

When people face the circumstances of the world's wealth, sensual pleasure, fame, and gain, an analogy may make it clear. Suppose there is a bonfire here, and five things placed near it. The first is like dry grass: the moment it is touched by the fire, it bursts into flame. The second is like wood: it does not ignite instantly, but blow on it a little and it, too, catches fire. The third is like iron: it will not catch fire at all — and yet, given enough heat, it can still be melted. The fourth is like water: not only does it not burn, it can actually put the fire out — and yet, set it in a pot over the flame, and it can still be brought to a boil. The fifth is like empty space: whatever the fire does to it, its own nature remains forever unaffected; it needs no putting-out at all, for the fire will simply burn itself down to nothing on its own. The first is the state of the ordinary unenlightened person; the middle three describe the successive stages of a practitioner's deepening cultivation; only the last is the state actually realized by the buddhas, the great sages.

Removing the obstructions to practice likewise happens in five stages. Consider a person's body wrapped in five layers of clothing: outermost, an iron coat of armor; next, a fur robe; next, a cloth gown; next, a silk shirt; and innermost, against the skin, the lightest possible gauze. To remove them, one must undo them in order, and only once even the lightest gauze has been taken off does one arrive at the body's own bare, original state. A practitioner must first remove the coarse, outer obstructions, and go on removing them layer after layer, until even the most subtle obstructions of fundamental ignorance itself have been entirely cleared away — only then does one arrive at the body's original state, the pure Dharma-body.

A maggot living in a latrine, seen from a dog's or a sheep's point of view, would seem to be suffering unbearably — yet the maggot itself knows nothing of suffering, and even takes it for happiness. Dogs and sheep living on the bare ground, seen from a human point of view, would seem to be suffering unbearably — yet dogs and sheep themselves know nothing of suffering, and even take it for happiness. Human beings living in this turbid world, seen from the point of view of the heavenly beings, would seem to be suffering unbearably — yet human beings themselves know nothing of suffering, and even take it for happiness. Carried to its furthest extension, the happiness and suffering of the heavenly beings themselves works exactly the same way. Once you truly know this, and seek to be reborn in the Pure Land, not even ten thousand oxen pulling together could drag you back!

Two guests were absorbed in a game of go, when someone standing nearby said with a smile: "All I see is two pillars of flesh, twitching." The players asked: "What do you mean by that?" He said: "Your two bodies are present, gentlemen, but your spirits have already departed — your consciousness has been lodged inside those black and white stones for quite some time now. What is it, facing each other here, if not two pillars of flesh?" The two players had nothing to say.

Dhyāna, in Chinese, means "cultivation through contemplation" — hence the term "monk of contemplative meditation," which shows how highly contemplation is valued. Yet a sutra also says: "One who still has a contemplating mind can never enter the great ocean of the Tathāgata's nirvana," and again: "This Dharma cannot be reached by thought or discriminative analysis" — which points instead to contemplation's fault. Why is this? Because contemplation is of two kinds: right contemplation and wrong contemplation. Contemplation without discriminating thought is right contemplation; contemplation with discriminating thought is wrong contemplation. Contemplation is also of two further kinds: contemplating inward from without — turning away from the dust of the senses to unite with awareness; and contemplating outward from within — turning away from awareness to unite with the dust of the senses. For one who contemplates outward from within, thinking and thinking and thinking again, thought never comes to an end, and truth only grows more distant. For one who contemplates inward from without, thinking and thinking and thinking again, thought comes to its end, and one returns to the source. To pass, by way of contemplation, into no-contemplation — this is exactly like the practitioner of Buddha-recitation who passes, by way of recitation, into no-recitation.

When I first left the household life, an elderly monk at Chatang Monastery on Mount Gaoting invited me to a vegetarian feast in honor of his birthday. At the time there was a Chan practitioner at Daling, a northerner, honest and blunt without a trace of flattery, who looked at me and said: "Did he invite you for the sake of the Dharma, or out of mere social obligation? I suspect he values you chiefly out of social obligation — why go at all?" I was deeply ashamed.

There was also a fellow practitioner named Guming, who once said to me: "It would be best if you never came out to head a monastery." I told him of my own long-standing wish — to remain, my whole life, a student still on the path, continually forging myself. Guming laughed and said: "You will have your day of coming out to lead one nonetheless — there's no escaping it."

Thinking of it now, I can never find friends like these two again, and I have felt a lingering sorrow over it for a long time.

When the autumn examination results were posted, a procession of drums and music passed the gate of a monastery, celebrating a newly successful candidate, and two monks hurried out to watch. The first said: "How wonderful! Isn't this joyous!" The second said: "How wonderful! Isn't this sorrowful!" The first asked why. The second said: "You only know today's drums and music — you don't yet know there will be another set of drums and music, later on." The first monk did not understand, and went on admiring the scene just as before.

What the ancients called a "person of the Way" was someone who took lightly what the world takes seriously, and took seriously what the world takes lightly. What does the world take seriously? Wealth and rank. What does the world take lightly? The cultivation of body and mind. If a person cultivating the Way today weighs these the same way the world does, can such a person still be called a person of the Way?

When I was young, I saw earlier worthies attacking Buddhism, and, taking their preconceived opinion as my own, I too looked down on it with the same shallow understanding, entirely unaware of my own ignorance. Then, by chance, at a sutra shop near an ordination platform, I obtained several scrolls of scripture and read them — and only then was I truly astonished, and sighed: "Had I never read books like these, I would have all but wasted my entire life!"

There are people today who go from youth to middle age to old age to death without ever once laying eyes on a Buddhist sutra — they might be said to stand before a mountain of treasure and never enter it. There is another kind of person who does read the sutras, but only in order to extract phrases for conversation or to lend flourish to their own writing — from youth to middle age to old age to death, never once truly investigating the profound meaning within; they might be said to enter the mountain of treasure and take nothing from it. And there is yet another kind who discuss the sutras, even lecture on them, but do no more than gloss individual characters and paraphrase the text, competing to seem novel or superior — from youth to middle age to old age to death, never once truly practicing what the teaching says; they might be said to have actually taken hold of the treasure, only to turn it over in their hands as a curiosity, admire it, tuck it in a sleeve or a pocket — and then discard it after all.

And yet, even so: once a seed has been planted in the field of consciousness, it will eventually become a seed of the path to buddhahood. This is why the sutras must be read.

Empress Wu, imitating the "human pig" punishment devised by Empress Lü of Han, put Empress Wang and the others to death; before dying, Consort Xiao made a vow that in life after life she herself would be reborn as a cat and Wu as a rat, so that she could seize Wu by the throat and eat her flesh, life after life. To this day the two of them are said to still be reborn among cats and rats, and even after hundreds of thousands of such cycles of revenge, it has still not come to an end.

In the past, when I held a Water-and-Land rite, I felt pity for them and had them included in the deliverance offered — though I feared their mutual enmity ran so deep, and the power of my own deliverance-rite was so shallow, that it could not release them all at once. Cases like this, going back through history, are far from rare. When people today perform good works, they should not shy away from doing as much as they can to help and ferry such beings across.

Someone asked: "Head Monk Tai passed away seated, within the time it takes a stick of incense to burn — yet Jiufeng would not certify his attainment, on the grounds that he had not truly grasped Shishuang's sayings 'rest,' 'cease,' 'become like cold ash and dead wood,' and so on. And the Robe-of-Paper practitioner could come and go between life and death at will — surely he, too, must not have grasped Shishuang's meaning, since Dongshan likewise refused to certify him? Why is that?"

My own view: if the Robe-of-Paper practitioner had truly reached the point where his outbreath was untouched by any external condition and his inbreath dwelt in no realm of the aggregates at all, then his freedom to come and go would be genuine, and he could have walked hand in hand with Dongshan at the Feast of Folly as an equal — how could Tai possibly compare to that? But if he had not actually reached that point, then he was, in the end, no more than a man playing tricks with his own spirit-essence — exactly what the ancients called "the trade of ghosts and spirits." Head Monk Tai, on the other hand, genuinely possessed real meditative power — his one fault lay in the single phrase "clinging to a state of stillness, unable to turn and move beyond it." On this point, the two men's faults were, in fact, equal. Yet the Robe-of-Paper practitioner emptied his mind and went to seek understanding from Dongshan, while Head Monk Tai, in a fit of resolve, simply departed for good — and so lost, of his own accord, the greater benefit he might have gained. "Fullness invites loss; humility receives benefit" — students of Chan ought to know this.

Xueyan asked Gaofeng: first, "In the tumult of the daytime, can you remain master of yourself?" Then: "In your dreams at night, can you remain master of yourself?" And third: "When you are sound asleep, without dreams, where is your true master then?" People today go straight to this third question and try to work it out through discursive guesswork — this is simply wrong. If you cannot even remain master of yourself in the waking day, how can you possibly speak of that final, deepest place at all? Better to apply yourself earnestly at the first question, and work through them in order — there is still time. That said, if someone can awaken directly to the third question, with no doubt remaining, then in the waking day or in dreaming sleep alike, everything will already be perfectly settled — and a person of truly exceptional capacity is, after all, not to be confined by any fixed order of stages.

Layman Pang sank his entire family fortune into the sea. People asked him: "Why not give it away in charity instead?" The layman answered: "Across many lifetimes I have been burdened by the practice of giving — that is exactly why I am sinking it." Foolish people then use this remark as an excuse, hoarding their wealth and refusing to give at all. What they fail to understand is that the layman was releasing those attached to the outward form of giving from their own bondage — he was not saying that giving itself is wrong.

The myriad practices are led by prajñā; once the three wheels — giver, receiver, and gift — are seen as empty and still, what fault could there be even in giving all day long? It is only the ordinary, unenlightened person who clings fixedly to the form of giving — and so the layman's act of sinking his fortune in the sea was itself a giving away of even the name and form of "giving." This may rightly be called the great giving, the true giving, the giving without peer — how, then, could one say the layman did not give?

At the start of our dynasty, Master Konggu wrote the two compilations Favoring Directness and Favoring Principle, discussing the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism at great length, and in the course of it forcefully argued that Master Huian [Zhu Xi] secretly made use of Buddhist teaching while openly attacking it. I myself suspect Huian harbored no such intention — it is more likely simply that his understanding had not yet reached that depth. How do I know this? I recall that in my youth I once read the Categorized Sayings of Master Zhu, in which he says of himself: "Once, sitting in the presence of a certain elder, I heard a monk expound his views, and my heart was delighted by them. Later, when I entered the examination hall, I wrote what I had heard straight into my exam paper. The examiner was so taken with it that I passed. It was only later, when I met Master Yanping, that I came to know there was such a thing as the learning of the sages." From this passage one can see that Huian's engagement with Buddhism amounted to no more than what people today do when they borrow it to embellish their prose — he never actually attained the profound principle of the Dharma. His attacks on Buddhism, then, came from understanding not yet arrived, not from deliberate concealment. Konggu's reproach of him seems, in that light, somewhat excessive.

Heaven and earth bring forth living things for people to eat: every kind of grain, every kind of fruit, every kind of vegetable, every fine delicacy of land and water alike. And people, with their own cleverness and skill, go on to turn these into cakes, pastries, salted preserves, pickled dishes, boiled dishes, roasted dishes — surely this is already abundance enough, ten thousand times over. Why, then, must people go on to kill and eat creatures that share with us the same blood, the same bond between mother and child, the same awareness, the same capacity to feel pain and itch, the same knowledge of life and of death — how could this possibly be reasonable?

People commonly say: "It's only the heart that matters — you don't need to keep a vegetarian diet." Alas! To slaughter a creature's body and feast on its flesh — of all the things in the world called a vicious heart, a cruel heart, a poisonous heart, an evil heart, which could possibly be worse than this? Where, then, is the "good heart" supposed to be in all this? I once wrote an essay, On Refraining from Killing and Releasing Life, to exhort the world, and it has since gone through a good many reprintings by others, not fewer than ten or twenty editions. How wonderful — that in this world there are still such benevolent and noble people to be found!

Establishing a monastic community for the benefit of the assembly is certainly a fine undertaking — but it should only be taken up once one's own affairs are already settled. Otherwise, it may exhaust one's spirit and vitality, or draw one into worldly entanglements, so that those who have not yet attained anything end their lives merely gazing helplessly at the ocean of the task before them, and those who have already attained something abandon their practice halfway through. In restoring Yunqi, every single step I took was forced on me by circumstance, and I never pushed for any of it myself — and even so, my own practice suffered no small loss because of it. How much more so, then, for someone who pursues such a project with their whole heart and strength! I write this down to caution myself, and to tell those who come after.

In this age of the Dharma's decline, one often finds that a monastic's faith falls short of a lay householder's, and a lay man's faith falls short of a lay woman's. Is it any wonder, then, that so many study the Buddha's teaching, and so few actually attain buddhahood?

As Master Zhiyi approached his death, he said: "Had I never led an assembly, I would certainly have achieved purification of all six sense-faculties; but because I sacrificed my own advancement to benefit others, I have attained only the fifth of the five ranks." Nanyue likewise said of himself: "For this same reason I have only reached the Iron-Wheel stage." Though both masters spoke this way out of humility, to instruct others, what they said was also literally true — yet the loss they speak of is not the same kind of loss as ours. Why is this? Because when we sacrifice something in serving others, it is a genuine loss; when these two masters did so, it was a loss that was, in fact, no loss at all.

Let me illustrate: suppose a wealthy household and a poor household both give away money to help the needy — the amount given away may be identical, and yet the poor household grows all the poorer for it, while the wealthy household remains just as wealthy as before. Or again: a ditch and the ocean are both drawn upon for irrigation, yet the ditch runs dry while the sea remains exactly as full as before. Since these two masters lost nothing at all, why should they describe themselves as limited to the fifth rank, or the Iron-Wheel stage? Ah — the whole world attributes sagehood to Confucius, and yet Confucius himself said, "How could I dare to be called a sage?" The whole world attributes the Way to King Wen, and yet King Wen himself said he still looked and had not yet seen the Way. Monks given to spiritual conceit — should they not reflect on this?

Master Xinjian [Wang Yangming] founded the teaching of innate knowing out of the deep attainment of his own learning and insight — not as a banner deliberately raised to build up a following of his own. But those fond of reconciling Confucianism and Buddhism, who claim this "innate knowing" is simply the Buddha's own "true knowing," go too far. Why? The term "innate knowing" originates with Mencius himself. Let me analyze it now using the three-part form of Buddhist logic — thesis, reason, and example: the thesis is "innate knowing"; the reason is that it is known without deliberation; the example is that even a small child knows, without being taught, to love its parents and respect its elders. From this we see that "innate" means good, or excellent — something known spontaneously, not something constructed through effort. But the love and respect thus known has already, for a very long time, been entangled with delusion — how could it possibly be the same as the true, ever-still, ever-illuminating awareness the Buddha speaks of? Between "true" and "innate," a real distinction must be drawn.

The Kongcongzi says: "The mind's vital spirit is called sagehood." Yang Cihu built his entire lifetime of learning on this single line as its foundation — how does this compare to "innate knowing"? Could it, perhaps, accord with the Buddha's own "true knowing"?

I would say: "vital spirit" is in fact a shallower notion even than "innate knowing" — both alike are no more than ripples on the surface of water. How could either be called true knowing? Moreover, taken separately, the two characters 精 [essence] and 神 [spirit] each carry their own meaning; but combined into a single compound term, they refer to nothing more than the deluded consciousness that clings to a sense of self. As a person of old once said: "The root of birth and death across countless kalpas — and the fool mistakes it for his own original face."

Cihu was a Confucian scholar — did he never read Confucius's own words: "Hold on to it and it remains; let it go and it is lost; it comes and goes at no fixed time, and no one knows its direction"? This already goes beyond mere "vital spirit," and beyond "innate knowing" as well! Does this, then, count as the Buddha's own true knowing? I would say: not yet, either. True knowing has no coming or going, no remaining or being lost. "No one knows its direction" comes close — but it still does not capture the whole of it.

Confucius also said: "Without thought, without deliberate action, utterly still and unmoving — and yet, when stirred, it penetrates all the causes and conditions of the world." To extinguish thought and deliberate action, and enter stillness — this is "no one knows its direction." Without that final clause, it would collapse into mere annihilationism; and annihilationism is simply ignorance! "Penetrates all the causes and conditions of the world" — without the three clauses that precede it, this alone would collapse into chaotic, unmoored thought; and chaotic thought is simply deluded knowing! Still, and yet penetrating — this, and only this, is what may be called true knowing.

And yet these words of Confucius were spoken in the context of expounding the Yijing, not in a direct treatise on the mind itself — which is why people have taken them merely as a matter of divination. The truth is that the time had not yet come, the opportunity had not yet ripened, and so Confucius could only let a faint trace of it show through, entrusted to the language of the Yijing, leaving it for people to arrive at the deeper meaning themselves. How extraordinary — how skillfully Confucius spoke of the mind! And how true it is, then, that Confucius was himself the Bodhisattva Rútóng!

If that is so, does reading the Confucian classics alone suffice to resolve the great matter of birth and death — why, then, do we still need the Buddha? I would say: the Buddha expounds wondrous principles exactly like this one throughout the whole of the Tripiṭaka; in the Confucian classics, by contrast, among a thousand and ten thousand words, such a thing appears only once, in passing. It is not that Confucius did not know it — Confucius simply took worldly affairs as his own domain, while Śākyamuni took what transcends the world as his. The underlying mind is not two different things — only the gate through which it is approached differs, and students cannot help but follow whichever gate suits them.

A monk who, in this present life, keeps the precepts and cultivates merit, but whose mind is not yet clear and whose aspiration is weak, and who moreover does not seek rebirth in the Pure Land — such a person, in the next life, will often experience the retribution of wealth and rank, and will often, in turn, be led astray by that very wealth and rank, even to the point of creating karma and falling into lower states. There was an old monk who, hearing me say this, waved his hand and refused to believe it.

I said to him: "Never mind other lifetimes — I have seen this with my own eyes, in this very life. A monk once built a simple thatched hut on the shady side of North Peak, and for ten years gained a considerable reputation for pure practice there. Then, all at once, devoted men and women of faith came to admire him, built him a separate hermitage, and moved him there to live — and this led him straight into decline, so that whatever small gain he had made before was entirely lost. If this can happen in the present life, how much more so in the next!" He asked who this monk was. I said: "It is you yourself, old friend." He fell silent.

Some monks, on seeing a person of high rank and standing, feel envy rise in their hearts and wish to be like him; others, on seeing the same person, feel only contempt and disdain. Both are mistaken. Why? You who envy him — how do you know that his previous life was not one just like your own, a monk of austere practice and accumulated merit? Then why envy him at all? And you who despise him — how do you know that your own austere practice will not, in a future life, make you a person of exactly his kind of rank and office? Then how could you despise him?

We have none of us yet escaped the cycle of birth and death; rich and poor, noble and base, take turns, one after another, like the wheel that draws water from a well, endlessly rising and falling in relation to one another. Thinking this through, how can one's heart not grow chilled with apprehension? One should simply apply oneself diligently to prior cultivation, not wasting a single inch of shadow, hoping to transcend the world entirely — how could there be any leisure left over for envying or despising other people?

Whatever natural gift a person happens to have, he inevitably clings to it and cannot let it go. Someone gifted in poetry and prose, someone gifted in statecraft, someone gifted in commerce, someone gifted in the arts of war, or even someone gifted in calligraphy, painting, the qin, or the game of go — all such people exhaust their spirit, drain their vitality, and use up every ounce of their intelligence and skill in pursuit of that gift; and not a few of them plumb its depths and its subtleties to the very bottom, founding a school of their own that endures, unforgotten, for generations. If such a person could set this gift aside and refuse to use it, and instead turn that same spirit and intelligence and skill toward prajñā, why should he ever worry about failing to accomplish the path? And yet, across the vast expanse of history, among a thousand such people, one scarcely ever finds even one or two who actually do this.