Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — First Collection, Part 3

The house rat runs through walls and along roof-beams, creeps along the bed-frame and into chests and boxes — its traces constantly close to people, and yet it flees the moment it senses a shadow or a form; since ancient times, no one has ever managed to tame or grow familiar with one. The tree squirrel, by contrast, makes its country of the mountain crags and its home in the treetops — like a recluse beyond the dust of the world, a subject beyond the reach of any government — and yet people are able to catch one, and once caught, hold it close to their hearts, and it grows as tame and gentle as an infant in its mother's arms.

What could account for this difference? I suspect it comes down to habits carried over from past lives. That house rat may once have been a thief who broke through walls and slipped through holes; that tree squirrel may once have been someone's faithful servant. Both alike are now animals, and yet one is plainly better than the other — a warning that one cannot be too careful in choosing the trade one takes up.

In this age of the Dharma's decline, there are monks who practice calligraphy, practice poetry, practice the polished language of letters — yet all three of these are properly the business of scholar-officials. And scholar-officials themselves have now set these aside in favor of studying Chan! Monks, meanwhile, devote themselves precisely to what scholar-officials have abandoned, while setting aside the one great matter that is properly their own concern — how upside-down can things possibly get!

Venerable and virtuous monks of our own dynasty, from the founding Hongwu era down to the present day, are scarcely to be found. Never mind the Tang and Song — even compared just to the Yuan-dynasty elders Zhongfeng and Tianru, in our own age only Qi Chushi alone might be said to hold his own against them — and how much more so against the truly ancient masters, further back still! Could it be that as the age declines further, karmic obstructions only grow heavier? Even without a King Wen to inspire them, men of real heroic character will still rise — but such people are, in the end, no more than a single moon among the stars. And so people of this degenerate age must neither grow arrogant and look down on the ancient worthies, nor resign themselves to giving up and refusing to become such heroic figures themselves.

There has arisen a rebuttal of Sengzhao's Treatise on the Immutability of Things, which holds that Master Zhao ought not to have grounded "immutability" in the claim that each thing rests fixed in its own position, but should instead have grounded it in the claim that each thing is without any fixed self-nature at all. And those who find this unfair have rebutted the rebuttal in turn. Someone, uncertain which side was right, put the question to me.

I said: those who raised the rebuttal were certainly not arguing from nothing, without any basis at all; and those who rebutted the rebuttal were likewise not simply defending the ancients over the moderns out of bias — each side, in fact, has seen something real. Let me now weigh the matter fairly and reconcile the two. Have you not read Master Zhao's other three treatises — On Emptiness Not Being Real, On Prajñā's Non-Knowing, and On Nameless Nirvāṇa — together with his opening Fundamental Meaning? Without having read these, I think Master Zhao himself, faced with today's rebuttal, would simply have to hang up his mouth on the wall, with nothing to say and no argument to make! But in fact these three treatises expound the meaning of emptiness of self-nature in the most thorough and exhaustive way, and the Fundamental Meaning states outright that dependent origination and emptiness of self-nature are one and the same thing — how could he possibly not have understood what "emptiness of self-nature" means?

The real point of the treatise was this: because ordinary people assume that a thing belonging to the past cannot reach into the present, and so conclude that the past has permanently departed — calling this "the shifting of things" — Master Zhao took up their own words and turned them back on themselves. As if to say: what you call "shifting" is exactly what I call "not shifting." This is what is meant by "returning home by the very road you are already on," or "using a thief to catch a thief" — the position never actually moves, and yet south becomes north; the substance never actually changes, and yet brass becomes gold. It is a piece of supremely skillful, unobstructed argumentative craft. This treatise, then, is not really a straightforward treatise on whether things shift or not — it was written specifically to address the two claims, "the thing of the past" and "the thing of the present." If it had had no such specific occasion, and had simply been composed on its own, it would surely have grounded its entire argument in emptiness of self-nature throughout, exactly like the other three treatises! To turn around now and fault Master Zhao for not understanding emptiness of self-nature — how could he possibly accept that verdict?

And so the treatise's lines — "seeking the thing of the past in the past, it was never, in the past, absent; holding the thing of the present accountable in the present, it has never, in the present, been present" — these words may seem, at first glance, to run against the very meaning of emptiness of self-nature. But in fact: the past thing existed, by virtue of the coming-together of conditions, not as something absent; the present thing does not exist, by virtue of the dispersal of conditions, not as something present. Since dependent origination and emptiness of self-nature are already not two different things, why go to all this trouble arguing over some supposed flaw in Master Zhao's treatise?

Someone might ask: why, then, does the treatise never state this point outright, from beginning to end? I would say: because the statement "dependent origination is no different from emptiness of self-nature" already appears in the Fundamental Meaning, and Master Zhao evidently expected his readers to grasp the connection silently, on their own. Had he known there would one day be a controversy like this one, he would surely have added a line or two at the end of the treatise to make the point explicit — and then how could any rebuttal have arisen at all? Ah! I feel certain Master Zhao himself would nod in agreement with this reading — though I cannot say whether those who raised the original rebuttal will find it convincing.

Yuanwu compiled the Blue Cliff Record, and Miaoxi wanted to travel to Fujian to destroy its printing blocks. Those of shallow understanding then found fault with Yuanwu over this — not realizing that Miaoxi's remark was simply something said in the heat of a particular moment! Xuedou's hundred verses on old cases were, the worthies of old said, the very finest such verse ever composed; and Yuanwu, in being the first to add running commentary to them, was likewise the finest ever to do so — and yet even this remains, in the end, merely "prajñā expressed in words." Fools clung to the text itself, and it was for their sake that Miaoxi spoke as he did — to smash the students' own deluded clinging, not to smash the Blue Cliff Record itself. His talk of "smashing" carries roughly the same force as Yunmen's saying about "striking dead with a single blow."

Understood with real spiritual insight, every inch of the Blue Cliff Record is fragrant sandalwood; clung to and taken literally, the entire printed canon itself could just as well be smashed to pieces. Ah — but this can only be said to someone who already understands!

When Zhang Wujin was about to visit Master Yue, Yue said: "I must drive the awl in deep and make this man feel real pain." Someone warned him that officials of high rank generally like to be flattered and deferred to, and that he risked provoking anger. Master Yue said: "The worst that can happen is that I lose my abbotship." And so he pressed and pushed relentlessly at Wujin without letup, until Wujin, through this, came to genuine awakening.

I would say: that Master Yue possessed the skillful, masterful hand to forge a student in this way needs no further comment on his own worthiness; and that Wujin was willing to humble himself before a spiritual teacher, and to investigate with all his strength, until he finally attained genuine insight — this truly stands as a model for scholar-officials studying the Way.

When ancient venerable masters, true adepts, met one another, the exchanges of question and answer between them sometimes sounded meaningless and without flavor, sometimes startling or perplexing, sometimes almost like cursing or mockery — and yet all of it arose out of genuine investigation and genuine realization, fitting together like water and milk, like a box and its lid, with not one word or phrase wasted or thrown away. When later people, out of ignorance, imitate such exchanges, the karmic offense of speech they incur is no small thing.

Consider the analogy: two people from the same hometown, long separated and meeting again by chance a thousand miles from home, fall into speaking their local dialect, private allusions, and proverbs together. To a bystander listening in, this too sounds meaningless and without flavor, startling or perplexing, almost like cursing or mockery — and yet, in truth, every single word and phrase of it comes straight from the heart, the innermost truth each has to tell the other. The bystander, of course, has no idea what any of it means — but between the two speakers themselves, the understanding fits together as perfectly as water and milk, as a box and its lid.

People today would do far better to hold their tongues in silence, and simply apply their effort to their own root investigation — worrying only about failing to awaken, never about having nothing left to say once awakening comes.

"Living drunk and dying in a dream" is a common saying, and yet it is also, in truth, the highest kind of truth. People of the world fall roughly into two kinds: the poor and lowly, and the rich and eminent. The poor and lowly are, of course, busy from morning to night simply to secure food and clothing; but the rich and eminent are equally busy from morning to night, in their case to enjoy sensual pleasure. What each enjoys differs, but their busyness is exactly the same — busy right up until death, and even then the mind itself is not yet finished. Carrying this same mind forward, it is reborn, and grows busy all over again, and dies all over again — dying and being born, being born and dying, muddled and confused, as if drunk, as if dreaming, through hundreds and thousands of kalpas, with never an end in sight. To stand out clear-eyed and alone awake amid all this — a truly great man ought to be exactly this!

Of a hundred ordinary people who create karma, only one or two do good. Of a hundred who do good, only one or two turn toward the Way. Of a hundred who turn toward the Way, only one or two persevere steadily and long. Of a hundred who persevere steadily and long, only one or two persevere steadfastly still further, and longer still, all the way to bodhi, with a mind that never turns back. Only these last may truly be called a "genuine person of the Way." How difficult it is!

Someone said: "Does not Laozi's Scripture of Clarity and Stillness say, 'observing emptiness is itself empty, and even emptiness has nothing left to be emptied' — and is this not the very meaning of the Śūraṅgama's 'emptiness of the very emptying, exhausted'?"

I would say: the Śūraṅgama begins by speaking of the two aspects, movement and stillness, as "utterly clear, and not arising at all." Now, this text you cite is named the Scripture of Clarity and Stillness — meaning the aspect of movement has ceased to arise, but the aspect of stillness has not. If stillness itself has not yet even been emptied, what is there left to say about emptying emptiness itself?

Someone said: "If there truly is a separate transmission outside the teachings, then the whole body of the Buddha's own scriptural teaching becomes so much irrelevant text. But if there truly is no separate transmission outside the teachings, then the Patriarch's long journey west from India was made for nothing."

I would say: there truly is a separate transmission outside the teachings, and there truly is no separate transmission outside the teachings, both at once. Does the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment not say: "The sutras are like a finger pointing at the moon"? The finger is not the moon — one may say the moon exists apart from the finger; and yet the moon lies exactly in the direction the finger points — one may equally say there is no moon apart from what the finger indicates. To cling to the finger as if it were the moon, and claim there is no other moon at all, is simply foolish. To turn away from what the finger indicates, and go searching for some "moon" somewhere else entirely, is simply reckless. To grasp this with genuine clarity depends, in the end, entirely on the person.

The Śūraṅgama Sūtra says: "When a single person manifests truth and returns to the source, the empty space of the ten directions entirely dissolves and vanishes." Meanwhile the Doctrine of the Mean takes the state before joy, anger, sorrow, and delight have arisen as "the Mean," and then goes on to say: "Once the Mean is fully realized, heaven and earth find their proper places." Those fond of reconciling Confucianism and Buddhism claim that this "Mean" is the same as the Buddhist "true source." And yet: returning to the source dissolves the entire world, while fully realizing the Mean establishes the entire world — how can the same cause produce such utterly opposite effects?

The truth is that joy, anger, sorrow, and delight belong to the mental sense-faculty — the sixth consciousness, and nothing more. To halt only the sixth consciousness from operating still leaves the seventh, manas, and the eighth, the storehouse consciousness, entirely untouched — it is as if a great wave has subsided while the small ripples remain. One has not yet returned to the source at all — how, then, could empty space possibly dissolve and vanish?

In ancient times, when a student and teacher first met, the moment the student had entered through the gate, the two of them would take up this one great matter and investigate it together. Today, when people gather, their idle talk is for the most part all worldly chatter — even a journey of a thousand miles brings no occasion for genuine spiritual inquiry. How distant that ancient manner of practice now seems — never to be recovered again! Alas!

The King of Chu lost his bow, and his attendants wanted to search for it. The King said: "A man of Chu lost the bow, and a man of Chu will find it — why bother searching?" Confucius, hearing of this, remarked: "A pity his generosity was not broader still. Why did he not simply say: a man lost the bow, and a man will find it — why must it be a man of Chu?" How magnificent! The King of Chu already possessed a heart as vast as the ocean, and yet Confucius's own capacity was vaster still, as vast as heaven and earth.

And yet — Confucius was, in this remark, speaking only in terms set by the King's own words, and had not yet said everything there was to say. Why? Because he, too, had not yet let go of his attachment to the bow itself. Take it a step further: whether the King loses the bow or not, the King remains exactly the King he was — nothing is lost. Suppose the King recovers the bow: the King remains exactly the King he was — nothing is gained either. And yet even this is not enough, for one still has not let go of attachment to the "self." Take it further still: seek for this so-called "self," and it cannot be found at all — how, then, could one go on seeking the so-called bow, or the man, or Chu itself?

On the tenth day of the first month of the xinchou year [1601], I went, as customary, to bathe, and lost my footing in the boiling water — scalded from heel to thigh. The treatment that followed was mishandled, and it took more than two months before I recovered. Though I underwent every kind of suffering, in the midst of that suffering I came to see clearly the faults of my ordinary daily life, and felt great shame, and gave rise to the bodhi-mind.

I realized that, in ordinary times, when my body was free of illness — walking and sitting as I pleased, sleeping and rising as I pleased, eating and drinking as I pleased, talking and laughing as I pleased — I had never once recognized this as the great good fortune of a human or heavenly being. I simply enjoyed this good fortune without ever once thinking of the beings of the six realms. And in that very moment when I was enjoying a brief spell of ease, the hell-beings, being crushed and burned and pounded and ground, were undergoing who knows how much suffering; the hungry ghosts, drinking molten copper and eating blood, were undergoing who knows how much suffering; the animals, bearing bit and saddle, cut apart by the knife and boiled in the cauldron, were undergoing who knows how much suffering. And even among those born human: those pressed by hunger and cold, those exhausted by forced labor, those bound by lingering illness, those separated from their families, those punished under the law, those imprisoned, those crushed by unpayable taxes, those who drowned or burned to death, those bitten to death by snakes or mauled by tigers, those who died bearing unjust accusations — their suffering, too, is beyond counting, and I had never once known of it.

From now on, whenever I enjoy even a brief spell of ease, I will think at once of the suffering beings of the six realms, gather in my mind and set my intention right, and vow to attain the fruit of the path swiftly, so as to save all sentient beings universally, that they may all be reborn together in the Pure Land and reach the stage of non-retrogression. To indulge myself even for an instant — how could that possibly repay the Buddha's kindness above, or the faithful donors' generosity below? Let me strive at this!

The Buddha said that a human life lasts no longer than a single breath, and I myself have often used this very saying to warn and spur on the assembly — yet I had never actually experienced it in my own body. Then came my scalding ordeal. Just as I entered the bath, body at ease and mind untroubled, entirely carefree — and then, all at once, I stepped into the boiling cauldron, and very nearly died! That I survived was pure good fortune — the dragon and heavenly guardians saved me. The whole thing took no more than an instant, and yet life and death hung upon that instant. "Life lasts no longer than a breath" — how could this not be exactly, literally true?

From this I came to understand that we monks, in urging others with the Buddha's own teaching, are always most earnest and urgent — but in applying that same teaching to warn ourselves, we grow careless. This is a common failing. Over this I felt deep shame, deep alarm, and resolved to restrain and discipline myself with all my strength.

In ordinary times, when discussing how to practice while sick, I knew well enough Pilindavatsa's teaching of "pure awareness that leaves the body behind"; I knew well enough Great Master Ma's saying about "the one who does not fall ill"; I knew well enough Yongjia's line, "even meeting the wind's blade, ever calm and untroubled; even given poison, still perfectly at ease"; I knew well enough Master Zhao's teaching that "the four elements are fundamentally empty, the five aggregates are fundamentally without existence."

But once my foot had actually plunged into the boiling water, and I checked each of these, one by one, from the very start: the pain was plainly present in my own body — who, then, was the one who had "left the body behind"? I was, at that very moment, actually suffering illness — who, then, was "the one who does not fall ill"? The pain of the scalding cut into my flesh like a blade, like poison — who, then, was "ever calm," "perfectly at ease"? The four elements and five aggregates were, in that moment, quite genuinely my own body, and quite genuinely the source of my suffering — who, then, was "fundamentally empty," "fundamentally without existence"? Only then did I understand: "dry wisdom" — knowledge without the water of genuine realization behind it — is entirely useless when the moment actually comes.

Without real meditative power, one is simply left to submit meekly at death's own gate; and all that so-called "samādhi" spoken only from the mouth is nothing but self-deception. Ah — how can one not strive with all one's might!

I once saw, at a butcher's stall or a tavern, live turtles, eels, shrimp, and crabs thrown into a pot and boiled alive in scalding water, and I would admonish the people there: "Those creatures cannot fight back against you, and are too weak and small even to cry out! If they were a match for you in strength, they would devour you exactly as a tiger or leopard would. And if they could cry out, their screams of anguish and pain would shake the entire universe. Even if you escape retribution for it in this present life, across countless thousands of kalpas to come, those creatures will not let you go. Try it yourself: plunge one arm into boiling water for just a moment, and you will understand exactly what it feels like."

I never expected that this very retribution would one day fall on me. And so I thought it through: from youth to old age, though I myself had not committed this particular karma directly, across countless past lives — since I have not yet attained knowledge of my former existences — how could I possibly be certain I never committed it? And so, without resentment or complaint, I accepted the suffering calmly, and resolved to apply myself all the more diligently to whatever I had not yet attained.

There are those who pride themselves on Chan practice, and habitually say: "Bodhidharma did not establish words and letters — once you see your own nature, that is the end of it." There are those who pride themselves on Buddha-recitation, and habitually say: "All that matters is having real conviction right here and now — why bother with scriptures at all?" If people of either kind speak this way because they have genuinely attained something, there is nothing more to discuss; but there are also those who have truly attained nothing at all and simply say such things carelessly — and these, for the most part, are people who do not understand the teachings and are merely protecting their own shortcomings.

I myself have devoted my whole life to venerating Buddha-recitation, and yet I urge people, earnestly and persistently, to study the teachings as well. Why? Where, after all, does the teaching of Buddha-recitation itself come from? Had it not been proclaimed by the Buddha's own golden mouth, and clearly recorded in the scriptures, how would sentient beings today ever know that, a hundred thousand million buddha-lands beyond our own, there exists an Amitābha Buddha at all?

As for those who pride themselves on Chan, using "a separate transmission outside the teachings" as an excuse — they do not realize that to practice apart from the teachings is a deviant cause, and to awaken apart from the teachings is a deviant understanding. Even granting that your practice genuinely leads to awakening, it must still be verified against the teachings; if it does not accord with the teachings, it is deviant, through and through. This is why students of Confucianism must take the Six Classics and the Four Books as their standard, and students of Buddhism must take the Tripiṭaka and its Twelve Divisions as their model.

In ancient times, only once a person's understanding was complete and their virtue firmly established, fit to serve as a teacher to humans and gods alike, would their recorded sayings be handed down to later generations. Broadly speaking, such records are of two kinds: some are recorded by disciples, such as the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch; others are written by the masters themselves, such as the Extensive Record of Zhongfeng. I am, in truth, an ordinary unenlightened person, unable even to save myself — let those who follow me take care never to write down some passing remark of mine and publish it as a "recorded sayings." Doing so would not only be a matter of unwarranted self-importance; a remark made in passing may also have been spoken for a particular occasion, or tailored to a particular person, and may not represent any final, complete teaching at all — and how much more so when the listener has heard it only carelessly, in passing, before setting it down in ink on paper. I fear this could do real harm, and mislead people.

A sutra says: "When someone slanders me — by the time the second word of the abuse is uttered, the first word is already gone; and when the first word was uttered, the second word had not yet come into being. It is nothing more than air stirred by wind — utterly without substance. If one gives rise to anger over this, then one ought to grow angry, too, at the chattering of magpies or the cawing of crows!" This teaching is truly marvelous.

But someone might object: "Suppose the slander is written down in a letter — then at a single glance, every word stands complete before you, and it persists indefinitely, never disappearing. What method could possibly overcome that?" Have you never considered: the white is merely paper, and the black merely ink — where, exactly, is the "slander" in that? And besides, every single character is only assembled from the characters found in some dictionary or rhyme-book — if you count these black marks on white paper as slander, then a single dictionary left open on your desk would already contain a hundred thousand million slanderous letters, present before you at every moment! How could you possibly be so confused?

Even so, this is still only a provisional remedy. If one truly understands the emptiness of the self, then who, exactly, is left to receive the slander at all?

The world takes illiteracy and ignorance of practical affairs to be foolishness — and this is indeed a kind of foolishness, though not the deepest kind. There are people who have read through libraries of books, with not a single character unfamiliar to them; who have mastered every conceivable skill, with not a single task beyond their ability; who can discourse fluently on the most profound and subtle matters of Chan. And yet, when it comes to the truly essential matter, they remain confused and deluded through and through, and end up mocked by the very people they once dismissed as ignorant. If this is not foolishness within foolishness, what is?

Impermanence strikes swiftly, and makes no distinction between the young and the old. And yet a young person still has an undetermined span of years ahead, and can foolishly hope for a long life; an old person, by contrast, quite certainly has little time left at all. One must settle the great matters of body and worldly affairs properly and in good order, so that whenever impermanence arrives — this morning or this evening, it makes no difference — one can simply let go and depart, with nothing left binding one down. This is the single most crucial task of one's later years. Do not neglect it! Do not neglect it!

In studying the sutras, one must read broadly and comprehensively before one can achieve genuine synthesis, without falling into one-sided attachment. This is because the sutras sometimes affirm and establish a teaching in one place, and sweep it away and negate it in another; establish it here, and sweep it away there — adapting always to the moment and to the capacity of the listener, with no single fixed method.

Suppose a person reads only the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, and sees there that Mahāsthāmaprāpta's method of Buddha-recitation is not the one chosen for our world as the gateway to perfect penetration — and then, without going on to read broadly among the various sutras praising the Pure Land, concludes that the Buddha-recitation method is simply not worth honoring! Or suppose a person reads only Bodhidharma's remark to Emperor Wu of Liang, and sees there that merit does not lie in performing good works — and then, without going on to read broadly among the many sutras on the six perfections and the myriad practices, concludes that all conditioned works of merit may simply be discarded! Turn it around, and the same error appears: clinging to the Pure Land teaching in order to attack Chan, or clinging to conditioned practice in order to attack the unconditioned — these come to exactly the same thing.

It is like a doctor who has not read broadly in medicine: seeing only that cinnamon bark and aconite are used to treat cold conditions, he condemns scutellaria and coptis outright; seeing only that ginseng and astragalus are used to treat deficiency conditions, he condemns immature bitter orange and magnolia bark outright — not realizing that scutellaria, coptis, bitter orange, and magnolia bark, too, each have their proper occasion for use, just as cinnamon, aconite, ginseng, and astragalus each have their occasion to be set aside instead. This is why a doctor who clings to a single prescription endangers the physical body, and a student of the sutras who clings to a single teaching endangers the spiritual life. I have often said that the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch should never be handed carelessly to someone without real wisdom — precisely because I fear such a person will cling to that one text and neglect all the rest of the teaching.

When people see someone who disciplines himself and establishes real virtue, gaining a good reputation for it, they often go to great lengths, by every means available, to dig up his faults — this is simple jealousy, a mean-spirited way of behaving. The same happens when people see that someone has written something worthwhile: they go hunting for its faults in exactly the same way. They fail to realize that on hearing of one good deed, or reading one good book, one ought simply to rejoice and offer praise — instead, they try to bury it and destroy it. What kind of heart does that come from?

If the conduct in question really is false, or the book really is heretical, then one should of course state one's judgment plainly and openly, and clearly point out the fault — but even then, one should not go half-praising and half-mocking, bending this way and that to suit one's own convenience.

The ancients said that Fang Xuanling was skilled at planning, and Du Ruhui was skilled at deciding — and truly, planning and deciding must go together; neither can be missing. In my own dealings with things, I have often seen a matter with perfect clarity, and yet failed to carry it through with the necessary resolve — and this has led me into error more than once, which I have often regretted and been pained by ever since.

This is why the Chan tradition prizes compassion and wisdom in equal measure — and both planning and deciding belong, in fact, to the domain of wisdom. To have the capacity to plan without the capacity to decide is exactly my own fault: the ability to see clearly without the ability to carry it through. This, in the end, comes down to wisdom that is shallow rather than deep, one-sided rather than whole. I must strive all the harder!

Two monks met on the road, one a Chan practitioner, the other a practitioner of Buddha-recitation. The Chan monk said: "Fundamentally there is no Buddha, and nothing to recite — I do not even like to hear the single word 'Buddha' spoken." The Buddha-recitation monk said: "In the west there is a Buddha, named Amitābha — recollect the Buddha, recite the Buddha's name, and one will surely see the Buddha." One clung to existence, the other to non-existence, and the argument went on without end.

A young man happened to pass by and overhear them, and said: "What you two gentlemen are saying is nothing but the talk of a plank-carrier — seeing only what is directly in front, never the whole picture." The two monks scolded him: "You are just an ordinary layman — what could you possibly understand of the Dharma?" The young man said: "I am indeed an ordinary man, but I can understand something of the Dharma even from an ordinary man's experience. I am an actor in a theater troupe. On stage, I sometimes play a ruler, sometimes a minister, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes a good person, sometimes a villain. If you go looking for the 'ruler,' the 'minister,' the 'man,' the 'woman,' the 'good,' or the 'villain' as something truly, substantially there, in fact there is nothing there at all; and yet if you say there is nothing there, in fact something is there, on the stage. This 'existence' is existence precisely by virtue of non-existence; this 'non-existence' is non-existence precisely by virtue of existence. Neither existence nor non-existence is really true — only I myself remain, clear and unmoved, constantly present throughout. Once you know this constant 'I' that remains, what is there left to argue about?" The two monks had nothing to say.

While I was ill, someone gave me a painting of the Nine Bends of Wuyi, and I found looking at it a joy. This made me think of an old story: a certain man, gravely and persistently ill, was advised by a friend to gaze at the Wangchuan Painting, and within ten days he had recovered. Yet paintings of the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss are widely circulated, and people pay their respects before them morning and night — why have I never heard of any such miraculous, swift effect as with the Wangchuan Painting?

The reason, surely, is this: the scenery of Wangchuan exists right here in this world, and so is easy to depict; the realm of Ultimate Bliss transcends this world entirely, and is difficult to render in form — so no painting of it can ever achieve the same exquisite, captivating craftsmanship, striking so directly at the heart and eye, as a painting of Wangchuan can. Even the transmission from the Kukkuṭapāda-vihāra monks, and what the Sūtra of the Sixteen Contemplations describes, offer only a rough sketch of that world's outline. In truth, the world of Ultimate Bliss so far surpasses even the heavens of Trāyastriṃśa, Tuṣita, and Nirmāṇarati that those heavens cannot approach even the smallest fraction of it. Were a person able to see it in full detail, it would not merely make one forget the four hundred and four bodily ailments — it would dissolve every one of the eighty-four thousand afflictions of the mind, without remainder. When the ancients spoke of "the spirit dwelling at rest in the Land of Peace and Nurture," or said, "first send the mind home to the Land of Ultimate Bliss" — were these merely empty words?

Before I left the household life, I had only just begun reading Chan texts when I started imitating their language out of my own untrained impressions, writing to a certain abbot in a letter full of reckless, unchecked argument, sweeping this way and that without restraint — the abbot was quite alarmed by it. Some years after I became a monk, I happened to meet that same abbot again at an old hermitage. In the course of our polite exchange of greetings, he noticed that I had become entirely devoted to the Pure Land, with no more talk of Chan at all, and said, startled: "Your understanding used to be so far above the ordinary — why has it become so plain and shallow now?" I laughed and said: "There's a saying: a newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger. Once you truly understand the Dharma, you become afraid — did you know that?" The abbot had no reply.