Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Second Collection, Part 6

Lord Wen's Verses Explaining Chan may truly serve as a mirror for those who study Buddhism without understanding its principles. But his equating "words and conduct that could serve as a model for a hundred generations" with the Buddha's indestructible body, and "unwavering benevolence and righteousness" with the treasury of luminous wisdom, was only a remedy offered for a particular ill of his own time, not a settled, unshakeable truth. To be careful in word and deed, to cultivate benevolence and righteousness, is certainly valuable within the world — but how could this simply be equated with the vajra-indestructible body, the great treasury of spiritual light and supernatural power? How lightly he speaks of it! He also equates the noble man's broad and easy composure with heaven, and the petty man's constant anxious gloom with hell — this is reasonable enough in principle, but it commits the error of clinging to principle while losing sight of actual fact. Can it really be said that stupidity simply is being an ox or a sheep, and violence simply is being a tiger or a leopard, with no actual, literal ox or sheep covered in fur and horns, no actual tiger or leopard with sharp teeth and claws, existing beyond this metaphor at all? I fear that when people see how refined and striking Lord Wen's phrasing is, they will be delighted and believe it deeply — and the resulting harm may be that they come to deny cause and effect altogether, and even consider worldly goodness sufficient in itself, no longer aware that there is a matter still higher to pursue. Then these verses, originally meant to awaken people, would instead mislead them — this cannot go unexplained.

Jingren said of himself: "For twenty years I have not once given rise to a single stray thought." That Jingren was a worthy man is beyond doubt — and yet to go twenty full years without a single stray thought arising is perhaps not so easily attained. Even Yan Hui could manage only three months without departing from benevolence — beyond those three months, a stray thought might well have arisen; even Zhaozhou needed forty years before his practice became "a single seamless whole" — before it became seamless, a stray thought might well have arisen too. Can it really be that a man like Jingren had none at all? Even if the coarse, obvious thoughts were absent, perhaps subtle, fine thoughts still quietly arose and stirred without his own awareness! I do not say this to belittle Jingren — I say it only because I fear settling for too little too soon myself, and offer this as a warning to myself in advance.

A predecessor once said: "Custom moves people along with it — even the worthy and wise cannot entirely escape it." Today, whether it concerns a single robe or hat, a single implement or object, a single word or phrase, whatever one person happens to initiate, the crowd rises up to follow, and this is called fashion. Someone favors solitary retreat, and the crowd rises up to sit in solitary retreat as well; someone favors ritual repentance, and the crowd rises up to perform ritual repentance as well; the crowd rises to recite sutras from memory, rises to chant the Cundī mantra, rises to study phonological tables, rises to set aside commentaries in favor of the bare text alone, rises to hold vegetarian feasts for a hundred and eight thousand monks, rises to study calligraphy, poetry, and the polished prose style of officials and scholars — sweeping through society like wind through grass, with no need for any prior agreement at all. Only genuine, wholehearted, dedicated Chan investigation and Buddha-recitation finds someone to initiate it, and yet no crowd ever rises to follow. What could possibly explain this?

There are those who practice stillness, dwelling alone in a single room, and who find even the slightest human voice an intolerable disturbance. Human voices, perhaps, can be forbidden — but what of crows and magpies clamoring in the courtyard? Crows and magpies, perhaps, can be driven off — but what of tigers and leopards roaring in the forest? Tigers and leopards, perhaps, can be caught by a hunter — but what of the sound of wind, the flow of water, the crash of thunder, the rush of sudden rain? And so it is said: "The foolish try to remove the environment rather than the mind; the wise remove the mind rather than the environment." Wishing to remove the environment, and yet finding the environment can never finally be removed at all, one would never be able to study the Way at all!

Someone might say: "The World-Honored One himself once failed to notice the sound of five hundred passing carts — but this happened within deep meditative absorption, something beyond an ordinary person's reach." And yet consider Gao Feng reading his books, failing to notice a sudden downpour washing away the wheat drying in his courtyard — what meditative state, then, had Gao Feng himself entered? To blame the environment for its lack of stillness, rather than blaming one's own lack of firm resolve, is a genuine error indeed!

The ancients treated New Year's Eve as though it were their own day of death — for the end of a year is, in miniature, exactly like the end of a whole life. This is why Huangbo taught his students, saying: "If you have not yet broken through before this, then when the thirtieth day of the twelfth month finally arrives, I guarantee you will be thrown into utter confusion." If this is so, then attending to the affairs of New Year's Eve starting from New Year's Day itself is not too early at all — attending to the matter of one's own death from the very moment of birth is not too early either. How, then, can one afford to drift along carelessly, aimlessly, unaware as childhood gives way to maturity, maturity to old age, old age to death — and this leaves aside those who never even reach maturity or old age at all, which is all the more profoundly sad!

Tonight is New Year's Eve — each of us ought to feel a real jolt of self-warning, and resolve firmly that we will not squander the coming year exactly as we squandered this one. And yet this phrase "breaking through" must not be taken lightly — it does not mean having read through a few sutras and treatises, nor sitting through a few sticks of incense without moving, nor being able to explain a few of the old masters' recorded exchanges or compose a few verses commenting on old cases, nor being able to trade a few slick, well-rehearsed phrases of Chan repartee. The ancients said: this matter must become as clear as the sudden falling away of a bucket's bottom, as bright as waking from a great dream, with not the slightest thread of doubt remaining — only then can one truly speak of having broken through. Alas! How can we not strive with all our might?