Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 12

Someone asked a monk: "Do you wish to be reborn in the West?" He answered: "I do not. What I wish for instead is to wear the green robe of office in my next life, with a wife and a concubine to share my household — this is my own paradise." The questioner fell silent. He later told me of this, and I said: each person has his own aspirations; if his aspiration is wealth and rank, why would he wish for the West at all?

And yet, though wealth and rank are hardly a fitting goal for a practitioner of the Way, even these require the cultivation of ordinary worldly merit to obtain. Should he fail to cultivate such merit, he may not even become a minor official, but instead a mere servant in green livery; he may not marry a virtuous woman from a fine family, but instead take an ordinary commoner's daughter as his wife through the proper six rites.

Nor is even that certain. Should he have accumulated bad karma, he may not even qualify to become a servant, but instead fall among the ranks of some mere bird or beast — who can say? He may not even manage to marry a commoner's daughter, but instead find himself dwelling among the grooms, fish-keepers, and cooks who serve others — who can say?

Nor is even that certain. Should his karma be heavier still, that bird's golden plumage might transform instead into the red-hot copper sheeting of hell — who can say? Those grooms, fish-keepers, and cooks might transform instead into the very demons who torment the damned — who can say? How sorrowful!

Another monk was asked the same question: "Do you wish to be reborn in the West?" He answered: "I neither wish it, nor do I not wish it. If a buddha is in the east, I go east; if a buddha is in the west, I go west; and the same for south, north, above, and below. Why should I fix myself on the West alone?"

Yet another monk was asked: "Do you wish to be reborn in the West?" He answered: "Should the eight great vajra-guardians carry me toward the east, I would not go; should the four heavenly kings carry me toward the west, I would not go either. What, then, do I know of 'east' or 'west' at all?"

Considering these together: the first man was one sunk contentedly in the five turbidities; these two, one relies on rebirth wherever karma leads, the other claims to be beyond birth altogether. And yet, to say one "relies on rebirth wherever karma leads" does not necessarily mean one can truly remain master of oneself, unmoved by karmic pull; and to say one is "beyond birth" does not necessarily mean one has genuinely attained the forbearance of the unborn and dwells permanently in the light of quiescence. If one has not truly attained this, such words are nothing but empty talk. And if, beyond that, one still speaks this way without any real attainment at all, this is nothing but shameless boasting. How difficult this all is!

Attendant Ping served Master Taiyang for a very long time, and claimed to have attained genuine realization. And yet later, he was the very first to raise objections against his own teacher, moving Taiyang's memorial pagoda, removing his remains, and subjecting his skull to a brutal act of desecration — and in this present life, his own retribution was to be devoured by a tiger, and after death, to fall into hell. From this we know that his own realization amounted to nothing more than a vague, approximate understanding, one he mistook for genuine attainment and rested content with — how could a truly, thoroughly awakened person ever commit such a monstrous, unfilial act as this? Mistaking shallow understanding for genuine awakening brought disaster to this very extreme — let this serve as a warning.

The Perfected One Ziyang held that even those who have attained the four fruits of the śrāvaka path must, when their own body decays, seize another body and be reborn into it, passing from one dwelling to the next. And so he wrote: "If one masters subduing the dragon and taming the tiger, how could a house built of true gold ever wither away?" Yet the first fruit still requires seven more rounds of birth and death; the second fruit is called "one further return" — these, perhaps, could still be discussed in terms of rebirth into a womb. But the third fruit is already called "no further return"; and as for the fourth fruit, all delusions of view and thought are entirely exhausted, no further rebirth is received at all, and one possesses the three insights and six supernatural powers, bearing the title of arhat — what need, then, could there possibly be for seizing another body at all?

Ziyang's own attainment in the Daoist arts of transcendence was truly extraordinary, and his Understanding Reality and other writings speak extensively on matters of principle and nature — and yet this particular statement suggests he had never studied Buddhist scripture with real thoroughness. Ah! Even a house of true gold merely fails to decay — has he never considered that gold itself is not immune to fire?

When an ordinary person nears death, he leaves words behind to instruct his own descendants, calling this a testament — and his descendants hold fast to it as their own guide, honoring it faithfully across generations without ever changing it. How much more so, then, for the great teacher of the three realms, the compassionate father of all four kinds of birth, who taught the Dharma for forty-nine years, and whose very last testament this is! A monk ought to recite and study it morning and night, receiving it from his own teacher and passing it on to his own disciples, honoring it faithfully his whole life long, never once neglecting it even for a single day. And yet there are those who treat it as though it were a mere primer for children, setting it aside and never once seriously studying it — is this not exactly the conduct of a rebellious child of the Tathāgata, a stubborn, unreformable subject of the Buddha-dharma?