Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 15

Among the ancients devoted to study, there were those who did not so much as glance at their own garden for three years, those who shut their own door and never once crossed the threshold, and those who, receiving a letter from home, seeing only the two characters "all is well," threw it into the water without ever unrolling it further — these come close to what may truly be called single-minded, undivided concentration! And yet monks, who study a teaching that transcends this world entirely, instead allow worldly affairs to disturb their own minds? Seeing this, we ought to feel our own faces burn with shame, and our very bones tremble with real self-warning!

The venerable masters recorded in the Transmission of the Lamp — the six patriarchs in unbroken succession, the flames divided among the five lamp-histories — are all figures of the very first rank across all of history, exactly as it was once said: "only then did I know that beyond Confucius and the Duke of Zhou, there existed heroes of an entirely different order." Is this a title easily earned? And yet people today, having grasped some half-understood insight, or experienced a moment of slight ease and lightness in meditation, immediately consider themselves greatly and thoroughly awakened; and elders lacking real discernment then go on to confirm them with a mere counterfeit seal — one blind man leading a crowd of other blind men, not merely useless but genuinely harmful. How this deserves real lament!

Lord Liu, whose personal name was Kuan, governed his own district using only a reed whip to punish wrongdoing, shaming rather than injuring the offender. His own wife, wishing to test his temper, once had a servant girl deliberately spill soup on his court robes — and he only asked: "Did the soup scald your hand?" — never once growing angry. From these two incidents alone, we know he was truly a bodhisattva among laypeople, a standard most people could never hope to reach.

Consider: those who govern the people today, even using punishments of the harshest severity, still cannot bring their own legal cases to a proper resolution; and yet Lord Liu, using only a reed whip, was able to transform the hearts of his own people through moral example alone — without some vast, numinous power, how could this possibly have been achieved? Consider further: those who command servants today, at the slightest displeasure, immediately resort to punishment; and yet when soup was spilled on Lord Liu's own robes, he responded instead with concern rather than reproach — without some vast power of compassion, how could this possibly have been achieved? And when pressed for time before an urgent audience at court, he could still change his robes calmly, his mind entirely undisturbed — without some vast power of meditative stability, how could this possibly have been achieved?

For a layperson, still dwelling within the burning house of this turbid world, to possess such genuine bearing and such breadth of character, surpasses even thirty years of a monk's own meditation cushion! Seeing this, we ought to feel real shame, and strive all the harder to improve ourselves.

At the beginning of our own dynasty, Layman Shen Shirong, a court attendant in the Hanlin Academy, wrote his own Continuing Treatise on the Origin of Teaching, in which one carefully detailed chapter, "Confucian Scholars Studying Buddhism," assembles Tang and Song gentlemen of note — Bai Xiangshan, Su the Academician, all the way through Chancellor Pei and Vice Minister Yang — and examines the depth of each man's own understanding of Chan with genuine precision and rigor. He writes: "Even men like Pei and Yang cannot be said to have lacked genuine insight — and yet whether they truly sustained and preserved that insight over time remains an open question. For how could anyone dwelling amid the very arena of fame and profit, and not yet a bodhisattva of the fruit stage itself, possibly remain free of subtle, continuously flowing delusion?" Those whose realization has already reached free, unimpeded mastery need not be discussed at all — but as for the rest of us, monks who have left the household life, let us each quietly reflect on exactly where our own practice truly stands.

Among laywomen renowned for their devotion to the Way, I have personally witnessed three: one, a nun surnamed Yan, who practiced pure austerities her whole life long, never once seeking out wealthy or powerful families. One, a laywoman surnamed Zhao, who copied out the entire eighty-one fascicles of the Flower Ornament Sutra by her own hand. One, a laywoman surnamed Zhu, who, in urging her own husband to give up his fishing trade, threw herself into the water.

In this degenerate age, monks and nuns often cultivate ties with prominent families — who among them can match Nun Yan's own lifetime of austere practice? People who solicit donations or copy scripture often obscure cause and effect from their donors — who can match Laywoman Zhao's own self-supported, hand-copied labor? Who would risk her own life to save others, ultimately transforming her own husband's conduct, as Laywoman Zhu did? I would say these three women were truly great men — no, truly great heroes among men.

The burning-mouth food-offering rite originated with Ānanda, and belongs to the esoteric Yoga division of teaching. This Yoga tradition flourished greatly under the Tang masters Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra, who could command spirits and ghosts, move mountains and seas — their spiritual power was truly inconceivable. Within a few generations after them, no one proved capable of inheriting their full tradition, and only the food-offering rite itself survived. Forming the mudra with the hand, reciting the mantra with the mouth, contemplating with the mind — the three actions working in unison is exactly what "yoga" means, and this is no easy thing to accomplish at all. Today, the mudra and mantra are rarely even performed with real precision, let alone the power of genuine contemplation — and so the three fail to unite at all! And when they fail to unite, not only can the rite fail to benefit any being, it may well turn back and harm the very officiant himself instead.

Recently, a wandering monk in the mountains fell gravely ill, and that same evening, while a food-offering rite was being performed elsewhere, he said to the one nursing him: "Some ghosts came to lead me out to join the feast, and I refused to go. A moment later they returned, saying: 'The officiating master lacks real sincerity — we have returned empty-handed, and someone must answer for it.' And so they seized me by the arm to drag me along. The crowd of them carried hooked poles and ropes, saying: 'We mean to drag this officiant down to the ground with us.' I was terrified, and cried out for help, and at once they all scattered." Several days later, the monk died. He must already have been keeping company with these very ghosts even before his own death — had he not cried out, how great the danger to the officiant on the platform that night would truly have been!

And this was not the only such case. One monk, lacking genuine sincerity, was carried by ghosts and nearly drowned in a river; another monk, having lost the key to his own locked chest, kept thinking of that very key, and the ghosts, seeing nothing but iron fragments on top of the offered rice, could not eat it at all; another monk, having left his own felt robe out to dry and unable to bring it in before a sudden rain, kept thinking of that robe, and the ghosts, seeing nothing but animal hair atop the rice, likewise could not eat it — each receiving visible retribution in turn.

And one man who journeyed into the underworld saw, within a dark chamber, several hundred monks, their bodies emaciated, their faces haggard, wearing an expression of unbearable suffering. Asked who they were, it was said they were all masters of the food-offering rite. Performing this rite is truly no easy matter — how true this proves to be!