Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Third Collection, Part 20
Continuing the Third Collection (三筆). A monk with real spiritual promise ends up ruined for lack of a genuine teacher, and a cautionary account of pilgrims drowned taking dangerous shortcuts to Mount Putuo prompts a redirection of devotion inward, toward the cultivation of compassion itself rather than toward risky physical pilgrimage.
86. 師友 — Teachers and Friends
A cautionary account of a monk with genuine spiritual promise who, lacking a real teacher to confirm and correct his own insight, drifted into an unauthorized folk sect — a sober illustration of why seeking out true teachers and companions is essential to genuine practice.
越僧定公，中年出家，破衲乞食，雲行鳥飛，於名利淡如也。苦志力參「天晴日出」四句，忽有省，時無大知識為之鉗鎚，有印之者，心不服，咈然去。嘗謂予曰：「今世僧誰敢印證我者？」因引釋迦如來以作印證。繇是得少為足，認鋀作金，乃崇信羅道，註釋其所作五部六冊等書，遂為時人所呵。向使其得真師勝友，必大有成就。故知尋師訪友之功，學道者之要務。而有因無果，喪失初心，良可歎悼！
A monk from Yue named Ding, who had taken ordination in his middle years, wore a threadbare patched robe, begged for his food, and wandered freely like clouds drifting or birds in flight, entirely indifferent to fame and profit. He labored earnestly at a certain four-line phrase concerning "clear skies and the rising sun," and suddenly experienced an awakening. At the time there was no great teacher present to properly hammer and temper his insight; when someone later offered to confirm it, he was not satisfied in his own heart, and left in displeasure. He once said to me: "In this present age, which monk would dare to confirm my own attainment?" — and so he cited the Buddha Śākyamuni himself as his confirmation.
From this point on, he was satisfied with the little he had gained, mistaking base ore for genuine gold, and eventually came to place his faith in the teachings of Luo Qing, even writing commentaries on Luo's own Five Divisions and Six Volumes — for which he was reproached by his contemporaries. Had he only met a genuine teacher and true spiritual companions, he would surely have achieved something great. From this we may know that seeking out true teachers and true friends is essential work for anyone pursuing the Way. That he had the cause but lost the result, abandoning his own original resolve, is truly a matter for lament and sorrow!
Luo Qing (羅清, 1442–1527) was the genuine historical founder of the Wuwei (Non-Action) folk-Buddhist sect, sometimes called the Luo Teaching, whose "Five Divisions and Six Volumes" of scripture drew a large popular following among Ming-dynasty monks and laypeople alike despite lacking any formal ordination lineage — Zhuhong's account of Monk Ding's drift into this movement, told from firsthand acquaintance ("he once said to me"), gives this entry an unusually personal, eyewitness quality distinct from the more abstract doctrinal cases discussed elsewhere in this collection, and reinforces the same emphasis on proper teacher-student verification already voiced in entry 34's discussion of self-proclaimed enlightenment.
87. 朝海 — Pilgrimage to the Sea
A cautionary account of pilgrims drowned while taking dangerous shortcuts to Mount Putuo prompts Zhuhong to redirect devotion inward, arguing that cultivating Guanyin's own compassion within one's own heart matters more than the physical hazards of pilgrimage itself.
僧俗進香南海，或有不繇四明正路，而別從大洋及鱉子門，蹈不測之險者，颶風作，覆舟，溺死數十百人。嗟乎！不遠數百里、數千里，虔誠而往參謁，寧非好心，寧非善事？而至於失命，則未必其臨終正念，何如也？夫經稱菩薩無剎不現身，則不須遠涉他方；而大慈大悲者，菩薩之所以為菩薩也。但能存菩薩慈悲之心，學菩薩慈悲之行，是不出戶庭，而時時常覲普陀山；不面金容，而刻刻親承觀自在矣！更有投入洪濤，謂之捨身，冀菩薩為接引；及其死也，必發瞋起怨，是反成墮落，豈不哀哉？不特此耳，泰山絕頂亦有「捨身崖」，後賢為之築垣，大書「矜愚」二字，亦無量陰德矣！
Monks and laypeople alike travel to burn incense at Mount Putuo in the Southern Sea; some, instead of taking the proper route through Siming, choose instead to sail the open ocean or through the Turtle Gate strait, courting unpredictable danger — and when a typhoon strikes and ships capsize, dozens or even hundreds drown. Ah! To travel several hundred or several thousand li, sincerely intending to pay homage — how could this not be a good intention, a virtuous act? And yet, when it costs them their lives, who can say whether their final thought at the moment of death remained truly undisturbed?
The sutras themselves teach that the bodhisattva manifests in every single realm without exception — so there is no need at all to travel to some distant place. Great compassion is precisely what makes a bodhisattva a bodhisattva in the first place. If one can simply hold the bodhisattva's own compassionate heart and practice the bodhisattva's own compassionate conduct, then without ever stepping outside one's own door, one pays homage to Mount Putuo at every moment; without ever beholding the golden countenance, one personally attends upon Guanyin in every single instant! And yet there are those who throw themselves into the raging waves, calling this "giving up the body," hoping the bodhisattva will come to receive them — and when death actually comes, they inevitably feel rage and resentment instead, so that the act ends in their own downfall rather than salvation. How tragic! Nor is this only true at Mount Putuo — the summit of Mount Tai also has its own "Body-Relinquishing Cliff," where later sages, out of concern, built a wall and inscribed upon it in large characters the words "Pity for the Foolish" — this too was an act of boundless hidden virtue!
Mount Putuo, off the coast of Zhejiang, was already a major pilgrimage destination sacred to Guanyin by Zhuhong's own lifetime, its reputation as the bodhisattva's manifestation-site dating back to the tenth century; the historical "Body-Relinquishing Cliff" (捨身崖) atop Mount Tai was likewise a real and documented site where pilgrims sometimes leapt to their deaths seeking merit or release, and the walling-off described here — inscribed with the pointed rebuke "Pity for the Foolish" — is independently recorded as an actual Ming-dynasty intervention, giving Zhuhong's closing anecdote the same grounded, historically verifiable texture found in his account of Zhaoqing Temple's ordination platform in entry 79 above.