CHAPTER 18

Someone asked:
"What about the state where 'minds and Mind do not differ?"

The Master said: "At the instant you try to question [me] your mind has already differed, and your nature and form have separated from each other.

"Followers of the Way, make no mistake! All the dharmas of this world and of the worlds beyond are without self-nature. Also, they are without produced nature. There is just the name 'empty,' and the name [empty] is also empty. All you are doing is taking these worthless names to be real. That's all wrong! Even though they do exist, they are nothing but states of dependent transformation, such as the dependent transformations of Bodhi, nirvana, emancipation, the threefold body, the[objective] surroundings and the [subjective] mind, bodhisattvahood, and buddhahood. What are you looking for in these lands of dependent transformations! All of these, up to and including the Three Vehicles' twelve divisions of teachings, are just so much waste paper to wipe off privy filth. The Buddha is just a phantom body, the patriarchs are just old bhiksus.

"But you, weren't you born of a mother? If you seek Buddha, you'll be held in the grip on the Buddha-mara. If you seek the patriarchs, you'll be bound by the ropes of the patriarch-mara. If you engage in any seeking, it will all be pain. Much better do nothing.

"There're a bunch of shavepate bhiksus who say to students: 'Buddha is the Ultimate; he attained Buddhahood only after he came to the fruition of practices carried on through three great asamkhyeya kalpas.' Followers of the Way, if you say that Buddha is the ultimate, how is it that after eighty years of life the Buddha lay down on his side between the twin sala trees at Kusinagara and died? Where is Buddha now! We clearly know that his birth and death were not different from ours.

"You say, 'The thirty-two [primary] features and the eighty [secondary] features indicate a Buddha.' Then must the Cakravartin also be considered a Tathagata? We clearly know these features are illusory transformations. A man of old said:

The Tathagata's various bodily features
Were assumed to accord with worldly feeling.
Lest men conceive annihilist views,
He provisionally provided unreal names.
Temporarily we speak of the 'thirty-two,'
The 'eighty,' also, are but empty sounds.
The mortal body is not the awakened body,
Featurelessness is the true figure.

"You say, 'A buddha has six supernatural powers. This is miraculous!' All the devas, immortals, asuras, and mighty pretas also have supernatural powers-must they be considered buddhas? Followers of the Way, make no mistake! For instance, when Asura fought against Indra and was routed in battle he led his entire throng, to the number of eighty-four thousand, into the tube in a fiber of a lotus root to hide. Wasn't he then a sage? Such supernatural powers as these I have just mentioned are all reward powers or dependent powers. Those are not the six supernatural powers of a Buddha [, which are]: entering the world of color yet not being deluded by color; entering the world of sound yet not being deluded by sound; entering the world of odor yet not being deluded by odor; entering the world of taste yet not being deluded by taste; entering the world of touch yet not being deluded by touch; entering the world of dharmas yet not being deluded by dharmas. Therefore, when the realization has been attained that the six kinds-color, sound, odor, taste, touch, and dharmas-all are empty forms, they cannot bind this man of the Way who is dependent upon nothing. Although he is constituted of the seepage of the five skandhas, he yet has supernatural powers while walking upon the earth.

"Followers of the Way, true Buddha has no figure, true Dharma has no form. All you are doing is fashioning models and creating patterns out of illusory transformations. Anything you may find through seeking will be only a wild fox spirit; it certainly won't be true Buddha. It will be the understanding of a heretic.

"The true student of the Way has nothing to do with Buddhas, nothing to do with Bodhisattvas or Arhats. Nor has he anything to do with what is held to be excellent in the three realms. Having transcended these, in solitary freedom, he is not bound by things. Though heaven and earth were to turn upside down I wouldn't have a doubt; though all the Buddhas of the ten directions were to manifest themselves before me, I wouldn't have any joy; though the three hells were to suddenly yawn at my feet, I wouldn't have any fear. Why is this so? Because as I see it, all dharmas are empty forms; when transformation takes place they are existent, when transformation does not take place they are non-existent. The three realms are mind only, the ten thousand dharmas are consciousness only. Hence:

Illusory dreams, flowers in the sky,
Why trouble to grasp at them!

"Only you, the follower of the way right now before my eyes listening to my discourse, [only you] enter fire and are not burned, enter water and are not drowned, enter the three hells as though strolling in a pleasure garden, entger the realms of the hungry ghosts and the beasts without suffering their fate. How can this be? There are no dharmas to be disliked.

If you love the sacred and hate the secular
You'll float and sink in the birth-and-death sea.
The passions exist dependent on mind:
Have no-mind, and how can they bind you?
Without troubling to discriminate or cling to forms
You'll attain the Way naturally in a moment of time.

"But if you try to get understanding by hurrying along this byway and that, after three asamkhyeya kalpas you'll still end up in the round of birth-and-death. Better take your ease sitting cross-legged on the corner of a mediation chair in a monestary.

Chapter 18 Continued...