Entertain thought and
you will enter the demons’ snares.
Entertain no-thought and you
will escape them.
looking for nothing in particular
Looking for
nothing in particular,
wholly without ambition,
good-naturedly doing not doing,
you arrive at the center of yourself
and find the whole universe
waiting there.
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buddha has gotten into your nostrils
Master Ciming said to an assembly, “The body of reality is formless; it manifests forms in response to beings.”
(Dahui holds up his staff.) This is a staff — what is the reality body? Leaving this complication aside, the communal hall and Buddha shrine have gotten into your nostrils, the waters of the four great oceans are on your heads, the dragon kings are under your fingernails — do you feel them?
If you feel them, you go three thousand by day, eight hundred by night, smoke rising under your feet, fire rising on your heads. If you don’t know, eat when hungry, sleep when tired.
(Dahui planted his staff once.)
the first thing is, don’t seek
If you want to attain Intimacy, the first thing is, don’t seek it. If you attain through seeking, you have already fallen into interpretive understanding.
This is especially true because this great treasury extends through all times, clearly evident, empty and bright. Since time without beginning it has been your own basic root: you depend on its power entirely in all your actions.
You will only pass through to freedom when you cease and desist to the point that not even a single thought is born. Then you penetrate through without falling into sense and matter and without dwelling in conceptualizations and mental images.
When you absolutely transcend these, then the whole world does not hide it. Everywhere everything becomes its Great Function, and every single thing flows forth from your own breast. The ancients called this bringing out the family treasure. Once this is attained, it is attained forever. How could it ever be used up?
Just be wary that your investigation does not rest on a firm footing, and that you will not be able to penetrate through to realization. You must bravely cut off all entanglements, so there is not the slightest dependence or reliance. Relinquish your body and give up your life and directly accept the suchness that faces you; there is no other.
Then if if the thousand sages came forth it wouldn’t change you at all. Leaving it to the flow at all times, eating food and wearing clothes, you nurture the embryo of sagehood to maturity, not keeping to intellectual understanding. Isn’t this an especially excellent teaching and a most essential shortcut?
the highest good is like water
The highest
good is like water,
which benefits all things and
contends with none. It flows in low
places that others disdain, and
thus it is close to
the tao.
In living,
choose your ground well.
In thought, stay deep in the heart.
In relationships, be generous.
In speaking, hold to the truth.
In leadership, be organized.
In work, do your best.
In action, be
timely.
If you compete with no one,
no one can compete with you.
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