spend your days silencing your mind

silent and still

Once you

merge your tracks

into the stream of zen,

you spend your days silencing

your mind and studying with your

whole being. You realize that this Great Cause

is not obtained from anyone else but is just a matter

of taking up the task boldly and strongly, and making constant

progress. Day by day you shed your delusions, and day by day you

enhance your clarity of mind. Your potential for enlightened perception

is like fine gold that is to be refined hundreds and thousands of times.

What is essential for getting out of the dusts, what is basic for

helping living creatures, is that you must penetrate

through freely in all directions and arrive at

peace and security free from doubt and

attain the stage of great

potential and great

function.

This work

is located precisely in

your own inner actions. It is just

a matter of being in the midst of the interplay

of the myriad causal conditions every day, in the confusion

of the red dusts, amid favorable and adverse circumstances and

gain and loss, appearing and disappearing in their midst,

without being affected and turned around by

them, but on the contrary, being able

to transform them and turn

them around.

…When you

go on grinding and polishing

like this for a long time, you are liberated

right in the midst of birth and death, and you look upon

the world’s useless reputation and ruinous projects as mere dust

in the wind, as a dream, as a magical apparition, as an

optical illusion. Set free, you pass through the

world. Isn’t this what it means to be a

great saint who has emerged from

the dusts of sensory

attachments?

Yuanwu

zen letters

cut off any duality

ashes and snow

Yongjia said,

“Without leaving wherever you are,

there is constant clarity.” No words come closer

to the truth than these. If you start seeking, then we know

that you are unable to see. Just cut off any duality between

“wherever you are” and “constant clarity,” and make

yourself peaceful and serene. Avoid concocting

intellectual understanding and seeking.

As soon as you seek, it is like

grasping at shadows.

Yuanwu

without leaving wherever you are

steady devotion

Yongjia said,

“Without leaving wherever you are,

there is constant clarity.” No words come closer

to the truth than these. If you start seeking, then we know

that you are unable to see. Just cut off any duality between

“wherever you are” and “constant clarity,” and make

yourself peaceful and serene. Avoid concocting

intellectual understanding and seeking.

As soon as you seek, it is like

grasping at shadows.

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷

meet the source on all sides

quiet, still, at home

Those who are determined to practice the Way practice self-awareness and self-understanding twenty-four hours a day. They think of this and focus on this. They know that the one Great Cause is there right where they stand, that it is in sages without being augmented and in ordinary people without being diminished. They know that it stands alone free of senses and sense objects, and that it far transcends material things.

Wayfarers don’t set up fixed locations in anything they do. They are clear and tranquil, with solid concentration, and the myriad transformations never disturb them. They appear in response to conditions and go into action as they encounter events, leaving nothing incomplete.

You should just be empty and quiet, transcending everything. Once the main basis is clear, all obscurities are illuminated. “Ten thousand years — a single thought. A single thought — ten thousand years.” Passing through from the heights to the depths, the great function of the whole potential is in operation. It is like when a strong man flexes his arm: he doesn’t depend on anyone else’s strength. Then the illusory blinders of birth and death vanish forever, and the true essence indestructible as a diamond is all that shows. Once realized, it is realized forever — there is no interruption.

All that the enlightened teachers, ancient and modern, have said and done — the scriptural teachings, the enlightenment stories, the meditation stories, the question-and-answer sessions, all their teaching functions — all of this illuminates this true essence alone.

If you can be free and clear in actual practice for a long time, naturally you will come to meet the Source on all sides and become unified and whole.

Haven’t you seen Fadeng’s verse?

Going into a wild field, not choosing,

Picking up whatever plant comes to hand,

Rootless but finding life,

Apart from the ground but not falling.

Right before your eyes, it has always been there. Facing the situation, why don’t you speak? If you don’t know it in your daily life, where then will you look for it? Better find out.

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷