Posts Tagged → dahui

how can it be taken by force?

one robe, one bowl

 
Having left the Fifth Ancestral Teacher’s place, Hui Neng traveled south for two months, and had reached the Ta Yu Range. He was pursued by the monk Hui Ming, who was originally a general, accompanied by several hundred men, who wanted to seize the robe and bowl (emblematic of succession to the ancestral teachers).

Ming was the first to overtake him. The Sixth Ancestral Teacher threw down the robe and bowl on a rock and said, “This robe signifies faith: how can it be taken by force?” Ming tried to pick up the robe and bowl, but was unable to move them. At that point he said, “I have come for the Dharma, not for the robe.”

The Ancestral Teacher said, “Since you’ve come for the Dharma, you should put to rest all your motivations, and don’t give rise to a single thought, and I will explain for you.” After a silence, he said, “Without thinking of good, and without thinking of evil, at just such a time, which is your original face?”

At these words, Hui Ming was greatly enlightened. He also asked, “Besides the intimate words and meaning that struck home a moment ago, is there any further intimate message?”

The ancestral teacher said, “If it were said to you, it wouldn’t be intimate. If you turn around and reflect, what’s intimate is in you.”

 

Dahui

i don’t know

🪷

 

buddha has gotten into your nostrils

here is what a buddha is

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.)

Dahui

 

what is there to cultivate in space?

nasa

 

Only when you’ve

seen the Way do you practice

the Way — if you don’t see, what do you

practice? The emergence of the Way is like space —

what is there to cultivate in space? Those who practice

the Way by all kinds of contemplation are fire

stirring fire looking for foam. Just observe

the manipulation of the puppets —

when the strings are cut, it

all stops at once.

 

Chan Master Jing

treasury of the eye of true teaching

 

an object of esteem becomes a nest

giuseppe palmisano

 
Haven’t you seen the saying of Master Yantou that whenever you have an object of esteem, it becomes a nest?…

Those who get a taste for the sayings of people of old make extraordinary sayings and wonderful statements into a nest…Those who get a taste for a state of quiescent silence without words or speech make a nest of closing the eyes and sitting in a ghost cave in a mountain of darkness on the other side of the prehistoric Buddhas. Those who get a taste for the goings-on of daily activities make a nest of raising their eyebrows, blinking their eyes, and alerting attention…

If you do not have a strong will and discipline to step back and realize your error, you will imagine what you esteem to be extraordinary, imagine it to be mysterious and marvelous, imagine it to be peace and security, imagine it to be ultimate, imagine it to be liberation.

Those who entertain such imaginations could not be helped even if the Buddha appeared in the world. In the teachings this is called the confusion of ignorance and benightedness. Why? because you are ignorant you cling to error and consider it right. Because you are benighted you remain plunged into what you esteem and cannot budge.

If you do not produce anything in your mind, and are not fixated on anything, then you have no object of esteem. When you have no object of esteem, you naturally have no greed and no dependence on things, independent in the midst of things, with bare-boned strength. 

If you want such accord right now, it is not difficult; just be equanimous in mind, unaffected by anything. What is affectation? Formulating concepts of sentient beings, concepts of Buddha, concepts of the mundane, concepts of the transcendental, concepts of seeking detachment, concepts of seeking enlightened knowledge. Those are all called affectations.

Just concentrate intensely on the brink of arousal, and leap out in one jump — this mind will be clear, independently liberated. Then as soon as you sense this, turn upward, and you will spontaneously be lucid everywhere; it will be evident in everything. 

When you manage to reach such a state, don’t keep taking note of it. If you keep taking note of it, then you’ll have an object of esteem.
 

Dahui

treasury of the eye of true teaching