Posts Tagged → dharma

washing dirt in mud

diamonds

 

By even speaking a phrase to you,

I have already doused you with dirty water.

It would be even worse for me to put a twinkle in my eye

and raise my eyebrow to you, or rap on the meditation seat

or hold up a whisk, or demand, “What is this?”

As for shouting and hitting, it’s obvious

that this is just a pile of bones

on level ground.

 

There are also the type

who don’t know good from bad and

ask questions about Buddha and Dharma and Zen

and the Tao. They ask to be helped, they beg to be received,

they seek knowledge and sayings and theories relating to

the Buddhist teaching and to transcending the world

and to accommodating the world. This is washing

dirt in mud and washing mud in dirt —

when will they ever manage

to clear it away?

 

Forget the words and 

embody the meaning.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

 

where can the dust alight?

fabrice dozias

 

The Fifth Ancestor

Daimin Konin wanted to find

his successor. He asked the monks to write

a poem to express their understanding. Jinshu,

the headmonk, wrote the following poem

on the wall in the middle

of the night:

 

Our body is the bodhi tree,
our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully wipe then hour by hour,
and let no dust alight.

 

When Eno saw this

next day, he said to the monk

standing next to him, “I too have a poem.

Since I am illiterate, would you

write it down for me?”

 

There is no bodhi tree,
nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is void,
where can the dust alight?

 

When Konin saw this, he

knew the author had the understanding

he was looking for, and he recognized Eno as

his dharma heir and hence the

Sixth Ancestor.

 

Shunryu Suzuki

branching streams flow in the darkness

 

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

🪷