Now is the time
to apply effort toward the Path
every moment, without your mind wavering
or your attention faltering. Catch sight of it right where
you are. When you reach the point where not a single
thought is born and before and after are cut off,
you will suddenly penetrate through
to freedom.
Things fundamentally
have no origin and presently have
no extinction; there is no more to speak.
As soon as you speak, this is origination;
and if you don’t speak, this
is extinction.
The essence of awareness,
complete and clear, is a formless body.
Don’t mistake far and near based on intellectual opinion.
When thoughts differ, you’re blind to the substance
of the mysteries. When mind diverges,
you’re not neighbor to
the Way.
When subjectively
discriminating myriad things,
you get submerged in the objects before you.
When conscious awareness is fragmented,
you lose the basic reality.
If you understand
such expressions with complete
clarity, you’ll wind up unburdened,
as you were before.
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.”
The Ultimate Path is not
one-sided, the Final Truth is not biased.
We must not seize upon the views of just one
of these approaches. We must understand
them as one and make them all
perfect and wondrous.
In essence,
if you are confined to one
of them, they are all wrong; if you
reconcile them, they are all correct.
Forget sentiments and return
to the ocean of
wisdom.
Records of the Teachers and Students of the Lanka