the Way is a path for one

If you can refrain from producing a single thought, you’ll be forever freed from birth and death, and will not be bound up by birth and death. You go when you want to go and sit when you want to sit — what further concern is there?

Don’t go crazy; I suggest to you that it would be better to stop and not be obsessed with anything. The moment a thought flashes through your mind, you’re a minion of the devil, an immoral worldling.

Just do not stick to sound and form externally, and do not conceive of subject and object internally. In essential being there is neither ordinary nor holy — what more would you learn? Even if you learn a hundred thousand marvelous doctrines, you’re just a sore-sucking ghost; it’s all mere fascination.

I do not mean to slander him about this, but this is why Buddha spewed out so much spittle of expedient means, to teach you to be free. Don’t search outside. As long as you don’t acquiesce, you want to collect unusual sayings and store them in your chest, so you can talk cleverly, getting by on glibness, hoping to be acknowledged by people as a Chan master, wanting to obtain a position of prominence.

If you entertain such views, someday you’ll go to hell where your tongue will be pulled out.

My perception is not that way. Here I have no Buddha and no Dharma. Bodhidharma was a smelly old foreigner, the bodhisattvas of the tenth stage are dung haulers, the equally and subtly enlightened are immoral worldlings, bodhi and nirvana are donkey-tethering stakes, the twelve-part canonical teachings are ghost tablets, paper for wiping pus from sores, those who have attained the four fruitions, the three ranks of sages, and those from initial inspiration to the tenth stage are ghosts haunting ancient tombs, unable to save even themselves. Buddha was an old foreigner, a piece of crap.

Good people, don’t make the mistake of putting on a garment of sores.

Here I have no doctrine at all to give you to interpret. I don’t understand Chan myself, and I am no teacher. I don’t understand anything at all, I just consume and excrete. What else is there?

I urge you to be free from concerns, promptly stopping your search; don’t learn aberration and madness. Everybody carries around a corpse, traveling, licking up the slaver of the old baldies wherever you go. Imbibing their drivel, you immediately proclaim that you are going into samadhi, cultivating capacities, accumulating good deeds to nurture the embryos of sagehood in hopes of fulfilling the realization of Buddhahood. This radiant void is unobstructed, free: it is not something you can attain by embellishment.

You are people of the present time; don’t seek somewhere else. Even if Bodhidharma were to come here, he would just tell you to be without affectations; he would tell you not to be contrived. Dressing, eating, excreting, there is no more “birth and death” to be feared, and no nirvana to be attained, no enlightenment to be realized. You’re just an ordinary individual, without affectations.

Do you want to know? It’s just a void, with nothing to attain, pure and clear everywhere, radiant with light, thoroughly translucent inside and out. There is no affectation, no dependence, nothing to dwell on. What are you concerned with?

Deshan Xuanjian

treasury of the eye of true teaching

abandoning things is superior

win the world by letting go

Yantou said, “Abandoning things is superior, pursuing things is inferior.” If your own state is empty and tranquil, perfectly illuminated and silently shining, then you will be able to confront whatever circumstances impinge on you with the indestructible sword of wisdom and cut everything off — everything from the myriad entangling objects to the verbal teachings of the past and present. Then your awesome, chilling spirit cuts off everything, and everything retreats of itself without having to be pushed away. Isn’t this what it means to be well endowed and have plenty to spare?

If the basis you establish is not clear, if you are the least bit bogged down in hesitation and doubt, then you will be dragged off by entangling conditions, and obviously you will not be able to separate yourself from them. How can you avoid being turned around by other things? When you are following other things, you will never have any freedom.

The Ultimate Path is simple and easy — it is just a matter of whether you abandon things or pursue them. Those who would experience the Path should think deeply on this.

People in ancient times gave up their whole bodies for the sake of this one matter. They stood out in the snow, worked as rice pounders, sold off their hearts and livers, burned their arms, threw themselves into roaring fires, got dismembered and cut to pieces, fed themselves to tigers and birds of prey, gave away their heads and eyes, endured a thousand kinds of pain and suffering.

In sum, if you do not suffer hardship, you will not arrive at deep realization. Those with the will for the Path must certainly consider the ancients as their comrades and aspire to equal their standard.

Yuanwu

zen letters