CHINA
Zen Master Ma-Tsu (馬祖道 Mazu Daoyi 709–788 CE)
Ma-Tsu: Why have you come here ?
Pupil: To seek Buddha.
Ma-Tsu: Why are you ignoring your own treasure-house and walking around outside looking for it ?
Pupil: What is my own treasure-house ?
Ma-Tsu: That which is asking the question is your own treasure-house.
Later, in the kitchen...
Ma-Tsu: What are you doing ?
Pupil: Tending an Ox.
Ma-Tsu: How ?
Pupil: I watch him. When he tries to enter the grass I grab his nostrils and pull him away.
Huang Po (黄檗希运 Huangbo Xiyun 770-850 CE)
Zen Master Huang Po said:
All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn (not in the sense of eternity, for this allows contrast with its opposite; but unborn in the sense that it belongs to no categories admitting of alteration or antithesis) and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces, and comparisons. It is that which you see before you - begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured.
The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it.
They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.
JAPAN
Zen Master Bankei (盤珪永琢 Bankei Yotaku 1622-1693 CE):
I
was still a young man when I came to discover the principle of the Unborn and
its relation to thought. I began to tell others about it. What we call a
"thought" is something that has already fallen one or more removes from the
living reality of the Unborn. If you priests would just live in the Unborn,
there wouldn't be anything for me to tell you about it, and you wouldn't be here
listening to me.
Because of the unbornness and marvelous illuminative power inherent in the
Buddha-mind, it readily reflects all things that come along and transforms
itself into them, thus turning the Buddha-mind into thought. I'm going to tell
those in the lay audience all about this now. As I do, I want the priests to
listen along too.
Not a single one of you people at this meeting is unenlightened. Right now,
you're all sitting before me as Buddhas. Each of you received the Buddha-mind
from your mothers when you were born, and nothing else. This inherited
Buddha-mind is beyond any doubt unborn, with a marvelously bright illuminative
wisdom.
In the Unborn, all things are perfectly resolved. I can give you proof that they
are. While you're facing me listening to me speak like this, if a crow cawed, or
a sparrow chirped, or some other sound occurred somewhere behind you, you would
have no difficulty knowing it was a crow or a sparrow, or whatever, even without
giving a thought to listening to it, because you were listening by means of the
Unborn.
If anyone confirms that this unborn, illuminative wisdom is in fact the
Buddha-mind and straight away lives, as he is, in the Buddha-mind, he becomes at
that moment a living Tathagata, and he remains one for infinite kalpas in the
future. Once he has confirmed it, he lives from then on in the mind of all the
Buddhas, which is the reason the sect I belong to has sometimes been called the
"Buddha-mind" sect.
While you face this way listening to me now, if a sparrow chirps behind you, you
don't mistake it for a crow; you don't mistake the sounds of a bell for that of
a drum, or hear a man's voice and take it for a woman's, or take an adult's
voice for a child's. You hear and distinguish those different sounds, without
making a single mistake, by virtue of the marvelous working of illuminative
wisdom. This is the proof that the Buddha-mind is unborn and wonderfully
illuminating.
None of you could say that you heard the sounds because you had made up your
minds to hear them beforehand. If you did, you wouldn't be telling the truth.
All of you are looking this way intent upon hearing me. You're concentrating
singlemindedly on listening. There's no thought in any of your minds to hear the
sounds or noises that might occur behind you. You are able to hear and
distinguish sounds when they do occur without consciously intending to hear them
because you're listening by means of the unborn Buddha-mind.
When people are firmly convinced that the Budha-mind is unborn and wonderfully
illuminating and live in it, they're living Buddhas and living Tathagatas from
then on. "Buddha" too, is just a name, arising after the fact. It's only the
skin and shell. When you say "Buddha," you're already two or more removes from
the place of the Unborn.
A person of the Unborn is one who dwells at the source of all Buddhas. The
Unborn is the origin of all and the beginning of all. There is no source apart
from the Unborn and no beginning that is before the Unborn. So being unborn
means dwelling at the very source of all Buddhas.
If you live in the Unborn, then there's no longer any need to speak about "nonextinction"
or "undying." It would be a waste of time. So I always talk about the "Unborn,"
never about the "Undying." There can be no death for what was never born, so if
it is unborn, it is obviously undying. There's no need to say it, is there?
You can find the expression"unborn, undying" here and there in Buddha's sutras
and in the recorded sayings of the Zen masters. But there was never until now,
any proof or confirmation given of the Unborn.
When you are unborn, you're at the source of all things. The unborn Buddha-mind
is where the Buddhas of the past all attained their realization and where future
Buddhas will all attain theirs. Although we're now in the Dharma's latter days,
if a single person lives in the Unborn, the right Dharma flourishes in the
world. There's no doubt about it.
Upon confirming yourself in the Unborn, you acquire the ability to see from the
place of that confirmation straight into the hearts of others. The name the Zen
school is sometimes given, the "Clear-eyed" sect, stems from this. There, at the
place of confirmation, the Buddha's Dharma is fully achieved. Once the eye that
can see others as they are opens in you, you can regard yourself as having fully
achieved the Dharma, because wherever you are becomes a place of total
realization. When you reach that place, no matter who you are, you are the true
successor to my Dharma.
A certain priest has said, "All you do is repeat the same things day after day.
You ought to give your listeners a change. Their minds will be more receptive if
you throw in some stories about the Zen masters of the past."
Dull-witted as I am, I think if I put my mind to it, I could probably remember a
couple of anecdotes to tell people. But that would be like feeding them poison.
I don't want to do that.
I never cite the Buddha's words or the words of Zen patriarchs when I teach. All
I do is comment directly on people themselves. That takes care of everything. I
don't have to quote other people. So you won't find me saying anything about
either the "Buddha Dharma" or the "Zen Dharma."
I don't have to, when I can clear everything up for you by commenting directly
on you and your personal concerns right here and now. I've no reason to preach
about "Buddhism" or "Zen."
You're all intelligent people here. It's only your ignorance of the Buddha-mind
that makes you go on transforming it into a hungry ghost, fighting spirit, or
animal. You turn it into this and into that, into all manner of things, and then
you become those things. Once you have, once you've become an animal, for
example, then even when the truth is spoken to you, it doesn't get through to
you. Or, supposing it does; since you didn't retain it even when you were a
human being, you certainly won't have the intelligence as an animal to keep it
in your mind.
This happens to everyone when, through a single thought, they let the
Buddha-mind slip away from them. So you can see that it's a very serious matter
indeed. Therefore, you must thoroughly understand about not transforming the
Buddha-mind into other things. As I told you before, not a single one of you in
attendance here today is an unenlightened person. You're a gathering of unborn
Buddha-minds. If anyone thinks, "No, I'm not. I'm not enlightened," I want him
to step forward. Tell me: What is it that makes a person unenlightened?
In fact, there are no unenlightened people here. Nonetheless, when you get up
and begin to file out of the hall, you might bump into someone in front of you
as you cross over the threshold. When you go home, your husband, son, daugher-in-law
or someone else may say or do something that displeases you.
If something like that happens, and you grasp onto it and begin to fret over it,
sending the blood to your head, raising up your horns, and falling into
illlusion because of your self-partiality, the Buddha-mind turns willy-nilly
into a fighting spirit. Until you transform it, you live just as you are in the
unborn Buddha-mind; you aren't deluded or unenlightened. The moment you do turn
it into something else, you become an ignorant, deluded person. All illusions
work the same way. By getting upset and favoring yourself you turn your
Buddha-mind into a fighting spirit—and fall into a deluded existence of your own
making.
So whatever anyone else may do or say, whatever happens, leave things as they
are. Don't worry yourself over them and don't side with yourself. Just stay as
you are, right in the Buddha-mind, and don't change it into anything else. If
you do that, illusions don't occur and you live constantly in the unborn mind.
You're a living, breathing, firmly established Buddha. Don't you see? You have
an incalculable treasure right at hand.
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