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Winter Retreat - The Record of Master Linji
Do not go seeking in words and letters, which only makes the mind more agitated, the intellect more exhausted, and the lungs gasp useless cold air. Instead of studying sutras and commentaries to get degrees without being able to transform afflictions, we only need to see in a single moment that dependently co-arising phenomena are unborn. The word no-birth represents the eight negations:
- no birth
- no death
- no being
- no non-being
- no coming
- no going
- not one
-
not many.
When we see the unborn nature of all things, we can touch the Buddha in a cloud, a pebble, and in ourselves without needing to pass through the ten grounds from the first ground to the tenth ground like hired laborers with an inferiority complex. We can be a Buddha instantly in the present moment through each leisurely, peaceful step, without needing to strive in our practice or procrastinate as the days and months pass by.
Instead of using the words dependent co-arising or dependent origination, we should use the word dependent manifestation to see that all things do not pass from non-being into being, but are merely a manifestation from a hidden state to a revealed one. Vijnapti is manifestation, avijnapti is non-manifestation, and vijnapti-matra is Manifestation-only, meaning there is only manifestation and no creation, as in the poem “You are not created but only manifested.” The ultimate truth of the path is not to use reasoning to conquer others with an Asura state of mind that always wants to be number one. Verbal teachings are merely skillful means to guide people into categories:
- The Three Vehicles: Hearer Vehicle, Solitary Realizer Vehicle, and Buddha Vehicle.
- The Five Natures: the determinate nature of Bodhisattvas, the determinate nature of Solitary Realizers, the determinate nature of Hearers, the indeterminate nature of the Three Vehicles, and sentient beings without the nature of enlightenment.
The perfect and sudden teaching does not need to pass through stages or the 53 consultations of the youth Sudhana. When the mind is no longer wrongly used to seek or accumulate knowledge, the sun of insight will naturally shine. Nirvana is precisely the absence of concepts of birth and death, coming and going, being and non-being; it is that very thing present right here and right now. Encountering a spiritual friend is as rare as the blooming of the udumbara flower, so we should rely on them to inherit insight and peacefulness instead of getting caught in emotional attachments or the material comforts of food and clothing, fame and profit. “The great ocean never accepts a corpse,” therefore each person must make their own effort to become a dynamic living being in the world of enlightenment.
