Hidden Treasures
Posted by: mayflow (IP Logged)
Date: April 2, 2005 01:04PM
(This is from the Jade Purity forum)
Yuanwu (1063-1135)
Brave-spirited wearers of the patched robe
possess an outstanding extraordinary aspect.
With great determination
they give up conventional society.
They look upon worldly status
and evanescent fame as dust in the wind,
as clouds floating by,
as echoes in a valley.
Since they already have great faculties
and great capacity from the past,
They already know that this level exists,
and they transcend birth and death
And they move beyond the holy and the ordinary.
This is the indestructible true essence
that all the enlightened ones of all times witness,
The wondrous mind that alone the generations
of enlightened teachers have communicated.
To tread this unique path, To be a fragrant elephant
or a giant, golden-winged bird,
It is necessary to charge past the millions
of categories and types and fly above them,
To cut off the flow and brush against the heavens.
How could the enlightened willingly be petty creatures,
confined within distinctions of high and low and victory and defeat,
Trying futilely to make comparative judgments of instantaneous experience,
and being utterly turned around by gain and loss?
For this reason, in olden times the people of great enlightenment
did not pay attention to trivial matters
And they did not aspire to the shallow and easily accessible.
They aroused their determination to transcend the buddhas and patriarchs.
They wanted to bear the heavy responsibility that no one can fully take up,
To rescue all living beings, to remove suffering and bring peace,
To smash the ignorance and blindness that obstructs the Way.
They wanted to break the poisoned arrows of ignorant folly
And to extract the thorns of arbitrary views from the eye of reality.
They wanted to make the scenery of the fundamental ground
clear and reveal the original face before the empty eon.
You should train your mind and value actual practice wholeheartedly,
exerting all your power, not shrinking from the cold or heat.
Go to the spot where you meditate; Quiet your mental monkey
And pacify your intellectual horse. Make yourself like a dead tree,
like a withered stump.
Suddenly you penetrate through; How could it be attained from anyone else?
You discover the hidden treasure, you light the lamp in the dark room,
You launch the boat across the center of the ford.
You experience great liberation, and without producing a single thought,
You immediately attain true awakening.
Having passed through the gate into the inner truth,
You ascend to the site of universal light.
Then you sit in the impeccably pure supreme seat
of the emptiness of all things.
But this is not yet the stage of effortless achievement.
You must go further beyond, to where the thousand sages cannot trap you,
The myriad conscious beings have no way to look up to you,
The gods have no way to offer you flowers,
And the demons and outsiders cannot spy on you.
You must cast off knowledge and views, Discard mysteries and marvels,
And abandon all contrived actions.
At this stage you are never aware of having mind or not having mind,
Of gaining mindfulness or losing mindfulness.
So how could you still be attached
to what you have previously learned and understood,
To "mysteries" and "marvels" and analysis of essential nature,
To the fetters of names and forms and arbitrary opinions?
How could you still be attached
to views of "Buddha" and views of "Dharma"
Or to earth-shaking worldly knowledge and intellect?
You would be tying and binding yourself,
You would be only trying to count the grains of sand in the ocean.
What would there be to rely upon?
All of those who are truly great must strive
To overcome the obstacles of delusion and ignorance.
They must strive to jolt the multitudes out of their complacency
And to fulfill their own fundamental intentions and vows.
Only if you do this, are you a true person of the Path,
without contrived activity and without concerns,
A genuine Wayfarer of great mind, persuing
great vision, through great great liberation.
