示無隱桂禪人
Instructions for the Zen practitioner Wuyin Gui
明桂西蜀李氏子。年十七出家。參伏牛法光和尚。禮清涼。感文殊光相。燒一指供養。如京謁徧融禪師。從古梅座主聽講。復從大方宗師請益機緣。訪余於東海海印道場。受金剛寶戒。余觀其骨氣孤硬。可為法門標幟。第以名言厚習。不能洞發性真。初聞余言。猶河漢而無極也。因字之曰。無隱。每為曲唱傍通。方便調伏者期年。一日聞唯心宗旨。恍然自信。遂誓歸依。三閱寒暑。相從於患難。又期年丙申十月來五羊。依棲於壘壁者數月。余方觀棱伽。擬令入室。冀入第一義。心忽有歸省之思。余以為忠於法門。孝於師親。其志一也。因示之曰。惟佛性之在纏。如神光之在目。雖明暗去來。而照禮獨立。以障翳厚薄。故智用淺深。是故從上佛祖。必經多劫。事多知識。入多法門。然後得見性真。所以然者。如人被縛。自不能解。必假手於他。至若釋然解脫。自在縱橫受用處。又非解者所可與也。即稱上根利智。有能一念頓悟自心。不從人得者。未必不由積累辛苦中來。如萬里還家。入門一步。慶快平生。迴視向之䟦涉艱難。閒關險阻。依稀彷彿如夢中事然。且大通十劫。猶不現前。身子發心。中道退沮。在聖尚爾。況其他乎。是知信向此段大事因緣。能操久遠之志。持畢竟之懷者。從古為難得。歷觀前修。拌捨身命。親師擇友。動則三二十年。乃至盡形畢壽。不以窮達改心易慮。以極願力所持。窮劫而不化。千載如一日者。所以光明廣大。一發則為人天師表。非苟然也。禪人以夙習般若聞熏之力。不忘所先。今幸為佛子。歷事法門。殷勤若是。苟能執金剛心。盡此形壽。乃至周徧恒沙。以極究竟菩提。不退初心。將布法雲於火宅。圓智種於覺園。未必不以今日為因地也。子行矣。即歸峨嵋。親見普賢。儻問諸變化人。報言瘴海炎方。不減白銀世界。無恙無恙。
Minggui was a man of the Li family from western Shu. At seventeen he left home and studied under Elder Faguang of Funiu. He made pilgrimage to Qingliang, where he was moved by Wenshu's radiant presence, and burned off one finger as an offering. Going to the capital, he visited Chan Master Bianrong, attended lectures by the vinaya master Gumei, and sought instruction in koan encounters from the lineage master Dafang. He came to see me at the Haiyin Dharma Center in the Eastern Sea and received the Diamond Precious Precepts.
Observing him, I saw a man of staunch and solitary spirit, fit to be a banner for the Dharma gate. Yet long habit of words and names kept him from piercing through to the true nature. When he first heard my words, they seemed to him as remote as the Milky Way, without limit. So I gave him the name Wuyin, "No Concealment." Again and again I sang for him in indirect strains and drew him along by side paths, using skillful means to tame him, for a full year. One day, hearing the essential teaching that "all is mind only," he suddenly came to trust it himself and vowed to take refuge. Three winters and summers he followed me, through hardships and danger. Another year passed, and in the tenth month of the bing-shen year he came to Wuyang and lodged among the earthen walls there for several months. I was just then reading the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and meant to have him enter my room, hoping he might enter the supreme meaning. But his heart suddenly turned toward home to visit his parents. I judged that loyalty to the Dharma gate and filial devotion to one's teacher and parents are one and the same resolve. So I said to him:
The Buddha-nature within the tangled bonds — it is like the light of the spirit within the eye. Though bright and dark come and go, its illumining essence stands alone. Because the obscuring film is thick or thin, the function of wisdom is shallow or deep. For this reason, the Buddhas and ancestral teachers of old must pass through many kalpas, serve many teachers, and enter many Dharma gates before they see the true nature. Why is this so? It is like a person bound with ropes, unable to free himself, who must rely on another's hand. But when at last he is untied and set free — the freedom to move at will, to use and enjoy — that is something no one else can do for him. Even one said to have sharp faculties and keen wisdom, able to awaken to his own mind in a single thought and not receive it from another, has not necessarily come by it without long accumulation of hardship — like one returning home from ten thousand li: the single step through the gate brings joy for a lifetime. Looking back at the toilsome crossings and the perilous passes behind him, it seems dim and vague, like a thing in a dream. Even Great Insight, through ten kalpas, still did not bring it before him; and Śāriputra, having aroused the aspiration, turned back midway. If this is so even for the sages, how much more for others?
From this you may know: to believe in and turn toward this great matter, to hold firm a long-enduring resolve and a determination that carries through to the very end — this has always been rare. Looking through the records of former cultivators, they gave up body and life, drew near to teachers and chose their friends, and often spent twenty or thirty years, even to the end of their days, never altering their minds or changing their resolve through poverty or success. Held fast by the utmost power of vow, they went on through kalpas without turning, a thousand years as a single day. That is why their light is vast and great: once it shines forth, they become teachers and models for gods and humans. This is no accident.
You, as a Chan practitioner, by the power of habitual hearing and perfuming of prajñā in past lives, have not forgotten what came before. Now you are fortunate to be a child of the Buddha, and you have served the Dharma gate with such earnestness as this. If you can hold to a diamond resolve, spend this whole life to its end — even to the bounds of the Ganges' sands — reaching for ultimate Enlightenment, never retreating from the first aspiration, then you will spread the Dharma-cloud over the burning house and plant seeds of perfect wisdom in the garden of awakening. Surely it is not impossible that today will be your causal ground. Go now. Return to Mount Emei and see Samantabhadra face to face. If the transformation-body beings there ask after me, tell them: in the miasmic seas and the blazing regions, it is no less than the Silver World. All is well, all is well.