Zen Ways Archives
25-1 “The Third Eye and Bent Elbow”
“With the forearm bending back to meet [the body] one can respond to every event. The third eye by itself illuminates the solitary casting off of the body. Both of these gather in or release with no inside or outside. Many thousands of realms emerge equally with oneself; the three times are naturally transcended.”
~Hongzhi
24-3 “Everyone Included in the Field”
“Their conduct and practice accord with the standard. With amazing effectiveness, as numerous as grains of sand in the river Ganges, they harmoniously mature each other. From this field our life arises; from this field it is fulfilled.”
~Hongzhi
24-2 “Everyone Included in the Field”
”Buddhas and demons cannot invade it, pollution cannot poison it. Square or round, they just enjoy the center.”
~Hogzhi
Immaculate and dazzling, [the field’s] limits cannot be seen with the eyes’ strength. Serene and expansive, its directions and corners cannot be found with the mind’s conditioning. People who sincerely meditate and authentically arrive trust that the field has always been with them.
~Hongzhi
~Hongzhi
23-3 “Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function”
~Hongzhi
23-2 “Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function”
To gain such steadiness you must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas.
23-1 “Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function”
Drop Off Your Skin, Accept Your Function In daytime the sun, at night the moon, each in turn does not blind the other. This is how a patch-robed monk steadily practices, naturally without edges or seams.
~Hongzhi
22-3 “Rolling and Unrolling”
If you want to make appropriate changes, then you must transform majestically along with the ten thousand forms. If you want to be still and abiding, you must accord with the process of containing and covering like earth and heaven (yin and yang).
~Hongzhi
22-2 “Rolling and Unrolling”
The ten thousand ancients appear in succession, undisguised. If you know the whole story with a nod of your head, you will not chase after birth and death and will not dwell in nihilism or eternalism.
~Hongzhi
22- 1 “Rolling and Unrolling”
Where the field is secure and familiar, when the great work is like a clear, cool pond, then you will see the empty kalpa. Do not allow a hair to bind you or permit a fiber to screen you. Be supremely empty and bright, pure, round, and glorious.
~Hongzhi
21-4 “All Beings are Your Ancestors”
Essentially you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent.
~Hongzhi:
“Essentially you exist inside emptiness and have the capacity to respond outwardly without being annoyed, like spring blossoming, like a mirror reflecting forms. Amid all the noise spontaneously emerge transcendent.”
~Hongzhi
Subtly illuminate all conditions, magnanimous beyond all duality. Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements. Without minds interacting, [wind and pines or moon and water] do not impede one another.
~Hongzhi
Since the inside is empty and can respond, absorbing or not absorbing is equal. Since the outside is interconnected and constantly vacant, abiding or not abiding is all the same. Patch-robed monks enter samādhi just like their home wind that breezes through the entire world.
~Hongzhi
~Hongzhi
“There is an excellent saying that the six sense doors are not veiled, the highways in all directions have no footprints. Always arriving everywhere without being confused, gentle without hesitation, the perfected person knows where to go.~Hongzhi
“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountain appears. The moon sets and the water is cool.”
~Hongzhi
18-2 “The Mind Ground Dharma Field and the Single Seed”
“Directly arriving here you will be able to recognize the mind ground dharma field that is the root source of the ten thousand forms germinating with unwithered fertility. These flowers and leaves are the whole world. So we are told that a single seed is an uncultivated field. Do not weed out the new shoots and the self will flower.”
~Hongzhi
Leighton, Taigen Dan; Wu, Yi (2014-12-23). Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi (Kindle Locations 775-777). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
18-1 “The Mind Ground Dharma Field and the Single Seed”
The field of bright spirit is an ancient wilderness that does not change. With boundless eagerness wander around this immaculate wide plain. The drifting clouds embrace the mountain; the family wind is relaxed and simple. 30 The autumn waters display the moon in its pure brightness.
~Hongzhi
17- 5 “Beaming Through All Gloom”
“How could there be an obstruction? Since [this mind] is entirely without obstruction, there is no difference between that one and me, self and other are not separated by their names. Sounds and colors crowd in together, carefree and transcendent, directly leaping into each other. So it is said that mountains and rivers are not separated. You should enact this like the brightness apparent everywhere.”
~Hongzhi
17- 4 “Beaming Through All Gloom”
“The jade vessel turns over on its side, at once dispensing energy for you to return, share yourself, and respond to the world. In this realm are the separate, limited forms, but all are only what the self establishes, arising along with our own four elements.”
~Hongzhi
17-3 “Beaming Through All Gloom”
“Constantly still and constantly glorious, the stillness is not extinguished by causes, the glory is not marred by shadows. Vacant, round, and pure, the empty kalpa will not shift, shake, or obscure [this source]. Able to be serene, and able to know, here you can walk securely.”
~Hongzhi
17-2 “Beaming Through All Gloom”
“Without pettiness, or weaving hairs to create an obstacle, be magnanimous beyond appearances. Splendid and lustrous like the waters moistening autumn, noble like the moon overwhelming the darkness, from the beginning just beam through all gloom, profoundly free from stain.”
~Honghzi
17-1 “Beaming Through All Gloom”
“Study the Buddha and research his lineage’s subtlety. You must clarify your heart, dive into the spirit, and silently wander in contemplation, apprehending the dharma’s source.”
~Hongzhi
16-4 “The Backward Step and the Upright Cauldron”
Despite a hundred uglinesses or a thousand stupidities, the upright cauldron is naturally beneficent. 27 Zhaozhou’s answers “wash out your bowl” and “drink your tea” do not require making arrangements; from the beginning they have always been perfectly apparent. 28 Thoroughly observing each thing with the whole eye is a patch-robed monk’s spontaneous conduct.
~Hongzhi
16-3 “The Backward Step and the Upright Cauldron”
The empty valley receives the clouds. The cold stream cleanses the moon. Not departing and not remaining, far beyond all the changes, you can give teachings without attainment or expectation. Everything everywhere comes back to the olden ground. Not a hair has been shifted, bent, or raised up.
~Hongzhi
16-2 “The Backward Step and the Upright Cauldron”
Outstanding and independent, still you must abandon pretexts for merit. Carefully discern that naming engenders beings and that these rise and fall with intricacy. When you can share your self, then you may manage affairs, and you have the pure seal that stamps the ten thousand forms. Traveling the world, meeting conditions, the self joyfully enters samādhi in all delusions and accepts its function, which is to empty out the self so as not to be full of itself.
~Hongzhi
16-1 “The Backward Step and the Upright Cauldron”
With the depths clear, utterly silent, thoroughly illuminate the source, empty and spirited, vast and bright. Even though you have lucidly scrutinized your image and no shadow or echo meets it, searching throughout you see that you still have distinguished between the merits of a hundred undertakings. Then you must take the backward step and directly reach the middle of the circle from where light issues forth.
~Hongzhi
15-2 “Buddha Flowers, Leaves, Roots, and Dusts”
Constantly living apart from surface appearances is called being the ancestor. Simply certify and unite with it; you cannot be handed it. All buddhas arrive here and regard this as the ultimate. They respond to transformations and disperse their bodies as flowers, leaves, roots, and dusts. Wisdom enters the three times and the ten thousand changes do not disturb us, each dust is not outside us. This marvel is beyond the vast thousands of classical texts, so where could you hold on to the shadowy world?
~Hongzhi
The “backward step” is meditative introspection. This orientation is applied to all forms: sitting, standing, walking & reclining. [See Dogen’s “Zazenshin”]
15-1 “Buddha Flowers, Leaves, Roots, and Dusts”
The Way is not what the ancestors transmit. Before the ancestors come, it already pervades the whole environment. Emptiness is inherently without characteristics; spirituality cannot be imitated. On its own, illumination emerges from causes and conditions.
~Hongzhi
14-4 “Spectacular Images of Clouds and Dragons”
Clouds disperse and winds die down. The autumn sky clears and the moon sets. The waters of heaven are limitless. Where the ground is on its own the brightness begins to be realized.
~Hongzhi
14-3 “Spectacular Images of Clouds and Dragons”
Complete without a hair’s difference between them, springing forth with spontaneity, they clearly exemplify coming home, but still must investigate until they have eaten their fill.
~Hongzhi
14-2 “Spectacular Images of Clouds and Dragons”
“Smooth and level, magnificently peaceful, from north to south, from east to west, heaven is the same as heaven, people are the same as people, responsive with their bodies, visible in their forms, speaking the dharma. This ability is fully actualized, extensively obliterating obstacles.”~Hongzhi
“The center is manifest and is celebrated. All the various events are consummated, with yin and yang balanced and the ten thousand representations equalized.”
~Hongzhi
“The place of silent and serene illumination is the heavenly dome in clear autumn, shining brightly without strain, gleaming through both light and shadow. At this juncture the whole is supreme and genuinely arrives. The clear source is enacted with spirit, the axis is wide and the energy lively, everything apparent in the original brightness.”
12-3 “Return to the Source and Serve the Ancestors”
“From the beginning the clouds leisurely release their rain, drifting past obstacles. The direct teaching is very pure and steady. Nothing can budge it. Immediately, without allowing past conditions to turn you, genuinely enact it.”
~Hongzhi
“Emptiness is without characteristics. Illumination has no emotional afflictions. With piercing, quietly profound radiance, it mysterioiusly eliminates all disgrace. Thus one can know oneself; thus the self is completed. We all have the clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation. With boundless wisdom journey beyond this, forgetting accomplishments. Straightforwardly, abandon strategems and take on responsibility. Having turned yourself around, accepting your situation, if you set foot on the path, spiritual energy will marvelously transport you. Contact phenomena with total sincerity not a single atom of dust outside yourself.”
5- “Simply Drop Off Everything”
“Silently dwell in the self, in true suchness abandon conditioning. Open-minded and bright without defilement, simply penetrate and drop off everything. Today is not your first arrival here. Since the ancient home before the empty kalpa, clearly nothing has been obscured. Although you are inherently spirited and splendid, still you must go ahead and enact it. When doing so, immediately display every atom without hiding a speck of dirt. Dry and cool in deep repose, profoundly understand. If your rest is not
satisfying and you yearn to go beyond birth and death, there can be no such place. Just burst through and you will discern without thought-dusts, pure without reasons for anxiety. Stepping back with open hands, giving up everything, is thoroughly comprehending life and death. Immediately you can sparkle and respond to the world. Merge together with all things. Everywhere is just right. Accordingly we are told that from ancient to modern times all dharmas are not concealed, always apparent and exposed.”
4- The Ground That Sages Cannot Transmit
3- Performing the Buddha Work
“The empty field cannot be cultivated or proven. From the beginning it is altogether complete, undefiled and clear down to the bottom. Where everything is correct and totally sufficient, attain the pure eye that illuminates thoroughly, fulfilling realization. Enlightenment involves enacting this; stability develops from practicing it. Birth and death originally have no root or stem, appearing and disappearing originally have no defining signs or traces. The primal light empty and effective illuminates the headtop. The primal wisdom, silent but also glorious, responds to conditions. When you reach the truth without middle or edge, cutting off before and after, then you realize one wholeness. Everywhere sense faculties and objects both just happen. The one who sticks out his long broad tongue transmits the inexhaustible lamp, radiates the great light, and performs the great Buddha work, from the first not borrowing from others one atom from outside the dharma. Clearly this affair occurs within your own house.”
2-The Practice of True Reality
“The practice of True Reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. This empty, wide-open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Spacious and content, without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping, effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not possessed by emotions. You must be broad-minded, whole without relying on others. Such upright independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Here you can rest and become clean, clear and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately return, accord, and respond to deal with events. Everything is unhindered, clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, the moonlight glitteringly flowing down mountain streams. The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed, totally unobstructed and clearly manifesting responsive interaction like box and lid or arrowpoints meeting. Continuing, cultivate and nourish yourself and achieve stability. If you accord everywhere with thorough clarity and cut off sharp corners without dependence on doctrines, like the white bull or the wildcat, helping to arouse wonder, you can be called a complete person. So we hear that this is how one on the way of non- mind acts, but before realizing non-mind we still have great hardship.”
1- The Bright, Boundless Field
“The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image; upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth, unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly, we are told that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear. The deep source transparent down to the bottom can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces, and mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally mind and dharmas emerge and harmonize. An ancient said that non-mind enacts and fulfills the way on non-mind. Enacting and fulfilling the way of non-mind, finally you can rest. Proceeding you are able to guide the assembly. With thoughts clear, sitting silently, wander into the circle of wonder. This is how you must penetrate and study.”
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