HISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM FROM BODHI-DHARMA TO HUI-NENG (YENO) (520 A.D.–713 A.D.)
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Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
When you are not prejudiced against the six sense-objects,
You in turn identify yourself with Enlightenment;
The wise are non-active,
While the ignorant bind themselves up;
While in the Dharma itself there is no individuation,
They ignorantly attach themselves to particular objects.
It is their own minds that create illusions—
Is it not the greatest of self-contradictions?
Ignorance begets the dualism of rest and unrest,
The enlightened have no likes and dislikes:
All forms of dualism
Are ignorantly contrived by the mind itself.
They are like unto visions and flowers in the air:
Why should we trouble ourselves to take hold of them?
Gain and loss, right and wrong—
Away with them once for all!
If an eye never falls asleep,
All dreams will by themselves cease:
If the mind retains its oneness,
The ten thousand things are of one suchness.
When the deep mystery of one suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements:
When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
We return to the origin and remain what we are.
Forget the wherefore of things,
And we attain to a state beyond analogy:
Movement stopped is no movement,
And rest set in motion is no rest.
When dualism does no more obtain,
Even oneness itself remains not as such.
The ultimate end of things where they cannot go any further,
Is not bound by rules and measures:
The mind in harmony [with the Way] is the principle of identity
In which we find all doings in a quiescent state;
Irresolutions are completely done away with,
And the right faith is restored to its native straightness;
Nothing is retained now,
Nothing is to be memorised,
All is void, lucid, and self-illuminating,
There is no stain, no exertion, no wasting of energy—