Master Chang said:
The Ultimate Truth is wordless.
People of the time do not realize this:
They impose the practice of other things,
Considering them accomplishments.
They do not know that inherent nature has never been sense objects,
That is the gate of subtle wonderous great liberation,
Aware of all there is
Without being stained or obstructed.
The light has never stopped:
From ages past up to the present
It's been steady, never changing.
Shining like the sun on near and far,
Though it touches myriad colors,
It doesn't mix with all of them.
The subtle illumination of the spiritual light
Does not depend on being cultivated and refined.
Since they don't understand,
People grasp the forms of things---
It's just like rubbing the eyes.
Falsely making optical illusions arise---
They wear themselves out futilely,
Passing many eons in vain.
If you can turn back and reflect,
There is no second person:
All your conduct and activities
Won't be lacking in the real aspect.
You say that you have dull faculties. Try to reflect back like this: see if the one who can recognize the dullness is dull too or not. If you don't turn the light around and reflect back, you're just keeping to your dull faculties and adding more affliction. That would be adding illusory falsehood to illusory falsehood, laying on optical illusion on top of optical illusion. Just listen: the one who can know that sense faculties are inherently dull is definitely not dull. Though you shouldn't hold to this dull one, you shouldn't abandon it to study, either; grasping and rejecting, sharp and dull---these have to do with people, not with Mind. This Mind is one substance with all the buddhas of the three worlds: there is no duality. If there were duality, the Dharma would not be of even sameness. "Receiving the teaching" and "transmitting Mind" are both empty falsehoods. Looking for truth and seeking reality seem even further off.
Just realize that Mind, with a single essence and no duality, definitely does not lie within sharp and dull or grasping and rejecting: then you'll see the moon and forget the finger, immediately making a clean break. If you linger further in thought, calculating before and after, then you're still understanding the empty fist as if it held something real, falsely concocting strange things amidst the phenomena of the sense objects, vainly confining yourself within matter, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness, within the elements of sensory experience--you'll never get done.
{To Ch'en Li-Jen, from Swampland Flowers}
{Images linked/Programming by DPC}
