Awakening the Spring of Life

Question: How should one practice in order to see the light? Answer: Directly use the manas to observe and illuminate.

Answer: The step is too high; find a footstool to step on.

Question: Seeing without discriminating, hearing without discriminating, doing without discriminating. Neither welcoming nor dismissing, neither inside nor outside. Can one thereby see the light? Answer: Stones and wood also do not discriminate—what difference is there between you and them? Question: What about discriminating but not dwelling on it in the mind—using it and immediately letting it go? Answer: No. Using it in ignorance, letting it go in ignorance—what benefit is there? Question: I remember the Master once said: as soon as the manas directs attention, stop; as soon as it makes contact, stop—do not "feel," and even less "perceive" or "deliberate." Is that acceptable? Answer: That is cultivating meditative concentration; it is not ultimate.

Question: If one knows that all dharmas are false and illusory, does one see the ultimate reality of no-marks? Answer: Arhats also see that all dharmas are false and illusory—have they seen the ultimate reality? Answer: They do not know it; Mahāyāna practitioners know it. Question: What use is knowing? Answer: When I see the myriad dharmas as shadows and illusions, I thereby see the projector. Question: Does one see the projector first, or the shadows first? Answer: One first sees the shadows as illusions, and at the same time knows it is the function of the projector. Question: If one does not see the projector, how does one know it is the projector's function? By guessing? Answer: The myriad dharmas are like bubbles; seeing the bubbles, one sees the great ocean. Question: Since beginningless kalpas, sentient beings see bubbles every day—who has seen the great ocean? Answer: Sentient beings' minds and eyes are not yet open; they do not know to investigate, and they put the cart before the horse. Therefore they only see the shadows, not knowing that the shadows are the effect of light. Take it up right now in this moment—all are the Tathāgata; the entire wave is nothing but water. Answer: It is truly not easy, but may I press forward courageously!

Answer: I do not stand outside the waves to look at the water. Question: What is there outside the waves? The waves are the water itself—who still sees waves? Answer: Outside the waves there are no dharmas. Sentient beings only see the waves, not knowing it is water. Buddhist practitioners see the waves and also do not know it is water, yet they go off and imagine a separate "water." Answer: Birth and death have always been in the water, yet one does not know it—only because it is too familiar, too intimate. Question: Zhuangzi said: fish forget one another in the water; people forget one another in the Dao. Is that acceptable? Answer: It is acceptable. But even though acceptable, birth and death are not thereby resolved. Question: "The mad mind does not cease"—if it ceases, is that enough? Answer: If you have not found the original source, how can the madness cease? Answer: Through birth after birth and death after death, I have never come; the tide rises and falls, but the seawater neither arises nor ceases.

Question: Birth and death are illusory dharmas—sentient beings are constantly in nirvāṇa yet do not know it? Answer: Indeed. Question: I, within the purity of nirvāṇa, watch my own birth and death, watching the changes of sentient beings' birth and death. Answer: Within nirvāṇa, everything should be in nirvāṇa—why would there be seeing and birth-and-death? Answer: Within nirvāṇa there is no seeing; it is the place of quiescent extinction. Question: Can one see birth and death without becoming deluded by birth and death? Answer: To have seeing is already delusion; knowledge and views are the root of ignorance.