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問：「如何是真正見解？」師云：「爾但一切入凡、入聖，入染、入淨，入諸佛國土，入彌勒樓閣，入毘盧遮那法界，處處皆現國土成、住、壞、空。佛出于世，轉大法輪，却入涅槃，不見有去來相貌，求其生死了不可得，便入無生法界，處處游履國土，入華藏世界，盡見諸法空相，皆無實法。唯有聽法無依道人，是諸佛之母，所以佛從無依生。若悟無依，佛亦無得。若如是見得者，是真正見解。學人不了，為執名句，被他凡聖名礙，所以障其道眼不得分明。秖如十二分教，皆是表顯之說，學者不會，便向表顯名句上生解，皆是依倚，落在因果，未免三界生死。爾若欲得生死去住、脫著自由，即今識取聽法底人：無形、無相、無根、無本、無住處，活撥撥地，應是萬種施設，用處秖是無處，所以覓著轉遠，求之轉乖，號之為祕密。道流！爾莫認著箇夢幻伴子，遲晚中間便歸無常。爾向此世界中覓箇什麼物作解脫？覓取一口飯喫，補毳過時，且要訪尋知識，莫因循逐樂。光陰可惜，念念無常，麁則被地、水、火、風，細則被生、住、異、滅四相所逼。道流！今時且要識取四種無相境，免被境擺撲。」

Someone asked, "What is true and right understanding?"

Linji said: "You step into the ordinary and into the holy, into the defiled and into the pure. You step into the buddha-lands, into Maitreya's tower, into Vairochana's universe. Wherever you go you see worlds forming, holding, breaking down, emptying out. A buddha appears in the world, turns the great wheel of the teaching, then passes into nirvana, and you see no coming or going about it. Look for his birth and death and they're nowhere to be found. So you step into the realm where nothing is born, wander through one land after another, and enter the flowering treasury of all worlds. You see straight through it: everything is empty, none of it solid or real. There is only the person right here listening to this teaching, the one who leans on nothing. That person is the mother of all buddhas. Buddha is born from leaning on nothing. Wake up to leaning on nothing, and there's no buddha to get either. See it like this, and that's true and right understanding.

"Students don't get it. They cling to words and labels, they let words like 'ordinary' and 'holy' box them in, and so their eye for the Way is blocked and never sees clearly. Take the whole canon: every word of it is only a pointing finger. Students miss this and build their understanding out of the pointing words, the labels. They prop themselves up on those words, fall into cause and effect, and never escape birth and death in the three worlds.

"If you want to be free, to come and go through birth and death, to pick things up and put them down as you please, then recognize, right now, the one listening to this teaching. No shape, no form, no root, no trunk, no fixed address. Wide awake and alive, answering with ten thousand kinds of moves, yet the place it works from is no place at all. That's why the harder you hunt for it the farther off it gets, the harder you chase it the more it slips away. They call this the secret.

"Followers of the Way! Don't go claiming this dream of a body for your friend. Sooner or later it returns to impermanence anyway. What in this world are you going to dig up and call liberation? Scrounge a mouthful of rice, patch your robe, get through the day, and use the time to go find a real teacher. Don't just drift along chasing pleasure. Time is precious. Moment by moment, nothing lasts. On the gross level earth, water, fire, and wind are tearing at you; on the fine level the four marks close in: arising, abiding, changing, perishing. Followers of the Way! Right now you'd better get clear about the four states beyond form, so circumstances can't knock you around."

Pointer

A monk asks what real insight looks like, and Linji answers by walking him through a tour of cosmic Buddhist scenery, then pulling it out from under him. Maitreya is the buddha still to come, Vairochana the cosmic "everywhere" buddha, the "flowering treasury" a vision of infinite worlds nested in worlds. The inventory is the point: all of it, even the holiest gear, is empty and not worth gripping. His punchline is plain, stop chasing the light show and notice the bare fact of the one right here hearing these words, the listener who "leans on nothing." That listener is the whole deal, what he calls "the mother of all buddhas," because buddhas come from leaning on nothing and once you wake to that there's no buddha left to get either. Then the gut-check that runs through the next several talks (15, 16): this body is on a clock, so quit drifting, find a real teacher, and see it before the elements grind you down.