16Addressing the Assembly示眾

師示眾云：「如今學道人且要自信，莫向外覓，總上他閑塵境，都不辨邪正。秖如有祖、有佛，皆是教迹中事。有人拈起一句子語，或隱顯中出，便即疑生，照天、照地，傍家尋問，也大忙然。大丈夫兒，莫秖麼論主、論賊，論是、論非，論色、論財，論說閑話過日。山僧此間，不論僧俗，但有來者盡識得伊，任伊向甚處出來，但有聲名文句，皆是夢幻。却見乘境底人，是諸佛之玄旨。佛境不能自稱「我是佛境」，還是這箇無依道人乘境出來。若有人出來問我求佛，我即應清淨境出；有人問我菩薩，我即應慈悲境出；有人問我菩提，我即應淨妙境出；有人問我涅槃，我即應寂靜境出。境即萬般差別，人即不別，所以應物現形，如水中月。道流！爾若欲得如法，直須是大丈夫兒始得。若萎萎隨隨地，則不得也。夫如㽄嗄之器，不堪貯醍醐。如大器者，直要不受人惑，隨處作主，立處皆真，但有來者皆不得受。爾一念疑，即魔入心。如菩薩疑時，生死魔得便。但能息念，更莫外求，物來則照。爾但信現今用底，一箇事也無。爾一念心生三界，隨緣被境分為六塵。儞如今應用處，欠少什麼？一剎那間便入淨、入穢，入彌勒樓閣，入三眼國土，處處遊履，唯見空名。」

Linji addressed the assembly:

"Students of the Way today, the first thing you need is faith in yourselves. Stop looking outside. All you do is grab at somebody else's worthless scenery, and you can't even tell the true from the false. Take 'there are ancestors, there are buddhas': that's only words on a page, footprints the teaching left behind. Someone throws out a single line, half-hidden and half-shown, and at once the doubts start. You scan the heavens, you scan the earth, you run door to door asking around. What a frantic mess.

Real men, don't waste your days arguing master against thief, right against wrong, sex, money, idle talk. Here, I don't care whether you're a monk or a layman. Whoever walks in, I see straight through him. Wherever he comes from, it's all just sounds and names and phrases, all of it a dream.

What I'd rather see is the person riding on the scene, for that is the deep point of every buddha. A buddha-realm can't stand up and announce, 'I am a buddha-realm.' It's this person, the one who depends on nothing, who rides in on the scene. Someone comes asking me for a buddha, and I meet him by sending out a pure realm. Someone asks about the bodhisattva, I meet him with a realm of compassion. Asks about awakening, I meet him with a realm clean and fine. Asks about nirvana, I meet him with a realm still and silent. The realms come in ten thousand kinds, but the person doesn't change. So he answers each thing and takes its shape, like the moon in water.

Followers of the Way! If you want to do this right, you have to be a real man. Limp and slack, you'll never get it. A cracked, leaky jug can't hold cream. To be the great vessel, simply refuse to be fooled by anyone. Wherever you are, be the master; wherever you stand is the real thing. Whatever comes at you, don't let it take you in. One flicker of doubt and the devil walks into your heart. It's like the bodhisattva: the moment he doubts, the devil of birth and death gets his opening. Just put your thinking to rest, stop hunting outside, and when something comes, light it up.

Trust what's working in you right now; there's nothing else. One thought of yours gives birth to the three worlds, and following conditions, split by circumstances, it scatters into the six dusts. Right now, in the way you respond and function, what are you missing? In a single instant you step into the pure and into the filthy, into Maitreya's tower, into the land of three eyes. You wander everywhere, and everywhere all you see are empty names."

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The whole sermon turns on one instruction, and Linji says it outright: "wherever you are, be the master." People outsource their lives, chasing teachers, scriptures, fancy states like nirvana and awakening as if the answer were somewhere out there. He calls all of it "scenery," passing scenes the mind throws up, and even the word "buddha" is just a footprint the teaching left, not the thing that walked. The "person who depends on nothing" is you, right now, the one doing the seeing, who can meet any situation and take its shape the way the moon shows up in any puddle. The cosmology he name-drops (the three worlds, the six dusts, Maitreya's tower) is real Buddhist furniture, but his cut through it is that you generate every one of those realms with a single thought, so there's nothing out there to go get. This is the "true person of no rank" (3) restated as a working stance: stop waiting to be certified and run your own ground.