21Case 21

問：「大通智勝佛十劫坐道場，佛法不現前，不得成佛道，未審此意如何？乞師指示。」師云：「大通者，是自己，於處處達其萬法無性、無相，名為大通。智勝者，於一切處不疑、不得一法，名為智勝。佛者，心清淨，光明透徹法界，得名為佛。十劫坐道場者，十波羅密是。佛法不現前者，佛本不生，法本不滅，云何更有現前？不得成佛道者，佛不應更作佛。古人云：『佛常在世間，而不染世間法。』道流！爾欲得作佛，莫隨萬物。心生種種法生，心滅種種法滅，一心不生，萬法無咎。世與出世，無佛、無法，亦不現前，亦不曾失。設有者，皆是名言章句，接引小兒，施設藥病，表顯名句。且名句不自名句，還是爾目前昭昭靈靈鑒覺聞知照燭底，安一切名句。大德！造五無間業，方得解脫。」

A monk asked, "The Buddha of Great Penetrating Wisdom sat in the place of awakening for ten eons, yet the buddha-dharma never appeared before him and he could not attain the buddha way. What does this mean? Please explain it to me."

Linji said: "'Great Penetrating' means yourself. Wherever you go, you see straight through to the fact that all things have no fixed nature and no fixed form. That is great penetrating. 'Wisdom' means that wherever you are, you do not doubt and you grab hold of nothing. That is wisdom. 'Buddha' means a mind clear and clean, its light shining through the whole universe. That earns the name buddha. 'Sitting in the place of awakening for ten eons' is the ten perfections. As for the buddha-dharma never appearing before him: a buddha was never born and the dharma never dies, so how could anything appear before you? As for failing to attain the buddha way: a buddha has no business becoming a buddha all over again. An old master said, 'A buddha is always in the world, yet untouched by the things of the world.'

"Followers of the Way! You want to be a buddha? Then stop chasing after things. When the mind stirs, every kind of thing arises; when the mind stops, every kind of thing vanishes. Let the one mind stay unstirred, and the ten thousand things cannot fault you. In this world or beyond it, there is no buddha and no dharma. Nothing appears before you, and nothing was ever lost. If anyone tells you otherwise, it is all words and phrases, medicine handed to a sick child, labels dressed up as teaching. And the words and phrases do not make themselves words and phrases. It is that bright, living, aware thing right in front of you, the one that sees and hears and knows and lights everything up, that pins all those names onto things.

"Honored ones! Commit the five unforgivable crimes, and that is how you win your freedom."

Pointer

The monk quotes a famous riddle from the Lotus Sutra: a cosmic buddha named Great Penetrating Wisdom sat in meditation for ten eons (an eon being an unimaginable stretch of time) and supposedly still couldn't become enlightened. He wants the puzzle solved. Linji refuses the story whole and reads every word of that buddha's name as a description of the listener's own mind: "great penetrating" is seeing through the fixed nature of things, "wisdom" is gripping nothing, "buddha" is mind clear and shining. Of course no buddha "appeared" after ten eons, he says, a buddha was never born and has no business becoming a buddha twice over. The shock at the end, "commit the five unforgivable crimes," isn't literal, it's a teaser he unpacks in the very next case (22), where the "crimes" turn out to mean cutting off ignorance, craving, and your grip on holy ideas. The whole move is his standard one: a sacred story dragged down into your own present mind so you stop chasing buddhas out there.