Dahui's Swampland Flowers
These are excerpts taken from Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Dahui, translated by J.C. Cleary. This is all Dahui’s instruction without any commentary.
Buddha said, if you want to know the realm of buddhahood, you must make your mind as clear as empty space and leave false thinking and all grasping far behind, causing your mind to be unobstructed wherever it may turn. The realm of buddhahood is not some external world where there is a formal “Buddha”; it is the realm of the wisdom of a self-awakened sage.
Once you are determined that you want to know this realm, you do not need adornment, cultivation, or realization to attain it. You must clear away the stains of afflictions from alien sensations that have been on your mind since beginningless time, so that your mind is as broad and open as empty space, detached from all the clinging of the discriminating intellect, and your false, unreal, vain thoughts too are like empty space. Then this wondrous effortless mind will be unimpeded wherever it goes.
“Just get to the root, don’t worry about the branches.” Emptying this mind is the root. Once you get the root, the fundamental, then all kinds of language and knowledge and all your daily activities as you respond to people and adapt to circumstances, through so many upsets and downfalls, whether joyous or angry, good or bad, favorable or adverse—these are all trivial matters, the branches. If you can be spontaneously aware and knowing as you are going along with circumstances, then there is neither lack nor excess.
Since you’re studying this Path, then at all times, in your encounters with people and responses to circumstances, you must not let wrong thoughts continue. If you cannot see through them, then the moment a wrong thought comes up you should quickly concentrate your mental energy to pull yourself away. If you always follow those thoughts and let them continue without a break, not only does this obstruct the Path, but it makes you out to be a man without wisdom.
In the old days Guishan asked Lazy An, “What work do you do during the twenty-four hours of the day?” An said, “I tend an ox.” Guishan said, “How do you tend it?” An said, “Whenever it gets into the grass, I pull it back by the nose.” Guishan said, “You’re really tending the ox!” People who study the Path, in controlling wrong thoughts, should be like Lazy An tending his ox; then gradually a wholesome ripening will take place of itself.
"Do not grasp another’s bow, do not ride another’s horse, do not meddle in another’s affairs." Though this is a commonplace saying, it can also be sustenance for entering the Path. Just examine yourself constantly: from morning to night, what do you do to help others and help yourself? If you notice even the slightest partiality or insensitivity, you must admonish yourself. Don’t be careless about this!
If worldly people whose present conduct is without illumination would correct themselves and do good, though the goodness is not yet perfect, isn’t this better than depravity and shamelessness? One who does evil on the pretext of doing good is called in the Teachings one whose causal ground is not genuine, bringing on crooked results. If, with a straightforward mind and straightforward conduct, you are able to seize supreme enlightenment directly, this can be called the act of a real man of power. The concerns that have come down from numberless ages are only in the present: if you can understand them right now, then the concerns of numberless ages will instantly disperse, like tiles being scattered or ice melting. If you don’t understand right now, you’ll pass through countless eons more, and it’ll still be just as it is. The truth that is as it is has been continuous since antiquity without ever having varied so much as a hairsbreadth.
Matters of worldly anxieties are like the links of a chain, joining together continuously without a break. If you can do away with them, do away with them immediately! Because you have become habituated to them since beginningless time, to the point where they have become totally familiar, if you don’t exert yourself to struggle with them, then as time goes on and on, with you unknowing and unawares, they will have entered deeply into you. Finally, on the last day of your life, you won’t be able to do anything about it. If you want to be able to avoid going wrong when you face the end of your life, then from now on whenever you do anything, don’t let yourself slip. If you go wrong in your present doings, it will be impossible not to go wrong when you’re facing death.
This matter may be taken up by brilliant quick-witted folks, but if you depend on your brilliance and quick wits, you won’t be able to bear up. It is easy for keen and bright people to enter, but hard for them to preserve it. That’s because generally their entry is not very deep and the power is meager. With the intelligent and quick-witted, as soon as they hear a spiritual friend mention this matter, their eyes stir immediately and they are already trying to gain understanding through their mind’s discriminating intellect. People like this are creating their own hindrances, and will never have a moment of awakening. “When devils from outside wreak calamity, it can still be remedied,” but this (reliance on intellectual discrimination) amounts to “When one’s own family creates disaster, it cannot be averted.” This what Yongjia meant when he said, “The loss of the wealth of the Dharma and the demise of virtue all stem from mind’s discriminating intellect."
The obstruction of the Path by the mind and its conceptual discrimination is worse than venomous snakes or fierce tigers. Why? Because venomous snakes and fierce tigers can still be avoided, whereas intelligent people make the mind’s conceptual discrimination their home, so that there’s never a single instant, whether they’re walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, that they’re not having dealings with it. As time goes on, unknowing and unawares they become one piece with it—and not because they want to, either, but because since beginningless time they have followed this one little road until it’s become set and familiar. Though they may see through it for a moment and wish to detach from it, they still can’t. Thus it is said that venomous snakes and fierce tigers can still be avoided, but the mind’s conceptual discrimination truly has no place for you to escape.
Once you have the intent to investigate this Path to the end, you must settle your resolve and vow to the end of your days not to retreat or fall back so long as you have not yet reached the Great Rest, the Great Surcease, the Great Liberation. There’s not much to the Buddha Dharma, but it’s always been hard to find (capable) people. The concerns of worldly passions are like the links of a chain, joining together without a break. Those whose resolve is weak and inferior time and time again willingly become involved with them: unknowing and unawares they are dragged along by them. Only if the person truly possesses the faculty of wisdom and willpower will he consent to step back and reflect.
When people engaged in meditation read the scriptural teachings and the stories of the circumstances in which the ancient worthies entered the Path, they should just empty their minds. Don’t look for the original marvel or seek enlightenment in sounds, names, and verbal meanings. If you take this attitude, you’re obstructing your own correct knowledge and perception, and you’ll never have an entry. P’an Shan said, “It’s like hurling a sword at the sky: no talk of whether it reaches or not!” Don’t be careless!
Vimalakirti said that the Truth goes beyond eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and intellect. If you want to penetrate this Truth, first you must clear out the gates of the six senses, leaving them without the slightest affliction. What does “affliction” mean? It means to be turned around by form, sound, scent, taste, touch, and phenomena, and not detaching from them. It’s seeking knowledge and looking for understanding in the words and phrases of the scriptural teachings and the ancient worthies. If you can avoid giving rise to a second thought about the scriptural teachings or the stories of the ancient worthies entering the Path, and realize directly what they go back to, then there will be nothing in your own realm or in the realms of others that is not according to your will, nothing of which you are not the master.
If you want to cut directly through, don’t entertain doubts about buddhas and ancestral teachers, or doubts about birth and death—just always let go and make your heart empty and open. When things come up, then deal with them according to the occasion. Be like the stillness of water, like the clarity of a mirror, (so that) whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly approach, you don’t make the slightest move to avoid them. (Then) you will truly know that the mindless world of spontaneity is inconceivable.
Since ancient times, when good people of the Path have attained this, they’ve appeared and disappeared in the sea of birth and death, able to use it fully. There is no deficit or surplus: like cutting up sandalwood, each piece is it. Where do the passions of birth and death arise from? Where can it be located when gathering the causes to produce the effect? Since there is no place to locate it, Buddha is illusion and Dharma is illusion; the three worlds, twenty-five states of being, the sense organs, sense-objects, and consciousnesses are utterly empty. When you get to this realm, there’s no place to put even the word “Buddha”; if even the word “Buddha” has no applicability, where is there True Thusness, Buddha Nature, Enlightenment, or Nirvana? Thus the Great Being Fu said, “Fearing that people will give rise to a view of annihilation (nihilism), we provisionally establish empty names.”
In the old days, the military governor Li Wen-ho was able to study Ch’an and attain great penetration and great enlightenment while in the thick of wealth and rank. When Yang Wen-kung successfully studied Ch’an, he was dwelling in the Imperial Han Lin Academy. When Chang Wu-chin studied Ch’an, he was the minister for transport in Kiangsi. These three elders are examples of this “not destroying the worldly aspect while speaking of the real aspect.” When has it ever been necessary to leave wife and children, quit one’s job, chew on vegetable roots, and cause pain to the body? Those of inferior aspiration shun clamor and seek quietude: thence they enter the ghost cave of “dead tree Ch’an” entertaining false ideas that only thus can they awaken to the Path. Haven’t you seen Layman P’ang’s words:
Just have no mind in myriad things:
Then what hindrance is there when myriad things surround you?
The iron ox doesn’t fear the lion’s roar:
It’s like a wooden man seeing a picture of flowers and birds—The wooden man’s body itself has no feelings,
And the painted birds aren’t startled when meeting the man.
Mind and objects are Thus—only this is:
Why worry that the Path of Enlightenment will not be fulfilled?
If you can manage not to forget the matter of birth and death while in the midst of the passions of the world, then even though you do not immediately smash the lacquer bucket (of ignorance), nevertheless you will have planted deep the seed-wisdom of transcendental knowledge (prajna). In another lifetime you will appear and save your mental power. You won’t fall into evil dispositions; you’ll overcome that sinking down into the defilement of passion.
Not seeking escape, some say this affair should not be treated casually, and make of it an object of veneration and faith. Views like this are countless.
As a gentleman of affairs, your study of the Path differs greatly from mine as a homeleaver. Leavers of home do not serve their parents, and abandon all their relatives for good. With one jug and one bowl, in daily activities according to circumstances, there are not so many enemies to obstruct the Path. With one mind and one intent (homeleavers) just investigate this affair thoroughly. But when a gentleman of affairs opens his eyes and is mindful of what he sees, there is nothing that is not an enemy spirit blocking the Path. If he has wisdom, he makes his meditational effort right there. As Vimalakirti said, “The companions of passion are the progenitors of the Tathagatas: I fear that people will destroy the worldly aspect to seek the real aspect.” He also made a comparison: “It’s like the high plateau not producing lotus flowers: it is the mud of the low-lying marshlands that produces these flowers.
If you can penetrate through right here, as those three elders Yang Wen-kung, Li Wen-ho, and Chan Wu-chin did, your power will surpass that of us leavers of home by twentyfold. What’s the reason? We leavers of home are on the outside breaking in; gentlemen of affairs are on the inside breaking out. The power of one on the outside breaking in is weak; the power of one on the inside breaking out is strong. “Strong” means that what is opposed is heavy, so in overturning it there is power. “Weak” means what is opposed is light, so in overturning it there is little power. Though there is strong and weak in terms of power, what is opposed is the same.
These days there’s a kind of phony whose own standpoint is not genuine: they just teach people to control their minds and sit quietly, to sit to the point where the breath ceases. I call this lot pitiable. I’m asking you to meditate in just this way, but though I instruct you like this, it’s just that there’s no other choice. If there really were something to work on in meditation this way, it would defile you. This mind has no real substance: how can you forcibly bring it under control? If you try to bring it under control, where do you put it? Since there’s no place to put it, there’s no times or seasons, no past or present, no ordinary people or sages, no gain or loss, no quiet or confusion; there’s no name of profound clarity and no essence of profound clarity and no function of profound clarity, no one who speaks thus of profound clarity and no one to hear such talk of profound clarity.
“Buddha preached all doctrines to save all minds; I have no mind at all, so what’s the use of any doctrines?” Basically there is nothing in any doctrine, and no mind in mind. The emptiness of mind and things both is their real character. But these days students of the Path often fear falling into emptiness. Those holding such views misapprehend expedient means and take the disease for the medicine: they are to be pitied deeply. Therefore Layman P’ang said, “Don’t be averse to falling into emptiness—falling into emptiness isn’t bad.” He also said, “Just vow to empty all that exists; don’t make real that which doesn’t exist.” If you can see through this one saying, then the ignorance (born of) boundless evil deeds will instantly melt away and disperse. Even the whole great canon preached by the Tathagata cannot explain this one sentence.
If a person has certain faith, and knows that there is such a method of great liberation, and if in that knowing he turns the key of transcendence, then Layman P’ang’s saying and the whole great canon preached by the Buddha are no different, without before or after, ancient or modern, lack or excess. Such a person neither sees that any doctrines exist nor sees that any minds exist: the world in all directions is empty and vast. But don’t entertain the view of vast emptiness: if you hold this view then there is someone expounding emptiness and someone who hears emptiness being expounded, then there are all doctrines to be heard and all minds to be experienced.
Once there is something to be heard and experienced, then within there is the realizing mind and without there is a “Dharma” to be realized. Unless this disease is removed, the Teachings call it expounding the Dharma egotistically; it’s also called slandering the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. It also says in the Teachings, “If you cling to the aspect of Dharma, then you are attached to self, person, living beings, and life. If you cling to the aspect of no-Dharma, then you’re attached to self, person, living beings, and life.” This is the same principle as what I said previously about having a realizing mind within and an external truth realized.
Good and evil all arise from one’s own mind. But tell me, besides your activities, thoughts, and discrimination, what do you call your own mind? Where does your mind come from? If you can discern where your own mind comes from, then boundless karmic obstruction will be cleared away instantly, and all sorts of marvels will come of themselves without being sought.
Where do we come from at birth? Where do we go at death? If you know where we come from and where we go, then you can be called a student of Buddha. Who is it who knows of birth and death? And who is it who experiences birth and death? Again: who is it who doesn’t know where we come from and where we go? Who is it who suddenly realizes where he comes from and where he goes to? And who is it who, contemplating these words, blinks his eyes unable to understand, his belly churning up and down, as if a mass of fire were placed in his heart? If you want to know, just apprehend him at the point where he can’t understand. If you can recognize him then, you’ll know that birth and death surely have nothing to do with him.
“Sentient beings get inverted: they lose themselves and pursue objects.” Addicted to their taste for petty desires, they willingly receive immeasurable suffering. Day after day, even before they’ve opened their eyes and gotten out of bed, while they’re half awake and half asleep, their minds are already flying around in confusion, pursuing a torrent of vain thoughts. Although their good and bad doings are not yet manifest, before they’ve gotten out of bed heaven and hell have already instantly formed within their hearts. And when their actions do come forth, they’ve already fallen into the storehouse mind. Didn’t Buddha say that all the senses are manifestations of one’s own mind, that the physical body and organs are the appearances of one’s own false thoughts? He established ways to show this, likening them to river currents, seeds, lamplight, wind, and clouds, changing and decaying from moment to moment, unsettled as monkeys, reveling in filth like flies, insatiable as flames fanned by the wind, turning like a waterwheel from the habit energy of beginningless falsity, and so on.
If you can understand thoroughly like this, then it’s called the knowledge that there’s neither self nor others. Heaven and hell are nowhere else but in the heart of the person while he’s half awake and half asleep, before he’s gotten out of bed—they don’t come from outside. When you’re getting started but are not yet under way, when you’re awakening but are not yet awake, you must diligently reflect back on this, but without struggling with it as you reflect back—if you struggle, you waste power. Didn’t the Third Ancestral Teacher say so? “When you try to stop motion to return to stillness, the stopping causes further commotion.”
As soon as you become aware of gradually conserving power in the midst of the afflictions of daily activities, this is where a person acquires power. This is how a person achieves buddhahood and becomes an ancestral teacher, this is how a person changes hell into heaven, this is where a person sits in peace, this is where a person gets out of birth and death, this is where a person becomes sovereign above the ancient emperors Yao and Shun, this is where a person raises the weary people from misery, this is where a person brings prosperity to his adopted descendants.
At this point it’s extraneous to speak of buddhas or ancestral teachers, of mind or nature, of the original or the wondrous, of principle or phenomena, or of good or bad. Since even these things are extraneous, how much more alien to agree to do things in passion which the former sages censured! If you don’t even consent to do good, how can you consent to do what is not good? If you can believe in these words, this is what Yongjia meant when he said, “Walking is also meditation; sitting is also meditation; speaking or silent, moving or still, the body is at rest.” These are not empty words: please act according to them, without ever changing. Then, although you have not yet witnessed the scenery of your own fundamental state fully, though you have not yet seen your own original face clearly, what was raw will become ripe, and what was stale will become fresh. Be sure to remember: where you save power is where you gain power.
In the conduct of their daily activities sentient beings have no illumination. If you go along with their ignorance, they’re happy; if you oppose their ignorance, they become vexed. Buddhas and bodhisattvas are not this way: they make use of ignorance, considering this the business of buddhas. Since sentient beings make ignorance their home, to go against it amounts to breaking up their home; going with it is adapting to where they’re at to influence and guide them.
Right where you stand, investigate the one in you who covets wealth and rank: where does he come from, and, in the future, where will he go? Since you don’t know where he comes from or where he goes, your mind will feel confused and unhappy. Right when you’re confused and unhappy, it’s not someone else’s affair—right here is the place to [investigate].
