Day 10 No Such Thing as True or False | The Sword of Wisdom

Speaking in silence, silent in speech,
The door of giving is wide open without obstruction.
If someone asks what basic principle I interpret,
I will say it is the power of Mahaprajna. Others do not know whether I am right or wrong,
Even devas cannot fathom whether I oppose or agree.

I have practiced for many kalpas; I am not deceiving you as some idlers are.These verses describe the behavior of a person who has attained Great Enlightenment. He is the way he is. It does not matter what other people say about him or how they treat him. He cannot be influenced or forced to change in any way. A practitioner like this is the greatest of benefactors, the greatest giver of ultimate Dharma.

There are three kinds of donations: giving material wealth, giving Dharma, and giving non-action. Ordinary people give material wealth. Intelligent people give Dharma. People with great wisdom and merit give non-action. The person described in these verses is of the third category. Intelligent people must speak in order to give Dharma, but whether a great Ch’an master speaks or not does not matter. He is still giving. Speaking, he gives; not speaking, he gives.

An enlightened person with great merit can give people anything they need. Jesus Christ was extremely poor, yet those who followed him always had food to eat. If you do not have anything or want anything, then when you need something it will be there. If you were to ask a great practitioner how he is able to do these things, he would answer, “I don’t know or understand anything in particular. The power is not mine; it is the power of Mahaprajna, or great wisdom.” Great wisdom does not belong to the practitioner. He does not have or want anything. If he claimed to have any power, then it would be pride, not wisdom. Wisdom does not belong to him, or me or you. If it were your wisdom, it would be as limited as you are.

A great Ch’an practitioner may seem right, wrong, unfathomable, even crazy. A Dharma teacher once complained to me about a Ch’an master. “The guy’s crazy, ” he said. “When you talk about existence, he talks about non-existence. When you talk about self, he talks about no-self. If you begin talking about non-existence, then he talks about existence. You can’t win. Everytime you say something, he says the opposite. If I were you, I wouldn’t pay any attention to him. He’s nuts!”

This particular Ch’an master does not necessarily act that way with everyone, nor does he act like that all the time. It depends on the situation. Sometimes he may seem normal. He may say ordinary things. Other times he may appear to be completely irrational. You cannot judge such a person.

In the daytime you might find him prostrating to a Buddha statue, and at night chopping it up for firewood. He might free an animal ready to be slaughtered and then sit down to a hot bowl of chicken soup. There is no standard of behavior you can measure him against.

There was a modern Ch’an master called the Living Buddha of Gold Mountain. A rich man asked him to help his daughter who was dying from tuberculosis. The doctors had given up on her. When the master reached her bedside, he gathered her in his arms and kissed her full on the lips. She struggled to get away, and others tried to stop him, but he held tight for ten minutes. Then he let go, turned around and vomited a pile of putrid, black filth. The people were shocked and disgusted. They asked how he could stand to suck it out of her. He said, “What’s so awful about this? As a matter of fact, it’s quite good.” He scooped the filth up, fried it and ate it. By the way, the girl was cured.

I do not think you would consider him an ordinary person. What he says and does may have no rhyme or reason, but you do not have the power of practice to understand. His actions are backed by the experience of long-time practice. You cannot understand him, much less imitate him. If you kissed someone dying of tuberculosis, you would probably die too.

Setting up the Dharma banner, establishing the basic principle,
Ts’ao Ch’i clearly followed the Buddha’s decree.
The first one to pass on the lamp was Mahakasyapa;
In India it was transmitted through twenty-eight generations.
The Dharma flowed east and entered this land
Where Bodhidharma was the First Patriarch.
Six generations transmitted the robe, as heard throughout the land,
And those who later attained the Tao cannot be counted.

This stanza describes the transmission of Dharma in the Ch’an school ─ transmission not through words. The Dharma banner is a long, circular tube of cloth that hangs from the eaves of temple roofs. The banner is a sign to let people know what is happening in such places. Yung-chia uses it as a symbol to show that Ch’an does not rely on words or language, but on direct comprehension.
The stanza says that Ch’an was transmitted through direct comprehension from the time of the Buddha to the Sixth Patriarch, of whom Yung-chia was a contemporary. In India there were twenty-eight generations of patriarchs, starting with Mahakasyapa. The 28th Patriarch was Bodhidharma, and he became the First Patriarch in China. Hui-neng (Ts’ao-ch’i) was the Sixth Patriarch in China. This does not mean that only patriarchs have attained enlightenment. There have been many practitioners before and after Bodhidharma who have realized Ch’an.

The truth does not stand, the false is originally empty.

When both existence and non-existence are swept away, not empty is empty.

The twenty empty doors teach non-attachment.

The nature of all Tathagatas’is one; their substance is the same.There is no such thing as true and false. They are one and the same. For the Tathagata, true and false are equally the essence of his nature. One cannot speak of true and false as separate things.

It is not correct to say that truth and falsehood exist externally, nor is it correct to say that truth and falsehood exist only in the mind. To understand this, you must first realize the emptiness of truth and falsehood. Then you must realize the negation of the emptiness of truth and falsehood. At this point, there are no more words. If you can still talk about it, then there is still an emptiness to be emptied.

You can approach emptiness from many angles. The poem mentions twenty types, but Yung-chia does not name them. Yung-chia probably derives these twenty types of emptiness from the eighteen emptinesses described in the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, which are:(1)internal emptiness;(2) external emptiness;(3)both internal and external emptiness; (4)emptiness of emptiness;(5)great emptiness;(6)ultimate emptiness;(7)emptiness of existence;(8)emptiness of non-existence; (9)limitless emptiness;(10)boundless emptiness; (11) emptiness of the undeniable;(12) emptiness of original nature;(13) emptiness of all elements of existence;(14) emptiness of form;(15) emptiness of the unobtainable;(16) emptiness of nothingness;(17) emptiness of self-nature;(18) emptiness of no self-nature.

There are many such categories, but they are all different ways to express the same thing ─ emptiness. Self-nature is empty. Your self-nature is the emptiness of self-nature. The mind is a sence organ; dharmas are its object. The two are like marks on a mirror. Once the dust is rubbed off, the light begins to appear.

When both mind and dharmas are forgotten, this is true nature.In this stanza, Yung-chia is talking about the process of practice. The mind does not move on its own. The mind moves because it comes into contact with external phenomena. Phenomena can be broken down into two categories: mental dharmas ─ those within the mind; and material dharmas ─ objects with form and shape. The mind interacts with external, material dharmas through the sense organs. The motion of mind is, in itself, a mental dharma, but here the poem is discussing external dharmas, or form.
External dharmas are sometimes called sense objects. Actually, the literal translation of the Chinese term is “sense dust.” Once the mind perceives external dharmas, a series of mental dharmas ─ which are sense objects of the sixth consciousness ─ is triggered. Mental dharmas by themselves can also trigger other mental dharmas. Any mental activity or external phenomenon that influences the mind can be considered sense dust. It is this sense dust which accumulates and conceals the mind mirror.

When there is no interaction with external dharmas, then there are no mental dharmas. When form leads to sensation, and sensation to perception and conception, then a chain of associations, or mental dharmas, takes off in the mind, and the external object is left behind. Once the mind moves, it will continue to roll along, powered by its own activity. If the mind does not move, then both the internal and external disappear. When the interaction between internal mental activities and external form ceases, wisdom appears. At that time there is neither a mind nor any dharma to be found.

If mind and dharma are no longer there, then what are they to begin with? They are none other than Buddha-nature.

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