Chapter 9 There is no bodhi tree——A wonderful epiphany of an illiterate

For a while, the Buddha preached in Lingshan.In the immeasurable worlds of nine heavens and ten earths, all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, heaven, dragons, ghosts and gods come to gather together.Speaking of subtleties, hundreds of thousands of billions of great bright clouds are emitted.Among the crowd, the Brahma King was overjoyed, leaned his right shoulder, put his right knee on the ground, and presented a Jinboluo flower to the World Honored One.The Buddha held the flower in his hand, without saying a word, he held it up high to show the public.Everyone was puzzled, only Maha Kassapa smiled. The Buddha nodded slightly, and with his supreme supernatural powers, he announced loudly to thousands of worlds: "I have the eyes of the correct Dharma, the wonderful mind of Nirvana, the reality without appearance, and the subtle Dharma door. I entrusted it to Mahakasyapa."

All the members of the congregation clasped their hands together and saluted, and the three thousand great thousand worlds immediately played solemn Sanskrit sounds. There are countless clones of Jinboluo flower, and the fragrant petals are flying one after another, floating in the three realms. A petal swirls in the flowing water and drifts away. The Yangtze River is in late spring. Gently splashing some small water splashes-a green reed was thrown into the river.Before the river rushed away, a chapped and callused bare foot stepped on it.The reed sank slightly—the water seemed to stagnate a little—and rose steadily again.A few dragonflies are playing around the tip of the leaf, clinging to the surface of the river.The bearded Bodhidharma stood on the reed pole, his concave eyes shining from afar.An old robe bulged in the river wind, with fluttering sleeves.After a long time, he took a deep breath, and as soon as he lifted his strength, the reed rod broke through the waves towards the north bank like an arrow.

The dragonfly was frightened and scattered in all directions. It is said that this was the tenth year of Taihe in the Northern Wei Dynasty. Bodhidharma is the first ancestor who introduced Zen from the Lingshan Dharma Assembly to my country. "Crack!" Another piece of firewood was split into two pieces. One afternoon in the first year of Longshuo in the Tang Dynasty, Huineng was chopping firewood as usual outside the pestle room of Huangmeidong Temple in Qizhou.A dragonfly flew up and down his sweaty brow, so often he had to wave his hand away.At this time, there was a commotion in front of the Five Patriarchs' Meditation Hall:

"The mantle must be inherited by Shenxiu." "This gatha, Your Majesty, is really thorough." "After all, it's been years of practice." ... Huineng put down the axe, stood up to relax his muscles and bones, patted the sawdust and dust on his body, and Shi Shiran walked over.The corridor in front of the meditation hall has already gathered a group of people, not only the monks of the temple, but also some ordinary tourists who came to worship the Buddha.They clicked their tongues in praise of a gatha written by Shenxiu on the wall.A scholar-like man was reciting aloud:

"The body is a bodhi tree, and the heart is like a mirror stand; always wipe it diligently, so as not to stir up dust." Hui Neng shook his head secretly, stepped forward and pulled the scholar's sleeve, and said to him in his somewhat difficult Lingnan clay: "Layman, I also have a verse, please help me write it down." "You don't know how to write yourself?" The scholar, Jiangzhou don't drive Zhang Riyong, turned his head and stared at the disheveled Huineng. "Huineng can't read." Huineng casually hung his hands in front of his body, and rolled up his trousers.

"Come to recite gatha even if you can't read? It's rare." "If you want to learn the supreme Bodhi, you should not take it lightly. The lowly people have the superior wisdom." Hui Neng still spoke slowly with his clay. Don't be surprised, when you look at him again, this thin, withered young novice with the appearance of a woodcutter seems to be emitting a golden light all over his body. Zhang Riyong swallowed a few sneering words: "Okay, I'll write what you say!" "Bodhi doesn't have a tree, and the mirror is not a stand; there is nothing in the first place, where does the dust come from?"

With such a small gatha, this rough envoy monk who had only been started for eight months became the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism.Since then, Zen "one flower blooms five leaves" has become the most prosperous Buddhist sect in China.Some even say that Huineng is the real ancestor of "Chinese Zen". As for Zen Buddhism, I am just a layman with a half-knowledge, so I dare not make further comments.What interests me the most is that this legendary figure, the great disciple Shenxiu who has overcome years of penance and is proficient in Buddhist scriptures, died illiterate without knowing a single word.

In addition to the survival instinct, there is a desire to think about the living space and everything outside the body, and the ability to think is the reason why human beings are the best of all things.Becoming an encyclopedia-like all-knowing and all-powerful figure is not just the dream of Voltaire and Diderot.At all times and in all over the world, almost every thinker has tried to understand, explain, and grasp our world.So the representatives of mankind, one after another, outstanding wise men trekked on the bitter journey of seeking knowledge. Splendid civilizations are born, grown, and strengthened in the arduous process of seeking knowledge from generation to generation...

However, when our science develops to the point where we can decipher DNA, explore Mars, go to the sky, land on the moon, and hit planets, we have to find that we seem to be getting more and more panicked and ignorant. Taking medicine as an example, after spending more than ten years to become an expert authority in a certain field, when I look back, I find that what I have mastered may only be a small part of the human body.The deeper you go, the more superficial you may feel: Orthopedics may not be able to understand speeches from the Department of Brain, and Department of Internal Medicine may not be able to read papers from the Department of Neurology.There is a joke saying that a certain surgical expert was helpless with a fractured right leg, and he replied confidently to other people’s doubts: “I learned from the left leg!” It’s just a joke, but many Western doctors regard Chinese medicine prescriptions as a bible. It is a common fact that even those who have been Chinese medicine practitioners for many years may not be able to blindly pick out the medicinal materials used in their own prescriptions in the face of the densely packed medicine bucket in the medicine kitchen.

Not to mention outside of medicine.Every row is like a mountain, and the mountain gets taller the more you climb it. The more subdivided the subjects, the deeper the research. As a result, each individual loses confidence in the knowledge of geometric multiple growth, gets lost in the direction, and feels that the darker the unknown, the more mysterious it is. Like the firewood in Hui Neng's hands, the finer the split, the farther away from the true nature of the wood.And the firewood is still splitting with the axe: one is divided into two, two is divided into four, four is divided into eight... It will never stop.The sawdust was scattered all over the place and it was difficult to clean up.

For this consequence, the Confucians thousands of years ago were worried. They were pragmatic and intelligent, and drew a circle for themselves and future generations in the chaos: "The way of great learning... is to stop at the ultimate good—— Knowing to stop and then having steadiness, being steadfast and then being able to be quiet, and being still and then being able to be at peace ("Great Learning")". Outside the circle limited by "Zhi Shan", all belong to "weird powers and chaotic gods", and should not be thought about.What is the "supreme good"? They believe that the ultimate goal is to maintain a harmonious and orderly world, and the people are fed, clothed, warm, and contented. It sounds simple enough. However, people's thirst for knowledge can never be satisfied, and it is fundamentally the driving force of human progress.Even if people outside the circle try their best not to touch it, the world inside the circle is enough for everyone to spend their whole lives studying.Just for the annotations in the Five Classics, it is common to use tens of thousands of words to explain a word in the original text.Next, it is time to annotate these interpretations with hundreds of thousands of words... Even if you can really understand the true meaning of the sages, at that time, when you look in the mirror and look at yourself, you will be surprised to find that the white hair is rustling, and the god of death is already smiling at you sarcastically not far in front of you.Yu Qiuyu once said that he felt suffocated by the overwhelming works of his ancestors in his study.The ancients also said that the pursuit of knowledge is "not a human being grinds ink and ink grinds people." In a short life, how many times can you stand the grind?The knowledge piled up layer upon layer is clearly the blood-stained old account that countless ancestors have exchanged with flying youth and fresh life. It is impossible for a person to pass a life like a white horse, but breakthroughs and innovations are needed. What a great power. Even more philosophers discovered with horror: the vast world, the small us who come here occasionally, in fact, there is no god to guide where to go; found that the burden of the whole world has been lifted from the cross of God, and it has been crushed mercilessly. on my own small shoulders; the hard work of a lifetime is destined to disappear completely in a hundred years; the greater the ability, the more ridiculous and insignificant our existence and knowledge will be; There is no god to listen to undo the burden— Our struggle, our confession, our confession, our cry, our grief and indignation, can only form a breeze on the cold earth, and at the same time, it will disappear silently in the boundless silence and void. When the loess gently covers our cold and pale faces, the only achievement is often to add a brick to the tower of knowledge with the words left behind, and the next generation will start again on the eternal starting point: Fangya Learning language toddler.They cannot directly inherit the knowledge and experience of their predecessors, and have to start the arduous journey all over again—our life is often just an extension of the journey of future generations to seek knowledge. Zhuang Zhou, the wise man among the wise men, spent his whole life, leaving a few helpless sighs: "My life has a limit, but knowledge has no limit." To search for endless knowledge in a finite and insignificant life will result in exhaustion. However, human beings always have to move forward, and they must constantly learn new knowledge in order to move forward. It's just that the hearts of mortals in the world are inevitably lost in the exploration, and they will inevitably fall into deep pain due to losing their direction when they go astray. Religion, which regards saving people's hearts as its mission, certainly took over this difficult problem that can never be solved. When Shenxiu buried their heads in the vast sea of ​​classics to find a good way to save the world, Hui Neng stepped onto the stage of history with an iron ax in hand. If we use a tree as a metaphor for knowledge, when all living beings, grandparents and grandchildren, have cultivated soil, fertilized, pruned, and climbed around the tree one after another, they respectfully hold up the leaves to the sun, muttering to themselves and pondering the petiole stone cells of the veins. At the end of the vascular system, Huineng used his supernatural powers to chop down this luxuriant tree that had been entrenched in the hearts of the world for an unknown number of years. He Bo looked at the sea and sighed when he saw the sea, but the sea god knew that he was just a small rock or grass in the mountains.And to Taixu, this world is just a drop in the ocean, a drop in a thousand horses.In this world of ours, the supreme rule of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, the great achievements of Qin Huang and Han Wu, the tragic and cruel world wars, the ambition of heroes, the lingering love of gifted scholars and beautiful women, in the vast universe, is just a small bubble in the dust, and it is endless. The dust in the dust, subdivided, is simply empty.Then there is this world but not this world, there is this life but not this life, there is this person but not this person—— What is the difference between having this tree and not having this tree? Think about it, everything is about equal to zero, why not cut it down from the root, let more sunshine and rain, and receive more moonlight and breeze, unrestrained and unhindered, swinging among the green mountains and green waters, wouldn’t it be happy for a lifetime? If there is one more drop or one less water in the sea, what does it matter if it is full or empty?So what is the difference between being literate and not being literate? Once you know how to read, you may not be able to get out of the obstacles set by words, and you will not be able to lift the sharp ax in your hand. I can’t comment on whether what Hui Neng has thoroughly realized is the truth, but I only know that it is really difficult to express real insights in words—even if I just try to use words to describe colors to blind people and explain sounds to deaf people, it is extremely ridiculous and futile. This may be the greatest experience of Zen monks.After Zen master Deshan Xuanjian became enlightened, he piled up the "Qinglong Shuchao" that he had spent half his life writing in front of the Dharma hall, and burned it completely.He said: "The poor metaphysics are like a drop thrown into the void; the cardinals of the world are like a drop thrown into a huge gully." In the face of truth, words are so pale and useless.But the real truth can only be understood in the heart, but cannot be expressed in words. Sakyamuni held up flowers on the Lingshan Mountain to show the public, which is this helpless preaching. In the Tang Dynasty, the master and apprentice of Tang monk fought fiercely for Anuo, Kaye Biography and wordless scriptures.In fact, this is the reason that their teachers and students are not enlightened, and scriptures without words are the real supreme wisdom.Sakyamuni explained this: "It's good to have no words in the scriptures—because all the beings in the eastern lands of you are ignorant and do not understand", so you can't see the mystery in it.Those who worship knowledge and believe in words are mostly mediocre: those who are full of classics must be half a bottle of vinegar;However, some talented people who really understand are deliberately talking nonsense, lest they get angry with the upper class—of course, this is not the case for more rotten scholars. Their self-satisfied full of knowledge is nothing more than competing with silverfish. The scriptures without words can only be understood by those who have the root of wisdom, and they often come to realize it through chance and coincidence after spending half their lives in words.As straightforward as Huineng's, who directly broke through the barriers of written knowledge and pointed directly at her heart, Shenxiu should really be convinced. To pack the heavy Tripitaka in a solid package, carry it back thousands of miles, and translate it word by word. Abandoning all words, all explanations, and heart-to-heart communication is the supreme way. But forgive me for lying, I think the so-called thorough enlightenment in Zen is actually despair: the despair for knowledge, reality, and pursuit, the more desperate you are, the more thorough you are.In the middle of the desert, when water and food are exhausted, the smartest people simply lie down.Nothing can be done anyway, everything is illusory anyway, what is the Western bliss, what is the endless Nirvana, everything is empty, even the emptiness is empty.Decades of flashes and lightnings, like the shadows of geese in the river, the shadows of geese going away, everything ups and downs, let nature take turns, the tide rises and falls, I just have no heart, I just don’t have thoughts, when I look back, Nirvana is in this world, and the western sky is here Underfoot, the Buddha is himself. But the most complete despair sometimes becomes a sharp knife that cuts the shrinking and tightening rope, and becomes a breeze that sweeps away the stale air. Despair often turns into hope. Get rid of the shackles of old knowledge, throw away all the bottles and cans, open your clothes, relax, and everything is floating in front of your eyes, full of life and wit.Spring flowers and autumn moons are used to replace the ancient Buddhas with blue lanterns, the eyes are graceful with the willow catkins, and the thoughts are dancing with the white butterflies.The green and green bamboos are all Dharma bodies; the lush yellow flowers are nothing but Prajna.The holy land of the West, shaped by the power of gold and pious practice like Emperor Wu of Liang, collapsed. From now on, everyone can become a Buddha, regardless of high or low, wisdom or foolishness. This shore is the other shore, and the moment is eternity. In the bitter journey, there is no looking back or looking forward, but just comprehending the part that belongs to me. It is this simple and quick method that has liberated countless people who have spent their spring and autumn in the ivory tower piled up with knowledge and words—not just Shizi, but many scholars who have been dizzy and teeth-shaking because of pretending to be in Confucian classics. People also screamed and broke out of the tower.Echoing the popularity of Zen Buddhism, the philosophy of mind that is almost a copy of Zen Buddhism shines brilliantly.More and more people support Zen and become Confucianism, and more and more people find that Confucianism and Zen are interlinked. For a time, the Miaosi Spring on the earth is full of vitality. The fish swimming in the secluded stream, the heron among the white clouds, the staggering when drunk, and the singing after waking up from a dream, all of them are full of strong Zen interest. Although it has also fulfilled many so-called "crazy Zen" and "wild fox Zen" who are lazy or indulge in the name of Zen. Many years later, in the Song Dynasty, there was a Zen master who suddenly became enlightened one day, and called himself Huanglong Xinwu New Zen Master. He laughed and wrote two lines of poems: "The Sixth Patriarch didn't have a husband back then, so Qianren Shubi was confused." How many people can really understand this confusion?