The intellectual understanding of words in Buddhist sutras may not lead to one’s direct realization. On the other hand, scriptures are a primary source of Buddhist teachings. Dogen ponders this dilemma.
In China, since the time Bodhidharma, the Twenty-eighth Ancestor, came from India, the principle that there is dharma heritage in the buddha way has been authentically understood. Before that time, it had never been spoken of. Although teachers of scriptures or treatises have received a human body as a vessel of the way, they are uselessly entangled by the net of scriptures; they do not understand the method of breaking through and cannot realize the moment of leaping out.
A monk called Fada54 visited the assembly of Huineng, Zen Master Dajian of the Baolin Monastery, Mount Caoxi, Shao Region, Guangdong, Tang China. He boasted that he had chanted the Lotus Sutra55 three thousand times.
Huineng said to him, “Even if you have chanted the sutra ten thousand times, if you don’t understand the meaning of it, you won’t even know your own errors.”
Fada said, “Because I am stupid, I have only been able to follow the words and chant. How can I understand the meaning of it?”
Huineng said, “Chant it for me. I will elucidate its meaning for you.”
Fada chanted the sutra.
At chapter 2, “Skillful Means,” Huineng said, “Stop. The essential meaning of this sutra is the causes of the Buddha’s emergence into the world. Many parables are expounded, but there is nothing more than this. This cause is the single essential matter. What is the single essential matter? It is the buddha unfolding knowledge and entering realization. You are originally buddha knowledge. You who have this knowledge are a buddha. You should trust right now that the buddha knowledge is your own mind.”
Then he taught with a verse:
When your mind is deluded, you are turned by the dharma blossoms.
When your mind is enlightened, you turn the dharma blossoms.
If you cannot clarify the meaning after chanting the sutra at great length, you become its enemy.
Thinking beyond thinking is right.
Thinking about thinking is wrong.
If thinking and beyond thinking do not divide the mind, you can steer the white-ox cart endlessly.
The meaning of studying sutras is that if you understand and follow the rules of practice for sudden or gradual realization taught by the Buddha, you will unmistakably attain enlightenment. In studying sutras you should not expend thoughts in the vain hope that they will be helpful for attaining realization.
Even one thousand sutras and ten thousand attainments cannot match one realization.
Buddha ancestors all expound sutras. What expounds sutras is empty space [boundlessness]. Without being empty space, no one can expound even one single sutra. Expounding the Heart Sutra56 and expounding the body sutra are both done with empty space.
Zhaozhou,57 Great Master Zhenji of the Guanyin Monastery, Zhao Region, was once given a donation by an old woman and was asked to rotate [chant] the canon.
He got off the meditation platform, walked around it, and said to the messenger, “The canon has been rotated.”
The messenger went back to the old woman and reported this. The old woman said, “I asked the master to rotate the entire canon. Why did he only rotate half of the canon?”
There are no voices or forms that are more beneficial than buddha sutras. Voices and forms delude you, and yet you tend to seek them and be greedy for them. On the other hand, buddha sutras do not delude you. Do not slander them with a lack of trust in them.
Both following a teacher and following a sutra are following yourself. A sutra is no other than a sutra as yourself.
You receive sutras and expound sutras by means of mountains, rivers, and earth or by means of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Likewise, you hold sutras and transmit sutras with the self before the Empty Eon, or with body and mind before the original face. You actualize such sutras by cracking open particles. You bring forth such sutras by cracking open the world of phenomena.
Arousing the aspiration for enlightenment depends on sutras and teachers. Practice depends on sutras and teachers. The fruit of enlightenment is one and intimate with sutras and teachers.
A sutra is the Tathagata’s entire body. To bow to a sutra is to bow to the Tathagata’s entire body. To encounter a sutra is to encounter the Tathagata’s entire body.
The sutras are the entire world of the ten directions. There is no moment or place that is not sutras. The sutras are written in letters of the supreme principle and of the secular principles. The sutras are written in letters of heavenly beings, human beings, animals, fighting spirits, one hundred grasses, or ten thousand trees. This being so, what is long, short, square, and round, as well as what is blue, yellow, red, and white, arrayed densely in the entire world of the ten directions, is no other than letters of the sutras and the surface of the sutras. Regard them as the instruments of the great way and as the sutras of the buddha house.