Dharma Gate of Essential Expedient Means
for Entering the Way and Pacifying Mind
入道安心要方便法門
By Fourth Ancestor Zen Master Daoxin (580-651)
Translated from the Chinese by A. Gregory Wonderwheel
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If at the beginning of learning sitting meditation, in a single quiet location directly contemplate body and mind, the four great elements, the five shadowy skandhas, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mentation, along with greed, anger, and stupidity. If good, if bad, if resented, if intimate, if ordinary, if sacred, reaching up to all the various things (dharmas), you should undertake their investigation. Since coming from the root, they are empty and silent, not born and not extinguished, equal and non-dual. Since coming from the root, there is nothing that exists but ultimate nirvana. Since coming from the root, it is peaceful and liberated.
Pay no attention to day or night, and when walking, staying, sitting, or lying down, always work on this contemplation; then it’s like one’s own body appearing to be the moon within the water, like images within a mirror, like a mirage in the heat, like an echo in an empty valley. If declared ‘this is existing,’(是有) then every place that is sought is unable to be seen. If declared ‘this is not existing,’(是無) then what is ordinarily in front of the eyes is finally understood. The Dharma-body of the various Buddhas is likewise thus. Then know that one’s own body from immeasurable eons in the final analysis hasn’t ever been born. From the past and present and ongoinig, likewise in the final analysis there is no person who dies.
If there are those who are able to constantly do contemplation like thus, then this is confession of true reality, and 1,000 eons or 10,000 eons of extremely heavy evil karma at once on its own are annihilated. By only removing doubt but unable to give birth to faith, these people are unable to enter awakening. If one gives birth to faith, for those who rely on this practice there is no not gaining entry to the correct principle of the unborn.
