Extract of 'The Record of Rinzai' PART 2
Book Extracts
Master Rinzai points directly towards the true nature of mind in this powerful excerpt of The Record of Rinzai’ .
Master Rinzai
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Rinzai Gigen, father of the line or school of Rinzai Zen, died January 10th 866 A.D. His date of birth is unknown, but it is generally taken that his teaching career was not much longer than a decade.
Rinzai’s ‘Record’ was written by his disciples. It contains his teachings, episodes from his training, and from his teaching career.
15a - The master addressed his monks: ‘What students of the Way need is to have self-reliance. Do not search for anything outside, for all is idle dust and you cannot discern the false from the true. Even if there are patriarchs and Buddhas, these are only the traces in the teachings. There are people who select one single phrase which is half hidden and half revealed, and from that doubt is born. So they search heaven and earth, run around asking others and keep themselves busily occupied. But the man who has nothing further to seek does not pass his days arguing about ruler and robber, this and that, is and is not, form and essence, and other vain propositions.
As for me, if anyone comes with a question, I know him to the bottom, whether he be monk or layman. Whatever position he may come with, all are only words and names, dreams and phantoms. The aim of the profound teachings of all the Buddhas is rather to see the man who can ride all circumstances.
The state of Buddha cannot say of itself ‘I am a Buddha-state’. It is rather the independent man of the Way who avails himself of all states. If one comes to ask me where to look for the Buddha, I will show myself in accordance to a state of purity. If one asks me on Bodhisattvas, I appear accordingly in a state of compassion. If one asks me on Bodhi, I respond by showing a state of pure mystery. And if one questions me on Nirvana, I show a corresponding state of quiet calm. States (or circumstances) are manifestations, they are the differentiation into the ten thousand things; but there is only one who is always the same man, who does not differ at all. That is why forms appear in response to circumstance as the moon is reflected on the moving waves.
(The Record of Rinzai, tr. Irmgard Schloegl pub. The Buddhist Society 1975)
