“Today's students of the Buddha-Dharma need to look for genuine insight. If you have genuine insight, birth and death will not affect you, and you will be free to come and to go. Nor do you need to look for worthiness; it will arise of itself. Followers of the Way, the old masters had ways of making men. Do not let yourselves be deluded by anyone; this is all I teach. If you want to make use of it (genuine insight), then use it right now without delay or doubt. But students nowadays do not succeed because they suffer from lack of self-reliance. Because of this lack, you run busily hither and thither, are driven around by circumstance and kept whirling by the ten thousand things. You cannot find deliverance thus. But if you can stop your heart from its ceaseless running after wisps of the will, you will not be different from the Buddha and patriarchs. Do you want to know the Buddha? None other than he who here in your presence is now listening to the Dharma. Just because you lack self-reliance, you turn to the outside and run about seeking. Even if you find something there, it is only words and letters and never the living spirit of the patriarchs. Do not be deceived."
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Venerable Ones, get to know the one who plays with these configurations. He is the original source of all the Buddhas. Knowing him, wherever you are is home. Your physical body, formed by the four elements, cannot understand the Dharma you are listening to; nor can your spleen, stomach, liver or gall; nor can the empty space. Who then can understand the Dharma and can listen to it? The one here before your very eyes, brilliantly clear and shining without any form — there he is who can understand the Dharma you are listening to. If you can really grasp this, you are not different from the Buddhas and patriarchs. Ceaselessly he is right here, conspicuously present.
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In the eye, it is called seeing; in the ear, hearing; in the nose, smelling; in the mouth, talking; in the hands, grasping; in the feet, walking. Fundamentally, it is on light; differentiated, it becomes the six senses. When one's whole heart comes to a full stop, one is delivered where one stands. Why do I speak thus? It is only because I see you, followers of the Way, all running about with an agitated heart, quite unable to stop, fretting yourselves over the playthings of the old masters.
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b. There are shaven pates who eat their fill and then sit down to
do zazen. They arrest the flow (of the heart) and do not let it act. They dislike noise and seek quietude.
These are the practices of other ways.
A patriarch said: “If you stay (fix) the heart, you see quietude. If you arouse it, it beholds the outside; if you recollect it, the inside is clear. If you concentrate it, Samadhi is entered.” But all these are merely forms of activity.
Do you not know him who is right now listening to the Dharma? Why should you need to approach him by practice, ascertain him and solemnity him? He is not one whom you can approach or dignify. Moreover, if he would exalt himself, then everything would gain exaltation.
Do not be deceived.
~ Zen Master Linji