Freely Roaming About With Rinzai

Just see it nakedly.
Drop all thoughts, expectations, ideas, perceptions, and fixations.
See it as it is, and the Seer will awaken to Seeing! -DSZ


Followers of the Way, the leaver-of-home must study the Way.

I myself was formerly interested in the Vinaya and diligently studied the Sutras and Treatises. Then I realized that they were only drugs suitable for appeasing the ills of the world, only relative theories.

At one stroke I threw them away, set myself to learn the Way, started Zen training and met great teachers.

Only then did my eye of the Way begin to see clearly, and I was able to understand all the old masters and to know the false from the true. Man born of woman does not naturally know this. But after long and painful practice, one morning it is realized in one's own body.

Freely roaming about, you see that everywhere there are only empty names.

**

Followers of the Way, the Dharma of the heart (xin, often translated as "mind") has no form and pervades the Ten Directions.

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 one 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.

Followers of the Way, as I see it, once and for all sit down and cut off the heads — both of the Sambhogakaya Buddha and of the Nirmanakaya Buddha.

Those satisfied with merely completing the ten stages of the Bodhisattva are like serfs. Those content with universal and profound awakening are but fellows carrying cangue and chains. Arhats and Pratyeka-Buddhas are like cesspits. Awakening and Nirvana are like tethering posts for donkeys!

-ZEN MASTER RINZAI (from The Record of Linji)