IF!

IF you instantly cut off the emotional clinging of the self, all cravings and attachments, the greed and grasping, the notions of degraded and pure, in other words, all delusive thoughts; THEN you'll be like the sun or the moon hanging free in space, shining clearly. You'll be like a great elephant crossing a raging river – engulfed in the rapids but not losing your footing. Neither heaven nor hell can pull you in. When you read a scripture or hear a teaching, the words all return to yourself. You'll see that all verbal teachings are only a reflection of the immediacy of self-nature and are just meant to point the way. Letting go of all sound and form, but not dwelling in the notion of detachment, and not holding any intellectual comprehension – this is the true practice of reading scriptures and hearing teachings. If you let everything be as it is, always acting with clarity according to the situation, this is truly dropping off all fetters. -Master Pai-Chang