聖人雖然仍舊生活在此岸世界之中，但他對彼岸世界的領悟並不是白費了工夫。他所做的事情雖然還和普通人一樣，這些事情對聖人卻有不同的意義。百丈禪師懷海（卒於814年）曾說：“未悟未解時名貪瞋，悟了喚作佛慧。故云：‘不異舊時人，異舊時行履處。’”（《古尊宿語錄》卷一）此處末句文字可能有誤，懷海法師想說的顯然是“不異舊時行履處，只異舊時人”。
人和舊時不同了，因為他的所作所為雖然和別人一樣，但他對任何事物都沒有執著。這就是禪語常說的：“終日吃飯，未曾咬著一粒米；終日著衣，未曾掛著一縷絲。”（《古尊宿語錄》卷三、卷十六）
There are two ways of practising Buddhism: one is gradual enlightenment, which follows gradual procedures and steps to achieve enlightenment after reaching a certain level; the other is enlightenment that directly comprehends the truth without false time and order. But what kind of spiritual experience is "epiphany", and what do people with "epiphany" realize? Many people may not understand.
The philosophical master馮友蘭 Feng Youlan made an incisive analysis of “頓悟” "Episode" in his classic masterpiece "A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy", which can be helpful to understand this mysterious spiritual experience.
According to the Buddhist view, no matter how long a person's practise is, by its nature, it is just a preparation of the soul. To become a Buddha, one must experience the epiphany as mentioned previously, which is an inner experience similar to 29 習坎䷜ jumping over a cliff. Only through this kind of inner experience can a person become a Buddha.
Zen masters often refer to this kind of "enlightenment" as "seeing the way." Nanquan Zen Master Pu Yuan (died 834) once said to his disciples: "道 is not about knowing or knowing, knowing is delusional perception, knowing is not remembering. If you truly reach the way of unsuspecting, it is like being too imaginary, how can you force right and wrong! "("Gu Zun Su Quotations" Volume 13) Enlightenment of people means unity with 道. At this time, the vast and infinite 道 "Dào" is no longer "nothing", but a "state of indifference".
According to the Zen master’s experience, this state is "wisdom and reason, state and spirit, like a person drinking water, knowing his own coldness and warmth" (Quotations from Gu Zun Su, Volume 32). "Like a person drinking water, he knows himself cold or warm", first seen in 《六祖壇經》the "Six Patriarch Altar Sutra", later Zen masters often quoted these two sentences to show that the "indifference state" between people and the outside world cannot be expressed by words, only by themselves. Experience can be realized.
In this state, people have abandoned knowledge in the usual sense, because this knowledge first separates the cognitive subject of "human" from the cognitive object of "world". But as the first two sentences of Zen Master Nanquan show, "knowledge without knowing" brings the monk into a state where knowledge and truth are not separated, and the human mind and its object are integrated, so that the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge are integrated. There is no longer any difference. This is not a lack of knowledge, it is completely different from blind ignorance. This is "knowledge without knowing", which is what Zen Master Nanquan wants to express.
When the Zen monk was on the eve of the epiphany, he especially needed the help of the master. When the monk wants to jump over the cliff in his mind, the little help from the master means a great help. At this time, the Zen master’s method is often “一聲棒喝” "a good drink." Zen records many such examples in the literature. After the master asked many questions to the apprentice, he would suddenly beat him with a stick or bamboo stick a few times. If the time is right, the apprentice will often get an epiphany. How to explain this? It seems that when the master beats his apprentice, it is precisely through this action that he pushes the apprentice into the mental state of jumping forward on a cliff, and this is the moment the apprentice has been waiting for in spirit.
In order to describe the "insight", Zen masters use a metaphor: “如桶底子脫。” "like the bottom of a bucket falling off." When the bottom of the bucket suddenly fell off, the contents of the bucket fell out in an instant. In the process of practising meditation, at a certain point, all kinds of burdens in the mind will suddenly disappear, and all kinds of problems will be solved by themselves. This is not a solution to the ideological problem that people usually understand, but that all the original problems are no longer problems. This is why the "Tao" is called "the way of no doubt".
After a person experiences an "insight", he does not get another thing from this. Zen Master Shuzhou Qingyuan (died 1120) once said: "Now that we can understand, what is not going forward? So, what is enlightened now is enlightenment now; what is enlightened today is forward. Lost.” (Quotations from Gu Zun Su, Volume 32) This means that after a person has “enlightened”, will the previous “fascination” still exist? The previous "mystery" has been replaced by today's "enlightenment". Today's "enlightenment" is the previous "mystery". In the last chapter, we saw that Seng Zhao and Dao Sheng pointed out that truth is only a phenomenon. There is an idiom in Zen Buddhism: "Mountains are mountains, and water is water." When people are in the mist, they look at mountains as mountains and water as water; after people's enlightenment, mountains are still mountains and water is still water.
The Zen master also has another commonly used phrase: "riding a donkey to find a donkey." It is used to refer to people who want to find truth outside of phenomena or people who want to find Nirvana outside of the cycle of life and death. Zen Master Shuzhou said: "There are only two diseases: one is to ride a donkey to find a donkey, and the other is to ride a donkey and refuse to get off. Mi. Lingli people know right now, except for mimic donkey disease, the madness ceases."
"Now that you know the donkey, and you refuse to ride it, this disease is the most difficult to cure. The mountain monk said to you: Don't ride. You are a donkey, and the earth is a donkey. How can you ride a horse? If you ride, I don’t care if I don’t get rid of it. If I don’t ride, the world will fall to the ground. These two illnesses will go away for a while, and there will be nothing in my heart. What can I do if I am called Taoist?” (Ibid.) Other things are like riding a donkey to find a donkey and riding a donkey to refuse to get off.
Zen Master Huang Bo said: "The speech is silent and moving, all sounds and colours are full of Buddha's things. Where to find the Buddha? Don't put your head on your head and your mouth on your mouth." (Quotations from Gu Zun Su, Volume 3) If you reach enlightenment, everything will be done at this time. It's all Buddhist things, and you see the Buddha everywhere. It is said that a Zen monk entered the temple and spit on the Buddha statue. The people in the temple criticized him. He said, "Please tell me, where is there no bodhisattva?" (Book 27 of Chuan Deng Lu)
Therefore, the Zen master lives like ordinary people and does what ordinary people do; after the process of going from fascination to enlightenment, he has put down his physical temperament and entered the realm of meditation. After that, he has to leave the realm of meditation and return to the world of the world. This is what the Zen master said, "A hundred feet of success, one step further." At the end of the day, it is like a sign of enlightenment. "Further" means that you have reached the epiphany and that you have reached the peak of enlightenment, but there is still work to be done. What remains to be done is nothing more than ordinary things in ordinary life. As Zen Master Nanquan said: "We met straight there, but came here to walk." (Quotations from Gu Zun Su, Volume 12)
Although the saint still lives in the world on this side, his understanding of the world on the other side is not in vain. Although the things he did were the same as ordinary people, these things had different meanings to the saints. The Zen Master Baizhang Huaihai (died 814) once said: "The name is greedy and hatred when you have not understood, and when you have realized it, you will be called the wisdom of the Buddha. Therefore, it is the same as the old people, and the walking and walking places when the old is different." ("Gu Zun) "Su Quotations" Volume 1) The last sentence here may be wrong, and what Master Huaihai wants to say is obviously "it is not different from the behaviour of the old-time, only the people of the old-time".
People are different from the old days because even though his behaviour is the same as others, he has no attachments to anything. This is what Zen often says: “Eating all day long without biting a grain of rice; wearing clothes all day without hanging a strand of silk.” (Quotations from Ancient Zun Su, Volume 3 and Volume 16)
The above content is selected from "A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy (Collector's Edition)" published by Chongqing Publishing House in September 2020
