Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity (Kōmyōzō Zanmai)
Sōtō Zen · Kōun Ejō · 1278
Kōmyōzō Zanmai
Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity · Recorded by Kōun Ejō (孤雲懷奘)
Preface to the Recut Edition of Kōmyōzō Zanmai
This book, Kōmyōzō Zanmai, is a ray from the white curl between the brows of our Ancestor Ejō. The Ancestor used it to illuminate and break through; those who come after use it to turn the light back and illuminate themselves. The World-Honored One’s teaching throughout the five periods and the Founding Ancestor’s instructions throughout his lifetime—could they have had any other purpose?
About a hundred years ago, in the autumn of the five-hundredth memorial of Ancestor Ejō, the elder Menzan, together with Genryō of Eikeiji, joined their efforts to carve printing blocks and make this work public. Then the dark chamber of beginningless time suddenly opened and the luminosity of Dharma-nature shone again. But many years passed, the original blocks wore away, and copies of the book became rare. For years I anxiously sought one and could not find it.
Textual note. Before 面山 (Menzan), T2590 reads 命福老人. Menzan Zuihō is independently documented under the sobriquet 永福老人 (Eifuku Rōjin). Because the controlling witness has 命 rather than 永, the body preserves only the secure title “elder” and does not silently normalize or romanize the uncertain epithet.
In the autumn of Meiji 11, on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the six-hundredth memorial of the Ancestor happened to fall. My Dharma brother Kōan, formerly of Buttokuji, brought this book and deliberately climbed the mountain. I swept my room, burned incense, and received it with leaping joy. This was more than finding a ring in a neighbor’s grounds and seeing the pearls return to Hepu: it was a great blessing for the Ancestor’s descendants, and a great luminosity in this degenerate age. I therefore sent it to the former west-hall elder Teisan and arranged to have it recut. The carving is now complete.
Textual note. At 得環隣揃, the direct Taishō/SAT wording is unusual. It appears to compress the classical Yang Hu ring-recovery allusion; the English therefore renders only the secure allusive sense and does not emend the local text.
Alas! If the tens of thousands of distant descendants in our latter branches know only how to dwell in the residual light left by the Ancestor, yet never turn the illumination back upon themselves, who knows whether the Ancestor’s luminosity may not finally fall to the ground? Can we fail to take warning?
Eiheiji, sixty-first generation — the unworthy Mitsuun, respectfully prefacing
Preface to Kōmyōzō Zanmai
The Buddha said that the luminosity of wisdom is like the shining of the sun: it is the illuminating contemplation of prajñā, what is meant by “clearly seeing that the five aggregates are all empty.” In the Zen school this is called “turning the light around and illuminating back.” The whole lifetime of the Founding Ancestor Eihei’s teaching never departed from this. Ancestor Ejō inherited it and set forth this fascicle; one may indeed say that the son followed the father.
In my prime, I was reading through the canon at Sannōrin in Sōshū. An elder practitioner named Tōkai from Kōzuke entrusted this fascicle to me, saying that he himself had obtained it twenty years earlier at the ancestral mountain in Echizen. I accepted and treasured it with great joy.
I find in Zen Master Keizan’s words: “Zazen is the Dharma gate of ease and joy, the wondrous Dharma of great liberation; the mind-seal of transmitting mind to mind for each person, the standard of receiving Dharma through Dharma for each person. There is no distinction between wise and foolish, no separation between ordinary and sage. All abide in the samādhi of self-enjoyment and together realize and enter the Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity. It is originally apart from the operations of mind, thought, and consciousness and is never measured by thinking, imagining, or contemplation. Have you recognized it yet?” After a long pause he said, “It appears through nonthinking; it is accomplished without intermingling.” Keizan may truly be said to have inherited it directly and exactly, without changing a hair’s breadth.
The ancient temple Eikeiji on Great Dragon Mountain in Bungo was founded by Ancestor Ejō in the Hōji era. Its present abbot, Genryō, whose style name is written 大津 in the source, gave up money intended for robes in order to have this text engraved. I rejoice in his deed and add the following verse of praise as my preface:
When the season ripens, the wondrous teaching is encountered;
— Menzan Zuihō
outside measureless kalpas, an excellent affinity.
A golden-winged garuḍa is hard to bind with a golden cord;
even a jade horse is urged on with a white-jade whip.
The sound of wind striking bamboo clears the morning mist;
water holding the moon’s reflection brightens the autumn sky.
The Samādhi of Luminosity stands openly revealed,
shining throughout the three-thousandfold Sahā world.
The eighty-four-year-old Menzan, distant descendant in the twenty-eighth generation, respectfully inscribed this
Kōmyōzō Zanmai — Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity
Recorded by Kōun Ejō
Within the Shōbōgenzō there is a fascicle entitled “Luminosity.” I now present this further piece solely to give full expression to the fact that the face of the Buddha family is the Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity. It is the hidden practice and secret functioning by which those long in training, who have entered the Master’s room, engage in their own practice and guide others.
What is called the Treasury of Luminosity is the source of all buddhas, what beings inherently possess, and the totality of the myriad dharmas: the great Treasury of Luminosity of the spiritual power of complete awakening. The three bodies, the four wisdoms, and the samādhis of the universal gate, countless as dust motes, all manifest from within it.
Dīpaṃkara Buddha and the Light of the Sūtras
“Dīpaṃkara Tathāgata’s great radiance is supreme among all auspicious things. That Buddha once entered this palace; therefore this place is most auspicious.”
— Avataṃsaka Sūtra, fascicle 16, “Ascending the Summit of Mount Sumeru”
The great luminosity of Dīpaṃkara Buddha pervades the Dharma-realm. Because within it there is no difference between ordinary and sage, “that Buddha once entered this palace.” To hear this once and take it up just so is itself to enter this palace. And because “this place is most auspicious,” when Śākyamuni Tathāgata received the prediction of buddhahood from Dīpaṃkara Buddha, he said that there was nothing attained. Precisely because there was nothing attained, he received Dīpaṃkara’s prediction. This is because one seamless field of luminosity spans ancient and present. If there were even the slightest thing attained, it would already be split in two.
At that time the Bhagavān addressed Vajrapāṇi, saying: “The mind of bodhi is the cause; great compassion is the root; skillful means are the culmination. Lord of Mysteries, what is bodhi? It is to know one’s own mind as it really is. Lord of Mysteries, this is unsurpassed complete awakening. In that Dharma not even the slightest portion can be obtained. Why? Because bodhi has the characteristic of empty space. There is no one who comprehends it, nor is there any understanding of it. Why? Because bodhi is without characteristics. Lord of Mysteries, the dharmas are without characteristics: this is the characteristic of empty space.”
— Mahāvairocana Sūtra, chapter 1, “The Stations of the Mind When Entering the Mantra Gateway”
“Lord of Mysteries, in the practice of the Great Vehicle one gives rise to the mind of the vehicle without objective supports and comprehends the selflessness of phenomena. Why? Those who practiced in this way in former times contemplated the ālaya—the abode of the aggregates—knowing its own nature to be like an illusion, a mirage, a reflection, an echo, a wheel of fire, or a gandharva city. Lord of Mysteries, having thus relinquished the notion of no-self, with the mind-lord free, one awakens to one’s own mind as fundamentally unborn. Why? Lord of Mysteries, because the mind’s former and latter limits cannot be obtained. By thus knowing the nature of one’s own mind, this is the yogic practice of transcending a second eon.”
— Mahāvairocana Sūtra, chapter 1, “The Stations of the Mind When Entering the Mantra Gateway”
“Former and latter limits cannot be obtained” means that one’s own mind is fundamentally unborn. Such is Vairocana’s great wisdom-luminosity.
“The Buddha-body universally emits great radiance;
— Avataṃsaka Sūtra, fascicle 11
its forms are boundless, utterly pure.
Like clouds it fills every land;
everywhere the Buddha’s virtues are proclaimed.
All whom the radiance illumines rejoice;
all the suffering of sentient beings is entirely extinguished.
Each is caused to arouse reverence and a mind of loving-kindness:
this is the Tathāgata’s sovereign functioning.”
“At that time the radiance passed beyond a hundred thousand worlds and universally illumined a million worlds in the east. South, west, north, the four intermediate directions, above and below were likewise. In each of those worlds were ten billion Jambudvīpas, and so on up to ten billion Akaniṣṭha heavens; everything within them became clearly manifest. … Then Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva, in every place and before each Buddha, simultaneously raised his voice and spoke this verse:
‘The Tathāgata is supremely sovereign,
— Avataṃsaka Sūtra, chapter 9, “Awakening through Luminosity”
transcending the world, relying on nothing.
Possessing every virtue,
liberated from all that exists,
undefiled and unattached,
without thought and without reliance,
his essential nature cannot be measured;
all who behold him praise him.
Luminosity pervades, entirely pure;
all dusty defilements are cleansed away.
Unmoving, apart from the two extremes—
this is the Tathāgata’s wisdom.’”
Thus the Tathāgata’s wisdom is luminosity: the samādhi of the luminosity of unmoving wisdom that casts off the two extremes of ordinary and sage, ultimate and conventional. It is the luminosity of the non-discriminating wisdom of Great Wisdom Mañjuśrī. It manifests in just sitting, without contrivance. Hence Vairocana tells the Lord of Mysteries, “In the practice of the Great Vehicle one gives rise to the mind of the vehicle without objective supports and comprehends the selflessness of phenomena.” The Third Ancestor says, “Do not seek the true; only cease holding views.” Know clearly, therefore, that within the Treasury of Luminosity of this vehicle without objective supports there is neither selfhood nor any view. The terms “self” and “view” are merely other names for spirit heads and demon faces. From the initial view of self through even views of Buddha and Dharma, establish none of them. There is only this luminosity. Listen carefully: prajñāpāramitā is like a great mass of fire.
“At that time the Buddha emitted from the white curl between his brows a ray that illumined eighteen thousand worlds to the east, pervading them all, downward to the Avīci hell and upward to the Akaniṣṭha heaven.”
— Lotus Sūtra
Therefore this luminous sign is the supremely rare numinous radiance accomplished by a Buddha. In answer to Maitreya’s question, the great being Mañjuśrī says: “This original luminous sign appeared in the past when Sun-Moon-Lamp Buddha, while teaching a Great Vehicle scripture, entered the Samādhi of the Abode of Immeasurable Meanings. Now Śākyamuni Buddha is about to teach the Wondrous Dharma Lotus—the Dharma that instructs bodhisattvas and is protected and kept in mind by buddhas.” Know, therefore, that this luminosity fulfills immeasurable meanings: a great illumination with neither two nor three, universally shining.
Mañjuśrī at that time was Bodhisattva Wondrous Light. He became the teacher of Sun-Moon-Lamp Buddha’s eight sons and established them firmly in the unsurpassed Way; the last to become Buddha was named Dīpaṃkara. Know from this that the zazen of our gate is precisely the Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity directly transmitted from Dīpaṃkara to Śākyamuni. What further meaning could there be? It is the luminosity in which ordinary and sage are not two, the One Vehicle of present and past. It does not issue from within and it does not enter from without. Why become discouraged over distinctions of high and low, intimate and distant? It cannot be grasped and cannot be cast away. Why suffer under discriminative feelings of grasping and rejecting, hatred and attachment?
Not only that. In the “Peaceful Practices” chapter, the Buddha tells Mañjuśrī:
“If a bodhisattva mahāsattva dwells on the ground of patience, gentle, harmonious, and compliant, neither rash nor violent, with mind also unafraid; and further, with regard to dharmas, engages in nothing, yet contemplates all dharmas according to their true characteristic—neither acting upon them nor discriminating.”
— Lotus Sūtra, “Peaceful Practices”
This is just sitting; this is just walking meditation. In neither acting upon them nor discriminating, one proceeds in accord with the great luminosity.
The same chapter says in verse:
“Rather than making inverted discriminations—saying that dharmas exist or do not exist, are real or unreal, arise or do not arise—dwell in a secluded place, gather and regulate the mind, and abide stable and unmoving like Mount Sumeru. Contemplate all dharmas as having no existence, like empty space, without solidity: not arising, not emerging, unmoving, not retreating, constantly abiding in a single characteristic. This is called the place of approach.”
— Lotus Sūtra, “Peaceful Practices”
This is a direct indication of “straightforwardly abandon expedient means and preach only the unsurpassed Way.”
Bodhidharma, Yunmen, and the Luminosity of the Whole Body
In China, when Emperor Wu of Liang asked Bodhidharma about the ultimate meaning of the holy truths, Bodhidharma said, “Vast emptiness—nothing holy.” This is the great mass of fire of luminosity in ancestral Zen, transparent in every direction, with not a single thing. Outside luminosity there is no separate practice and no different Dharma—how much less some object of wisdom. How could there be practice and realization, antidotal treatment, or contrivance? The emperor asked, “Who is facing me?” Bodhidharma replied, “I don’t know.” It is nothing but one seamless expanse of luminosity. Later Xuedou praised this exchange: “The holy truth—vast emptiness; how could one discern the point? ‘Who faces me?’ Again he says, ‘I don’t know.’” If you penetrate this encounter and drop away, your whole body is luminosity; the whole world is luminosity.
The thirty-ninth generation from the World-Honored One, Great Master Kuangzhen of Mount Yunmen, ascended the hall and instructed the assembly:
“Everyone has luminosity. When you look for it, you do not see it: all is dark and murky. What is everyone’s luminosity?” No one answered. Yunmen himself replied: “The monks’ hall, the Buddha hall, the kitchen and storehouse, the mountain gate.”
— Yunmen
When Yunmen says that everyone has luminosity, he does not say that it will appear later, nor that it existed only in the past, nor that someone standing to the side can watch it coming. He says: everyone has luminosity. This is the exact essential meaning of great wisdom-luminosity. Hear and uphold it in your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow; rejoice and put it into practice. Luminosity is each and every person; Śākyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. “It does not increase in buddhas or decrease in sentient beings” is precisely this numinous luminosity. Therefore it is whole-being. The great earth is one mass of fire.
Yunmen asked, “What is everyone’s luminosity?” The assembly had no answer. Even if they had offered hundreds of thousands of eloquent sayings, there would still have been no answer. Yunmen answered for them: “The monks’ hall, the Buddha hall, the kitchen and storehouse, the mountain gate.” His answering for them answers for every person, for luminosity, for the darkness, and for the assembly’s silence. It is the Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity in which luminosity opens forth.
Therefore it does not inquire whether one is a sentient being or a buddha and does not discriminate between sentient and insentient. Luminosity has long shone everywhere; it has no beginning and no location. Therefore it is dark and murky. What is it like? It is walking in the night. For billions upon billions of kalpas, it is inconceivable.
A monk once began asking Yunmen, “Luminosity, quiescently illuminating, pervades worlds as countless as the sands of the Ganges…” Before he had finished, Yunmen abruptly asked, “Isn’t that a saying of the scholar Zhang Zhuo?” The monk said yes. Yunmen said, “You have fallen into words.” Homage to the ancient Buddha Yunmen! His eyes shoot like meteors, his functioning flashes like lightning. The monk had no word. Who would not know shame at that point?
Xuefeng told the assembly, “The buddhas of the three times turn the great Dharma wheel within flames.” Yunmen said, “The flames preach the Dharma for the buddhas of the three times; the buddhas of the three times stand there and listen.” Thus the luminosity of the flames is the bodhimaṇḍa of the buddhas of the three times and the teacher of all buddhas. Therefore all tathāgatas abide in the fundamental bodhimaṇḍa of the Great Light of Quiescent Extinction and ceaselessly preach Dharma amid the myriad forms. Value what you hear, but do not disparage what you see. This mass of flame is neither before nor after; it is nothing but total manifestation through and through.
Yet people generate discrimination for themselves and belittle and confine themselves: “From the beginning I am an obscure sentient being, an ignorant ordinary person.” This slandering of the Tathāgata’s wheel of true Dharma is in truth karma leading to Avīci hell. Xuefeng’s words and Yunmen’s “flames preach the Dharma” directly abandon expedients and proclaim only the unsurpassed Way; they raise up the teaching of the Buddha’s whole lifetime. Xuefeng’s very words have already been burned away in these flames. Do you intend to escape them? Reciting sūtras and bowing, lifting a foot and setting it down—each and every one is the great functioning of luminosity manifesting before you. Why study it as depending on anyone’s beneficent power?
Some fail to know this profound intent and exhaust themselves trying to quiet thoughts. Others, doubting even that, make their livelihood in a ghost cave. Some are like people entering the sea to count grains of sand; some like mosquitoes trying to pierce a paper window. Leave aside “falling into words.” Great worthies, what is it right now? Though there is no leisure for washing a clod of earth in mud, practitioners of Zen, when posing a question, should first know its huatou (head of speech). It already says “quiescently illuminating” and “pervades worlds as countless as the sands of the Ganges.” How could these be merely Zhang Zhuo’s words? How could they be merely the World-Honored One’s? How could they be yours? Ultimately, whose words are they? Monks’ hall, Buddha hall, kitchen and storehouse, mountain gate—listen carefully, listen carefully.
Great Master Zhaoxian of Changsha ascended the hall and instructed the assembly:
“The entire world of the ten directions is the eye of the monk. The entire world of the ten directions is the everyday speech of the monk. The entire world of the ten directions is the monk’s whole body. The entire world of the ten directions is one’s own luminosity. In the entire world of the ten directions there is not a single person who is not oneself.”
— Changsha
In studying the Buddha Way, one must study diligently and come to trust and understand it. Unless through life after life one has formed affinities with the Buddha family, how could one hear such instruction? Again and again, do not become increasingly distant from it. The “entire world of the ten directions” spoken by Changsha is the single eye of the very person who studies; it is the whole realm of empty space and the entire body-mind. It neither grasps the sacred nor discards the ordinary; it does not say, “Deluded people are not thus; awakened people are thus.” It directly points: this is your own luminosity. Do not hand it over to Master Changsha.
This Dharma talk is the horizontal and vertical preaching within your own nostrils and the free turning and use within each person’s eyes. Yet some take up ancient-case kōans as something separate and, until death, never illuminate back and do not know. Each is a rich man’s child without trousers. Again, when foolish people hear the word “luminosity,” they imagine something like the glow of fireflies, lamps, sun and moon, gold or jewels. They grope and calculate, trying to see some brightness; they make it an object of mind and speculate under the faculty of thought, aiming toward a realm that is empty, vacant, and still. Thus they stop movement and return to stillness. Some cannot cast away a view of real existence or the deluded view that there is something to attain. Some continually entertain thoughts of something inconceivably mysterious and subtle, dwelling excessively on how rare and difficult it is to encounter. There are many such rice-bags dozing with their eyes open.
If it were truly the inconceivable and subtle great matter, why fantasize that thought could reach it? Such people are of the demonic kind: they take the meditative contemplation of the consciousness-spirit to be Buddha-sitting. For this reason our First Ancestor revealed: “Vast emptiness—nothing holy. I don’t know.” To meet such a revelation is indeed difficult and rare.
“Students of the Way do not know the real
— Changsha
because all along they have taken the consciousness-spirit for the real.
The root of birth-and-death through measureless kalpas—
fools call it the original person.”
Thus to measure one’s own mind, establish something attained, and then undertake practice and realization on that basis is to nourish the root of birth-and-death. What is now called “the real” and indicated as “the original person” is the vast openness of luminosity, inherently present and perfectly complete. Outside this vast luminosity, what could you intend to crave or seek? Therefore: nothing holy; I don’t know. It is only a solid iron hammer without a hole, only a great mass of fire.
Ordinary Mind Is the Way
Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the Way?” Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” Zhaozhou asked, “Should I direct myself toward it?” Nanquan said, “The moment you intend to head toward it, you turn away.” Zhaozhou asked, “If I do not intend, how can I know the Way?” Nanquan said, “The Way does not belong to knowing and does not belong to not-knowing. Knowing is deluded awareness; not-knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the Way beyond doubt, it is like the great empty sky, vast and open. How could it be forced into right and wrong?”
Ancients therefore pitied those who mistakenly aim through forceful practice and contrivance, and carefully guided them: “The Way cannot be attained by having mind; it cannot be attained by having no mind. It cannot be reached through words; it cannot be arrived at through silent stillness. As soon as deliberation is involved, you are separated by a thousand or ten thousand leagues.” In all supramundane matters and principles, what notion of practicing the mind could there be outside this “having mind” and “having no mind”? Since it is already said to be unattainable either with mind or with no-mind, why not quickly put down the fantasies of seeking mind and discarding mind?
Ordinary people who do not even reach this point because of disbelief and laziness greedily cling to the illusory mark of self, run grandly through a world like dream, illusion, bubble, and shadow, and do not know that they have been possessed by the demon of worldly cleverness and eloquence. Their mental ingenuity never rests. Hearing secondhand only the word “luminosity,” they speculate that perhaps sparks shoot from the Buddha’s brow. They interpret meaning according to written phrases but never resolve to penetrate the reality of the sages. Even when seasoned adepts appear in the world, they do not go to them for instruction. How then could they settle decisively that the whole body is luminosity, the Dharma-realm is luminosity, covering heaven and covering earth? They are corrupt monks attached to marks, not worth pitying.
“This luminosity is not blue, yellow, red, white, or black; not form and not mind; not existence and not nonexistence; not a dharma of cause and effect. It is the source of all buddhas, the root of practicing the bodhisattva Way, the root of the whole assembly of Buddha-children.”
— Śākyamuni Buddha, as cited by Ejō
Thus the Tathāgata, whose essential nature is empty space, emerges from the Flower-Radiance Samādhi, sits upon the adamantine thousand-light throne, and expounds this luminosity of the single precept. Know clearly that this luminosity is not blue, yellow, red, white, or black. It is simply “the boy of fire whose whole body is red”; the mud ox running on the ocean floor; the iron ox with neither hide nor bones. Since it is neither form nor mind, why lodge a seeking mind in your chest and pant inwardly? Nor is it a dharma of cause and effect. How could it be fabricated by practice and realization? It is truly the source of the buddhas and the root of all Buddha-children. Rocana Buddha has upheld this luminosity of the single precept from the first arousing of the mind. Therefore it is called the “Mind-Ground” chapter. It is free from all names and characteristics; this is called the precept-light of the mind-ground.
“If one who teaches Dharma is alone in a quiet and empty place, still and without human voices, reading and reciting this scripture, then at that time I will manifest for that person a pure body of luminosity. If phrases are forgotten, I will explain them so that the recitation becomes fluent.”
— Śākyamuni Tathāgata, as cited by Ejō
Thus at the time of reading and reciting this scripture, “I will then manifest a pure body of luminosity.” The body and mind of the buddhas are luminosity. The lands of all tathāgatas are Eternally Quiescent Light. In a Pure Land neither body nor mind is other than luminosity. Therefore the teachings speak of eighty-four thousand, even immeasurable, rays of luminosity.
The Great Mass of Flame
Zen Master Baoning Renyong raised the case of the flames preaching the Dharma and presented this verse:
“A mass of fierce flame reddens the sky;
— Zen Master Baoning Renyong
the tathāgatas of the three times are within it.
The turning of the great Dharma wheel is now complete;
above the eyebrows rises a pure breeze.”
When one studies in the innermost chamber of the Buddha family, one naturally penetrates the preaching of the flames in just this way. A single mass of fierce flame blazes through the three times, with no place from which it is born, no appearance, and no differentiation; therefore it ultimately has no place where it is extinguished. Because all is without differentiation, this is the original scenery of the myriad phenomena, sentient beings, and buddhas.
Why do students today fail to keep this in mind and to have faith and understanding? Because they lack faith and understanding, they become the most foolish of ordinary beings and cannot escape the cycle of rebirth in the evil destinies. Turn back to yourself and thoroughly see where the fault lies. People carried along by worldly convention take illusory and impermanent dharmas to be genuinely permanent and have no leisure from worldly gain and loss. They place deep and lasting reliance on this body—a lamp before the wind that can hardly be guaranteed until tomorrow, whose outgoing breath may not wait for the incoming breath—and rejoice or grieve according to favorable and adverse conditions.
Even your four elements and five aggregates will vanish like dew on Mount Tai and North Mount Mang, leaving not a dust mote that can be grasped as “mine,” yet you pass your days at ease as if a real “I” were here. How much more shameful to retain as “mine” things outside the body—countries and cities, spouses and children, fields and houses, gardens and estates, gold and jewels, clothing. Those who fail to truly believe that this is how things are, and instead devote themselves to accumulation, seeking, and attachment, will all disappear without remainder until not a trace remains—how sad. This does not require scriptural instruction; it is the principle before your very eyes.
It is already one mass of fierce flame. Therefore the tathāgatas of the three times are within it, and all beings born in the four modes are within it. Why, then, is there a difference between beings and buddhas here? One who falsely clings to “I” does not trust luminosity and floats and sinks with that “I” in birth-and-death within this very field. For one who thoroughly sees luminosity, the great, equal, unobstructed wisdom manifests within this same field.
“Without leaving this very place, it is always clear and still. When you seek it, you already know it cannot be seen. You cannot grasp it; you cannot discard it. Within the unattainable, just thus attain it.”
— Yongjia
Nāgārjuna praised prajñā: “Prajñāpāramitā is like a great mass of fire; it cannot be grasped from any of the four sides.” Yet although people hear and see such a great teaching, they study it merely as someone else’s realm. They do not drop away through-and-through and do not penetrate it in its entirety. Instead they say, “I am not a vessel for this; I am a beginner; I began late; I am an ordinary person who has not cut off even one delusion.” They refuse to put down old views and self-views.
All day and all night they live within prajñā’s great Treasury of Luminosity yet make themselves hired laborers of low status, becoming the poor son who wanders in hardship for more than fifty years. This is the conceit of self-abasement: forgetting the father’s command although originally a wealthy man’s child. How sad—clinging to the dung-removing vessel, becoming the lowly worker forever ordered to remove filth, and imagining the pure body of luminosity to be an impure body that is the fruit of suffering. There is no grief greater than this grief. Quickly correct the private bias of self-view.
Exhausting self-view
Even if you discuss the principles of Great and Small Vehicles, provisional and real teachings, exoteric and esoteric, or the wondrous purports of the Five Houses and Seven Schools, so long as self-view remains, all of it finally returns to arising and ceasing. Thus it is said: if you understand true reality with a mind of arising and ceasing, true reality itself becomes arising and ceasing. The views of self, person, sentient being, and life-span are self-view. The view of personal identity, one-sided views, wrong views, and attachment to views are self-view. Even from equal awakening up to wondrous awakening, what is called a dust-fine, gauze-thin ignorance is also self-view.
At first it is called “self-view”; later it may be called habitual intellectual understanding, attachment to Dharma, traces of awakening, the “nothing-to-do” view, or the view of standing on level ground. These are only different names substituted according to how much self-view remains and how light or heavy it is. Why? From the gravely evil and perverse view at the outset down to a single gauze-fine point of ignorance, when there is no self-view, what thing could be called a Buddha-view or Dharma-view? Who would remain there to preserve even that gauze-thin ignorance?
Therefore our Founding Ancestor said, “First of all, you should exhaust the ‘I’. If you wish to exhaust the ‘I’, contemplate impermanence.” This is a direct indication from a mind of the greatest and most utter sincerity. The Master of Shaolin’s Teaching on Pacifying the Mind says: “Question: People in the world study many things; why do they not attain the Way? Answer: Because they see a self, they do not attain the Way. Here, ‘self’ means ‘I’. The consummate person meets suffering without anxiety and meets pleasure without delight because no self is seen.”
An ancient Buddha’s verse says: “The Buddha does not see a body; wisdom is Buddha. If there truly is wisdom, there is no Buddha apart from it. The wise one knows that karmic obstructions are empty and rests at ease without fearing birth-and-death.” Not fearing birth-and-death is because no body is seen. Not seeing a body is the absence of self-view. Great wisdom-luminosity is thus free of private bias; hence it is said, “Wisdom is Buddha.”
Yet you cherish this body, like grass-dew or a floating bubble, while treating the great luminosity that is your original body as though it were someone else’s affair. You imagine there must be yet another grand thing beyond this, and uselessly discuss whether the country is peaceful or chaotic and whether offerings are good or poor, while this very body passes away in vain; you have no course of practice grounded in having settled what finally becomes of this body. If you had even the slightest share of trusting and practicing within this Treasury of Luminosity, how could it concern only the liberation of this single body called “me”? Above, it repays the four debts of gratitude; below, it benefits the three realms of existence. Mountains, rivers, the great earth, one’s own body and others’ bodies—all will be boundlessly illuminated by the luminosity of suchness.
“The nature of awakening, perfectly luminous, is the body without characteristics.
— Caoshan Benji
Do not, within knowing and views, force distinctions of distance and intimacy.
When thoughts diverge, the mysterious essence is obscured;
when mind deviates, it no longer neighbors the Way.
When feeling divides the myriad dharmas, one sinks into objects before one;
when discriminative discernment branches in many directions, original truth is lost.
If within these lines you completely understand,
clearly, with nothing to do, you are the person of old.”
This is a direct pointing and direct explanation within the Treasury of Luminosity, and at the same time it reveals wondrous practice and original realization. It does not ask whether one is monk or layperson, beginner or advanced. It does not choose sharp faculties over dull ones and makes no distinction according to how learned or knowledgeable one is. It simply points directly: the nature of awakening, perfectly luminous, is the body without characteristics. There are not two or three.
“The nature of awakening” means Buddha-nature. “Perfectly luminous” is one seamless great luminosity. This very illusory body of yours right now is the Quiescent Light without characteristics. Therefore an ancient worthy said, “Throughout the whole body there is no image or reflection; throughout the entire world it is nowhere concealed.” If you have not yet understood, I will ask you further: shatter the four elements of your whole body right now; burn away skin, flesh, bones, and marrow—then bring me one thing. At precisely such a time, buddhas and sentient beings of past and present, ordinary and holy throughout the three realms, the whole array of the myriad phenomena—none is other than the body without characteristics.
Linji Yixuan said, “The four elements cannot preach Dharma or listen to Dharma. Spleen, stomach, liver, and gallbladder cannot preach or listen. Empty space cannot preach or listen. Tell me: what is it that can preach and listen?” This is the numinous luminosity that listens to the Dharma without reliance—the body without characteristics. For the sake of people, the ancients provisionally gave it a name: “the person of the Way who listens to Dharma without reliance.” Here Caoshan says, “The nature of awakening, perfectly luminous, is the body without characteristics.” In this one line the matter is stated distinctly and completely.
Out of grandmotherly kindness he then shows wondrous practice: “Do not forcibly make near and far within knowing and views.” Those who draw close to bad teachers study interpretations and soon say, “Through the power gained in my training I have obtained a Zen that surpasses buddhas and ancestors. No one else can know it. Who besides me could be intimate with the pivotal function of Zen?” This is a crooked mind possessed by the demon king, an outsider who has not attained yet claims attainment.
Another group, positing a self and clinging to marks, becomes discouraged and says, “I am dull, not suited to study; the capacity for learning is remote from me.” This too is a fabricated view. When these two sorts of views arise, producing liking and dislike and judgments of right and wrong, all turn into the four modes of deliberation—mind, thought, feeling, and consciousness. So Caoshan cuts them in two with one stroke: “When thoughts diverge, the mysterious essence is obscured; when mind deviates, it no longer neighbors the Way.” Truly one should abandon bad teachers and draw near to good friends. To learn views from a false teacher and then think “this is close” and “that is distant” is merely to generate views without basis.
The Way and the mysterious essence are the sun-face and moon-face of the luminous nature of awakening. Yet from within this luminosity a single thought of non-awakening arises, and false mind and distorted imagination grow. These are floating clouds obstructing the moon of the perfectly luminous mind. Thus it says, “it no longer neighbors the Way.”
“When feeling divides the myriad dharmas, one sinks into objects before one.” The Tathāgata has already taught that there is no distinction among these three—mind, Buddha, and sentient beings; he has also said that there is only the One Vehicle. Yet although you hear and see such a great teaching, on your own side you recklessly raise distinctions of self and other, noble and low, ordinary and sage; because of beautiful and ugly sights and sounds, poverty and wealth, benefit and loss, you are carried away by objects before you. This is what comes of relying on your own views and thereby defiling practice-realization; it is the doing of the arrogant and unbelieving.
“When discriminative discernment branches in many directions, original truth is lost.” The Buddhadharma responds to vastly different capacities, and so there are many approaches: Great and Small Vehicles, provisional and real, half and full, partial and complete, exoteric and esoteric, Zen and doctrinal teaching, realization of the Way and Pure Land. But when the faculty of thought clings to conditions, original truth is finally lost. “If within these lines you completely understand, clearly, with nothing to do, you are the person of old.” This “person of old” is the body without characteristics, simply sitting upright without doubt and without contrivance of practice, realization, or mental effort. If even a hair’s breadth of intellectual understanding is kept in mind, there is not “nothing to do,” and it is not the person of old.
Nothing Attained
Śākyamuni Tathāgata said, “At the place of Dīpaṃkara Buddha, there was no Dharma by which I attained unsurpassed complete awakening.” This is the single phrase of meeting Dīpaṃkara Buddha. One phrase clearly realized surpasses tens of billions. Study this luminosity of nothing attained.
Those today who shave their heads and dye their robes as descendants of the Tathāgata spend days and months illuminated by Dīpaṃkara, yet never even question what Dīpaṃkara Buddha actually is; therefore they have no share in genuine study. They merely borrow the appearance of leaving home while greedily receiving offerings of the four requisites—truly idlers. If you say this is not so, I ask you: what are the marks and features of Dīpaṃkara Buddha right now? You may not answer with words, and you may not answer without words. Speak quickly! Speak quickly!
How sad that people study Dīpaṃkara only as a Buddha of the past and do not know the shining that spans antiquity and illuminates the present. How then could you trust that preaching Dharma and entering nirvāṇa are taking place within your own nostrils and eyes?
There is a group of inferior śrāvakas who intensely despise birth-and-death and urgently seek nirvāṇa. Those of you in this group rouse a fierce resolve based on real existence and something to obtain, adding craving for Dharma on top of your self-conceit; your seeking mind never stops until death. Blind teachers praise you as good people of faith, so you become proud that this self-clinging and acquisitiveness make you diligent practitioners of the Way, and in the end you attain the hungry-ghost realm. But the “constant diligence” studied in the Buddha family and the blazing, firm great samādhi that has been singly transmitted do not mean your distorted concentration, in which practice and realization are set up as two stages and intellectual understanding is pursued.
“Numinous luminosity shines alone,
— Baizhang
far removed from sense faculties and their objects.
The essence stands exposed, true and constant,
unrestricted by words and letters.
Mind-nature is unstained,
originally complete.
Only depart from false conditions,
and it is the Buddha of suchness.”
This numinous luminosity has not been interrupted from kalpas of the distant past through the furthest reach of the future; this is called constant diligence. Being far removed from sense faculties and their objects, with the essence exposed as true and constant, is called blazing and constantly firm. Entrusting yourself to this numinous luminosity and abiding without movement is called the samādhi of just sitting, the Samādhi That Is King of Samādhis.
Even within “having something to attain,” there are differences of depth and shallowness, lightness and heaviness. It is not only those who cling to phenomenal aspects, engage in practices with characteristics, seek outside themselves, discriminate true and false on words and phrases, give while abiding in marks, misunderstand “accumulating merit and virtue,” and afflict body and mind to extinguish sins and generate goodness while boasting that this is diligence. Even if you put down brush and inkstone, cut off human affairs, sit alone in an empty valley, live on fruits and nuts and wear grass garments, sit continuously without lying down—if in your mind you stop movement in order to return to stillness, seek to cut off delusion completely and abide one-sidedly in “truth,” grasping and rejecting, hating birth-and-death and loving nirvāṇa, all of this is still having something to attain.
“Abandoning existence and clinging to emptiness is the same disease—like avoiding drowning only to leap into fire. Discarding delusion to seize the true, the mind of grasping and rejecting becomes artifice. Students who do not understand use this as practice; truly they take a thief for their own child. The loss of Dharma-wealth and destruction of merit all come from this mind, thought, and consciousness.”
— Yongjia
Therefore students should cast body and mind into the Treasury of Luminosity, drop the whole body away in Buddha-luminosity, and sit, lie down, and walk within it. The World-Honored One said, “A Buddha-child dwelling on this ground is precisely the Buddha’s own enjoyment; always within it, walking, sitting, or lying down.” As Buddha-children, do not forget these golden words even for a moment. “This ground” is the Treasury of Luminosity; it is the single Buddha Vehicle.
Do not, by one thought that turns away from awakening and joins the dust, suddenly transform this Buddha-enjoyment into the enjoyment of animals or hungry ghosts. Tell me: as for Dīpaṃkara Buddha, Śākyamuni, and the succession of lamps whose flames have continued through the Seven Buddhas and the ancestral lineage—their marks and features, and the bodhimaṇḍa in which they enter nirvāṇa—do you study all this as belonging to remote antiquity? Do you hear of it and think of it as eternally abiding and never extinguished? Will you say they dwell in a jeweled city of Quiescent Light? Will you understand “the Buddha’s true Dharma-body is like empty space”? If you remain at such a level and never break free of the cave of learned calculation, how could you be called a teacher who inherits Buddha-luminosity? It is the cry of a jackal wearing a lion’s skin.
If you have no share in investigating within your own eye, then even if you shave your head and dye your robes, you are a pitiable sentient being. To explain a thousand scriptures and ten thousand treatises is only to count the treasures in the house next door—like a pearl diver who knows that a jewel is precious but does not know its price. Tell me: right now, when you shit and piss, put on clothes and eat food, ultimately whose enjoyment is it?
Not only that: the color of water and the light of mountains, heat departing and cold arriving, spring flowers and the autumn moon, a thousand changes and ten thousand transformations—what brings all this forth? Truly, “the countenance is exceedingly wondrous; luminosity shines through the ten directions.” Birth-and-death and nirvāṇa are like last night’s dream. Existence itself is nonexistence; nonexistence itself is existence. If it is not thus, then to say “always on Vulture Peak” is a provisional Dharma, a provisional theory; to hear “unborn, undying, Eternally Quiescent Light” is mere speech, entirely without real meaning.
Do Not Polish Darkness in Order to Produce Luminosity
Śākyamuni Tathāgata says in his golden words on the luminosity of the single precept:
“Those who posit a self and cling to marks cannot believe this Dharma. Those who cut short their lifespan in practice and realization are likewise not ground where the seed can be planted.† If you wish the sprouts of bodhi to grow and luminosity to illuminate the world, you should quietly contemplate the true characteristic of dharmas: neither arising nor ceasing, neither eternal nor annihilated, neither one nor different, neither coming nor going … toward those in training and those beyond training, do not give rise to discriminatory thought.”
— Śākyamuni Tathāgata, as cited by Ejō
Textual note. T2590/SAT reads 滅壽修證者 at this point, an anomalous local reading reflected literally above. The parallel precept verse in T1484 instead reads 滅盡取證者. Because T2590 is the controlling source for this translation, the English does not silently replace its wording with the parallel reading.
Hear these golden words, “luminosity shines upon the world,” through to the bones and marrow. It is the wondrous body in which the great functioning of the buddhas of the three times is manifest. Receive it upon your head, put it into practice, and how could you not rejoice greatly?
Yet when I look at practitioners today, they place themselves on the ground of foolish darkness and polish themselves morning and evening, waiting for some later time when they will finally see through luminosity. Or they mistake the blazing pure luminosity itself for the scattering flight of miscellaneous thoughts, repeatedly brush away every flame, and try to see “Eternally Quiescent Light.” If the absence of all arising were correct, then wood, stone, and clods of earth would be it. All this is to flee fire and leap into drowning: the sitting of inferior śrāvakas.
How foolish to cling to the sitting of the Two Vehicles and the strivings of ordinary people while wanting to awaken to the supreme great Way. There is no duller or more distorted practice than this. Therefore it is said: “The Two Vehicles are diligent but have no mind of the Way; outsiders are clever but have no wisdom. Foolish and deluded, childishly ignorant, they take an empty fist and pointing finger as real.”
Textual note. T2590/SAT prints 小駭 in the quoted line 又愚又痴又小駭. The underlying Yongjia Zhengdao Ge in T2014 instead reads 亦愚癡亦小騃. The English “childishly ignorant” follows the transmitted quotation-family sense of 小騃; the discrepancy with the controlling T2590 witness is disclosed here rather than silently normalized.
Obstructed by this kind of practice of the mind, seeking of the mind, calculation and conjecture, people not only bury the luminosity originally present and complete; they slander the Tathāgata’s wheel of true Dharma. This is karma leading to Avīci hell. Moreover, it is only people of little wisdom and great confusion who become heads of monasteries and guide crowds of blind people clinging to self and attainment. From the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties of China down to the present they have been as dense as rice, hemp, bamboo, and reeds. How could one not pity this? How could one not grieve?
Even those who occasionally emerge from that nest see spirits and ghosts; the “thieving mind” has not yet died. Some, in a once-in-a-lifetime burst of courage, recklessly confer certification. Others generate a fierce resolve for a time, sit long without lying down, exhaust mind and consciousness until all things become one piece, their activity merely ceases and thought becomes quiet, and there is a vacant, vividly alert state like solitary brightness. They falsely understand this “inside and outside made one piece” to be their own original ground. They present this view to a blind Zen teacher. The teacher lacks the eye that sees people and merely responds according to the visitor’s words, granting a winter-melon seal; the person then calls himself a monk who has finished training. Practitioners of shallow understanding and little learning who fall into this poison are too many to count. Even if we call this the Final Dharma age, is it not altogether lamentable?
Ejō’s Direct Instruction to Those Who Truly Practice
I respectfully say to companions who genuinely practice: do not seize upon any particular inner response or outward situation. Do not rely on interpretations or cleverness. Do not carry around what you have learned on the communal sitting platform of the monks’ hall. With body and mind, let go completely into the great Treasury of Luminosity spoken of above and never look back a second time.
Do not seek awakening. Do not sweep away delusion. Do not dislike the arising of thoughts; neither cherish thoughts and continue them. Sit fully and solidly, right here. If you do not continue a thought, thought does not arise by itself. Be simply like a single expanse of empty sky, like one mass of fire. Entrust yourself to exhalation and inhalation. Do not get involved in any of the myriad affairs. Sit through everything.
Even if eighty-four thousand miscellaneous thoughts arise and cease, when you do not take them up and let them go completely, each and every thought will become the luminosity of the spiritual power of prajñā. This is not only while sitting. Step after step is the walking of luminosity; step by step, there is no discriminative thinking.
Throughout the twelve periods of the day, be like a great dead person, without any self-view or discrimination. Yet exhalation and inhalation, hearing-nature and touch-nature, are without knowing and without discrimination: body and mind are one—the luminosity of quiescent illumination. Therefore, when called, you answer. This is the luminosity in which ordinary and sage, delusion and awakening, are one.
Even in the midst of activity, it is not obstructed by activity. Forest flowers and grass leaves, humans and animals, large and small, long and short, square and round—all manifest at once without relying on the discriminations of your mind, thoughts, or attention. This is direct realization of luminosity unobstructed by functioning: empty and bright, self-illuminating, without expenditure of mental effort.
From the beginning, this luminosity has no abiding place. Although buddhas appear in the world, luminosity does not “appear in the world.” Although buddhas enter nirvāṇa, luminosity does not “enter nirvāṇa.” When you are born, luminosity is not born. When you die, luminosity is not extinguished. In a buddha it does not increase; in a sentient being it is not extinguished. Even when deluded, it is not deluded; even when awakened, it does not awaken. It has no location, no characteristic, and no name. It is the totality of the entire array of myriad phenomena.
Textual note. At this later locus, T2590 and the 1909 printed edition both read 佛ニ在テモ増サズ。衆生ニ在テモ滅ゼズ (“in a buddha it does not increase; in a sentient being it is not extinguished”). Earlier in the same work, however, T2590 gives the paired formula 在諸佛不増。在衆生不減 (“does not increase in buddhas; does not decrease in sentient beings”). The translation follows each local witness and does not silently normalize the later 滅 to 減.
It cannot be grasped. It cannot be discarded. It cannot be attained. Yet though it cannot be attained, it functions throughout the whole body. From the Peak of Existence above down to Avīci Hell below, it is perfectly luminous just so—numinous luminosity, wondrous and inconceivable.
If you trust and receive this profound intent, there is no need to turn to another and ask what is true or false. It will be like meeting your own father in the marketplace. Do not seek another good teacher’s certification or delight in receiving predictions and attaining fruition. How much less should you cling to clothing, food, or dwelling, or indulge in sensual desire and attachment—the conduct of animals.
From the very beginning this samādhi is the bodhimaṇḍa of the fruit-ocean of all buddhas. Therefore it is the singly transmitted Buddha-sitting and Buddha-practice. Since you are already a Buddha-child, sit securely only upon the Buddha-seat. You need not necessarily sit the sittings of hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans and devas, śrāvakas, or pratyekabuddhas.‡
Textual note. T2590/SAT reads 聲聞縁覺坐ニカナラズシモ坐スべカラズ. The カナラズシモ construction with the negative predicate gives a partial-negation reading (“not necessarily”), which the translation follows. A 1909 printed edition reads カナラズ without シモ, yielding a stronger prohibition; because T2590/SAT is the controlling witness here, that variant is recorded rather than silently adopted.
Just sit in this way and do not let time pass in vain. This is called the bodhimaṇḍa of straightforward mind, inconceivable liberation, the Samādhi of the Treasury of Luminosity.
Do not show this writing to those who have not entered the room within the lineage. This single concern for protecting the Dharma is so that, in one’s own practice and in guiding others, distorted and deviant views do not arise.
Twenty-eighth day of the eighth month, Kōan 1 (1278)
Kōmyōzō Zanmai — End
Postscript by Genryō
The ancients said: “Causes, conditions, and the ripening of the time—quiescent, yet clearly manifest.” I therefore reflect: that our Ancestor Ejō first set forth this teaching was the cause; that my old teacher was fortunately able to obtain it was the condition; that it awaited the present, nearly half a millennium later, was the ripening of the time. That we have therefore carved blocks and circulated it throughout the realm—how could this not be “quiescent, yet clearly manifest”? Deeply moved, this unworthy one respectfully adds these humble words as a postscript.
Genryō, humble junior student at Eikeiji in Bungo Province, respectfully written
Verse for the Recut Edition
Earlier, on the six-hundredth memorial of Ancestor Ejō, I respectfully offered the fascicle of Kōmyōzō Zanmai that he had revealed, attaching an unworthy verse. Now I am informed that the recut edition has been completed, and so I record the verse at the end of the volume:
Six hundred years ago, that weathered staff—
— Kōan
swallowing seas and mountains whole, where could it coil?
Reed flowers, bright moon, the autumn wind clear and bracing;
a reflection moves in the cold pool—[reading uncertain] one mass.*
Textual note. At the final phrase, the direct Taishō/SAT witness reads 王一團. Because the initial graph 王 of this phrase does not yield a secure English reading in this context, the translation marks that portion unresolved rather than adopting an unverified emendation from a secondary transcription.
Kōan, formerly of Buttokuji, respectfully bowed and inscribed this
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