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The obstruction of the Path by the mind and its conceptual discrimination is worse than poisonous snakes or fierce tigers. Why? Because poisonous snakes and fierce tigers can still be avoided, whereas intelligent people make the mind’s conceptual discrimination their home, so that there’s never a single instant, whether they’re walking, standing, sitting or lying down, that they’re not having dealings with it.
As time goes on, unknowing and unawares, they become one piece with it; not because they want to, either, but because since beginningless time they have followed this one little road until it’s become set and familiar. Though they may see through it for a moment and wish to detach from it, they still can’t. Thus it is said that poisonous snakes and fierce tigers can still be avoided, but the mind’s conceptual discrimination truly has no place for you to escape.
Taken from the Chinese text Chih Yueh Lu – Records of Pointing at the Moon Excerpt from Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui Translated by Christopher Cleary |