..續本文上一頁 an illusion.

　　They make no discrimination between a sage and an ordinary man,

　　Nor do they have any arbitrary Concept of Nirvana.

　　They are above ”affirmation” and ”negation”;

　　They break the barriers between the past, the present .and the future.

　　Thy use their sense organs when occasion requires,

　　But the concept of ”using” does not arise.

　　They may particularise on all sorts of things.

　　But the concept of ”particularisation” arises not.

　　Even during the cataclysmic fire at the end of a kalpa. When ocean beds are burnt dry;

　　Or during the blowing of catastropic winds, when mountains topple;

　　The everlasting bliss of Perfect Rest and Cessation of Change that is Nirvana

　　Remains the same and changes not."

　　The Patriarch then said to Chi-tao, "I am trying to describe to you something that intrinsically is ineffable, in order to help you to get rid of fallacious views. If you do not interpret my words too literally you may perhaps know a wee bit of Nirvana."

　　Chi-tao became highly enlightened and, in a rapturous mood he made obeisance and departed.

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　　Footnotes

　　286:1 NOTE By EDITOR. It will be difficult to understand this stanza without knowing a little about Mahayana psychology and the Ten Stages of Bodhisattvahood. In Mahayana the mind is conceived as a rising series of faculties for cognition, vis, (1) The six vijnanas: p. 287 seeing-mind, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and the mental processes involved. (2) The Mano-vijnana, or discriminative mind. (3) The Manas, or intuitional-emotional-volitional mind. (4) Alaya-vijnana, or Universal Mind. It is sometimes called the system of the Vijnanas, and is developed in the great sutras, notably the Lankavatara, which has particularly to do with self-realisation. The Ten Stages of Bodhisattva-hood that culminates in Buddhahood, is the gradual getting rid of, or transcending, or transmuting, the defilements or hindrances of these successive "minds." The Alaya is immaculate but it acts as a "storage" for the accumulated karma of habit-energy from beginningless time, and its face is thereby defiled which acts as a particularising screen for the pure rays of Prajna, that in passing through become discolored and perfumed. This is true of each of the successive minds. Self-realisation of Mind-essence consists in getting rid of these successive layers of defilement. Success comes suddenly as one learns to "about face" and look inward intuitively, rather than outwardly by the discriminative faculties.

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《Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch - Chapter VI· Dialogues Suggested by Various Temperaments and Circumstances》全文閱讀結束。