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[The empty field] cannot be cultivated or proven. From the beginning it is altogether complete, undefiled and clear down to the bottom. Where everything is correct and totally sufficient, attain the pure eye that illuminates thoroughly, fulfilling liberation. Enlightenment involves enacting this; stability develops from practicing it. Birth and death originally have no root or stem, appearing and disappearing originally have no defining signs or traces. The primal light, empty and effective, illumines the head top. The primal wisdom, silent but also glorious, responds to conditions. When you reach the truth without middle or edge, cutting off before and after, then you realize one wholeness. Everywhere sense faculties and objects both just happen. The one who sticks out his broad long tongue transmits the inexhaustible lamp, radiates the great light, and performs the great buddha work, from the first not borrowing from others one atom from outside the dharma. Clearly this affair occurs within your own house.

-Hongzhi Zhengjue, Cultivating the Empty Field

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Patch-robed monks make their thinking dry and cool and rest from the remnants of conditioning. Persistently brush up and sharpen this bit of the field. Directly cut through all the overgrown grass. Reach the limit in all directions without defiling even one atom. Spiritual and bright, vast and lustrous, illuminating fully what is before you, directly attain the shining light and clarity that cannot attach to a single defilement. Immediately tug and pull back the ox's nose. Of course his horns are imposing and he stomps around like a beast, yet he never damages people's sprouts or grain. Wandering around, accept how it goes. Accepting how it goes, wander around. Do not be bounded by or settle into any place. Then the plough will break open the ground in the field of the empty kalpa. Proceeding in this manner, each event will be unobscured, each realm will appear complete. One contemplation of the ten thousand years is beginning not to dwell in appearances. Thus it is said that the mind-ground contains every seed and the universal rain makes them all sprout. When awakening blossoms, desires fade, and Bodhi's fruit is perfected self.

-Hongzhi Zhengjue, Cultivating the Empty Field

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Vast and far-reaching without boundary, secluded and pure, manifesting light, this spirit is without obstruction. Its brightness does not shine out but can be called empty and inherently radiant. Its brightness, inherently purifying, transcends causal conditions beyond subject and object. Subtle but preserved, illumined and vast, also it cannot be spoken of as being or non being, or discussed with images or calculations. Right in here the central pivot turns, the gateway opens. You accord and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications. Facing everything, let go and attain stability. Stay with that just as that. Stay with this just as this. That and this are mixed together with no discriminations as to their places. So it is said that the earth lifts up the mountain without knowing the mountain's stark steepness. A rock contains jade without knowing the jade's flawlessness. This is how truly to leave home, how home-leaving* must be enacted.

Hongzhi Zhengjue, Cultivating the Empty Field

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The practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent introspection. When you have fathomed this you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. This empty, wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Spacious and content, without confusion from inner thoughts of grasping, effectively overcome habitual behavior and realize the self that is not possessed by emotions. You must be broad-minded, whole without relying on others. Such upright independent spirit can begin not to pursue degrading situations. Here you can rest and become clean, pure, and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately return, accord, and respond to deal with events. Everything is unhindered, clouds gracefully floating up to the peaks, the moonlight glitteringly flowing down mountain streams. The entire place is brightly illumined and spiritually transformed, totally unobstructed and clearly manifesting responsive interaction like box and lid or arrowpoints [meeting]. Continuing, cultivate and nourish yourself to enact maturity and achieve stability. If you accord everywhere with thorough clarity and cut off sharp corners without dependence on doctrines, like the white bull or wildcat [helping to arouse wonder], you can be called a complete person. So we hear that this is how one on the way of non-mind acts, but before realizing non-mind we still have great hardship.

-Hongzhi Zhengjue, Cultivating the Empty Field

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The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Utter emptiness has no image, upright independence does not rely on anything. Just expand and illuminate the original truth unconcerned by external conditions. Accordingly we are told to realize that not a single thing exists. In this field birth and death do not appear. The deep source, transparent down to the bottom, can radiantly shine and can respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds. The whole affair functions without leaving traces, and mirrors without obscurations. Very naturally mind and dharmas emerge and harmonize. An Ancient said that non-mind enacts and fulfills the way of non-mind. Enacting and fulfilling the way of non-mind, finally you can rest. Proceeding you are able to guide the assembly. With thoughts clear, sitting silently, wander into the center of the circle of wonder. This is how you must penetrate and study.

-Hongzhi Zhengjue, Cultivating the Empty Field

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His students gathered in the hall to hear the great Fayan give a talk before the midday meal. He pointed to the bamboo blinds, and two students went and rolled them up in the same way. Fayan said, “One wins, one loses.”

Wumen’s Verse:

With the blinds rolled up, the vast sky is bright and clear,
but even the vast sky doesn’t match our Way.
Why don’t you throw away that sky completely?
Then not a breath of wind will come through.

The Gateless Gateway, Case 26

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Year after year
it's a monkey
in a monkey mask
-Basho

     The old calendar
     fills me with gratitude
     like a song
     -Buson

New Year's Day—
sunlight on every field
beloved
-Basho

     New Year's Day—
     everything is in blossom!
     I feel about average
     -Issa

Another year—
hat in hand
sandals on my feet
-Basho

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Budai always strolled around the streets, carrying a cloth sack and a torn carpet. The cloth sack was filled with pots, bowls, wooden clogs, fish, rice, vegetables, meat, tiles, rocks, clay, wood, the sadnesses of the world, and all kinds of things. Sometimes, in a crowded place, he would open the sack, empty it onto the carpet, and say, "Have a look, have a look."

   Then he would pick the objects up one-by-one in amazement and wonder, asking "What is this called? What is this for? How do you use this?"

   The people were dumbfounded.

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   Once Xuefeng and Yantou were traveling on Tortoise Mountain when they got snowed in at an inn. Yantou spent the entire time sleeping, while Xuefeng spent each day sitting in meditation.
   One day, Xuefeng called out, “Elder Brother! Elder Brother! Get up!”
   Yantou asked, “What is it?”
   Xuefeng said, “Don’t be lazy. As pilgrims, profound knowledge is our companion and should accompany us at all times. But all you do is sleep.”
   Yantou yelled back, “Just eat your fill and sleep! Sitting there in meditation all the time, you’re like a clay bodhisattva statue in someone’s hut. You’re just going to spook the villagers.”
   Xuefeng pointed to his chest and said, “I feel uneasy here, and I’m afraid of cheating myself.”
   Yantou said, “I’ve always said that someday you’ll build a cottage on a lonely mountaintop and convey a great teaching, and yet you talk like this!”
   “I’m truly anxious.”
   “If that’s really so, share your understanding with me, and where it’s true I’ll confirm it for you; where it’s not true we’ll root it out.”
   Xuefeng told Yantou of three incidents when he felt he had an opening through listening to what someone else said.
   Yantou responded, “Haven’t you heard that what comes in through the front gate isn’t the family treasure?”
   “Then what should I do?”
Yantou said, “If you want to convey a great teaching, it has to flow out from your own breast to cover heaven and earth.”
   When Xuefeng heard this he experienced a profound awakening. He bowed and said, “Elder Brother, today on Tortoise Mountain I’ve finally attained the Way!”

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During the second quarter of the night of awakening, the Buddha remembered his previous
lives. First one, then two, then five. Soon he stopped counting. Names appeared—and he would say: “That was me.” He saw places—and said: “That was me.” He saw passions flare and fade. He saw people dying—and said: “That was me.” A throng of faces, clothes, towns, animals, merchandise, roads. He went on watching. He had stopped repeating “That was me.” And suddenly he realized he was watching the lives of others. He didn’t notice any fundamental difference. He pressed on, amazed, but amazement was a constant in these migrations through time. True, he could no longer say: “That was me.” But was that really so important? He could still recognize the joy—and above all the suffering. The scenes he had lived through and those he had not lay side by side, each attracting the other, like leaves in a pond. The light they emanated fused into one. As soon as the eye retreated, they became a thread of beads, each with a slightly different color, and here and there a small chip.

-excerpt from Ka, by Roberto Calasso

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