Linji Yixuan Quotes

An ancient said that if you call it a thing, you miss the mark. Just look for yourself: what else is there? Talk could go on forever: each of you must personally make the effort.

If you love the holy and hate the ordinary, you float and sink in the sea of birth and death. Affliction exists because of mind: if you have no mind, how can affliction hold you? If you do not try to discriminate and grasp forms, naturally you find the Path that instant.

Students do not understand because they cling to names and sayings. They are obstructed by the names ‘ordinary’ and ‘holy.’ Thus they block their eye for the Path and do not find clear understanding. The scriptural teachings are all openly revealed explanations, but students do not understand them. Instead, they go to the words and phrases to produce interpretations. All of this is being dependent and falling into cause and effect, so birth and death in the triple world are inevitable.
If you want to get the freedom to go or stay, to take off or put on birth and death, then right now try to recognize the person who is listening to the Dharma.</br>This person has no form, no marks, no basis, no root, nowhere it abides, but it is leaping with life. In all its many kinds of activities, it functions without location. Therefore, if you search for it, the farther away it is, and if you seek it, the more you go against it. It is called the esoteric secret.

Even the multi-part scriptural teachings of the three vehicles are just old paper for wiping away dirt. Buddha is an illusion, an apparition. The ancestral teachers were just old monks.

Good people, you hurry around everywhere, but what are you seeking? You have worn your soles flat. There is no Buddha that can be sought, no Path that can be achieved, no Dharma that can be attamed. If you seek outside for a buddha with form, it is not like the real you. Do you want to know your fundamental mind? It’s neither merged with nor apart from [birth and death, karmic consciousness]. The real Buddha is formless, the real Path has no body, the real Dharma has no marks. The three are fused together, joined in one place. But since you cannot discern this, you are just ordinary, busy, confused sentient beings [in the grips] of karmic consciousness.

Good people, the physical body composed of the four great elements is impermanent. [All the parts of your body], your spleen and stomach and liver and hair and nails and teeth, just reveal the emptiness of all things.

Everywhere there are those who say that there is a Path that can be cultivated and a truth that can be realized. You tell me, what path, what truth? What is lacking in your present functioning? Where will you cultivate and repair it? The younger generation of would-be Zen people do not understand this, so they believe in these wild fox spirits. When they explain things, they tie people down. They say that enlightenment can be attained only when truth and conduct are in accord and you guard yourself from misdeeds of thought, speech, and action. This kind of talk is like springtime drizzle.

In my view, there are no buddhas and no sentient beings, no ancient and no modern. Those who attain, attain without cultivation, without realization, without gain, and without loss, for them there is never anything else but reality. ‘Even if there is anything that goes beyond this, I would say that it is like a dream or a magical illusion.’ This is what I am saying.

Where your mind stops for a moment, this is called the bodhi tree, [the site of enlightenment]. Your mind being unable to stop is called the tree of ignorance. There is nowhere that ignorance abides; it has no beginning and no end. If from moment to moment your mind cannot stop [its deluded stream of consciousness], then you climb the tree of ignorance. Then you enter among the various kinds of beings in the six planes of existence to wear fur on your body and horns on your head. If you can manage to stop, this is the body and realm of purity. If you are unborn for a moment, then you climb the tree of enlightenment. Then the light spontaneously shines, the light of the deliberate transformation bodies created by spiritual powers in the triple world and the bodies of the bliss of the Dharma and the joy of Zen.

In my view, there are no things to despise and avoid. If you love what’s holy, [I remind you:] ‘holy’ is just a name. There are some students who go to Mt. Wutai to look for Mañjuśrī [there in his legendary abode]. Already they are in error: there is no Mañjuśrī on Mt. Wutai. Do you want to know Mañjuśrī? This functioning here right before your eyes has never been any different [from Mañjuśrī], To have no doubts anywhere—this is the living Mañjuśrī. In the moment of non-differentiating light in your mind, the real Samanta-bhadra is everywhere. When in a moment of mind you can free yourself from bondage, and be liberated wherever you are, this is Avalokiteśvara. In the teaching of samādhi, [these three bodhisattvas] take turns as central figure and companions. When they come forth, it is for a certain period. Each one is all three and all three of them are one. Only when you understand like this can you read the scriptures properly.

Worthy people, we must value the time. [You are wasting your chance] if you just intend to ‘study Zen’ and ‘study the Path’ as superficial adherents running busily back and forth, getting to recognize terms and phrases, seeking ‘buddhas,’ seeking ‘patriarchs,’ seeking ‘enlightened teachers’ [as you conceive of them]. You only have one father and mother: what else are you seeking? You should reflect back on yourself and see them.

Good people, the real Buddha is formless; the real Dharma has no marks. The way you are acting is to erect models and patterns based upon the illusory transformations [which were provisionally put forward in the Buddhist teachings]. Even if you get something from this, you are all wild fox spirits. This is not real Buddhism at all, but the view of outsiders.

The local officials invited Linji to preach. Linji went up to the teaching hall and said: “Today I have no alternative but to bend to human sentiment—thus I have ascended to this seat [to preach]. By the standards of the Zen school, when you attempt to extol the great matter [of enlightenment], you simply cannot open your mouth. There’s no place for you to get a foothold.”

I tell you, there is no Buddha, no Dharma, no cultivation, no realization. What are you trying to find this way as a shallow adherent? Blind people [who reify these concepts] are placing a head upon a head [imposing objects of seeking upon spontaneous reality].

Someone asked: “What does it mean to go from mind-moment to mind-moment without deviating?”
Linji said: “If you try to ask, you have already deviated, and reality-nature and form have been separated. Make no mistake about it, people. All phenomena worldly and world-transcending are without a real fixed identity of their own, they have no inherent nature. There are just empty names, and names are empty too. If you go on this way accepting these empty names as real things, you are making a great mistake. Even if they are there, they are all objects and scenes dependent on transformation [for their temporary being].”