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 … - Linji Yixuan

People who study the Path genuinely do not grasp buddhas or bodhisattvas or arhats; they do not grasp attainments of special excellence within the triple world. They are transcendent and free and on their own—they are not constrained by things. Even if heaven and earth turn upside down, they are not in doubt. If all the buddhas of the ten directions appear before them, they feel no joy. If [all the torments of] the hungry ghosts, the animals, and the beings in hell appear before them, they feel no fear. Why are they like this? They see the emptiness of all phenomena, which exist through transformation and don’t exist without it. They see that the triple world is only mind, and the myriad things are only consciousness. Therefore, why bother to grasp [what are really] dreamlike illusions and apparitions?

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.

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.”