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… - Linji Yixuan

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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].”

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About Linji Yixuan

Línjì Yìxuán (臨済義玄; Wade-Giles: Lin-chi I-hsüan; Japanese: Rinzai Gigen; died 866) was the founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty China.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Shi Yixuan Linji heshang Yixuan Huizhao chanshi Linji
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Additional quotes by Linji Yixuan

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.

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?

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