恩師濟公活佛 慈悲訓示

Cultivation often begins in a single stir of quiet sorrow: an old object or a familiar scene draws up a faint sadness. This broadens the classical gesture of “seeing a thing and thinking of a person” (睹物思人) — not merely missing one person, but letting what lies before your eyes call up a whole reckoning with your life and all you have lived through.

捫心, “pressing the hand to the chest,” is a bodily gesture: the ancients held the heart to be the seat of conscience, so this touch stands for the most honest, most searching self-examination — the same spirit as Zengzi’s daily threefold self-examination in the Analects. What you press yourself to ask is the most basic question of all: where, after all, does happiness lie hidden?

The hardness of life is understood only by one who has lived through it; hope is born only in one willing to give. The force that sets a person onto the road of cultivation sprouts from just this recognition.

法航 is a vessel of rescue that Heaven, in its compassion, has sent down. Precisely because one bears this grace of Heaven — and dares not forget the vow one once made — one willingly shoulders the work of cultivation and service.

Setting down the affairs at hand and entrusting them to others, all to pursue a greater ideal: this names the cultivator’s inner motive — not coerced, but willingly laying aside small things in order to accomplish something large.

This road truly needs two things: without sincerity, you cannot break new ground; without wisdom, you cannot get through one barrier after another.

The whole bearing of the road ahead lies in four words — 自覺覺他, awaken the self and awaken others: first wake up and free yourself from affliction, then go further and raise a great compassion that helps others wake as well. Within this practice of ferrying yourself while ferrying others is hidden an inexhaustible treasury of merit that can never be spent dry — and this is where the true worth of a life lies.

The road will not be all smooth sailing. Three “perhaps”es are named — endless dispute, an occasional blockage, the vicissitudes of the world — and all are answered with one light phrase, “none of it, in the end, is any hindrance,” holding every one of them lightly.

“The Dharma has no fixed Dharma” carries the wisdom of the Diamond Sutra: every teaching the Buddha speaks is like a doctor’s prescription matched to an illness, adapted to the moment, with no single fixed, unchanging Dharma to be clutched — and since all things are by nature impermanent, attachment is pointless. Bodhi (菩提) is the wisdom of awakening: the instant one awakens, the heart’s feverish affliction is quenched then and there, and a cool ease is gained — not in some later time, but in this very moment.

道心, the Dao-heart, is the moral awareness that springs from Heaven’s principle; the Confucian sixteen-character mind-transmission says “the human mind is precarious, the Dao-heart barely perceptible,” and cultivation is precisely to let the Dao-heart govern. What proves out the Dao-heart is 無我, no-self — seeing through the self-centered, permanently standing “I” as an illusion; once ego-attachment is truly let go and one no longer calculates for oneself at every turn, the heart grows serene of its own accord. The opening question — where does happiness lie hidden? — is answered in exactly this no-self serenity.

Two figures speak at the altar today: the Holy Teacher, Ji Gong (Ji Dian) — remembered in history as the Southern Song monk Dao Ji, who drank wine and ate meat and seemed mad, yet was truly compassionate in relieving the world and boundless in power, one of the most exalted immortals and buddhas of the White Era — and the road-opening vanguard, the boy-general San Tai Zi, whose role is to guard the teaching, purify the altar, and clear the road ahead for the Teacher. Bearing Heaven’s decree, they descend into the mortal world; on entering the altar they first pay their respects at the throne, then turn to greet their beloved disciples with warmth — beneath the gravity of the heavenly mandate lies abundant tenderness.

A lifetime of rushing and toil — where does it come from? The root is 無明, the deluded, ignorant unknowing of life’s true nature. It is just this ignorance that keeps a person generating karma, pulled along by cause and effect, helpless in the grip of fate.

This reworks the saying of the Tang chancellor Lu Xiangxian — “under heaven there was never anything the matter; it is the mediocre man who stirs himself into vexation” — and chimes with the Chan teaching “originally not a single thing”: the world is fundamentally at peace, and right-and-wrong, affliction, gain-and-loss are all delusions the mind raises for itself. The storm is not outside; it is within your own heart.

A person’s greatest inversion is to take what is empty and unreal for what is solid and important, then plunge in and drive oneself at it, so busy that one never once lifts one’s head.

The clouds at heaven’s edge come freely and go freely, unattached and unburdened — this is exactly the state of mind a person can learn.

Everything in the world arises when conditions gather and ceases when conditions scatter; what is meant to pass will always pass. So-called gain and loss never had a fixed measure — today’s gain may be tomorrow’s loss. Only by seeing through this layer can one truly let go.

Lay down the attachments in your heart, and only then do you see through things clearly — and only then do you feel the deep, generous grace of Heaven.

These two lines show the Holy Teacher’s true character best: let the wind and rain beat down, and treat it as no more than throwing on a straw cape — I still wander serene and free, with nothing able to press upon me.

At peace in any circumstance, tangled in nothing and fooled by nothing, and clearly aware of each thought as it comes and goes. Cultivation is not stamping thoughts dead; it is that, the moment a thought arises, you perceive it lucidly and are not dragged along behind it — this is the Chan skill of 了了分明, clear and distinct awareness.

The deepest turn of the whole teaching: there is, in fact, no “cultivation” to be deliberately kept up. We cultivate only because the original nature has been stained by acquired habits, which is what breeds all our faults. Cultivation is not gaining something from outside; it is washing off what has been added.

If you can only return to that originally pure, complete, unstained true self, why toil to chase after some “truth” outside yourself? Truth is inherently complete in itself, not to be sought abroad.

The world’s names and forms are only borrowed for a moment and never stay for long — so how could you let them bind you, breed your own affliction, and invite blame upon yourself?

With a light wave of the sleeve, brush away every tie of name and form, and pass the years serenely, just as heaven and earth do. What this wave sweeps off is attachment; what it leaves behind is the ease of abiding together with heaven and earth. (Here 春秋 means the passing years, not the classic of that name.)

This heart of compassion and vow of mercy is not to be performed for anyone, nor offered for anyone’s reward; it is single-minded, lifting this pure sincerity all the way up to Heaven.

The immortals, buddhas, and sages come into the world to ferry the multitude across, and their true heart is just like Ji Dian’s (Ji Gong) — outwardly seeming unrestrained, inwardly the most genuine compassion. Here 濟顛 also puns on 濟: it is at once the proper name and the sense of relieving, rescuing, ferrying across.

涵養 is the Confucian work of self-cultivation — like a water-source slowly moistening the soil, nurturing virtue drop by drop; when the inner cultivation is deep enough, it naturally shows in how one meets people and handles affairs. Yet in an age like the present, how few keep that inner virtue whole and unlost.

Merit accrues drop by drop; nothing was ever ready-made — only when one is willing to let go does the Great Dao become manifest. The phrase 捨得 (“letting-go / gaining”) is full of dialectic: only by releasing the small self, private desire, and personal interest does the true Great Dao show itself.

Time flies and impermanence gives chase at your heels; year after year, facing the bright clear moon, one cannot help but sigh. This is a reminder: life is finite, impermanence presses close, and cultivation can no longer be squandered.

Take Guan Sheng Di Jun (Lord Guan) as your model — the deity honored in common by the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism — whose stern loyalty and righteousness are grand enough to match heaven and earth; to learn from him is to keep that “upright energy” (正氣) in your breast full and overflowing at all times. 正氣 stems from Mencius’s “flood-like energy” (浩然之氣) and was carried forward by Wen Tianxiang’s “Song of Righteous Spirit” (正氣歌) — a spiritual force supremely great and firm, at one with the moral order of heaven and earth.

To carry on the Dao-work of those before you and open a way for those who come after — this aspiration reaches far, and the will behind it is firm and decisive as cutting nails and slicing iron, without the least ambiguity.

Consistent from first to last, unafraid of the weariness, all to accomplish this great work. Here 萬八 refers to the vast sacred undertaking of the White Era — the ten thousand eight hundred years of universal salvation and final ingathering; what the cultivator-in-service must shoulder is precisely this sacred mission that spans the myriad years.

術, 流, 動, 靜 broadly names the many methods and schools of cultivation; these outward methods all arise to meet the circumstance of a passing moment and are not eternal truth. What truly must never be left behind, not for a single instant, is pure and right faith.

八風, the “eight winds,” are the eight worldly conditions the Buddhist teaching names — gain, loss, disgrace, honor, praise, blame, suffering, pleasure — four favorable and four adverse, and nothing stirs the human heart more. However the eight winds gust, so long as the heart is true and one’s stillness is firm, one withstands the test and fears no comparison.

Meet others with breadth and forbearance, and handle affairs with grace and accord — only thus do you fall into tune with your own purely good nature and the truth of heaven and earth (性理); do not force, do not contend, do not keep score over gain and loss.

了了分明 is the Chan clarity of lucid awareness: inwardly, the rise and fall and the good or ill of your every thought are perfectly clear; outwardly, you know the truth of worldly affairs as it is and are not deceived by false appearances. Having reached this clarity, one must further be able to “shoulder it, and rejoice” — not grudgingly, not taking up the burden with a bitter face, but willingly and gladly shouldering this responsibility of saving and delivering others. This is exactly the point of the lyric-theme “Joy” (語寄歡喜): the shouldering itself is a joy.