This teaching takes up Right Action — the fourth limb of the Noble Eightfold Path, the purifying of conduct. The Holy Teacher descends in his warm, familiar guise as the Ji-Dian Monk, sent down by the Eternal Mother; after bowing upward to the Venerable Mother, he turns to ask his disciples, “are you each at peace?” — doctrinal seriousness folded around a teacher’s affection. The opening verse begins with a Confucian line on moral cause and effect, then drops into the precise karma-vocabulary of Yogācāra — the deed that throws you into rebirth, the deed that fills in that life, all ripening in their season — and names the one way out: transforming consciousness into wisdom, to behold one’s own Buddha-nature. The body of the teaching runs in two halves: the first walks the Confucian road inward (sincere intent, a rectified heart, the self cultivated in reverence), and the second walks the Buddhist road of cleansing (extinguishing the three poisons, training in precept, stillness, and wisdom, finding awakening not apart from the world but within it). Both converge on a single repentance: every deviation born of body, speech, and mind, now wholly confessed. The teaching’s whole arc lands here — Right Action begins not with perfect conduct but with the willingness to see one’s own deeds and bow. (Sung to 〈Sakura Grass〉, a 2002 pop song whose longing for a distant beloved is turned inward, toward longing for one’s own original home.)
What goes out from you returns to you — the acts you perform, the fruits and retributions, you yourself receive.Whatever you send out comes back to you — the things you do, and the rewards or consequences they bring, all land on you yourself.
A Confucian moral-causation aphorism — Mencius attributes it to Master Zēng — placed first so the listener receives karma through a familiar door: what you send out comes back to you. Within four characters the verse is asking you to take this everyday ethics as the gateway to the deeper teaching on karma that follows.
The throwing-karma, the ripening-karma, the afflicting confusions — all can summon, in time, the ripening of every karma.The deeds that decide where you are reborn, the deeds that shape that life, and the troubles that cloud the mind — all can call up, in time, the ripening of every past deed.
Two precise Yogācāra (唯識) terms: the throwing-karma (發業) that propels you into one realm of rebirth, and the ripening-karma (潤生) that fills in the specifics of fortune, lifespan, and body within that life. Driven by affliction and confusion, their seeds — stored in the eighth consciousness — wait until conditions ripen.
In sequence they continue, turning and turning to be reborn; turning and turning, mutually and alternately, causes and conditions gathered in their sack.One after another they carry on, turning over and over into new births; turning and turning, back and forth, the web of cause and effect bundled up together.
The stored seeds do not act once and stop; they continue in sequence, turning and turning, each triggering the next. “Turning and turning” repeated front and back pictures karma compounding like a snowball, bundling cause and condition into a sack there is no escaping from.
Flowing and turning along with karma, suffering longs to be spent — only by transforming consciousness into wisdom does one behold my own Buddha.Drifting and tumbling along with your deeds, the suffering aching to be done with — only by turning ordinary awareness into true wisdom do you finally see your own Buddha-nature.
The way out, named at the verse’s end: transforming consciousness into wisdom (轉識成智) — converting the eight defiled consciousnesses into the four pure wisdoms of buddhahood. Only then do you “behold my own Buddha.” The first person is load-bearing: the Buddha you behold is not a remote deity but your own original nature.
This opening verse is the densest technical passage of the whole teaching, and it sets the keynote of cause and effect. It begins with a familiar Confucian-classical line — what goes out from you returns to you — and within four characters invites the listener to receive that moral causation as karma. From there it drops into precise Yogācāra vocabulary: the throwing-karma that propels one into a realm of rebirth, the ripening-karma that fills in that life’s fortune and span, the afflictions and confusions that drive both, the seeds that turn and turn in mutual triggering until every karma ripens. So beings drift through the Six Realms and Three Worlds, the suffering aching to be spent. The verse names the one way out at its very end — transforming consciousness into wisdom, converting the defiled consciousnesses into the pure wisdoms of awakening — and only then beholding one’s own Buddha: not a remote deity, but one’s own original nature. The opening round is thus both an exact anatomy of rebirth and the map for everything that follows.
I am your teacher, the Ji-Dian Monk, bearing Φ’s decree, descending to the altar hall; entering the door, paying my respects to the Venerable Sovereign Mother — and now I ask my disciples: are you each at peace?I am your teacher, the monk Ji-Dian, sent down by the Eternal Mother to this hall; I step through the door and bow to the Venerable Mother — and now I ask, my disciples: are you each well and at peace?
The self-introduction sets the register for the whole teaching. The Holy Teacher arrives under the name of the Ji-Dian Monk — the Southern-Song eccentric guise rather than the more exalted “Living Buddha” — and the choice is itself a signal: he comes not as a far-off being to be venerated but as your teacher. Having borne the Eternal Mother’s decree down to the hall and bowed upward to the Venerable Sovereign Mother, he turns to the disciples and asks whether each of them is at peace. The and also of that turn is the point: respects paid above, he now turns to ask after you, with the warmth a senior holds for family. Doctrinal seriousness in the body of the teaching, but always that fold of you are mine underneath — this is the persona at its most characteristic.
Cultivate the Dao: make the intent sincere, rectify the heart, cultivate the self in reverence, walk in the ethical relations.To cultivate the Dao: make your intentions honest, set your heart straight, work on yourself with reverence, and live out your duties to others.
The opening fuses the Great Learning’s progression (make the intent sincere → rectify the heart → cultivate the self) with the Analects’ charge to “cultivate the self in reverence” (修身以敬). Cultivation begins from the inside — honest intent, an unclouded heart — and works outward into your duties to others, layer by layer.
Moderate the bearing, correct the countenance, order the speech and tone — all of it in alignment with the rites.Carry yourself with dignity, keep your expression composed, speak with care — all of it in keeping with proper courtesy.
A verbatim quotation of Master Zēng’s deathbed counsel (Analects 8): the three things a gentleman treasures in the Way — moderate the bearing, correct the countenance, order speech and tone. Not metaphor: the literal discipline of body, face, and word is lifted up here as Dao-cultivation itself.
Trust deeply, learn ardently, guard the good Way; take benevolence as one’s own charge — the scholar-aspirant broad in heart and resolute in will.Believe firmly, study eagerly, and hold fast to the good Way; make kindness toward others your own life’s task — the true seeker, big-hearted and strong-willed.
Two more Analects lines woven together: “deeply trust, ardently learn, guard the good Way,” and Master Zēng’s “the scholar-aspirant must be broad in heart and resolute in will,” taking benevolence (仁) as one’s own charge. Together they restate a Confucian gentleman’s lifelong vow as the cultivator’s.
Fully realize your nature, become the ferry-raft; wantonly acting in the dark — peril, disaster!Bring your true nature fully to light and become a raft that carries others across; but blundering blindly along — that way lies danger and ruin!
“Fully realize one’s nature” comes from the Doctrine of the Mean; “the ferry-raft” is the Diamond Sutra’s raft-metaphor — to become the vehicle that carries self and others across, not merely to ride one. The warning that follows fuses the Daodejing’s “not knowing the constant and acting wantonly: peril” with the Buddhist walking-in-darkness (avidyā) that is the root of all karma.
知命立命迷破達濟聖賢希
zhī mìng lì mìng mí pò dá jì shèng xián xī
Know the mandate, establish the mandate, break through delusion and arrive; ferry-Ji aspiring to sage and worthy.Understand your destiny and take charge of it, break through confusion and reach the goal; aim to become a sage and a worthy one (a wish your teacher Ji-Gong holds for you).
“Know the mandate” (Confucius) and “establish the mandate” (Mencius) joined to breaking through delusion and arriving at clarity. “濟聖賢希” is a deliberate pun: “aspire to sage and worthy” — the motto of Song-Ming Neo-Confucian aspiration — and at the same time “as Jì-Gong did, aspire to sage and worthy,” a sly self-reference folded into the exhortation.
渡人可自渡愿了歸根復命去
dù rén kě zì dù yuàn liǎo guī gēn fù mìng qù
Saving others, you save yourself; vows fulfilled, return to the root and restore the mandate.In helping others across, you carry yourself across too; and once your vows are fulfilled, you return to your origin and go home to your true source.
The bodhisattva’s four great vows meet the Daodejing: saving others, you save yourself; vows fulfilled, you “return to the root and restore the mandate” (歸根復命, chapter 16). In this tradition that return is unmistakably the journey home to one’s original source.
Those resolved on the Way must vigorously practice; in the everyday and the natural, embody it directly.Whoever sets their heart on the Way must put it into practice; right in ordinary daily life, take it to heart and live it firsthand.
“Set the heart on the Way” (Analects) joined to “vigorous practice” (Doctrine of the Mean): resolve is not enough without doing. And the place to do it is “the everyday and the natural” — ordinary daily life — taken to heart and lived firsthand.
心如如覺覺覺他歧慎勿邁步履
xīn rú rú jué jué jué tā qí shèn wù mài bù lǚ
Heart in suchness — awakening, awakening others — careful not to step onto the forked paths.With a heart resting in things-as-they-truly-are — waking yourself and waking others — take care not to wander onto the wrong roads.
The heart resting in suchness (真如), unmoved by circumstance, is the ground; on it, awaken yourself and awaken others (the bodhisattva’s awakenings). But the road has many forks — take care not to wander onto the wrong one.
Suddenly the years shift — where can the heart rest? Things transform, feelings shift — each scattered east and west.In a blink the years slip by — where can the heart find rest? Things change and feelings drift along with them — everything scattered every which way.
An impermanence meditation: the years slip by, so where can the heart find rest? “Things transform, feelings shift” (物化, a Zhuangzi term) — everything scatters every which way. The lament is not despair but a wake-up call to urgency in practice.
自性現般若行直下承擔生命的真諦 (其一)
zì xìng xiàn bō rě xíng zhí xià chéng dān shēng mìng de zhēn dì · qí yī
Self-nature manifests prajñā in action — directly, here and now, take up the true meaning of life. (Part One)Your own true nature shows forth a wisdom that sees reality directly — so right here, right now, take up the real meaning of your life. (Part One)
The peak of Part One. Self-nature already contains prajñā — wisdom is not sought outside (Platform Sutra). “Take up here and now” (直下承擔) is the Chan master’s challenge to claim it this instant. The deliberately modern phrase “the true meaning of life” signals the point: this is not philosophy at a distance — it is your life, to be taken up now.
Extinguish the karmas of the Three Poisons — greed, anger, delusion; diligently cultivate precept, stillness, wisdom — the Three Trainings.Put out the deeds driven by greed, anger, and delusion; diligently train in moral discipline, inner stillness, and clear wisdom.
The most canonical Buddhist pairing: the Three Poisons (greed, anger, delusion) answered by the Three Trainings (precept, stillness, wisdom). Discipline gives rise to stillness, stillness to wisdom, and wisdom severs confusion.
Concentrate the spirit to cross the calamity; see feelings as illusion — cling not.Gather and steady your spirit to come through the hard times; see your passing moods as unreal — and don’t cling to them.
“Concentrate the spirit” draws on Daoist inner-alchemy and is reframed for coming through the hard times of the age. “See feelings as illusion — cling not” strips the Diamond Sutra’s “all marks are empty” to four characters; the closing particle 也 carries it as a command, not a remark.
The red-dust world is the true scholar’s whetstone and grindstone; the Buddha-dharma never departs from awakening within the world.This noisy, tempting world is the true seeker’s grindstone; awakening to truth is never found apart from the world — it is found right within it.
The red-dust world is not the obstacle to cultivation but its whetstone — the very place practice happens. The line then quotes Huì-néng verbatim (Platform Sutra): awakening never departs from the world. To seek liberation by fleeing the world, the Sixth Patriarch said, is like seeking horns on a rabbit.
自實證定悳如醫去疾瘳食禪悅
zì shí zhèng dìng dé rú yī qù jí chōu shí chán yuè
Verify it within: by stillness, the upright-virtue rises; like a physician dispelling illness — cured! — and feeding on the joy of meditation.Prove it for yourself: in stillness, your honest inner virtue rises; like a doctor curing a sickness — healed! — and nourished by the deep joy of meditation.
Verify it within yourself: in stillness, an upright virtue rises — the line uses the ancient form of 德 (悳), built from “upright” over “heart,” virtue rooted in directness of heart. The image of the Great Physician King (the Buddha) curing illness carries relief — the disease is healed — and the recovered one is nourished by “meditative joy as food” (禪悅), an Avataṃsaka Sūtra image.
Let virtue take up the upright root-nature; awaken into the Great Way, walk among the multitudes without rest.Let real virtue grow from a straight, sincere heart; awaken into the Great Way, and keep working among people without stopping.
Let real virtue grow from a straight, sincere heart — the “direct heart” that the Vimalakīrti Sūtra calls the bodhisattva’s pure land and Huì-néng calls the place of the Way. Having awakened into the Great Way, keep walking among people without rest: the bodhisattva’s tireless service.
Heroic in resolve, awaken from delusion, unmask the floating life — what I vow, and where I shall return at death.With bold resolve, wake from confusion and see through this fleeting life — knowing what you long for, and where you will go home at the end.
Heroic resolve (壯懷, echoing Yuè Fēi) waking from delusion and seeing through this fleeting life (浮生, carrying the Diamond Sutra’s “dream, illusion, bubble, shadow”). It closes on the cultivator’s ultimate question — what you would vow, and where you will go home at death — echoing the Analects: hear the Way in the morning, and you may die content at evening.
Every person possesses the awakened-nature and wisdom; only through deluded clinging does it fall to one side.Everyone already has the capacity to awaken and the wisdom that comes with it; it only goes to waste because of mistaken clinging.
人人都本具覺性、本具般若慧；只是因為虛妄地執著（妄執），自性才偏廢、才失去全面的圓明。
Every person already possesses the capacity to awaken and the wisdom that comes with it; it only goes to waste through mistaken clinging. The fault is not lack but obstruction.
自性迷失清淨淪為業性業趨業
zì xìng mí shī qīng jìng lún wéi yè xìng yè qū yè
Self-nature loses its purity, sinks into karma-nature — karma chasing karma chasing karma.The true self loses its original clarity and sinks into a life ruled by old deeds — one deed dragging in the next, on and on.
The fall, in three strikes of one character: the originally pure self-nature is forgotten, a karma-nature (業性) takes its place, and that karma-nature drives still more karma — karma chasing karma chasing karma — turning the wheel of the Six Realms and the Three Worlds.
Spinning the Six Realms, lost in the Three Worlds — all the evil karmas wrought in past lives,Spinning through the six paths of rebirth, lost in the three planes of existence — all the harmful deeds done in lives gone by,
The first lines of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra’s Samantabhadra repentance verse, chanted in Mahāyāna ceremony for fifteen hundred years: all the harmful deeds done in lives gone by. The teaching has broadened the standard “I in the past” to “in past lives,” widening the scope of what is being owned.
born of body, speech, and mind: every deviation, every error, I now wholly repent. (Part Two)arising from what I have done, said, and thought: every wrong and every straying, I now fully repent. (Part Two)
The repentance lands in first person: every wrong arising from body, speech, and mind — “I now wholly repent.” The teaching has changed the standard verse’s “every one of them” to “every deviation, every error,” pointing the repentance specifically at the strayings from Right Action. This is where 正業 begins — not in perfect conduct, but in the willingness to see one’s own deeds, words, and thoughts go astray, and to bow.
The body of the teaching divides explicitly into Part One and Part Two — the turn from delusion to rightness, from defilement to purity — taking the Confucian road inward and the Buddhist road outward, both converging on the same self-nature. Part One lays out the full Confucian course of self-cultivation: the Great Learning’s progression of sincere intent, rectified heart, and cultivated self, joined to the Analects’ charge to cultivate the self in reverence, and then Master Zeng’s deathbed counsel on a composed bearing, a settled countenance, and ordered speech — cultivation of the Dao is not abstract talk but the literal discipline of conduct, expression, and word, all kept in accord with the rites. To this it adds the lifelong vow of the scholar-aspirant — deep trust, ardent learning, benevolence as one’s own charge, broad in heart and resolute in will — and the call to fully realize one’s nature (from the Doctrine of the Mean) and so become the ferry-raft that carries self and others across, against which blundering blindly along can only end in ruin. Its summit is the line where self-nature manifests prajñā in action: the wisdom is already within, not sought outside, and one is to take up the true meaning of one’s life directly, here and now.
Part Two crosses over to the Buddhist Three Poisons and Three Trainings: extinguish greed, anger, and delusion; diligently cultivate moral discipline, stillness, and wisdom; gather the spirit to come through hard times; and see every passing feeling as unreal, clinging to none of it. The red-dust world is no obstacle but the true seeker’s whetstone — and here the teaching quotes the Platform Sutra directly, that awakening is never found apart from the world but only within it. Through stillness an upright virtue rises, rooted in directness of heart; like a great physician curing a sickness, one is healed and then nourished by the joy of meditation, awakening into the Great Way and working among people without rest. With heroic resolve one wakes from confusion, sees through this floating life, and faces the seeker’s ultimate questions — what do I vow, and where will I go home at death? Then the teaching returns to first principles: everyone already possesses the awakened nature and its wisdom, lost only through mistaken clinging; once self-nature forgets its purity it sinks into a karma-nature, and karma drives more karma in a spinning round.
The whole arc lands on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra’s repentance verse, which closes the body: all the harmful deeds of past lives, born of body, speech, and mind — every deviation, every error, I now wholly repent. The teaching narrows the verse’s “every one of them” to “every deviation,” pointing more exactly at what must be corrected. Everything cultivated before — composure, resolve, vigorous practice, gathered spirit — comes finally to this one first-person act of cleansing the three deeds of body, speech, and mind. And this is the real meaning of the keynote Right Action, the fourth limb of the Noble Eightfold Path: it begins not with perfected conduct but with the willingness to see one’s own deviations and to repent the deeds of the body.
訓中訓 Embedded Teaching · 「正業 / Right Action」 · recited
覺者自覺覺他行 了達妄破渡迷津
jué zhě zì jué jué tā xíng · liǎo dá wàng pò dù mí jīn
The awakened one walks in self-awakening and awakening others; thoroughly understanding, shattering delusion, ferrying across the misty crossing.The one who has awakened wakes both self and others; seeing through and breaking apart illusion, carrying people across the foggy ford.
The awakened one wakes both self and others — the bodhisattva’s own heart. Seeing through illusion and breaking apart attachment, such a one carries people across the foggy ford of confusion.
Awakening to truth, verifying the real — the spirit enters stillness; the Great Way is level as a whetstone, straight as an arrow — so it is said.Waking to truth and proving the real — the spirit settles into deep stillness; the Great Way runs smooth as a whetstone and straight as an arrow — so it is said.
從迷中醒悟，證得真如實相，心神入於禪定。由定發慧、由慧證真的修行次第，全在這一句中。
Waking to truth and proving the real, the spirit settles into deep stillness — the stillness-to-wisdom-to-truth progression of the Three Trainings compressed into a single line.
眾生所履所視情
zhòng shēng suǒ lǚ suǒ shì qíng
What the multitude tread and look toward — is only feeling.What ordinary people walk after and fix their eyes on — is nothing but their own cravings and moods.
The capstone, and an inversion of the Book of Songs poem Dà Dōng — whose original drew a class line: gentlemen tread the road, the common merely look. Here both gentleman and commoner are replaced by “all sentient beings,” and one character is added: 情 (feeling, attachment). The class hierarchy dissolves into Buddhist equality — everyone alike is bound by feeling. This is the root that Right Action finally points at: to straighten the body’s deeds, first see what the body is acting for.
The Embedded Teaching condenses the whole body into five compact lines, saying everything the keynote Right Action asks of a cultivator. The awakened one wakes both self and others — the heart of the bodhisattva path. Seeing through all illusory marks and breaking apart attachment, one ferries across the foggy crossing. Waking from delusion and verifying the real, the spirit settles into stillness — the progression from stillness to wisdom to truth held whole in a single line. The fourth line reworks the Book of Songs poem Da Dong — level as a whetstone, straight as an arrow — to say the Great Way is utterly fair, utterly upright, without a bend. And the capstone carries the deepest turn: where the Book of Songs drew a class distinction between what gentlemen tread and what common people merely watch, this teaching replaces both with all sentient beings and adds one load-bearing character — feeling. What everyone walks after and fixes their eyes on is nothing but feeling and attachment. The class hierarchy dissolves into the equality of all beings: gentle and common alike are bound by feeling — and this is exactly the root that Right Action is finally meant to straighten and break.