濟顛和尚 慈悲訓示

「我執」 (wǒ zhí) is the grip on the thought of “I” that will not loosen — putting yourself first, measuring everything from your own center, unable to set down face, gain and loss, or a fixed opinion. That attachment is the largest single obstruction on the path of cultivation. The Diamond Sutra says: “All appearances are illusory; see all appearances as no-appearance, and you see the Tathāgata.” Whatever the eye can take in and the mind can seize is not what is permanently real. To “behold the Tathāgata” is not to look with physical eyes upon a magnificent form, but to let wisdom burn through your attachment to “I” and to appearance. Once that clinging is dredged clear, the Buddha-nature stands present of itself.

The Dao is boundless, and yet the principle within it is exceedingly fine and subtle — not something a coarse or hurried mind can take in. “Behold the Buddha, and the flower opens” is a beautiful figure: the moment you truly see the Buddha of your own nature, it is like a blossom opening in its proper season — natural, complete, arriving of itself. Cultivation cannot be forced or hurried; when the heat is right, the heart’s flower opens on its own, and with that opening comes the beholding. The two lines run in sequence — first the clearing away of obstruction (setting down attachment to self), then the awakening (the flower opens, the Buddha is seen) — so the whole order of work in this teaching is already hidden in these opening lines.

The self-identification: Ji Dian the monk, the figure the world knows as Ji Gong the Living Buddha, entering the altar hall bearing the Eternal Mother’s command. Notice the order of what follows — homage is paid first before the Sovereign Mother, most exalted, and only then comes the question, asked of each disciple in turn, of whether they are well. These lines look ordinary, but they carry a consistent temperament: an attainment of the highest rank borne with no air of rank at all, more like a kindly elder attentive to whether each person in his care is warm and well. That question comes before any instruction, and it lets the warmth between teacher and disciple show itself plainly. Every line that follows is stately doctrine on its surface; underneath, this care for the disciples is what holds it up.

One who cultivates must first demonstrate, in every word and act, what the bearing of the Dao actually looks like. 「德風」 says that the transforming power of virtue works the way wind does: those standing in it are shaped without ever noticing. And what is carried forward here reaches far back — the sacred lineage of the sages (聖脈), and with it the orthodox Confucian tradition of how a person conducts himself in the world (儒宗). Cultivation is not abstract talk about mystery; it is living the way of the sages into your own shape, then handing it on by example.

Two things are to be kept constantly in mind — repaying grace and fulfilling one’s vow — and kept unchanged from the first day to the last. The nurturing grace of Heaven, the grace of ancestors and parents, the grace of teachers who lifted you: all of it is to be held in the heart and repaid in action; and the vow you once made is to be honestly discharged. What is it that can move Heaven and Earth? Perfected sincerity. The Doctrine of the Mean says 「至誠如神」 — sincerity cultivated to its utmost leaves the heart so clear and sensitive that it resonates with the subtlest movements of all things, reaching them through that resonance. This is nothing uncanny; it is the perception and connective power that ripen naturally out of matured virtue.

「浩然正氣」 is Mencius’s famous phrase for the vast, upright spirit he called “supremely great and supremely firm” — energy accumulated slowly, bit by bit, out of ordinary right conduct done openly and honorably, until it fills the space between Heaven and Earth and leaves a person unshaken by threat or inducement. With that upright spirit as the foundation, and a breast full of unfeigned devotion added to it, one can genuinely go out and ferry others across. The upright spirit is the substance, the devotion is its function; only together do they give the work of carrying others across both its force and its integrity.

「參贊天地造化」 comes from the Doctrine of the Mean’s 「贊天地之化育」: cultivate your own nature to completion, then extend that to others and to all things so each may fulfill its own nature, and you are assisting Heaven and Earth in the nurture of all creation. Cultivated to that point, a person stands alongside Heaven and Earth as one of the Three Powers (三才) — an active participant in the order of the cosmos rather than a passive visitor to it. 「齊聖廣淵」 is the Zuo Zhuan’s description of four qualities in the eight worthies of antiquity: 齊, an upright and reverent bearing of mind; 聖, a comprehension of principle that leaves nothing unclear; 廣, breadth of spirit and largeness of capacity; 淵, thought that runs deep and wisdom like a deep pool. Hold yourself to those four, and hold to a fair mind in all things — no favoritism, no partiality.

「善導」 is guiding others well, drawing them on step by step; 「能仁」 is having the capacity to actually practice benevolence — and within Buddhism, “the Able-Compassionate One” is also the rendering of Shakyamuni’s name, so the phrase reads two ways at once, naming a benevolent heart and carrying an undertone of compassionate rescue of the world. 「文行信忠」 comes from the four subjects the Analects records Confucius teaching: 文, the study of the cultural canon; 行, the practice of virtue in conduct; 信, honesty and consistency between word and deed; 忠, giving your whole effort and keeping faith with what was entrusted to you. (The source text has the order 文、行、忠、信; this teaching writes 文行信忠 — the teaching’s own wording, covering exactly the same ground.) Guiding others certainly takes a benevolent heart; more than that, it takes solid work in yourself across all four — learning, conduct, good faith, and loyalty.

The 「五美」 come from the Analects (堯曰), the five excellences Confucius set out — laid out one by one at the close of this teaching. Cultivate those five to maturity and Heaven’s principle and human affairs come into harmony with one another: what accords with the way of Heaven also runs true to human feeling. You are to become the model others take their pattern from (儀型), transforming them quietly by example (垂化), and shouldering the heavy load (負重) at the same time; and what holds all of it up is 「悲愿無窮」 — a compassionate vow to save the world that has no day of ending.

In the Book of Changes, the Commentary on the Words of the Text for the first hexagram (乾·文言) explains the four virtues 元、亨、利、貞 and says: 「亨者，嘉之會也……嘉會足以合禮」 — 亨 is precisely the gathering of everything fine, and a gathering of everything fine, gracious and well-ordered, accords of itself with propriety (禮). The apt thing is that 亨 is also the name of the disciple to whom this teaching is addressed — name and meaning illuminating one another: live into the bearing that the word 亨 stands for, let all that is good gather in you, and let every movement accord with propriety. 「愷惻」 is a heart both glad and compassionate; where a person genuinely has such virtue, the crowd gathers to him like clouds and follows as closely as a shadow follows a form (雲集景從 comes from the essay Discourse on the Faults of Qin 過秦論, where it described a whole realm rising to answer a call — borrowed here for the drawing power of virtue).

「不改其操」 means holding to your own integrity in hardship and in a disordered age, refusing to drift with the current. That spirit answers Confucius’s praise of the pine and cypress — only when the year turns cold do we learn which trees are the last to wither: in ordinary weather it cannot be seen, and only when the severe cold of a real trial arrives does it show who is genuinely able to stand. Carry the work of the Dao with that unchanging integrity (節行奉); tread the upright path (履正), keep the capacity of your heart vast (體大), and relieve those caught in hardship — helping them out of it and through into open ground (濟困通).

「樂道」 is taking joy in cultivation from the heart, not out of obligation and not for appearances. 「謙沖」 fuses two traditions: the Book of Changes’ hexagram 謙 is the one hexagram among the sixty-four whose every line is auspicious, an emblem of humility held to for its own sake; while 沖 is the Dao De Jing’s word for the Dao itself — 沖 read as 盅, meaning empty — for it is precisely because it is empty that it can hold all things and give rise to them without end. So 「謙沖」 is humility on the outside and a valley-like emptiness within: no self-satisfaction, no arrogance. 「清明在躬」 comes from the Book of Rites: when inward cultivation reaches a state of pure clarity, the spirit and will turn lucid and quick, and one has a kind of prior insight into how things come about and where they lead. Keep hold of that clarity and the heart is never muddied by craving.

「誾誾如」 is used in the Analects to describe speech that is respectful and straight at once — neither cringing nor overbearing. 「永言配命」 comes from the Book of Songs (大雅・文王): 「永言配命，自求多福」 — examine your own virtue at every moment, and keep what you do worthy of Heaven’s mandate. The ancients held that the mandate of Heaven is never fixed on anyone permanently; only the virtuous can bear it, and so blessing is not something that falls from above but something sought through unceasing cultivation of one’s own virtue. 「繼志述事」 comes from the Doctrine of the Mean: 「夫孝者，善繼人之志，善述人之事者也」 — Confucius’s deepest definition of filial devotion, in which the highest form is not merely providing for one’s elders but carrying forward their purpose and advancing their unfinished work. Take up the Dao-purpose of those who came before, and continue their Dao-work, in an attitude of reverence and care (敬慎), so that this sacred enterprise passes from generation to generation and flowers (紹隆).

「應物」 is meeting people and responding to the affairs of the world. In every such encounter, let sincerity, solidity, and generosity be the ground you stand on (篤厚其真) — nothing feigned, nothing done by halves. 「攝化」 is gathering in and transforming: drawing those with an affinity for the Dao toward you and then teaching them. And that gathering power is to be 「矯健若龍」 — vigorous and quick as a dragon, full of life, firm where firmness is called for and yielding where yielding is, supple and strong rather than rigid and fixed.

「時雨」 is the good rain that falls exactly in season. Mencius said that among the ways the noble one transforms others there is “the transformation of a timely rain” — good teaching arrives at the moment of greatest need and moistens everything without a sound. To carry the Dao and bring others across is to be that widely falling sweet rain: the rain of the teaching spread everywhere, nourishing all beings. Do this, and you naturally become able to bear the vast grace granted from above (鴻恩), and to arrive at the glory that is real — a glory that is not worldly name or gain, but the state of a life whose vow has been fulfilled and that now runs in the same current as Heaven, Earth, and the sages.

This line rests on the Book of Changes, the Commentary on the Words of the Text for the first hexagram (乾・文言): 「君子體仁足以長人，嘉會足以合禮，利物足以和義，貞固足以幹事」 — the explanation of the four virtues 元亨利貞, in which 亨 is 「嘉之會」, the gathering of everything fine. The 訓中訓 unfolds that phrase across the line (嘉→嘉美, 會→其會, 足以→皆能), so it does more than hold up the single word 亨: it defines 亨 — everything excellent gathered into one person, and everything so gathered finally according with propriety (禮). These two lines are distilled from the seventh line of the main teaching (亨嘉會合禮中) and the sixth (五美諧天理人事・儀型垂化). One detail worth noticing: the actual wording here is 朱熹’s rather than the Book of Changes’. Reading that same passage, he called the parts gathered 「嘉美」 — 「許多嘉美一時鬥湊到此，故謂之會」, many fine things converging at once, and that is what a 會 is — and he wrote 「則便能合禮」 where the Changes has 足以合禮. So the phrase 「嘉美其會皆能合禮」 comes to us through his reading. That matters for the couplet: the next line is also his, so the two are one continuous thought rather than a classical line followed by a commentator’s.

These two lines are a question and its answer, not a matched pair: the line above says that what the gathering of all that is fine must accord with is 禮; this line picks up that closing word and answers what 禮 actually is. The answer compresses, almost word for word, 朱熹’s definition of 禮 — 「禮者，天理之節文，人事之儀則」, recorded in the Classified Conversations of Master Zhu (朱子語類) and given in his commentary on the Analects passage 「禮之用，和為貴」 — with only the two particles 之 dropped. To be clear: this is 朱熹’s definition, not a line from the Analects itself. 「節文」 is to give measure and articulate form to something (Mencius: 「禮之實，節文斯二者是也」; the Book of Rites: 「禮者，因人之情而為之節文」); 「儀則」 is a standard and model. 朱熹 also said that Heaven’s principle is in itself 「無形無影」 — without form or shadow — and so this ritual form was made “to draw out a picture of Heaven’s principle for people to see, giving them a measure they can rely on.” Propriety, then, is the invisible principle of Heaven drawn where a person can see it, so there is something to go by — which is exactly what the main teaching’s 「儀型垂化」 points to.

The closing 「（惻取則）」 is an editorial construction note in the canonical record rather than a line of the teaching: the character 則 is taken from 惻 in the seventh line’s 「愷惻」 (惻 = 忄 + 則).

To confer real benefit on others without depleting yourself. Confucius explained it as 「因民之所利而利之」 — help people along the lines of what already serves and benefits them, so that a small effort moves a large weight: benefit given without exhaustion.

To labor and carry the burden without a word of resentment. Willingness to shoulder the work and to bear its toil without complaint is basic training for anyone cultivating and carrying the Dao.

To want something without sliding into greed. The teaching makes the point with 「求仁而得仁」: what you desire should be benevolence and the fulfillment of others, not goods and private gain; if what you seek is benevolence and what you gain is benevolence, that desire has nothing to do with greed.

To carry yourself with ease and composure without turning proud. Whether the company is large or small, the matter weighty or slight, the same dignity and unhurriedness holds; and that ease comes from inward steadiness, not from self-satisfaction.

To have a commanding presence without fierceness. What makes people revere you from the heart is a composed and dignified bearing, not the intimidation of a raised voice or a hard face.

This is an old maxim for holding office and for being a person. 「公生明」 — only impartiality, free of private stake, makes it possible to tell right from wrong and see a matter clearly (the thought traces back as far as the Xunzi); 「廉生威」 — only clean, upright integrity establishes real authority. A person’s standing has never been pressed out of others by severity or maneuvering; it grows naturally out of these two words, 公 and 廉. These ten characters name the two foundation stones beneath the long run of guidance that came before: let your intent be impartial, let your conduct be clean. Be impartial and you will see clearly; be clean and you will carry true weight.