Parshva and the Unborn

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from central India and was originally named Difficult Birth. Before his birth, his father dreamed that a jeweled seat rested on the back of a white elephant. A bright pearl lay on the seat, and its light illuminated the fourfold assembly. He woke, and the teacher was born. When Venerable Buddhamitra came to central India to teach, an elder named Fragrant Canopy brought a son and paid reverence to him. He said, “This child remained in the womb for sixty years and was therefore named Difficult Birth. I once met a hermit who said, ‘This child is no ordinary person. He will become a vessel of the Dharma.’ Now that he has met you, he should leave home.” Buddhamitra shaved his hair and gave him the precepts. He had spent sixty years in the womb and eighty more after birth. Altogether he was 140 when he first raised the mind of awakening—old to the very limit of age.¹ When he tried to leave home, everyone discouraged him: “You are already old. What use is it to leave your tracks in the pure stream? There are two kinds of home-leaving: practicing meditation and reciting sutras. You cannot endure either.” Hearing their criticism, the teacher vowed: “Once I have left home, unless I master the three baskets and obtain the three knowledges, I vow that my side will not touch a mat.”² Having vowed this, he studied and recited scripture by day and sat in meditation and reflected by night. He never slept. When he first left home, auspicious light illuminated his seat, and twenty-one relics appeared before him. From then on he practiced vigorously without weariness for three years. At last he mastered the three baskets and opened the wisdom of the three knowledges. One day Buddhamitra recited a sutra and expounded the unborn. The teacher heard him and awakened to the way. At last he joined the lineage as the Tenth Ancestor. Know that the work of buddhas and ancestors is vigorous effort like this: forgetting weariness in study, sutra recitation, seated meditation, and reflection. An ancestral teacher also ordinarily recited sutras and expounded the unsurpassed. The “sutra” here means a scripture of the true and right Great Vehicle. Although all are said to be the Buddha's teaching, one does not recite what is not a Mahāyāna sutra or rely on what is not a sutra of complete meaning. A Mahāyāna sutra does not teach merely sweeping away fine dust or removing delusive thought. A sutra of complete meaning does not merely exhaust principle and subtlety; it carries the matter itself through completely. To carry the matter through means that from the buddhas' first raising of the mind through awakening and nirvana, the three and five vehicles, kalpas, countries, and names are all brought forth without omission. This is complete meaning. Know the Buddha's sutras in this way. Even if you can speak one phrase or penetrate one principle, if the work of lifelong study is unfinished, it is difficult to recognize you as a buddha or ancestor. You must practice vigorously and forget fatigue. Raise a resolve surpassing the crowd, practice beyond your peers, investigate closely, and examine completely. Join night to day; establish resolve and summon strength. Clarify entirely the original intent for which buddhas and ancestors appear and the point of maintaining it yourself. During this one lifetime let there be no principle unpenetrated and no matter left unfinished. Then you will be a buddha and ancestor. Recently the ancestral way has declined, and study has no genuine place. People finally penetrate one sentence or one principle and think it enough. I fear they belong to the class of overweening presumption. Fear this greatly. Have you not heard: “The way is like a mountain—the farther you climb, the higher it becomes. Virtue is like the sea—the farther you enter, the deeper it becomes.” Enter the depth and reach the bottom; climb the height and reach the summit. Only then will you be a true child of the Buddha. Do not cast body and heart away in vain. Every person is a vessel of the way, and every day is a good day. There are people who penetrate and people who do not only according to whether they investigate closely. The present encounter shows that the way does not necessarily choose its person or its time. Pārśva was already more than 140 and very old. Yet because his resolve was undivided and his vigorous effort forgot fatigue, he completed a lifetime of study within that lifetime. How moving: in a body of old bones he attended at his teacher's side for three years and finally never slept. People today especially become negligent with age. Think back to the ancient sages. Do not make winter cold into “cold hardship” or summer heat into “hot hardship.” Do not think that body and life are cut off, or that thought cannot reach. If you can live in this way, you are a person who studies the ancient; you are a person who possesses the way. If you study the ancient and possess the way, who is not a buddha and ancestor? The text says he “recited a sutra.” Reciting a sutra must not be understood only as reciting with the mouth, holding it in the hand, and thereby “turning the sutra.” Within the house of the buddhas and ancestors, do not waste effort amid sound and form or walk within the womb of ignorance. Let wisdom arise everywhere and the ground of heart open and brighten at every moment. Recite the sutra in this way. When you live like this through all twelve hours without ever relying on anything, you cannot fail to embody and penetrate the originally unborn nature. Do you not know? Birth comes, but there is no place from which it comes. Death departs, but there is no destination. It is born at this very place and vanishes wherever it is. Arising and extinction never lag behind their time. Therefore birth is not birth, and death is not death. As a person who studies, do not lodge birth and death in your head. Do not separate yourself through seeing and hearing. Even when it becomes seeing and hearing, sound and form, it is your own treasury of radiance. It sends light from the eye-faculty and forms the adornments of visible appearance. It sends light from the ear-faculty and hears the Buddha-work of sound. It sends light from inside the hands and turns self and other. It sends light beneath the feet and advances or withdraws. Today, to point out this principle once more, I want to append humble words. Do you wish to hear them?