Assembly, since you have vowed to cultivate perfection and wish to learn to be Quanzhen Taoists, you must recognize the two words “true” and “false” clearly and understand them thoroughly, and only then set to work. To strive with all your might to change the false and exchange it for the true is the proper business of those engaged in spiritual practice.
Assembly, listen to me describe what is false, so that you can go and cultivate what is true.
Assembly, this body of yours is entirely false; it is called an impermanent illusory form. The six senses must in the end decay, and the six consciousnesses must finally return to emptiness. While breath is in the throat, it has a thousand uses; once impermanence comes, all affairs are over.
Assembly, have you not seen the living beings of the world—nine chi tall, ten spans around the waist; faces like the full moon, lips as if dabbed with vermilion; eyes like black lacquer, skin like cream; imposing in appearance, awe-inspiring in bearing; eloquent and persuasive, with a thousand tricks and ten thousand schemes; the wise skilled in letters, the brave skilled in arms; high officials and fierce generals, traders and merchants, seizing profit and contending for fame; scheming with all their minds, craving honor and getting rich, seeking it even at the risk of death? Before the painted hall, twelve women with golden hairpins play, sing, and dance; before the brocade court, three thousand in red shoes come and go to fawn and flatter. Gold and silver pile higher than the Northern Dipper, and treasures heap up like the Southern Mountain. Brocade clothes and jade food: lifting their chopsticks, there are a hundred rare delicacies; free-spending in their social life, everywhere they go there are all manner of ceremonies. When the beloved wife is half old, they cast off the old and welcome the new, with crowds of concubines, lost in wine and women; when the family fortune is ample, they establish ten thousand qing of estates as their foundation. Love for sons and daughters is deep; affection between husband and wife is weighty. Even first-rank office seems too small—they aspire to be kings and dukes; though they have many concubines, they still crave more, their hearts set on pleasure. Two axes chop down a withered tree: wine and women injure people. Ten thousand poisons attack the spiritual terrace: the ties of attachment enter the bones. Wind, cold, heat, and damp; the two qi of yin and yang cannot be regulated; hunger, fullness, and toil cannot be harmonized; so a hundred illnesses and a thousand sores break out, taking advantage of weakness. Birth, old age, sickness, and suffering: Bian Que and the physician of Lu cannot cure them, needles and moxa and decoctions have no effect; so the three calamities and eight hardships come from here. Some break the law of the realm and suffer punishment, squeezed, beaten, and clubbed, in cangue and chains, imprisoned in a dark jail. Some meet an enemy who takes revenge, wounded by knives or strangled by ropes, eaten by tigers and wolves deep in the mountains. Some capsize and are buried among fish and turtles; some meet disaster and are burned in a fire. For killing living things, their lives are demanded in return, and they perish by war, bandits, and robbers; when their karmic span is done, they lie on their pillows with evil diseases and poisonous sores. A thousand kinds of suffering and vexation can never all be told; one morning the breath is cut off and they fall into the cycle of rebirth. Where does the one point of spiritual light go? The hun flies off and the po scatters, never to return. The imposing appearance is only reflected in a basin of water; the awe-inspiring bearing is only painted on a sheet of paper. When have sons and daughters ever died in their place, or wives and concubines gone in their stead? The corpse of the dead is not yet cold, and the thoughts of the living are already sprouting: the brothers divide the property and split the household, the wives and concubines hide the wealth and treasures. Those with sons think of ways to get by; those without sons think of marrying someone else. Carriages and horses grow scarce at the gate—as the saying goes, “While the man is there, the favors are there”; theft breaks out among the servants at home—as the proverb says, “When power fails, you are bullied by slaves.” When the walls fall down, who takes care of them? When the family fortune is in difficulty, who knows? The wife is wanton and the sons unworthy, each looking out for his own future. When has anyone died and come back to life, or gone and returned again? The physical body enters the earth, fame and profit return to emptiness, and on the two roads of good and evil one receives clear retribution. What use are the eyes then? Can the beard and eyebrows take along a single hair? Born, one came with empty fists; dying, one goes with empty hands.
Assembly, would you say that this physical body is false? Since it is false, you should regard what is false more lightly in ordinary times.
Assembly, when the physical body decays, the one point of true spirit receives blessings or punishment, following like a shadow follows a form, without the slightest omission. Would you say that this is true? Since it is true, you should regard what is true more seriously in ordinary times. Though the physical body is false, why not borrow the false to cultivate the true and seek to get out of suffering? Without this physical body, when the one spiritual light is cast into another kind of being, it would take great effort indeed.
Assembly, the method of cultivating perfection is to sweep clean the six senses and six dusts, bring the five organs and five desires to peace and harmony, let the master of the house dwell constantly on the spiritual terrace, keep the demons and thieves from daring to cause trouble, do many good deeds, and pull out the roots of evil. But this method of cultivating perfection too has its true and false!
Assembly, the Diamond Sutra says: “All conditioned things are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, like dew and like lightning; one should contemplate them thus.” The Classic of Clarity and Stillness says: “The reason beings do not attain the true Tao is that they have deluded minds.”
Assembly, everything that has form has the four words formation, abiding, decay, and emptiness, and conditioned methods likewise do not last long. Suppose one borrows the false to cultivate the true, practicing the work and seated meditation, but moves essence and circulates qi, extends life and adds oil, returns from old age to youth, seeks long life without death, cultivating with attachment to forms—this again is conditioned and false, and one can never see one’s nature, establish one’s destiny, or be liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Then there are meddlesome Taoists of the Mysterious Gate who raise lead and lower mercury, form an embryo and set up the cauldron, gathering from others to supplement themselves. So many outer paths—though they seek to escape birth and death, they also do harm. But they do not know that birth and death cannot be escaped in this way.
Assembly, to escape birth and death, you must use the true method. What is the true method? Assembly, the mechanism of birth and death lies only in whether your mind goes with the current or against it. Going with it, you are at its mercy; going against it, you are master. A person’s physical body will die whether it is cultivated or not. Even if one lives a thousand years, one ends in death after all. So what is it all for?
Assembly, where there is form, there is death; where there is a beginning, there is an end; where there is coming, there is going; where there is prime, there is old age; where there is joy, there is anger; where there is honor, there is disgrace; where there is success, there is failure. Since this body has been born, it must naturally die. The birth and death I speak of has nothing to do with this physical body; it merely borrows it as a lodging in which to cultivate my body of the Law. The outer paths do not understand this principle; they take it as real and cling to form, wanting even to cultivate the physical body so that it will not die—is that not laughable? The method of escaping birth and death that I speak of lies only within the body: cultivate it in the thoughts that stir and the deeds that are done in this one mind. When deluded thoughts do not stir, the body of the Law is born; once the body of the Law is still, the heavenly workings move; once the heavenly workings come alive, the true light is seen. It is only because this true light is not yet perfect that one borrows this physical body to do many good deeds. And good deeds too have their true and false. Clinging to form is false; only not clinging to form is true. The Tathagata gave alms without clinging to form, made merit without clinging to form, taught the Law without clinging to form, went about cultivating the Tao without clinging to form, and left the world without clinging to form; therefore he could leave the world and escape birth and death. The Classic of Clarity and Stillness says, “Superior virtue does not hold itself as virtue”—that is, it does not cling. If, when you do good, you boast of your merit; when you act kindly, you say you have virtue; when you sit in meditation and investigate the mystery, you say you have the Tao—though these are true, once you cling to form, it is not liberation. How then can you escape birth and death? You will only live a few more years and obtain some reward of blessings. When the reward of blessings is used up, you will return to the cycle of rebirth as before.
Assembly, I urge you to follow the words of the Most High, and you will never go wrong: “He treats his own person as outside himself and yet his person is preserved; he puts himself last and yet finds himself first.” Only so can one die and not perish.
Assembly, set your body aside, and do not rigidly shake up the essence and stir the qi, trying to guide essence and qi down through the apertures and open up the flow of blood through the meridians to prolong life and ward off illness, craving these things, caring instead for the firmness of the physical body and its carefree pleasure, and forgetting your own true nature entirely, not looking after it year after year and day after day. You do not know on which day a little ghost, catching you off guard, will suddenly snare you and take you away. At that time, where will the body of the Law drift? The physical body will be laid down in the mud pit, and in the end it is all empty. I ask you all to practice the work in secret; do not deliberately cultivate the physical body, but cultivate the body of the Law in the proper matter of birth and death. If you can secretly practice the work of subduing the mind and patient endurance and see your nature early, why worry that your destiny will not be established?
Assembly, let me remind you: the physical body is a house, and the body of the Law is the master who lives in it. If the master has treasure, why worry that the house will not be in good order? If the master falls ill and is about to die, or gets into trouble or brings on disaster and is snared and taken away, who will live in your well-ordered house? Assembly, let me raise it one level further to open your understanding. The physical body is a rented house, not a bought one; when the master leaves, it returns to the earth and is divided back into the four elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. If you can secretly cultivate a true body of the Law that does not cling to form, why worry that you will not find a good place to settle?
Assembly:
The physical body is originally the house of the body of the Law; if it is bright within, the outside shines of itself.
If only the master cultivates blessings and wisdom, why worry that the house will not be splendid?
Complete Perfection must first remove the false; the true method must forget the false methods.
Not boasting of oneself and not clinging to form, one cultivates nature and life together and leaves impermanence behind.
“Secret” is the paramita of enduring insult; “true” is the highest truth of non-action.
Only still the mind and seek liberation; set down the illusory body, and that is the true body.
Craving life and fearing death, one must die in the end; cultivating perfection while clinging to form, how could one attain the true?
The Tathagata’s body was cut to pieces yet made whole; the Jade Emperor himself was once one who endured insult.
Forgetting body and giving up life for three thousand kalpas, abandoning his kingdom for the mountains for eight hundred periods of ten days.
The Taoist who clings to the false skin bag—through ten thousand kalpas and a thousand lives, how will he leave the dust?
Do not apply your intention and labor your spirit in vain; what has form must in the end return to yin.
If you lose your true suchness nature, in the boundless sea of suffering there is nowhere to find it.
Alas! How pitiable.
Clinging to the false within the false, layer upon layer of falsehood—studying Complete Perfection in vain, how can one attain the true?
Old age, birth, sickness, demons, sorrow, and suffering—at death, how is one different from worldly people?
In vain one wears the yellow cap and the feathered robe, never having recognized the mechanism of death and birth.
Wandering to the ends of the earth in search of food and clothing, when sinful karma falls upon the body, the flesh turns to mud.
If one does not understand that sin and blessing are originally empty, the cycle of birth and death does not cease;
if one has not awakened to the fact that the false and the true lie within oneself, light and wisdom are hard to open.
Assembly, each of you investigate this in detail; birth and death are impermanent and swift. The secret conduct I now speak of has three hundred articles: these are the great Precepts of the Central Ultimate, three hundred subtleties. Cultivating the body with them, the physical body becomes upright; cultivating the mind with them, deluded thoughts vanish. Used inwardly, one becomes a sage or worthy; used outwardly, one becomes a king or minister. One can leave the world and transcend the ordinary, realizing the fruit and rank of clear emptiness; one can save people from suffering and end the cycle of birth and death. The most important thing of all is the word “secret.” If one cannot hold to secrecy, one cannot perfect the true; if one does not perfect the true, the mind is not clear; if the mind is not clear, one’s nature is not seen.
Assembly, what is secret? “The sage cleanses his mind and withdraws into secrecy.” Secret means careful. Refined means hidden and subtle. I want all of you who receive the Precepts of the Central Ultimate to treat the first precept through the hundredth as the great divine incantation for purifying the body. Carry out this divine incantation carefully: you must remove all restlessness from this body and change it into limpid stillness, correct all frivolity and exchange it for steadiness. In the four dignified deportments: when walking, always walk the middle way; when sitting, do not sit askew on the mat; when standing, stand straight, not leaning against walls or pillars, propping yourself on partitions, or slumping over tables; when lying down, lie on your side with the body curled, not face up snoring loudly; if the breath through the nose makes even a slight sound, regulate it too. Cultivate a respectful and courteous bearing—this is called outer solemnity. The hundredth precept through the two hundredth are the great divine incantation for purifying the mind. Contemplate this divine incantation with refined thought until it accords with the Tao: every matter must accord with the Tao, every thought return to the true, and no word be let slip. Investigate again and again, awaken again and again; observe things afar and take examples close by in your own person; wipe out entirely the wild, disordered, heterodox, and perverse mind. When the true mind is in great stability, then the two hundredth precept through the three hundredth are the great divine incantation for purifying the intention; not the slightest bit may leak out. The workings of increase and decrease within them and the principle of coming and going are secretly stored in the palace of the Mysterious Capital: inaudible, invisible, subtle, and wondrous, inconceivable, beyond name and image, to be awakened to by the spirit and not transmitted in words—the utmost and most honored, the wondrous Tao of non-action is wholly contained in them.
Assembly, this is the work of secret conduct for cultivating perfection. Listen to one more word and remember it carefully.
Assembly, cultivating perfection in order to leave birth and death—is that an ordinary small matter? If the heavenly workings are not kept secret, they leak out to unworthy people. Thus Perfected Zhang Ziyang transmitted them three times to unworthy people and was punished by heaven three times; therefore they must not be divulged. How much more so when one wishes to transcend the cycle of rebirth and leap out of the world—is this not what heaven, earth, ghosts, and spirits abhor, and what yin, yang, and creation resent? Moreover, this turning back and going against the current of yours is as opposed to worldly ways as ice to coals. You must be careful and thorough. Otherwise your six relations will be displeased, your nine clans will become your enemies, your wife and children will be unfeeling, and your friends will not trust you—all because you did not make a fierce and great resolve, and so you have a mind that retreats from the Tao.