The Verse of Chan Master Dongshan

When Dongshan took leave of Yunyan, he asked: "After you pass away a hundred years from now, if someone suddenly asks whether I have been able to portray your true likeness, how should I reply?"

Yunyan remained silent for a long while, then said: "Just this is it."

The master pondered deeply.

Yunyan said: "Ācārya Jia, in shouldering this matter, you must be extremely careful."

The master still harbored doubt; later, upon crossing the water and seeing his own reflection, he greatly awakened to the former purport.

The verse says: "Above all, do not seek it from another; far, far away it would be distant from me."

(Never seek tathatā outside the mind. The deluded mind is not the true mind; if one takes the deluded mind to be the true mind, then every path leading to the deluded mind becomes distant from the true mind, separated by thousands of miles.)

"I now go on my way alone, yet everywhere I encounter Him."

(The five-aggregate "I" now walks alone by the water's edge, yet at every place where faculty and sense-object make contact, I can meet with Him; He is everywhere present.

"He now is precisely me; I now am not He."

(He now is the true me, yet I of the five aggregates am not He.)

"One must apprehend it in just this way, only then can one accord with suchness." (One must understand it in exactly this manner; only then can one be in accord with tathatā, without deviation.)