THE ZEN OF PERFECT INSIGHT

 

 

 

As it says in the verses praising perfect insight,
Perfect insight is truly objective, not distorted:
Thought, imagination, and envisioning gone,
Manners of verbal expression also vanish.

Infinite sins removed,
Pure clean mind always unified –
Such a fine respectable person
Is able to see insight.

Like space, without defilement,
Not a fantastic theory, not literal –
If you can see this way,
This is seeing Buddha.

 If you truly see Buddha, insight, and nirvana,
These three are one – really they have no difference.
The buddhas and bodhisattvas can benefit everyone:
Insight is their mother, giving birth and nursing them.
Since Buddha is a father to all beings,
And insight gives birth to buddhas,
It is therefore the grandmother of all living beings.
Insight is one reality,
But Buddha speaks of it in various terms,
Using different words according to people's capacities.
If people see insight, they no longer want to dispute;
It is like the dew drying up all at once when the sun comes out.

 The power of insight can move two kinds of people;
The ignorant are afraid, the knowing rejoice.

If people attain insight, they become insightful;
They are not obsessed even with insight,
Let alone other things!

Insight comes from nowhere, and also goes nowhere;
The intelligent may search everywhere
But cannot find it anywhere.

If they don't see insight, this is called being bound;

If people see insight, this too is called being bound.

If people see insight, this is attaining liberation;
If they don't see insight, they also attain liberation.

This fact is quite marvelous, extremely deep, and very significant.
It is like a magical object, which you see though it cannot be seen.

The buddhas and bodhisattvas,
The hearers and individual illuminates,
Liberation, nirvana, and the Way,
Are all realized through insight.

They speak in conventional terms for the world
Out of compassion for everyone,
Explaining things in provisional terms,
Not explaining even as they explain. 

Perfect insight is like a bonfire,
Ungraspable from the four directions.

No grasping is not even grasped –
All grasping is relinquished.
This is called the ungraspable –
To grasp the ungraspable
Is called getting a grasp.

Insight has no destruction;
It is beyond all words and speech.
Wherever it goes, it does not abide –
Who can sing its merits?

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