Appreciating a Chan Poem — The Mind Already Free of Dust, Why Wash It? The Body Without Illness, Why Seek a Doctor?
Chan Master Zhizhen of Guishan [Tang Dynasty]
Verses on Ascending the Hall
Chan Master Zhizhen of Guishan [Tang Dynasty]
The mind already free of dust, why wash it?
The body without illness, why seek a doctor?
If you wish to know the place where one is, yet is not, a Buddha,
It is when a bright mirror hangs high, before it has cast its light.
The opening line, "The mind already free of dust, why wash it," points directly to the nature of mind. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch says: "How wondrous! The self-nature is originally pure! How wondrous! The self-nature is unborn and undying! How wondrous! The self-nature is already complete!" The wondrous mind of perfect awakening in sentient beings is absolute and all-embracing, without a speck of dust — so where could there be any distinction between washing and not washing? The Buddha-nature is originally pure; where could dust alight?
"The body without illness, why seek a doctor" — though it speaks of the body, there's no reason not to read it as mind. The body of the six sense faculties, six sense objects, twelve sense bases, and eighteen realms is itself the vast expanse that the pure original mind pervades. True-suchness Buddha-nature is free from defilement, without sickness or pain — so why seek a doctor?
"If you wish to know the place where one is, yet is not, a Buddha — it is when a bright mirror hangs high, before it has cast its light." These last two lines read like a Chan gong'an that points beyond itself. What is the Buddha? What is your original face before your parents were born? Can the student grasp it? "A bright mirror hangs high, before it has cast its light."