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Old man Tcheng, he said:
I, old Tcheng, do not intervene to maintain,
modify or change the course of things by
following the desires of the individual mind. Let
there be neither distrust nor revolt but only the
necessary act. If I behave in a different way with
you, it is so that you might, at last, by yourselves,
directly see original spirit instead of always
seeking it through the mediation of dead fellows
or by running after scatterbrains like me.
My own manner, indeed, is to shake you like
saplings in the mountain wind. Thus, I break up
all your struts and props and, there you are, all
undone, with nothing more to hold on to. But
since I sap up all that you rely upon and, thus,
you are filled with fear, you say, to reassure
yourselves, that I sin against the law and
convention and am but a vile blasphemer. So you
go on desperately clinging to appearances and
accessories instead of letting them depart from
you by themselves, without striving to hold onto
them.
My words find no echo in you, so I play a trick
on you and tell you they come from a great and
famous fellow who has been dead for centuries.
But you still do not understand that they are your
direct and immediate concern. On the contrary,
you seize on them as something precious, good
for keeping and to cultivate. Bald-heads, by
holding onto futilities, you simply waste your life
away and the evidence of original spirit slips
through your fingers. What a shipwreck for you!
Nitwits, original spirit does not appear when
sleep leaves you and does not disappear when
sleep comes to you. Original spirit is nothing and
is totally independent of that which changes and
dies.
If original spirit were truly your sole
occupation, you would see all that alters and dies
in the same way that you perceive the
movements that dancers give to their streamers,
and would resolve to constantly seek that which
in you neither varies nor dies and, once you find
it, then not one of the thousand worlds could
divert you in your thoughts for the instant of a
flash or in the slightest degree make you stray
from it in your actions.
You believe you aspire to original spirit but
you only actually seek the satisfaction of a
condition, or learning, and of merit. Because of
this, nincompoops, you are entirely under the
fascination of all that in you and outside of you is
not steadfast and just dies.
That is why the sayings of old Tcheng simply
go through you without making an impression,
like the birds which leave no trace in the sky.
Bald pates, all that you think and say
concerning original spirit is but the erring and
wandering of your own puny little minds. To that
which nature spontaneously brings you, you
respond only after interpreting it through all that
you have placed on a pedestal above your heads.
Baldies, this being as artificial as the dragons
made for festivals, how can you hope to see
original spirit in its spontaneity?