SONG OF THE JEWEL MIRROR SAMADHI

Composed by Tozan Ryokai
www.bamboointhewind.org
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The teachings of Thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors
Now you have it so keep it well
Filling a silver bowl with snow
Hiding a heron in the moonlight
When you array them they’re not the same
When you mix them you know where they are
The meaning is not in the words
Yet it responds to the inquiring impulse
If you’re excited it becomes a pitfall
If you miss it you fall into retrospective hesitation
Turing away and touching are both wrong
For it is like a mass of fire
Just to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement
It is bright just at midnight
It doesn’t appear at dawn
It acts as a guide for beings
Its use removes all pains
Although it is not fabricated
It is not without speech
It is like facing a jewel mirror form and image behold each other
You are not it
It actually is you
It is like a babe in the world in five aspects complete
It does not go or come nor rise nor stand
Baba Wawa
Is there anything said or not
Ultimately it does not apprehend anything because its speech is not yet correct
It is like the six lines of the double split hexagram
The relative and absolute integrate
Piled up they make three
The complete transformation makes five
It is like the taste of the five flavored herb
Like the diamond thunderbolt
Subtly included within
The true inquiry and response come up together
Communing with the source and communing with the process
It includes in integration and includes the road merging
Is auspicious
Do not violate it
Naturally real yet inconceivable
It is not within the province or delusion or enlightenment
With causal conditions time and season
Quiescently it shines bright in its fineness
It fits into spacelessness in its greatness
It is utterly beyond location
A hairsbreadth’s deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement
Now there are sudden and gradual in connection with which are set up basic approaches
Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules
But even though the basis is reached and the approach comprehended
True eternity still flows outwardly still while inwardly moving
Like a tethered colt, a trapped rat
The ancient saints pitied them and
Bestowed upon them the teaching according to their delusions they called black as white
When erroneous imaginations cease, the acquiescent mind realizes itself
If you want to conform to the ancient way please observe the ancients of former times
When about to fulfill the way of Buddhahood, one gazed at a tree for ten aeons
Like a tiger leaving part of its prey, a horse with a white left hind leg
Because there at the base there are jewel pedestals, fine clothing
Because there is the startlingly different
There are house cat and cow
Yi with his archer’s skill could hit a target at a hundred paces
But when arrow points meet head-on, what has this to do with the power of skill
When the wooden man begins to sing, the stone woman gets up to dance
It’s not within reach of feeling or discrimination
How could it admit of consideration in thought
A minister serves the lord, a son obeys the father
Not obeying is not filial and not serving is no help
Practice secretly, working within as though a fool like an idiot
If you achieve continuity
This is called the host within the host.