So actually, Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom are just the three words, or just the tools. The Buddha laid them out to guide human beings of different capacities, just like the Eightfold Path, the Seven Factors of Awakening, Taking Refuge, or Leaving Household… All of them are merely speech or words temporarily shown by the Buddha. We shouldn’t closely attach to the language. Instead, we need realize what deeply hidden within the letters.

There it is! The dreamlike land! My place of peace is this Patriarchal Temple, and it is also the whole world. How could there truly be coming or going and life or death? Wherever we go, it is still within this mundane life. Whether alive or dead, all of it is merely circling within this dreamland.

Today, recalling stories from the old days which were only some years ago; yet it feels like endlessly distant. Joyful days passed so quickly! Twenty years gone! There wasn’t even the chance to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary before everyone had drifted away. Fall is coming, then spring, then autumn again. And now, only two yellow leaves remain, lonely and thinly clinging to the branch.

In conclusion, a sudden breakthrough or realization must occur at least once, or even multiple times, along the path of practice for one to truly enter the Chan house. Only then can one walk forward freely, no longer encountering obstacles within the mind. If one has not yet realized the original mind, one is still standing outside the gate... Once the latter is clearly realized, the former naturally fades away.

Schools and lineages, Zen masters, various means of Dharma teachings are all conditioned phenomena. They arise and cease. The Utmost Truth, however, is unconditioned, eternal, and does not come and go.

Chinese Chan Buddhism is regarded as having begun with its First Patriarch, Bodhidharma, an Indian monk, via the “lion’s roar” awakened people to return to their original mind and recognize their inherent nature—empty, quiescent, and luminous.

All the sects and sub-lineages in these two great transmission traditions have preserved the essential teachings of the Buddha and share the same ultimate goal: liberation from suffering, enlightenment, and self-emancipation.

The Buddha taught the last wholehearted words before leaving this world: “Be a lamp unto yourself.” “Rely only upon the Dharma.” “Do not depend upon anyone or anything else.” “ Because ‘Everything in this world is impermanent’. ”