In Seon, there is a saying.
If you have awakened, do not delay. Find a clear eyed Seon teacher and rely on them.
After experiencing awakening, I say this to those who come to see me.
Awakening comes to everyone. It is a right that everyone can enjoy, just as we all fall asleep every night and wake up again every morning.
However, after experiencing awakening, if you do not wish to fall back into your old delusions, but instead live the ordinary life of awakening, that is, to live as one who is awakened, then the habits that once bound you, the habit of living in delusion, must come to an end. Therefore, I say that one must spend quite a long time, at least more than ten years, listening to the true Dharma.
The true Dharma is not something special that I did not know before.
It is simply the wisdom of truth.
It is just like the words of caution that every mother has repeated to her children throughout her entire life.
"Be careful of cars."
There is probably no one who has never heard these words even once. No one wishes to hear them every time, nor does anyone want to spend their whole life hearing them.
Yet because the fatal consequences of that habit, excused by saying, "I didn't realize," are so great, we hear them again and again. We listen even though we already know them. The one speaking repeats them even though they do not want to, and even though they know the listener is annoyed and does not want to hear them anymore. Still they repeat them again, and feeling it is not enough, they say them again and again.
That is why it has long been said that those who truly hear the Dharma are rare.
A true Dharma talk continues until it becomes completely embodied, until one is no longer bound by anything, not even by those repeated words of caution.
Those who try only to understand these words intellectually, without awakening, often imagine that a teacher is merely trying to keep people bound through authority. False masters also make use of these words for their own purposes.
But the truth is quite the opposite.
Contrary to what most people expect, the majority of awakened masters are reluctant to give Dharma talks or to have disciples. They find it burdensome.
After wandering almost an entire lifetime inside the trap of delusion that they themselves created, they finally saw the light of truth and opened their eyes. Why would they then think, out of compassion, "I should go back into the darkness and save others"?
When I say this, some people lost in their own delusions ask me.
"Then according to the Buddhist scriptures, are the many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas somehow inferior to you because they return to this world to save people and spread the Dharma?"
My answer is this.
If it is not another delusion, then what is the thought of returning to this world? And what is the thought that there are people there whom I must save?
Awakening is the place where words and thoughts come to an end.
If someone stands firmly in that liberation, then without thinking, "I should save people," or "I should not save people," they simply do whatever needs to be done, quietly and naturally.
Just as the sun and the moon silently carry out their work throughout their entire existence, without pride and without regret, simply living naturally, so too, if the conditions arise to give a Dharma talk, one gives it. If no one comes looking, one does not. Like the wind, like the sunlight, bound nowhere, one simply lives freely according to one's own nature.
Finally, let me add one more thing.
Neither the Buddha nor Jesus underwent their hardships merely to solve your problems.
Just like us, they also began with what, in one sense, were rather pitiful and deeply personal concerns, seeking only to resolve their own small suffering.
From their perspective, your very existence is a dream and a delusion.
Why do you insist on interpreting everything from the center of your own thinking?
They were simply good examples of people who wandered in search of a way through life and, fortunately, brought their own work to complete fulfillment.
They do not think that they love you, nor do they have anything separate to give you.
So do not cling to them, and do not beg from them.
Simply do as they did.
Even so, if you truly wish to honor them, then awakening yourself, just as they did, is the only way to repay their kindness.
Sometimes there are people who become trapped in their own ideas. When they read something like this, they cannot restrain themselves. Caught in delusion, they speak in the comments as though they were representatives of justice, presenting things they have never experienced themselves as though they had personally realized them, pouring them out like filth.
As I have always said, please understand that I neither debate with those who praise or criticize me based only on thought or knowledge without a genuine experience of correct awakening, nor do I respond to those who, using argument as an excuse, seek teachings without even the basic courtesy.
As I have always said, if it is ever confirmed that the true Dharma is no longer being transmitted through my words, I promise that I will disappear without the slightest hesitation.