The Dialogue between Seng-Tsan and Tao-Hsin
Dharma talk by Do Kwang, Dharma Teacher (White Forest Monastery)
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The Case:
The monk Tao-Hsin (who later became the Fourth Patriarch of Zen in China) approached Seng-T’san (the Third Patriarch of Zen) and asked, “What is the Way to Liberation?”
“Who binds you?” replied Seng-T’san, answering a question with a question.
Taken aback, Tao-Hsin paused a moment to think, and then replied, “No one binds me.”
“Why then,” asked Seng-T’san, “do you seek liberation?”
At that moment, Tao-Hsin was enlightened.
The Commentary:
In the course of our daily lives, we often feel we are operating under restraint. It could be emotional, intellectual, social, political, or economic, but, generally speaking, we often experience, like Tao-Hsin, that we are not feeling and acting with a sense of ease, grace, and freedom. Somehow, if only we could find the key to the “Gate of Liberation”, we would be free, happy and fulfilled.
But, the mere idea that there is key, or a Gate, is what keeps us in a perpetual state of bondage. The Heart Sutra states very clearly that “Form IS Emptiness, Emptiness IS Form”, not “Form ‘could be’ emptiness”; “Form ‘may become’ Emptiness”, etc. This passage very emphatically asserts that both realities are not only simultaneous, but also simultaneously accessible.
The genius of Seng-T’san’s reply is that, without creating a long train of thoughts or reasoning, Seng-T’san forced Tao-Hsin to focus wholly on the present moment, to drop thoughts of past and future, and to realize that, in THAT MOMENT, he was truly free. Once Tao-Hsin realized the freedom in that moment, and also that the only time IS the present moment, he “found the key” to the Gate, and knew that there was, in fact, no gate at all. He was, (and always had been) “liberated”.
When we can drop thoughts of past and future (and our attachments and reactions to them), focusing wholly on THIS MOMENT, we also can understand that “no one binds us”, and, like Tao-Hsin, can pass effortlessly through the Gate which does not really exist at all, in joyful Realization of our True Nature.
