There was a great Chan master whose Dharma name was Xiyun. He resided beneath Vulture Peak on Huangbo Mountain in Gao’an County, Hongzhou. He was the direct Dharma grandson of the Sixth Patriarch of Caoxi and the Dharma nephew of Xitang and Baizhang. He alone bore the seal of the supreme vehicle, beyond words and letters, transmitting only the One Mind and no other Dharma. The substance of mind is itself empty, and the myriad conditions are all quiescent. It is like the great orb of the sun rising in the empty sky: its radiance shines forth, pure and without the slightest speck of dust.

For those who realize it, there is neither new nor old, neither shallow nor deep. In expounding it, he established no conceptual interpretations, no doctrinal school, and opened no gateway or window: directly and immediately, this is it; to stir a thought is already to go astray. Only then is one the original Buddha. Therefore, his words were concise, his principle direct, his Way lofty, and his conduct solitary. Students from the four quarters hastened toward the mountain, awakened upon beholding his countenance, and the assembly of those who came and went often numbered more than a thousand.

In the second year of Huichang, while serving at Zhongling, I invited him from the mountain to the prefectural seat, where he rested at Longxing Monastery, and morning and evening I inquired into the Way. In the second year of Dazhong, while serving at Wanling, I again respectfully invited him to my jurisdiction and had him reside at Kaiyuan Monastery. Morning and evening I received his teachings; afterward, I recorded them, obtaining perhaps one or two parts out of ten, which I have kept as a mind-seal and have not dared to circulate. Now, fearing that these subtle and essential meanings may not be heard in future times, I bring them forth and entrust them to my disciple, the monk Fajian of Taizhou, to return to Guangtang Monastery on the old mountain. I ask Elder Fajian and the Dharma assembly: how do they compare, in sameness and difference, with what you have customarily heard firsthand in former days?

Preface written on the eighth day of the tenth month, in the eleventh year of Dazhong of the Tang dynasty