When Bodhidharma came from the West, he faced the wall for nine years. Though he spoke few words, he was able to point directly to the human mind, so that one sees one’s nature and attains Buddhahood. He was the first to establish the Chan tradition in China. Later generations expounded and upheld it, illuminating its provisional and ultimate applications. They sounded the poison drum and wielded the edge of the great sword beyond the reach of words and images, before forms and names had yet arisen. Their responsiveness was like lightning flashing and thunder racing; their discourse like rivers flowing into the sea.

Blue lotuses scattered profusely from their tongues; the great lion’s roar resounded throughout the ten directions, piercing the ears of hundreds of thousands of Buddhas and leaping beyond the thirty-three heavens. Yet, when one investigates where it all leads, it is no more than spreading thorns and brambles, with branches growing everywhere: licorice and coptis, the sweetness and bitterness of one’s own mind. Thus, benefiting oneself and benefiting others surely do not depend on many words.

Chan Master Zhaozhou Congshen fully realized the forbearance of the unborn dharmas and received people through the fundamental matter. The paulownia at Dragon Gate stands a hundred feet high without branches. I have read his sayings: truly, as it is said, when skin and flesh have been entirely stripped away, the one reality alone is revealed. He was indeed one of whom Bodhidharma was mindful and protective.

A single drop of lion’s milk is enough to scatter a thousand measures of donkey’s milk. Yet the Chan master’s teachings are like five-colored pearls. If those of shallow knowledge and limited understanding seek comprehension in the words themselves, they betray the compassion of the ancient Buddhas and their grandmotherly concern in descending into the weeds. Whatever the master casually picked up or freely uttered enabled wise people throughout the ten directions to enter directly, all at once, the ground of the Tathāgata. It may be said that he stood like a cliff ten thousand fathoms high, while the moon’s reflection appeared in a thousand rivers. Zhaozhou’s way of receiving people was truly that of the ancient Buddhas: direct pointing to the human mind, seeing one’s nature and attaining Buddhahood. I have therefore recorded its essential passages in this volume to show later students the model and standard of the true tradition. Thus it is, thus it is.

Full-moon day of the fifth month, guichou year, the eleventh year of the Yongzheng reign