The skin bag lament: before the empty eon, I had no name or shape. Since Buddha’s awesome sound, a hindrance it has been. Three hundred and sixty joints connect the body’s frame; it’s every inch is covered by eighty-four thousand pores; one of the triad of primal forces combining the four great elements. It holds up heaven and pillars, earth a spirit magnificent. Because of cause and effect, discern the times. Despite our view of past and present, muddled we remain. All because of confused attachment to this illusory shape. We tire out our parents, and cling to our wives and children. Our vain ignorance leaves behind a trail of karmic debts.
Song of the skin bag, the skin bag lament: drinking wine and eating meat confound the mental nature. Indulging desires and greed for pleasure brings ruin in the end. The higher the office, the greater influence and power to oppress. Buying and selling is cheating people by means of craftiness. Honor, wealth, extravagance — how long can they last? When misfortune and poverty come, all is spent in an instant. False discernment of self and others creates inequality. By harming living things, we treat them as so many weeds. And every day our reckonings based on stupidity, anger and greed. Sinking in these perversities, we are destroyed entirely. Recklessly we steal, kill, lust, lie… Contemptuous of kin and friends, we are ravaged by love and hate. Scolding the wind, cursing the rain, deriding the spirits and gods. Not understanding birth and death, we are truly at a loss. From a cow’s belly born, we enter the womb of a mare. As heads and faces change, who praises his luck? Who mourns his doom? We create much evil, but plant no blessings. How vain our passage through birth and death… How useless the clamor of our lives… Thence, to the three evil paths, we fall to the hells… Or suffer as ghosts or animals.
The sages of old kept wagging their tongues, like morning chimes and evening drums, attempting to stir the strings of our hearts. Retributions for good and evil were sharp and clear as could be. They awaken us, so that we want to leave the five fold timidity. Endowed with form, let it not encumber you: illusory substance. Mere false name, it is just a relative Dharma. Quickly turn your heart around, and contemplate at ease. To kin, bid farewell, and sever all ties of love. Withdraw from the world and leave — don’t cling to wife, don’t pine for children; enter the door of emptiness; receive the Buddha’s precepts; seek a bright teacher, ask for instruction; investigate Chan; meditate well; stop declining mind’s insanity. Once and for all, to the red dust wave goodbye. Subdue the six senses. Cut off thoughts. Without self or other, afflictions cease.
Be not like the worldly, who sigh at the passing of mist and dew.
The road to shield you, food to fill you enough to sustain your body’s needs, riches and jewels renounce. Look lightly on body and life. Reject them as spit and phleghm, and do not hesitate. Hold precepts purely, blemishless. In four comportments, be clear as ice and pure as jade. When scolded, don’t be angry. When beaten, do not hate. Bear what is hard to bear. Forget about mockery. Overlook sarcasm. Ignore both winter and summer. Work without interruption. From beginning to end, recite with a single mind: Namo Amita Buddha.
Do not lapse into torpor. Refrain from getting scattered. Be like the pine in the cypress, never fading, ever green. Doubt not the Buddha, doubt not the Dharma, wholesome knowledge is to understand what it is you hear and see. Bore through the paper, pierce the cowhide, do not err. Make your mind round and bright. Return to The Origin. Reach liberation. Go back to The Source. Retrieve your heaven-true nature. Nothing’s not nothing. Emptiness isn’t empty. The divine’s potential revealed, its wonder is hard to imagine. You’ve arrived, you haven’t toiled in vain. Just in that instant, for you, it is finished. You are rightfully given the name ‘Great Hero’. You embody ten titles. Perfect and bright teaching, ten thousand generations.
Ah, the same leaking shelf, no manifests bodies throughout ten directions — with good and evil now distinquished clearly, no more mistakes occur. But why do you rely on the false alone, and yet not practice the true? The tai chi absolute divides into heaven and earth. With a lively thrust, you should turn the chen or the kun of your own mind. Kings and prime ministers certainly practiced The Way in previous lives. Wealth and honor, and utter poverty, are due to people’s past causes. Once there is birth, death will then follow. Everyone knows this: why moan and gripe?
For wives and riches, for heir and fortune, you ruin your future. It’s all due to anger and greed. For what sort of profit? For what kind of fame have I wasted nineteen springs? A thousand matters are not as you wish them to be. Embroiled in the world, you are assailed by hardships constantly. Once old, your eyes grow dim. Your hair turns snowy-white. With no particular virtue at all, you’ve wasted your whole life. Days stretch to months. Months stretch to years. In vain you lament the passage of time, rolling on and on, like a wheel.
Who is immortal in this world? Better return and bow to the one whose compassion is like a cloud. Visit the sacred mountains, places sublime, just as you wish — in comfort and ease. Swifly comes impermanence, but do you know? Are you aware? Just how much idle, empty chatter do you want to hear? Recite Amitabha. End birth and death. Keep yourself happy. How many can be like that?
Invesitgate Jnana. Attain the pulpit of the school. In such endeavors there is boundless vigor and energy. Plain tea, vegetarian food. Let not your mind be greedy. Throughout the day and night, rejoice. Be happy in the Dharma. Get rid of self and others. Do away with this and that. See that foe and friends are equal. Forget about slander and praise. Gone are impediements. There is no shame or insult. Achieve a mind like The Buddhas and Patriarchs. What are you waiting for? The Bhagavan cut the strings of love and climbed the snowy mountains. Quan Yin bade farewell to kin, and became The Buddha’s disciple. At the time of emperors Yao and Shun, hermits Chao and Tzu passed their days. When Yao offered Chao the empire’s rule, Chao washed his ears in the stream. Chuang-Tzu Fang and Lu-Cheng Yi, also gave up officialdom to roam the rivers and mountains. Much more should we, in the Dharma’s demise, fraught with anguish and difficulties, now strive to be like those of old, in search of our enlightenment.
Indulging ignorance, creating ten evils, we waste our resources — reap the world’s scorn. Weapons, armies, plagues and droughts — much misery to be borne. Famines and wars are more and more frequent at every turn. The daily news is fearful, full of strange forbodings. Earthquakes, tidal waves, devastating landslides… What can we do while caught in this age and time? This surely is the result of evil done in former lives. Faced with such adversity, we can fall into worse confusion.
But pure and unfortunate, if we create a thought of goodness, such wholesome thoughts can help us enter a temple and bow to The Dharma King. Repent, and reform your offenses, then your blessings can grow. Bow to a bright-eyed teacher, seek for certification — end birth and death. See the mind. Understand the nature. Smashing through impermanence is what we mean by permanence. The path within the path is found through strong cultivation. The sages and worthy bequeathed wise sayings and lucid exhortations. Uphold the Tripitaka teachings with reverence. Cleanse your heart. Purge your inner workings. Encourage people to guard what is proper. Don’t think my words are idle. Don’t fail to pay attention. Great cultivators must see their own natures. Quickly cultivate and be heroically vigorous. Plant the proper causes of ce. Aim to be born in the nine Lotus grades, and be certified by the Buddhas. Let Amitabha Buddha take you to the west. Put down the skinbag. Ascend the upmost vehicle. That’s the quest supreme.
The song of the skinbag’s son. I urge you all to listen…