What cannot be spoken and cannot be named is the generative energy,
which is the substance of the Way. When the substance is established, the
function operates.
When people are deluded by emotions and do not know there is essence,
they are ordinary ignoramuses. If they know there is essence but do not
know there are emotions, this is senseless vacuity. Therefore our teaching is
actively living and does not settle into one corner, but instead applies to
heaven and earth, combines eternity with the present, equalizes others and
self, and has neither enemy nor familiar.
It is said that we are the same in essence but different in feeling. There is no
difference in feeling either; it is just that habits develop unnoticed, evolving
in a stream, continuing to the present, so that their defiling influence cannot
be shed. Ultimately this is not the fault of essence.
The great Way is not in quiet living. If you stay quietly in a room, that has
the countereffect of increasing the flames of fire in the heart. It is necessary
to be working on the Way whatever you are doing in order to be able to "sit
on the summit of a thousand mountains without leaving the crossroads."
Consciousness is knowledge. In ordinary people it is called consciousness,
in immortals and Buddhas it is called knowledge. The only distinction is
between purity and impurity.
