The Great Doubt Block

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Gaofeng said: "Beneath the great doubt there is great awakening. If you can raise the doubt mass to fill your entire body so that it becomes like a solid block—no gap, no crack, no place for thinking to enter—then suddenly it will shatter of itself. When this happens, you will be like a person who has been dead and comes back to life, or like a person who snatches back what has been stolen. Only then will you know that you yourself have always had it."

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Gaofeng Yuanmiao

Lineage: Yangqi line

From Traditional Zen Sayings

• A Special Transmission Outside the Scriptures
• Thirty Blows
• A Day Without Work Is a Day Without Eating
• Mountains Are Mountains
• Cease and Desist
• Die While Alive
• The Whole Universe Is the Eye
• The Directness of Realization
• The Barrier of Words
• Not Deceived by Words

Sources

• contentWikisource — English-language free library

  Gaofeng Yuanmiao Chanshi Yulu, instruction on doubt

  Traditional Zen Sayings: The Great Doubt Block