The Duty of the National Preceptor

Text

When Khuông Việt was appointed National Preceptor (Quốc Sư) of Đại Cồ Việt, a visiting monk from China asked him: 'You are both a meditator and a minister. How do you hold both without one corrupting the other?' Khuông Việt said: 'In the meditation hall, there are no affairs. In the court, there is no meditator. When I sit in the hall, the affairs of the realm do not enter. When I stand in the court, the hall does not move.' The monk said: 'Is this not suppression? Do the affairs not press on the meditation?' Khuông Việt said: 'Let them press. A mountain does not collapse because a cloud presses against it. The one who knows this is already the mountain.'

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Speaker
  Khuông Việt

Lineage: Thiền

By Khuông Việt

• Verse Composed in Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm)verse

From Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Anthology of the Garden of Vietnamese Zen)

• On the Impermanence of Dynasties
• The Illusory Nature of Power
• Verse Composed in Vietnamese (Chữ Nôm)
• The King Tests the Third Patriarch
• On Receiving the Succession
• The Dharma Is Not Separate from Mind
• Silent Transmission

Sources

• contentCuong Tu Nguyen — medieval Vietnamese Buddhism scholarship

  Cuong Tu Nguyen

  Thiền Uyển Tập Anh, Khuông Việt (Ngô Chân Lưu) section; after Cuong Tu Nguyen, 'Zen in Medieval Vietnam' (1997), pp. 29–43

  Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Anthology of the Garden of Vietnamese Zen): The Duty of the National Preceptor