Difficult, difficult

Layman Pang was sitting in his thatched cottage one day studying the sūtras. "Difficult, difficult," he said; "like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree."

Sentient beings do not wake up;

Buddhas are already awake.

How do you get from not so to already so with no intermediate stages?

"Easy, easy," said Mrs. Pang; "Like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed."

Like walking a dog in the pouring rain.

Like stumbling backwards off a cliff.

Like a patch of vapor in a cloud declaring war against the sky.

"Neither difficult nor easy," said Ling Zhao; "on the hundred grass tips, the ancestors' meaning."

How do you get in or out of what has no inside or outside? What is a barrier? What is a gate?

What obscures awakening for sentient beings is not different from what reveals it for a Buddha.

Why is that?

Shitou says,

"If you do not see the Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it.

When you walk the way, it is not near, it is not far,

but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way."

If you are confused, blades of grass block your way.

But what about confusion?

"Dharma gates are boundless."

There's no escape from this.