Ch'an Master Gao-An - The Obscuring Power of Habit

[Shi Da Dao]

Ch'an Master Gao-An of the Northern Song Dynasty said:

'Virtue, humanity, and righteousness do not belong to the ancients alone; people of today have them too, but because their knowledge is not clear, their study is not broad, their faculties are not pure, and their wills are weak, they cannot carry them out with power, and eventually they are diverted by what they see and hear, which raises them to be unaware of their state. It is all due to delusive conceptions and emotional thinking, piling up into a deep accumulation of habit that cannot be eliminated all at once. This is the only reason that people today do not reach the ranks of the ancients.'


Recorded in a Letter.

This is extracted from Thomas Cleary's wonderful translation entitled 'Zen Lessons' - an English rendering of early Song Dynasty Ch'an texts. It is interesting to note that ancient China possessed a fully functioning postal system, whereby many Ch'an masters - living in the hills - were able to keep in written contact with their students - despite their prefrence for everyday isolation.
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