A person who enters Chan, no matter what meditations he has accomplished before or what great books he has read, immediately becomes like a Christian cast before the Lions. In this case the lions are his own false thoughts generated by the mind. These have to be faced and conquered.
The great problem is that, far from appearing as Lions, they appear as lambs, leading the way to salvation.
Here we present the true form of one hundred and twenty kinds of savaging lions presented by Yun-ming Yen-shou, which you will face in this arena of folly called your cognitive mind. They are really false views and deceptive understandings which are characteristic of ideas generated by the Identity-controlled mind. The great difficulty is recognising yourself within these descriptions and in that you encounter the most powerful beast.
"Because of the ignorance of the qualities of inherent nature, people fail to understand the true source. Abandoning enlightenment, they follow the dusts, giving up the root for the branches. They get hung up in the demonic web of being and nonbeing, and they wander in the forest of errors of oneness and difference. Trying to master true emptiness, they become alienated from the nature of reality; based on the arising and disappearance of sense data, they follow the being and nothingness of objects. Clinging to nihilism, confused by eternalism, they pursue the conditional and forget the essential. Mistakenly developing intellectual interpretation, they cultivate practice wrongly".
Yun-ming Yen-shou
Some mellow the spirit, nurture energy, and preserve naturalness.
Some torture the body, mortifying the flesh, and consider that the ultimate path.
Some cling to nongrasping and stand rooted in the immediate environment.
Some suppress the wandering mind in quest of quiet meditation.
Some get rid of feelings and negate phenomena in order to stabilize voidness.
Some stick to reflections, get involved in objects and embrace forms.
Some extinguish the true radiance of the spiritual source.
Some eliminate the true causal basis of Buddhist principles.
Some cut off consciousness and freeze the mind, experiencing an inanimate state in consequence.
Some clear the mind and ignore matter, abiding as a result in a kind of celestial state in which it is hard to become enlightened.
Some stick to phantasms, clinging to their existence.
Some become complete nihilists.
Some eliminate all views and dwell in dark rooms.
Some insist on perception and dwell on cognition.
Some consider having awareness to be the form of the true Buddha.
Some imitate insentience, like wood or stone.
Some cling to illusion as if it were the same as the ultimate realization, like considering clay in itself to be a jar.
Some seek ways of liberation wrongly focused, like seeking water while rejecting waves.
Some hasten outwardly and deludedly produce dream states.
Some keep to inwardness and live in solemnity, embracing ignorance.
Some are devoted to oneness and consider everything the same.
Some see differences and define individual reality-realms.
Some keep to ignorant nondiscrimination and consider that the Great Way.
Some value the notion of voidness and consider denial of good and bad to be the true practice.
Some interpret inconceivability to be insensate voidness.
Some understand true goodness and subtle form to be really existent.
Some stop mental workings and cut off thoughts, like angels with polluted minds.
Some contemplate with awareness and attention, falling within the bounds of intellectual assessment.
Some fail to investigate the nature of illusion thoroughly, interpreting it as the unknown beginning.
Some are ignorant of illusory substance and make a religion of nothingness.
Some recognize reflections as realities.
Some seek reality while clinging to falsehood.
Some recongize the nature of perception as a living thing.
Some point to illusory objects as inanimate.
Some willfully entertain ideas and turn away from silent knowledge.
Some cut off thoughts and thus lack enlightened function.
Some lose sight of natural qualities and conceive views of matter and mind.
Some rely on ultimate emptiness and develop a nihilistic attitude.
Some cling to universal principle and immediately abandon adornment.
Some misunderstand gradual teaching and become fanatical activists.
Some detach from objects by relying on essence but make their attachment to self stronger.
Some ignore everything and maintain themselves in ignorance.
Some decide that persons and phenomena are as they are naturally, and fall into the idea that there is no causality.
Some cling to the combination of objects and intellect and conceive the notion of collective causality.
Some cling to the mixing of mind and objects, confusing subjective and objective actualities.
Some stick to distinguishing absolute and conventional, bound up in the folly of obstruction by knowledge.
Some adhere to unchanging oneness, thus falling into eternalism.
Some determine the movement of origin, abiding, decay, and nothingness, thus sinking into nihilism.
Some cling to noncultivation and thus dismiss the ranks of sages.
Some say there is realization, and thus turn away from natural reality.
Some delight in the environment and their own persons, thus following the routines of the world.
Some reject life and death and thus lose true liberation.
Some, misunderstanding true emptiness, are devoted to causes and obsessed with results.
Some, ignorant of ultimate reality, long for enlightenment and despise bewilderment.
Some cling to expedient statements, holding to them as literal truth.
Some lose the reality of verbal expression and seek silence apart from words.
Some are devoted to doctrinal methods and disdain spontaneous meditation.
Some promote meditative contemplations and repudiate the measuring devices of complete teaching.
Some compete at being extraordinary while only being concerned with status, suddenly sinking in the sea of knowledge.
Some contrive purity to find out hidden secrets, instead getting trapped within a realm of shadows.
Some produce extraordinary intellectual interpretations, gouging flesh and producing wounds.
Some dwell on original essential purity but cling to the medicine so it becomes unhealthy.
Some pursue the literature, searching out meanings, and wind up drinking a flood.
Some keep to stillness and live in isolation, sitting in the dust of dogma.
Some discuss the formless Great Vehicle with the idea of getting something.
Some search for mystic truth outside of things by means of calculating thoughts.
Some reject explanation and conceive the notion of absolute nonverbalization.
Some keep explanation and call on the criticism of clinging to the pointing finger.
Some approve of active function and remain at the root source of birth and death.
Some concentrate on memorization, dwelling within the limits of conscious thinking.
Some lose the essence of complete awareness by modification and adjustment.
Some let be whatever will be, and lack a method of entering the path.
Some initiate energetic physical and mental efforts and linger in contrivance.
Some keep to letting be without concern and sink into the bondage of insight.
Some concentrate on focusing thoughts and contemplating diligently, thus losing correct reception.
Some imitate uninhibited freedom and give up cultivation.
Some follow binding complusions while presuming upon intrinsic emptiness.
Some cling to bondage and try to eliminate it arbitrarily.
Some are so serious that they develop attachment to religion.
Some are so flippant that they ruin the basis of enlightenment.
Some seek so aggressively that they turn away from the original mind.
Some slack off and become heedless.
Some lack realism, their speech and their realization differing.
Some violate the vehicle of enlightenment by disparity of being and action.
Some keep to tranquillity, dwelling in emptiness, thereby losing the nature of great compassion.
Some ignore conditions and reject the temporal, thus missing the door of naturalness.
Some stick to the notion of self, thus being ignorant of the emptiness of person.
Some confuse immediate experience and harden their attachment to doctrine.
Some interpret without having faith, increasing false views.
Some have faith but no understanding, increasing ignorance.
Some affirm the subjective but deny the objective.
Some claim states are deep while knowledge is shallow.
Some get confused about the nature of things by grasping.
Some turn away from immediate reality by rejection.
Some violate cause because of detachment.
Some forget consequences because of attachment.
Some repudiate reality by denial.
Some ruin temporary expedients by affirmation.
Some hate ignorance but thereby turn their backs on the door of immutable knowledge.
Some dislike varying states but thereby destroy absorption in the nature of reality.
Some base themelves on the principle of sameness but thereby develop conceit.
Some dismiss differentiations, thus destroying the methods of expedient techniques.
Some affirm enlightenment but repudiate the cycle of true teaching.
Some deny sentient beings and repudiate the true body of Buddha.
Some stick to basic knowledge and deny expedient wisdom.
Some miss the true source and cling to temporary methods.
Some linger in noumenon, sinking into a pit of inaction.
Some cling to phenomena, throwing themselves into the net of illusion.
Some annihilate boundaries and obliterate tracks, turning away from the door of dual illumination.
Some maintain rectitude, keeping to the center, but lose the sense of expedient technique.
Some cultivate concentration or insight one-sidedly, without balance, thus rotting the sprouts of the path.
Some carry out vows all alone, burying the family of the enlightened.
Some work on the practice of inaction to cultivate fabricated enlightenment.
Some cling to the nonclinging mind, learning imitation insight.
Some aim for purity, misunderstanding the true nature of defilement.
Some dwell on the absolute and lose the basic emptiness of the mundane.
Some practice formless contemplation, blocking true suchness.
Some conceive a sense of knowing but thereby turn away from the essence of reality.
Some stick by true explananion but develop literalistic views.
Some drink the elixir of immortality yet die young.
Some are so earnest about the principle of completeness that they develop an attitude of clinging attachment; they drink the nectar but turn it into posion.