The Avatamsaka Sutra:

The Buddha is like the cool, refreshing moon
Constantly coursing in ultimate emptiness.
When the water in the mind of beings is pure,
Bodhi manifests within it.

The Avatamsaka Sutra:

The Good and Wise Advisor’s teaching is like a full moon, in that it refreshes and cools everything it shines on.

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

If your mind is extremely pure, the Buddha’s light will shine on you and illumine your mind like the moonlight deeply penetrating clear water. If your mind is impure, it is like a puddle of muddy water through which no light can pass. The mind in samadhi is like a cloudless sky, a state that is inexpressibly wonderful. If you can truly purify your mind, then you can obtain the strength of the Shurangama Samadhi.

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

Having fathomed our own nature and that of others,
We rank as one with Heaven and Earth.
When the mind is as bright as the sun and moon,
It dazzles like the springtime sunshine.

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

When the moon appears in the water of the clear mind, and in the sky of concentrated thought there are no clouds, then there is a state of great naturalness. Nothing further is done in this natural and rustic existence. One's happiness is inexhaustible and transcendental.

 

Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

Morality is equivalent to the sun and moon, to Heaven and Earth, and to our very life. Lacking morality is equivalent to being without life, without the sun and moon, and without Heaven and Earth. What is morality? Morality means to take benefiting others as most important, and to take not hindering others as our principle. It is to fill our minds with humaneness, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness.

 

A verse in praise of the Venerable Master Hsu Yun:

He received the precepts and immediately entered the position of all the Buddhas.
Maintaining the precepts purely and clearly, just like the round full moon,
His karmas of body, mouth, and mind were free from flaw or blemish.
Who else besides our Master Yun is able to be like that?

 

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

Demons come to polish the True Way;
Those on the True Way have to endure demons.
The more you’re polished, the brighter you become;
The brighter you get, the more you must be polished.
You’ll be polished until you’re like the autumn moon,
Illumining all the demon hordes from space.
When the demon hordes are scattered,
The original Buddha manifests.

 

A line from the text of the Preface to The Flower Adornment Sutra, composed by the Tang Dynasty National Master Ching Liang:

Hidden and revealed together realized,
   like the crescent moon in an autumn sky

Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua explains:

It is also as in autumn, the Fall Season, the moon in the sky has both a period when it is hidden and a period when it is revealed. Sometimes the moon is waxing, and sometimes it is waning, and yet both aspects are “together realized.” In the combination of hidden and revealed, what is hidden reinforces what is revealed, and what is revealed reinforces what is hidden. Once the moon has waxed to the full, then it wanes. After waning, it then waxes once again. The principles of the Flower Adornment Sutra also follow that pattern, and so they are like the crescent moon in an autumn sky, like the Fall Season’s moon in empty space.

 

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

Across the sea of suffering, one leaves the revolving wheel,
The rains disperse, the heavens clear; just then the moon is fully bright.
The Qian source is the Way-substance, among people the sage.
His undecaying golden body is rare in the world.
Cast off birth; what need of thousand-year elixirs?
Attain extinction; why wait ten thousand kalpas?
Five dwellings ended, the two deaths disappear forever.
Roam at will from East to West, throughout the Dharma Realm

 

The Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:

As sun and moon do not stop in space. The sun and moon do not stop in space. Although the sun and moon travel through space, they are not attached to any part of it and do not stop anywhere. They are without attachments...

Dusk and Night

Reflections

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