Huang Po
The Tang dynasty, which stretched across much of the first millennium CE, was a period of considerable intellectual and literary activity in China. It was within this setting that Huangbo Xiyun — also known as Huang Po — lived and worked as a philosopher and poet.
Born around 800 CE, Huangbo Xiyun held citizenship of the Tang dynasty throughout his life. He pursued the dual roles of philosopher and poet, two vocations that placed him among the thinkers and writers active during one of China's more productive dynastic periods. The Tang dynasty provided the world in which he operated, and his work as both a philosopher and a poet gave him a particular position within it. These two roles together defined how he engaged with the intellectual and literary life of his time.
Huangbo Xiyun died around 850 CE at Mount Huangbo. That specific location gives a concrete endpoint to a life lived under the Tang dynasty. His death at Mount Huangbo is the last recorded fact about him, and it anchors the close of his life to a particular place within the Tang world he had inhabited since his birth around 800 CE.
Quotes by Huang Po
Just let your minds become void and environmental phenomena will void themselves; let principles cease to stir and events will cease stirring of themselves.2.
Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.
If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity. Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.1.
Where nothing is sought this implies Mind unborn; where no attachment exists, this implies Mind not destroyed; and that which is neither born nor destroyed is the Buddha.
Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves.
The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.
The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena.
Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.
Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves.