Turning pages

From Zen master Keizan’s Transmission of Light, 11:

To recite scripture does not necessarily mean that just reciting with your mouth and turning the pages with your hands is actually reciting scripture. Be careful in the house of Buddhas and Zen masters not to waste time in sound and form, not to carry out your activities in the shell of ignorance. When knowledge and wisdom appear everywhere, and the mind ground is always open and clear, this is the way you should ‘recite scripture.’ As you practice this way at all times, if you are never dependent, then you will completely realize the uncreated original nature.
Do you not know that we do not come from anywhere even as we are born, and we do not go anywhere even as we die? Born wherever you are, you pass away on the spot; origination and annihilation as time goes by never rest. Therefore birth is not birth, death is not death; and as Zen students, do not keep birth and death hanging on your mind. Do not obstruct yourself by hearing and seeing. Even if it becomes hearing and seeing, becomes sound and form, it is your own storehouse of light.
Emanating light from your eyes, you make arrays of color and form; emanating light from your ears, you hear the buddha work of sounds; emanating light from your hands, you can activate yourself and others; emanating light from your feet, you can walk forward and back.
Again I want to add some humble words to point out this principle:

Turning, turning, how many pages of scripture?
Revolving, revolving, how many scrolls?
Dying here, born there—
Divisions of chapter and verse.

— (Cleary 1990, 58-9)

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