Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘The kaṣāya that covers the body of [the monks whom the Buddha] welcomes to take the precepts is not necessarily cotton or silk: the Buddha’s influence is difficult to
consider. The precious pearl within the robe is beyond those who count grains of sand.

We should clarify and should learn in practice that which has quantity and that which is without quantity, that which has form and that which is without form, in the material, color, and measurements of the kaṣāya of the buddhas. This is what all the ancestral masters of the Western Heavens and the Eastern Lands, past and present, learned in practice and transmitted as the authentic tradition. If someone is able to see and to hear [a master] in whom there is nothing to doubt — the authentic transmission from patriarch to patriarch being evident — but fails, without reason, to receive the authentic transmission from this ancestral master, such smugness would be hard to condone.

The extent of [this] stupidity might be due to unbelief. It would be to abandon the real and to pursue the false, to discard the root and to seek after branches. It would be to slight the Tathāgata. People who wish to establish the bodhi-mind should always receive the authentic transmission of an ancestral master. Not only have we met the Buddha-Dharma which is so difficult to meet: also, as Dharma descendants in the authentic transmission of the Buddha’s kaṣāya,we have been able to see and to hear, to learn and to practice, and to receive and to retain [the authentic transmission of the Buddha’s kaṣāya].

This is just to see the Tathāgata himself, it is to hear the Buddha’s preaching of Dharma, it is to be illuminated by the Buddha’s brightness, it is to receive and to use what the Buddha received and used, it is to receive the one-to-one transmission of the Buddha’s mind, it is to have got the Buddha’s marrow, it is to be covered directly by Śākyamuni Buddha’s kaṣāya, and it is Śākyamuni Buddha himself directly bestowing the kaṣāya upon us. Because we follow the Buddha, we have devoutly received this kaṣāya.’ (Shobogenzo Kesa Kudoku)