Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

A monk asked, “How can a person gain freedom?”
Baizhang said, “If you attain it at this moment then you’ve attained it. If you can instantly cut off the emotions of the self, the five desires and winds of attachment, the greed and covetousness, the pollution and purity, that is to say, all delusive thoughts, then you’ll be like the sun and the moon hanging in space, purely shining—the mind like wood and stone; thoughts spared from worldly entrapments; like a great elephant crossing a river, engulfed in the rapids but taking no missteps. Heaven and hell can’t pull in such a person.
When that person reads a sutra or observes a teaching, the words return to the person. The person knows that all teachings with words are only a reflection of the immediacy of self-nature and are just meant to guide you. Such teachings don’t penetrate the revolving realms of existence and nonexistence. Only Diamond Wisdom penetrates the revolving realms of existence and nonexistence, and thus constitutes complete, independent freedom.
If you don’t understand in this manner and just go on chanting the Vedic scriptures, then you’re just making matters worse, and moreover you’re slandering Buddha. This is not practice.
But to be separate from all sound and form, though not abiding in the separateness, and not abiding in intellectual comprehension, this is the true practice of reading sutras and observing the teachings. One who lets the world be as it is, always acting in countless situations with clear rectitude, this is one who has truly cut off the passions.” (Zen’s Chinese Heritage)