We sentient beings, since beginningless eons, have lost our Original Face. Taking the false as true and calling a servant the master, we vainly give rise to greed and anger, create karma, and undergo karmic retribution. Like spring silkworms spinning cocoons, we entangle and bind ourselves, with no time of liberation. The foolish, in their ignorance, complacently endure their suffering without seeking liberation. The wise, although knowing that the matter of birth and death is of great consequence and the sea of suffering is boundless, desire liberation but suffer from finding no access.

Śākyamuni Buddha, out of compassion for sentient beings who had no way to escape suffering, manifested in the world to teach and transform them. All Buddhist sūtras and treatises, and all dharma gates, without exception, elucidate and expound upon this single center—realizing the mind and seeing one’s true nature—enabling people to awaken and shatter deluded attachments, eliminate ignorance, depart from the false and return to the true, and head directly home along the path.

If one selects the most direct, rapid, and easily practiced among these, which is closely akin to Chan, none compares to the Heart-of-Heart Dharma. Because this method is a formless esoteric practice, it has no complicated rituals and does not require setting up a maṇḍala. Anyone can practice it at any time and in any place. Furthermore, one need not take a roundabout path of cultivating preliminary practices to transition from form to formlessness; one can directly realize the essence and activate its functioning. Therefore, people often praise it as 'Chan-Esotericism.' Although the term may be imprecise, there is much truth to its meaning.