What Ages and What's Ageless

A Ch'an master once wrote that the wise enshrine the miraculous bones of the ancients within themselves; that is, they do not regard teachings of ways to enlightenment as an external body of knowledge or information to be possessed as an acquisition or believed or revered as inflexible dogma, but rather apply it as far as possible to themselves and their situations, vivifying the way to enlightenment with their own bodies and lives, not just in their thoughts. It is therefore a matter of course that new Buddhist literature has been produced; for the Buddhist canon is not closed, as long as people continue the search for enlightenment. This is where a consideration of Buddhist history has some meaning: to help us see what ages and what is ageless.

---Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary in the Introduction to their translation of The Blue Cliff Record---