https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%B3%E5%A4%B4%E5%B8%8C%E8%BF%81
竺土大仙心，東西密相付，人根有利鈍，道無南北祖。靈源明皎潔，支派暗流注。執事元是迷，契理亦非悟。
門門一切境，迴互不迴互。迴而更相涉，不爾依位住。 色本殊質象，聲元異樂苦。暗合上中言，明明清濁句。 四大性自復，如子得其母，火熱風動搖，水溼地堅固。 眼色耳音聲，鼻香舌鹹醋，然依一一法，依根葉分布。
本末須歸宗，尊卑用其語。當明中有暗，勿以暗相遇。 當暗中有明，勿以明相睹。明暗各相對，比如前後步。 萬物自有功，當言用及處。事存函蓋合，理應箭鋒拄。 承言須會宗，勿自立規矩。觸目不會道，運足焉知路。
進步非近遠，迷隔山河固。謹白參玄人，光陰莫虛度。
The eighth century Chinese Zen master Shitou Xiqian writes in his Tsan Tung Chi: “The darkness is in the middle of the light—you cannot find it in its darkness.”1 The point is that one does not need to shun clear and distinct places and deliberately grope around for inscrutable mysteries. From a standpoint that is all light, the darkness may only look like ambiguity, but in fact the truly mysterious and mystical is there. At the same time, the encounter with the mystical cannot take place in mere darkness, cut off from all light. Just as a merely surface rationalism is lacking in true reason, the arationality of a deep mysticism prevents us from encountering what is truly mystical. Shitou Xiqian adds later in the same work: “The light is in the middle of the darkness—you cannot see it in its brightness.” What is the light in the very middle of the truly mystical? To see it, he says, we cannot look only at its bright side, turning the light of reason on it.
Without our going into too much detail here, a first reading of these two short lines of an ancient writer suffices to reveal a complex structural relation between the elements, here given as light and darkness, that rule the interiority of things themselves. There is a dialectical logic at work in the development of this idea that includes contradictories like affirmation and negation and the negation of negation. The problems of the person of the thinker referred to above and of the transmission of thought are also woven into the working of this logic. In addition, different readers find different meanings in these lines. The passage winds up in a sort of conclusion with these words: “Light and darkness face each other—like footsteps following one after the other.” Light and darkness are relative and yet move as one body, as when we shift our weight from the back foot to the front in walking. In the words of the Zen saying, “Light and darkness, at bottom a pair.”2 All of this may help in some way to understand the method and content of Nishida’s philosophy.
Nishitani, Keiji. Nishida Kitarō: The Man and His Thought (Studies in Japanese Philosophy Book 2) (pp. 4-5). Chisokudo Publications. 2016, Kindle edition.
