This was sort of the preamble: https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/amkbpw/a_whole_bunch_of_poison/
What's the poison drum about?
BCR:
What's a drum, 5th Case:
Hsueh Feng, teaching his community, said, "Pick up the whole great earth in your fingers, and it's as big as a grain of rice. Throw it down before you: if, like a lacquer bucket, you don't understand, I'll beat the drum to call everyone to look."
13th Case:
Those who wanted to hold doctrinal disputes in India were required to obtain royal permission. Bells and drums would be sounded in the great temples and afterwards the debates could begin.
44th Case:
A monk came forward and asked, "What is 'real going beyond'?" Shan said, "Knowing how to beat the drum."
What's a poison drum, BOS 61
(which is also Case 48 from Wumenguan, the Gateless Barrier, discussed here: https://anchor.fm/ewkatreddit/episodes/Gateless-Barrier-of-Zen-Case-48-e2d39c), Xuefeng's verse, Wansong's commentary on the verse and discussion of the verse:
from the verse:
News of warmth bursts the plum--spring comes to the cold branches. * (Getting revivifying incense.) A freezing gale makes the leaves drop--autumn clarifies the runoff water. * (He comes and beats the poison drum.)
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Commentary on the verse:
Jianfeng's medicine for a dead horse didn't work as medicine--this monk was a man who had already perished and lost his life; Yunmen gathered some reviving incense, to enable the dead to come back to life again. In Miscellaneous Lore it says that in 84 AD, during the Han dynasty, an emissary came from the Yuezhi nation of the West with a gift of four ounces of incense as big as sparrow eggs, colored like mulberry and cypress. Later, when there was a great plague in the capital city, the emperor took the incense and burned it; the dead revived within three days; the fragrance of the incense lasted for three months. The incense comes from the Man-bird Mountains on the Isle of Clustered Caves, where there are trees like maple whose fragrance can be sensed for miles. It is called the tree that returns the living spirit; the root is cut, and the sap is boiled to a black paste in a jade pot. One name is the vitalizer, a second name is the reviver, a third is sandalwood, a fourth is death-remover. In an informal talk, Tiantong said, " Having sufficiently gathered revivifying incense, alike they come beat the poison drum." Yunmen's leftover, Tiantong says, is revivifying incense, but elsewhere they have made it into a poison drum. Just try to make them turn around and they can't breathe out; choked their throats and stop their noses, and still sweat will pour from all over their bodies. Master Zhi said, " Suddenly realizing that fundamental nature is basically empty is like fever breaking in a sweat." Even so, how many strands of eyebrows do I have left?
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The “poison” is the unnecessary and unprofitable problem, according to Blyth.
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619 Yen T'ou said, "The intent of my teaching is like a poison smeared drum: one beat and all who hear it, near and far, perish."
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ewk note: Questions?
Submitted February 09, 2019 at 04:22PM by ewk http://bit.ly/2E0Is1T
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