During his travels, our Master [Huangbo] paid a visit to his senior Nan Ch'üan. One day at dinner-time, he took his bowl and seated himself opposite Nan Ch'üan's high chair. Noticing him there, Nan Ch'üan stepped down to receive him and asked: 'How long has Your Reverence been following the Way?'
'Since before the era of Bhisma Rāja,' came the reply.
'Indeed?' exclaimed Nan Ch'üan. 'It seems that Master Ma has a worthy grandson here.' Our Master then walked quietly away.
A few days later, when our Master was going out, Nan Ch'üan remarked: 'You are a huge man, so why wear a hat of such ridiculous size?'
'Ah, well,' replied our Master. 'It contains vast numbers of chiliocosms.'
'Well, what of me?' enquired Nan Ch'üan, but the Master put on his hat and walked off.
Huanbgo Xiyun, On Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, 1958
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Wandering Ronin commentary: In part, the path of Zen involves dropping concepts and not being bound by the myriad things or world of form. It is noted here in this quote and elsewhere that Huangbo was a very big and tall person. Huangbo would have known that it would cause some 'conceptual unrest' if he wore a hat that was too small for a large person such as himself, so was he 'fishing' to catch those still bound to such concepts?
When Nan Ch'üan says something about his small hat, Huangbo remarks in a way that eradicates the relative by saying that "it contains vast numbers of chiliocosms". In Buddhist cosmology, a collection of one thousand solar systems are called a "thousandfold minor world-system" (culanika lokadhatu) or small chiliocosm. With this case, could it be considered that Huangbo was actively 'trolling' Nan Ch'üan and anyone else that would think of his hat as ridiculous?
Submitted May 22, 2019 at 01:11AM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2HOnzIe
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