Xiangyan set down this saying: (What are you doing?)
“Suppose someone has climbed a tree: (Do you notice your mouth’s full of frost?) his mouth is clamped onto a branch of the tree. (Knocked down)
His hands are not holding onto a branch. (So there is such a person.) Under the tree someone asks the meaning of the coming from the West. (Who?)
If he doesn’t answer, he’s avoiding the other’s question. (Don’t say.) If he does answer, then he loses his life. (I hope you will agree.) At such a time, what should he do?” (Xiangyan is also knocked down.)
At that time elder Hutou came forth and said, “I don’t ask about climbing up in the tree; please talk about before climbing the tree.” (When someone in the house to the east dies, the house to the west joins in the mourning.)
Xiangyan laughed out loud. (He has fallen into the other’s snare.)
Xuedou brought this up and said, “It’s easy to say up in the tree, hard to say under the tree. (He puts out a branch sideways.) I’m up in a tree—pose a question.” (Dangerous.)
Yuanwu said, The elders everywhere attained this insight, but they brought it out in a thousand ways with myriad strategies to help people, not concealing it or covering it up, setting out similes to get people to understand easily; but instead it became hard to understand.
Why? Because their kindness and compassion were so deep and rich as to cause people to conceive subjective interpretations more and more. If their kindness and compassion were slight, that was a little better.
As for Xiangyan’s saying that if one discusses this matter, it is like someone up in a tree holding onto a tree branch with his mouth, this doting kindness of Xiangyan, just this question, if you conceive at all of up in the tree or under the tree, replying or not replying, you create more and more ways of interpretation, falling into ordinary subjectivity, and will ultimately be unable to penetrate.
If you have the eye on the forehead, you’ll never formulate an interpretation in reference to answering or not answering.
You know what it comes down to before it’s brought up.
Later students have to pass through this lock before they can get out and breathe out. If you cannot get through, and sit here, you are called dead—what use are you?
Observe how someone who’s attained is quite different, immediately knowing what he’s getting at.
As soon as Xiangyan said this, a certain elder Hutou came forth and said, “I don’t ask about climbing the tree; please tell about before climbing the tree.” Xiangyan laughed out loud.
Tell me, what was Xiangyan laughing at? If you know what he’s getting at, what climbing or not climbing would you talk about? If you don’t know what he’s getting at, you should step back and look.
If you are an adept, you’ll see then and there; if you spend time trying to discuss it, you miss what’s right in front of you.
If you don’t fall into either side—answering isn’t right, and not answering isn’t right either—how can you see the ancient’s meaning?
Here, if you have masterful method, what up in the tree or under the tree, answering or not answering, will you talk about?
Xuedou cites the meeting of Xiangyan and Hutou, then tells people to ask a question. But is there anyone? “It is easy to speak up in the tree; it is hard to speak under the tree.” In the end he also says, “I have climbed the tree; pose a question.”
This bit is like wrestling in the presence of an authority; in the blink of an eye you’ve lost. Xuedou brings out the knotty problem to get people to see.
Those who cannot be trapped, who don’t turn their heads when called, know the great potential and great function as soon as they hear someone mention it, and are well able to bring it out.
See how old Xuedou is undeniably extraordinary.
-The Measuring Tap translated by Thomas Cleary
AssholeBuddha Commentary:
Without spending time trying to discuss it, what is this "know the great potential and great function as soon as they hear someone mention it, and are well able to bring it out"?
Speak quickly!
Submitted January 24, 2020 at 07:00AM by AssholeBuddha https://ift.tt/2NU2ShL
No comments:
Post a Comment