Hsueh Feng's Grain of Rice

Blue Cliff Record: Case V

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."

In the pointer Yuanwu says, "Principle and phenomena are not two, and he practices both the provisional and the real."

I didn't think there was anything confused or blinding about what Hsueh Feng said, unlike Yuanwu in their comments, but my mind automatically sidestepped a materialistic understanding by hearing 'earth' with a provisional perspective that didn't preclude the real.

Yet, Yunmen says "One can't always be making wild fox spirit interpretations." What is Yuanwu getting at? Yuanwu says:

People these days only say that the Ancient (Hsueh Feng) made something up specially to teach people of the future fixed precepts that they can rely on. To say this is just slandering that ancient master; this is called "spilling Buddha's blood."

Yuanwu goes on to shower praise on Hsueh Feng. For the reader, they say:

As for "Pick up the whole great earth in your fingers, and it's as big as a grain of rice"-tell me, at this juncture, can you figure it out by means of intellectual discrimination? Here you must smash through the net, at once abandon gain and loss, affirmation and negation, to be completely free and at ease; you naturally pass through his snare, and then you will see what he's doing.

To help us not lose our feet, Yuanwu says "Mind is the master of myriad things; the whole great earth is all at once in my hand," is not a correct understanding. Earlier, they quote Yun Feng as having said, "Compared to above, not enough; compared to below, too much. I am making up more complications for you." Yuanwu adds to all this:

Here you must be a true and genuine fellow, who penetrates the bone through to the marrow, and sees all the way through as soon as he hears it brought up, yet without falling into emotional considerations or conceptual thinking.

So we are cutting through concepts like a master swordsman; not looking something to lean on, to grapple with; to hold onto.

Verse

An ox head disappears,/A horse head emerges./In the mirror of Ts'ao Ch'i[Huineng]^1, absolutely no dust./He beats the drum for you to come look, but you don't see:/When spring arrives, for whom do the hundred flowers bloom?

Notice how no one has given the "answer" to the case; no one here says Hsueh Feng is giving a wrong interpretation as a model to avoid. When Hsueh Feng says, "Pick up the whole great earth in your fingers, and it's as big as a grain of rice," Yuanwu notes say, "What technique is this? I myself have never sported devil eyes." This suggests that Yuanwu sees these words as potentially leading to delusional conceptualizing. But in the commentary, Yuanwu denies this interpretation. Then, where does the intellect grasp?

This ox is no unruly beast; where does the horse come from? To cut through Xuedou's words in one stroke is to see Huineng's no dust. "[Hsueh Feng] beats the drum for you to come look, but you don't see. What is there to see? I leave you with Yuanwu's question; "Tell me, who else do they bloom for?"

¹ Shen Hsiu's verse for successorship to the fifth Patriarch:

The body is the tree of enlightenment,/The mind like a bright mirror-stand;/Time and again polish it diligently,/Do not let there be any dust.

Huineng's answer:

Enlightenment is basically not a tree,/And the mind-mirror not a stand;/Originally there is not a single thing-/What is the use of wiping away dust?

Submitted September 05, 2020 at 07:34PM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/3i2kXHj