Blue Cliff Record: Case XII
A monk asked Tung Shan, "What is Buddha?" 1
Tung Shan said, "Three pounds of hemp." 2
~___~
NOTES
1 Iron brambles; no patchrobed monk on earth can leap clear. 2 Clearly. Worn out straw sandals. He points to a pagoda tree to scold a willow tree.
Before we even get into Yuanwu's sermon, I can tell you this is a very compassionate response. Try thinking of it this way, instead of "Three pounds of hemp" as secret code or mysterious.
Yuanwu says:
So many people misunderstand this public case. It really is hard to chew on, since there's no place for you to sink your teeth into. What is the reason? Because it's bland and flavorless.
Is there a more appropriate answer to a needless question? How about "cake"? How about "no"? Yunmen says "a dry piece of shit." Matsu says "Not the mind, not the Buddha." Joshu says "The cypress tree in the yard." Weishan kicked over the water jar and left.
If Buddha is "iron brambles" for patchrobed monks, how much more expedient to cut off knowledge? I wish to be honest; even my explanation is too much.
Mumon, in their commentary on this case, says:
Old man Dongshan had learned a bit of oyster Zen: as soon as he opens his shell, he shows his guts. Nevertheless, tell me, where will you see Dongshan?
What is this saying? Does it make sense to go on discussing whether Dongshan responded appropriately or not, or is this just fanfiction? I say they did. It was worth being included as a case twice, and even mentioned by Wansong in case 73.
What is "shows his guts"? Here we see the essence of Dongshan.
Let's look at Case 19 of the Gateless Checkpoint:
When Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, “What is the Path?” Nanquan said, “The ordinary mind is the Path.”
Zhaozhou said, “Can we go toward it or not?” Nanquan said, “As soon as you go toward it, you go against it.”
Zhaozhou said, “If we do not try, how do we know it is the Path?” Nanquan said, “The Path is not in the province of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is false awareness. Not knowing is oblivion. If you really arrive on the Path of no trying, it is like space, empty all the way through. How can we impose affirmation and denial? ”
At these words, Zhaozhou was suddenly enlightened.
If you take a look at what Huangbo says, how are they not saying the same thing? It's not about knowing or not knowing; that is moving away; stumbling past. "How can we impose affirmation and denial?" How can we say "enlightened"? Three pounds of hemp is much more expedient, because it is flavourless.
Yuanwu continues:
The Ancients had quite a few answers to the question "What is Buddha?" One said, "The one in the shrine." One said, "The thirty-two auspicious marks." One said, "A bamboo whip on a mountain covered with a forest grown from a staff." And so on, to Tung Shan, who said, "Three pounds of hemp." He couldn't be stopped from cutting off the tongues of the Ancients.
There is much talk of hesitation in the literature. What is this if there is nothing to say? Yuanwu goes into the weeds for those who don't understand:
Many people base their understanding on the words and say that Tung Shan was in the storehouse at the time weighing out hemp when the monk questioned him, and therefore he answered in this way. Some say that when Tung Shan is asked about the east he answers about the west. Some say that since you are Buddha and yet you still go to ask about Buddha, Tung Shan answers this in a roundabout way. And there's yet another type of dead men who say that the three pounds of hemp is itself Buddha. But these interpretations are irrelevant. If you seek from Tung Shan's words this way, you can search until Maitreya Buddha is born down here and still never see it even in a dream.
A friend of mine who knows nothing of Zen asked me about all this, and they told me that they can use any word, such as "pizza" when asked about Buddha. I said no, that's not right. This is a cognitive entanglement. They asked me how I know they are wrong. Their demonstration was off. Yuanwu explains:
What's the reason? Words and speech are just vessels to convey the Path. Far from realizing the intent of the Ancients, people just search in their words; what grasp can they get on it? Haven't you seen how an Ancient said, "Originally the Path is wordless; with words we illustrate the Path. Once you see the Path, the words are immediately forgotten." To get to this point, you must first go back to your own original state. Just this three pounds of hemp is like the single track of the great road to the Capital; as you raise your feet and put them down, there's nothing that is not this. This story is the same as Yun Men's saying "Cake" but it's unavoidably difficult to understand. My late teacher Wu Tsu made a verse about it:
The cheap-selling board-carrying fellow/Weighs it out, three pounds of hemp./With a hundred thousand years of unsold goods,/He has no place to put it all.
This verse is hilarious. The person piling up the sayings can't even empty give them away for free! Who would listen? That's why "cake" is an appropriate response; it's not in the words, but in the demonstration. It's easy to see the people who just aren't getting it; even if you can't put a finger on why, there is something off. They answer "three pounds of hemp" to every question, and no one is buying. They haven't followed Yuanwu's instructions:
You must clean it all up; when your defiling feelings, conceptual thinking, and comparative judgements of gain and loss and right and wrong are all cleared away at once, then you will spontaneously understand.
Xuedou's Verse
The Golden Raven hurries;/The Jade Rabbit is swift./Has there ever been carelessness in a good response?/To see Tung Shan as laying out facts in accordance with the situation/Is like a lame tortoise and a blind turtle entering an empty valley./Flowering groves, multicolored forests;/Bamboo of the South, wood of the North./So I think of Ch'ang Ch'ing and Officer Lu:/He knew how to say he should laugh, not cry./Ha!
Interesting that Yuanwu also stresses what Xuedou and Wuzu talk about in their verses; those who say that hemp is Buddha are way off. Yuanwu explains the verse:
Hsueh Tou can see all the way through, so he immediately says, "The Golden Raven hurries; the Jade Rabbit is swift." This is of the same kind as Tung Shan's reply "Three pounds of hemp." The sun rises, the moon sets; every day it's like this.
They go on to laugh at intellectual interpretations before continuing:
Hsueh Tou easily goes to where the barriers are broken and the hinges are smashed to reveal a little something to let you see; there he adds a footnote, saying, "Has there ever been carelessness in a good response?" Tung Shan does not reply lightly to this monk; he is like a bell when struck, like a valley embracing an echo. Great or small, he responds accordingly, never daring to make a careless impression. At once Hsueh Tou has brought out his guts and presented them to all of you.
We've discussed all these things already; smashing the barrier of knowledge, revealing the essence. Dongshan's demonstration is "...like a bell when struck, like a valley embracing an echo." What a great image. So clear.
The other lines are much the same:
"Flowering groves, multicolored forests." When a monk asked Master Hsien of Fu Teh," "What is the mind of the Buddhas of antiquity?" The master replied, "Flowering groves, multicolored forests." The monk also asked Ming Chiao, "What is the inner meaning of 'three pounds of hemp'?" Ming Chiao said, "Bamboo of the South, wood of the North." The monk came back and recounted this to Tung Shan, who said, "I won't explain this just for you, but I will explain it to the whole community." Later he went into the hall and said, "Words do not express facts, speech does not accord with the situation. Those who accept words are lost, and those who linger over phrases are deluded."
The people who come in here and say that every all words are empty are deluded. In Mumon's verse for the case, we are pushed, inch by inch, closer:
Abruptly uttered: “Three pounds of hemp.”/The words are close [to truth] and the intent even closer./Those who come to talk of affirmation and denial/Are just affirmation-and-denial people.
It is the demonstration of flavourlessness, not the understanding; first the words, then the intent, and then the distance is closing fast. Nothing sought, nothing attained. No mind, no Buddha. All these flavours don't taste the same. Think about that.
Yuanwu carries on explaining:
Hsueh Tou has the kind heart of an old woman; he wants to break up your feelings of doubt, so he brings in more dead men. "So I think of Ch'ang Ch'ing and Officer Lu; he knew how to say he should laugh, not cry." To discuss the verse itself, the first three lines by themselves have already completed the verse. But I ask you, since the whole universe is just this three pounds of hemp, why does Hsueh Tou still have so many complications? It's just that his compassion is excessive, therefore he is like this.
If Bodhidharma has one thing only to teach, it must surely be found in the line "the whole universe is just this three pounds of hemp." As for Lu:
When Officer Lu Hsuan was Inspector of Hsuan Chou, he studied with Nan Ch'uan. When Nan Ch'uan passed on, Lu heard the (sound of) mourning so he entered the temple for the funeral. He laughed aloud a great laugh. The temple director said to him, "The late master and you were teacher and disciple; why aren't you crying?" Officer Lu said, "If you can say something, I'll cry." The temple director was speechless. Lu gave a loud lament; "Alas! Alas! Our late master is long gone."
Ha! My laughter joins with Xuedou's. This is my demonstration.
Hsueh Tou borrows the essence of this meaning to say that if you make up these kinds of intellectual interpretations, this calls for laughter, not crying. This is so, but at the very end there's a single word which is unavoidably easy to misunderstand, when he goes on to say "Ha!" Has Hsueh Tou washed himself clean?
Can you answer this question? Bonus points if you can show what Bodhidharma taught.
We can finish with Dongshan's enlightenment, which Yuanwu gives us:
When Tung Shan first saw Yun Men, Yun Men asked him, "Where have you just come from?" Tung Shan said, "From Cha Tu." Yun Men said, "Where did you spend the summer retreat?" Tung Shan said, "In Hunan, at Pao Tz'u." Yun Men asked, "When did you leave there?" Tung Shan said, "August twenty-fifth." Yun Men said, "I should let you have three score blows of the staff; go meditate in the hall."
That evening Tung Shan entered Yun Men's room; drawing near, he asked, "Where was my fault?" Yun Men said, "You rice bag! From Kiangsi to Hunan, and still you go on this way." At these words Tung Shan was vastly and greatly awakened. After a while he said, "Another day I'll go to a place where there are no human hearths and build myself a hut; I won't store even a single grain of rice or plant any vegetables. There I'll receive and wait upon the great sages coming and going from the ten directions; I'll pull out all the nails and pegs for them, I'll pull off their greasy caps and strip them of their stinking shirts. I'll make them all clean and free, so they can be unconcerned people." Yun Men said, "Your body is the size of a coconut, but you can open such a big mouth."
Why store rice when you have no fear of being hungry? That is the Buddha.
Submitted October 19, 2020 at 12:48AM by surupamaerl https://ift.tt/2FE8prK
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