What is the Buddhist rationale?

Dahui's Intro - Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching, case 1

Master Langya asked Master Ju, "Where have you just come from?"

Master Ju said, "From the riverlands."

"Did you come by boat or by land?"

"By boat."

"Where's the boat?"

"Underfoot."

"How do you utter an expression of not being on the road?"

Ju rustled his seat cloth and said, "Incompetent elders are extremely commonplace." Then he walked out.

Langya asked an attendant, "Who was that?"

"Master Ju."

Langya then went down to the transients' hall and asked, "Aren't you senior Ju?"

Ju shouted and asked, "When did you go to Fenyang, Elder?"

Langya said he went there at such and such a time. Ju remarked, "I had already heard of you when I was still in the riverland; but it turns out that your perception is only like this - how could you be famous throughout the land?"

Langya then bowed and said, "Thanks."

Dahui commented,

The guest is the guest from start to finish, the host is the host from start to finish. These two great masters took turns as host and guest in this impromptu encounter, directly bringing to light the heart and marrow of Linji. If you have not thoroughly realized the grip of transcendence and are not equipped with true perception beyond your ordinary sense, you will inevitably construe this in terms of winning and losing.

Some say Ju responded truthfully to each question all along, but at the end he shouldn't have made a Buddhist rationale, and this was his 'incompetence.'

Some say Langya became doubtful and uncertain at heart when he was called an incompetent by Master Ju, so he immediately lay down his weapons, took off his armor, and actually importuned Master Ju to stay so he could question him about this matter, in what they call sitting inquiry.

When one dog barks at nothing, a thousand monkeys bite in actuality. Because religious leaders do not have clear insight, they originate sectarian doctrines, confusing and misleading people of later times. What they don't realize is that the two great masters' stimulus and response were like the sun and moon shining in the sky.

Where dragons and elephants tread is not for lame donkeys and blind men - how could a frog in a well or a chicken in a pot know the vastness of the universe?

I once cited this story in an interview and asked the student, "Do you agree with what Langya said?"

"No," he replied.

"Why don't you agree?"

"One should not make a Buddhist rationale."

I then cited the story of Yunmen asking Dongshan, "Where have you come from?" Dongshan said, "Chadu." Yunmen asked, "Where did you spend the summer?" Dongshan said, "At Baoci in Hunan." Yunmen asked, "When did you leave there?" Dongshan said, "August 25th." Yunmen said, "I forgive you a beating of threescore strokes."

Do you agree with what Yunmen said, I asked the student.

"Yes," the student replied.

"Why do you agree?"

"Yunmen had no 'Buddhist' rationale."

I said, "The questions of the teachers were the same, and the answers of the students were the same - so why do you agree with one and not the other?"

The student stood there thinking. I drove him out with a caning. I then called the student to come back for a minute; when he turned his head, I said, "If you interpret it as a caning, you drag me down and you blind yourself." The student thereupon bowed and said, "Today I've finally realized that the encounter of Langya and Master Ju cannot be fathomed by ordinary feelings."

I said, "Look at this blind guy summing up arbitrarily," and again I drove him off with blows and shouts.

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What is the "Buddhist rationale"?

Submitted October 16, 2020 at 09:28PM by True__Though https://ift.tt/3j77z4x