Dongshan’s record series #14
Yün-yen asked a nun, "Is your father living?"
The nun replied, "Yes, he is."
Yün-yen asked, "How old is he?"
The nun said, "Eighty years old."
Yün-yen said, "You have a father who is not eighty. Do you know who that is?"
The nun answered, "Isn't he the one who has come just so?"
Yün-yen said, "That person is still no more than the child or the grandchild."
The Master said, "Actually, even the person who has not come just so is no more than the child or the grandchild."
The one who has come just so, or the thus-come-one is the Buddha, but really it bundles Buddha/realization/awakening/enlightenment. There’s a familiar ring to these early cases – the play of the seeming opposites of absence and presence, where realization is both utterly ungraspable and unmovable while also being completely to hand. These aren’t just ‘wacky’ themes plucked from thin air, but rather they represent the doctrinal development of of Mahayana Buddhism and its travels in China, stemming from Madhyamaka, Nargajuna, Sengzhao and the two truths doctrine. Getting a handle on these cultural and intellectual drifts helps to situate Ch’an in a philosophical framework that makes the cases more legible, imo. Not that any of that will help our realization much, but when it comes - it comes just so, in familiar packaging.
Questions:
- Does the nun have the eye?
- Do Yunyen and Dongshan agree?
Submitted April 27, 2021 at 01:14PM by bigSky001 https://ift.tt/2R1AheK
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