Learning to Have a Conversation

I figured this case from the BoS should get a fair shake today:

Fayan asked Xiushan, “‘A hairsbreadth’s difference is as the distance between heaven and earth’—how do you understand?”

Xiushan said, “A hairsbreadth’s difference is as the distance between heaven and earth.”

Fayan said, “How can you get it that way?”

Xiushan said, “I am just thus—what about you?

Fayan said, “A hairsbreadth’s difference is as the distance between heaven and earth.”

Xiushan thereupon bowed.

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Cleary translated the poem as such:

When a fly sits on the balance, it tilts;

The balance scale of myriad ages shows up unevenness.

Pounds, ounces, drams and grains—you see them clearly.

But after all it finally reverts and gives up to my zero point.

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Not satisfied, I re-translated Hongzhi's instructions:

A scale is immediately tilted off-center by so much as a seated house-fly,

While to weigh all the ages makes the unevenness visible—

A weight, a trifle, observed down to the finest point...

Eventually, the zero point of the scale was lost on me.

秤頭蠅坐便欹傾。萬世權衡照不平。斤兩錙銖見端的。終歸輸我定盤星。

(CBETA.T48n2004_002.0238)

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So, to start, we need to know what the "zero point of the scale" is.

Fayan says the distance between heaven and earth is pretty much a sudden. Xiushan answers that, according to him, everything is fine as it is—he thinks that's what the sudden means.

This is his zero point—everything is fine as it is.

But as Foyan says, "As for the spiritually sharp, they should know how to experientially investigate just who 'this person' is, directly seeking an insight."

It is not made true by you saying it, not by you understanding it, like intellectual games. What ever made you think I'd put up with your spinning rumination on the stories of dead people?

Foyan also said, "If you see anything in the slightest different from mind, you forfeit your own life."

Of course I can see you from a mile off—if you don't know what Foyan is saying, you can't talk about Zen.

How could I "have a conversation" with someone who doesn't know it in their bones. It's like health—you can read as many books as you want, but you know it when you experience it, even without a book.

Xiushan got some words to play with, so now he can express the zero point in the same words as Fayan, but how is Fayan different?

This is why I re-translated Cleary's work: yes, he "does give up to my zero point," but more accurately, as Hongzhi points out, the zero point is lost.

Why have a standard of measurement for something you have no intention of measuring?

So, what is the scale? What is the zero point?

Zhaozhou said, "Just sit looking into the principle; if you do not understand in twenty or thirty years, cut off my head."

I can give you a hint: Ananda was the greatest scholar of Buddha's retinue, but Kasyapa is the first Patriarch of our school.

Submitted June 13, 2022 at 04:37AM by surupamaerl2 https://ift.tt/04cjWuA