Why are pines straight and brambles tangled?

Zhongfeng said, "the illusory students asked: 'why are pines straight, why are brambles tangled, why are crows black, why are swans white?'
Then Zhongfeng said, "Obviously, the light of illusion makes pines straight, makes brambles tangled. If we could extricate sight from illusion so that pines weren't originally straight, brambles not originally tangled and swans not originally white, how could crows be black?"

Hengchuan said, "Pines are straight, brambles are tangled. The straights are used as building material, the tangled are burned as firewood".

Did Hengchuan win? Chop wood, carry water, eat when hungry, sleep when tired?

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Hengchuan also said: "Intelligence, sharp wits, conceptual conciousness, thinking and interpreting - these are the root of birth and death."

Zhongfeng also said: "You see straight as that which is not crooked and point to white as that which is not black. With all your stratagems and methods you grasp perversely at your own nature."

What about Hengchuan's pines and brambles now? People will build with the straight and burn the tangled allright, when holding a staff and asked "what's that" it's easy to just call it a staff. But if Zongfeng's illusions can't be seen through how to handle Yunmen's "you can't call it a staff, what is it?" without grasping perversely.

Everybody can already tell straight from crooked and white from black and the staffness of a staff from staff, but most hold on to their knowledge of things and end up in constant confusion.

Submitted July 06, 2022 at 08:03PM by JeanClaudeCiboulette https://ift.tt/PuDzCxe