Xūtáng 38: Where Do the Buddhas Go?

https://www.reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/xutangemptyhall

38

舉。寶應顒和尚因。僧問。從上諸聖。向甚麼處去。應云。不上天堂。即入地獄。僧云。和尚又作麼生。應云。還知寶應老漢落處麼。僧擬議。應以拂子驀口打。復喚近前云。令合是汝行。又打一拂子。

代僧擬議處。以目視以手指。

mdbg: here

Hoffman

A monk asked Master Nan-in. "Where do all the Buddhas go?" Nan-in said, "If they do not go to heaven, they go to hell." The monk said, "How about Your Reverend?" Nan-in said, "Don't you know where this old man will end up?" The monk was about to speak when Nan-in stick him on the mouth with hís stick. Then he called monk to come nearer and said, "Actually, you should have done it," and hit him once again with his stick.

[Comment from] Master Kido:
The monk, instead of being confused, looks with the eye, points with the finger [at Nan-in].

 

Appellations

Japanese - Pinyin - Chinese

• Master Nan-in - Grand Preceptor Bǎo​yìng - 寶應顒和尚
  
• Master Kido - Master Xūtáng - 虛堂
  
• Zen - Chán - 禪
  

 

What’s at stake?

• What purpose would the monk's question serve, exactly? Be specific if possible.

• The monk doesn't seem to know where Buddhas or sages, or his conversation partner, a master of the precepts will go when they die,

• Bǎo​yìng sets him up to make a dumb judgement call about Bǎo​yìng that won't be helpful to anybody and cuts him off before he can do it. A Zen Master does all the work for a monk, again.

• What does the monk know?

• Does the monk know what will happen to him?

• This Dahui letter comes to mind (just read the title, those aren't my brackets! How fun is that title):

[30.2: Censures Lü Longli for devoting himself to knowing others but not knowing himself —in reality Dahui is censuring Lü Juren]

Bookworms spend their whole lives boring into old paper [i.e., devote their lives to reading books]—they want to be informed concerning these [learned] matters. They broadly peruse a ton of books and engage in high-falutin’ talk and far-flung discussions. “And what about Confucius?” “And what about Mencius?” “And what about Zhuangzi?” “And what about the Zhou Changes?” “What about political order and upheaval in the past and present?”

They are pursued relentlessly by these words and phrases—until they are topsy-turvy. When they hear someone raise a single word from the philosophers of the ancient hundred schools, they immediately recite on andon from innumerable volumes and consider it an embarrassment if there is even a single matter that they don’t know about. But when it comes to asking them about their own original allotment there isn’t a single one of them that knows anything!

This could be called “to the end of one’s days counting the treasure of others, but never having even a half-cent oneself.” In vain they do one “go-around” [from birth to death] in this world. When freed [in death] from their “outflows-in-a-shell” [i.e., form body], they don’t know whether they will ascend to a heaven or enter a hell.

Following the power of their karma they flow into various rebirth paths—they don’t know [which one they will end up in], and yet, if it concerns matters of other people [i.e., the people in classical texts and the histories], whether minute or great matters, there are none they don’t know about!

 

r/Zen translation:

Submitted August 01, 2022 at 03:19AM by spectrecho https://ift.tt/jMWpnoy