Yunmen Wenyan [864–949]: Do you want to understand? That’s just due to your own quagmire of delusion accumulated for endless eons. You hear someone expound on something and it puts a doubt in your mind.

On the day when Yunmen first entered the hall as abbot, the governor of Guangzhou attended in person and said to the master, "Your disciple asks for your valued teaching."

Yunmen said, "There is nothing special to say. It is better if I don’t speak and thereby deceive you all. I’m sorry that I’ve already played the part of a wily old fox for all of you. If a man of clear vision were to suddenly see me now, I’d be the object of laughter. But if I can’t avoid it, then I’ll just ask you all, from the beginning, what’s the big deal? What are you lacking? I don’t have anything to say. There’s nothing to be seen. You have to break through to this on your own. And don’t ask silly questions. In my mind there’s just a dark fog.

Tomorrow morning and the day after there are a lot of affairs going on here. If your disposition is to tarry here and not return to your usual lives, to look here and there at the gates and gardens built by the ancients, what point is there in all this? Do you want to understand? That’s just due to your own quagmire of delusion accumulated for endless eons. You hear someone expound on something and it puts a doubt in your mind, so you ask about Buddha and you ask about the ancestors, looking high and low, searching for a solution, getting caught up in things. This scheming mind is wide of the mark. It’s always caught up in words and phrases. Isn’t what you require the non-intentioned mind? Don’t be mistaken about this. There’s nothing more to say. Take care!"

Yunmen Wenyan [864–949]: Zen's Chinese heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings, by Andy Ferguson, 2000

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Commentary and questions: Apparently, there's a quandary of sorts to being a Zen master. The masters understood that people would be confused in their seeking for liberation and freedom from suffering, and that the focus of the seeker would tend to be towards outside sources such as 'masters' and 'teachings'. How would a master correct for this mistaken direction of the seekers?

Yunmen said "There is nothing special to say. It is better if I don’t speak and thereby deceive you all. I’m sorry that I’ve already played the part of a wily old fox for all of you," which skillfully points away from himself and also away from words. Where does it point to? As Bodhidharma taught, Zen is the separate transmission outside the teachings, not based on the written word; furthermore, it points directly at the human mind. So in this case, Yunmen has revealed his mastery in that he compassionately redirects the focus of his students to their own minds again. There is nothing that Yunmen has to offer that one doesn't already have. Therefore, liberation is never to be found outside of your own mind, and seeking elsewhere is to always miss it entirely.

Submitted November 14, 2019 at 08:30PM by WanderingRoninXIII https://ift.tt/2KlCOKF