As I move from place to place, not banishing false thoughts, not seeking truth, everything is at ease. Once, as I was walking through the city, I overheard Buddha saying, "Someone should build a temple here." Indra, Emperor of the gods heard these words and thereupon set up a blade of grass right there and said, "The temple has been built." I pointed to both of them and said, "Just like in the third case of the Book of Serenity!" With those words Indra and Buddha banished, all the while muttering something about not questioning narrative devices.
A thousand years passed and Tiantong versified this interaction saying,
The boundless spring on the hundred plants;
Picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly.
The sixteen-foot-tall golden body, a collection of virtuous qualities.
Casually leads him by the hand into the red dust;
Able to be master in the dusts,
From outside creation, a guest shows up.
Everywhere life is sufficient in its way
No matter if one is not as clever as others.
There is so much to talk about with this case, and I can’t find a good way to thread all of the things I see as related except by acknowledging that. It seems to me, and I stole this from something ewk said, that Zen Masters don’t make a temple their home, but rather make temples where they stand. Sometimes they use a sixteen feet golden Buddha as a blade of grass. Other times they use a blade of grass as a sixteen feet golden Buddha. What’s the difference? I think people use giant golden Buddhas because they see them as valuable. Well, what if they had the same value as the blades of grass you step on every day? What if you didn’t step on the grass and instead assigned it the value of a giant golden Buddha? What if neither had any value?
When Zhoazhou went to Yunju, he was already kinda old, so Yunju asked him why he didn’t look for a place to stay. Zhaozhou was like :::shrugh:::, "what would my dwelling place be?" Yunju pointed to the front of the mountain and said there was a foundation for an ancient temple there. Zhaozhou said something like, "Well you should live there yourself."
Eventually he settled somewhere because why not. Years passed, monks gathered around him, and one time they all gathered at the same time and had one of them ask for his instruction to them. Zhaozhou told them to drag a tree over where they stood and build the monks’ hall with it. The monk was like this is your teaching isn’t it? And Zhaozhou told him he didn’t know any other games for them to pass the time.
So what's the deal with temples? Does a person need to go to a temple to study Zen? Should a person who studies Zen erect a monastery?
Again, Zhaozhou understands this shit. Another time someone asked him what a temple was and he said, "What else is there but it?" So the monk asked him what the people inside the temple where like, and Zhaozhou answered, "Me and you."
When Wansong was commenting on this subject he said that as Indra got the beginning, he took in the end. Then it was given over to Tiantong, who had to produce a matching literary talisman.
Talismans, temples, giant Buddha statues, sanghas. Who makes them?
Work with what comes, and rebuild what has gone by. If you do not rebuild, you are stuck deeply somewhere.
References
Book of Serenity: Case 3
Zhaozhou’s Record (Green): 346 & 262
Blue Cliff Record: Case 60
Treasury: https://zenmarrow.com/single?id=29&index=sho
ewk: https://old.reddit.com/r/zen/comments/szxm65/zhaozhou_in_cases_people_dont_like/hy6ihcs/
Submitted March 18, 2022 at 02:25AM by astroemi https://ift.tt/Y6soCgD
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