Guishan's Bottle

One of my favorite cases because of how my perspective on it continuously expands and evolves. Wanted to share some thoughts and hear yours. Side note... wasn't it technically Baizhang's bottle?

Case 40, Wumenkan

When Guishan was with Baizhang he was the tenzo [cook]. Baizhang wanted to choose a master for Mount Gui, so he called the head monk and the rest of them, and told them that an exceptional person should go there. Then he took a water-bottle, stood it on the floor, and asked a question. "Don't call this a water-bottle, but tell me what it is!" The head monk said, "It can't be called a stump." Baizhang asked Guishan his opinion. Guishan pushed the water-bottle over with his foot. Baizhang laughed, and said, "The head monk has lost." Guishan was ordered to start the temple.

This case has always fascinated me. Even before an inkling of what Guishan's intent might have been had grazed my brain, I felt that somehow the entire spirit of zen was made manifest in that brief instant.

First off, there appeared to be so much riding on the outcome. Baizhang was forming a new community and needed someone who could uphold the highest standards of the school and be a paragon for those who had yet to realize the truth. Why then would he base his decision on the outcome of such a deceptively simple contest? Any other organization would have had a lengthy exam, or extensive debate between the candidates, but here it seems these somehow wouldn't have proved anything of value.

Baizhang's challenge, then, must have been cleverly devised to instantly weed out anyone lacking the highest ability, while simultaneously demanding outstanding brilliance and the clearest insight to be dealt with. I won't speculate on the head monk's intentions with his "It can't be called a stump." answer. I don't at all claim I could have given a better one, but Baizhang didn't find it adequate, so I don't feel the need to dig too deep into it. It did seem like it had an effect on Guishan, though.

With the head monk falling short, Baizhang turned to Guishan for his opinion, or perhaps latent ability. Maybe Guishan was roused by the head monk's lack of insight in the same way the 6th patriarch felt compelled to retort to his head monk's verse. Offering no deliberation, he tipped the bottle over with his foot; somehow demonstrating that he embodied every quality Baizhang sought in the leader of the forthcoming expansion.

Now here's where you'll laugh at me. For about the first year after reading this case, I didn't even realize the bottle probably had water in it. Somehow the whole time I had always imagined it as being an empty vessel. So. Fucking. Stupid.

Finally it dawned on me that Baizhang (probably) filled it first, and then set it out for the contest. The novelty of that new seemingly likely plausibility greatly excited me. There's an impression I get from reading zen literature that during their enlightenment experiences, all these ancients shared a sentiment of "Of course! It's all so simple!", and I was primed to feel it.

"Tipping it over to make the water it contained flow out... He must have been demonstrating the real nature of the bottle!", I thought at the time. "Why stand there debating what it can or can't be called when you can show them what it is? Zen calls for action, not speculation!". After all, wouldn't this arguably be going beyond words and direct pointing? Still, after a while it began to feel like this explanation wouldn't have been enough to prove Guishan was on familiar terms with "the Ultimate Infallible All Encompassing Insight of Enlightenment", or whatever I had conceptualized zen to be at the time and projected on to these old gentlemen.

Later on, I found a brief exchange that occurred between Nanquan and Mazu:

One day while Puyuan (young Nanquan) was serving rice gruel to the community, Master Ma asked, “What's in the wooden bucket?” “The old man should keep his mouth shut and not say such words,” replied Puyuan.

Mind= Blown

Then I noticed something about the dynamic zen masters have with aspiring monks and each other... When the situation calls for it, they immediately cut off all complications. Are you pestering them with some hypothetical conceptual dilemma? Here's an answer that's even more confusing; go "meditate" about it. Are you disingenuously trying to convince them you're "in the know" to be counted among the buddhas and patriarchs? "Fuck you, taste my staff bitch!"

So how would Baizhang test to see if someone was truly an adept? There's a lovely expression Yuanwu uses in the BCR: "raising waves where there's no wind", which I understood to mean something like unnecessarily complicating things when we could all just relax. Baizhang's challenge to the monks reminds me of a similar one from Shoushan 3 cases down:

Shoushan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

Lately I suspect if Linji had been there, Shoushan might have been struck with it. Back to Baizhang... Was he "raising waves" by demanding the water bottle be identified by other means? What's wrong with calling it a water bottle? What don't you understand about it? What more do you need to know about it?

And Guishan's tipping the bottle over... Is he answering Baizhang's question, or rejecting it? Do you think metaphysical problems like this keep him up at night? Was there even really a problem for him to solve here? Is his attitude a reflection that there's not?

Anyway, I am not like this. Baizhang and Guishan's true intentions remain ambiguous, and these questions do keep me up at night. Maybe some of you can show your brilliance here and clarify what was really going on. Maybe some of you can just relate.

Either way if you made it this far, thanks for following me into the weeds.

Submitted June 02, 2022 at 08:36AM by Surska0 https://ift.tt/FrASD0I