Fayan was asked by a monk named Huichao, “What is Buddha?”
The Master replied, “You are Huichao.”
The monk thereupon entered into understanding.
[0302a07] 法眼。因僧慧超問。如何是佛。師曰。汝是慧超。僧於是悟入。
With one copper coin shining bright,
I bought a single fried rice cake,
Which I ate and it filled my belly,
At once I was no longer hungry.
[0302a09] 一文大光錢。買得個油糍。喫向肚裡了。當下便不饑。
This is the 9th case from Yuanwu’s Measuring Tap,
A monk asked Xuefeng, “How is it when ‘the ancient valley stream is cold from the source’?”
Xuefeng said, “When you look straight into it, you don’t see the bottom.”
The monk said, “How about one who drinks from it?”
Xuefeng said, “It doesn’t go in through the mouth.”
The monk cited this to Zhaozhou.
Zhaozhou said, “It can’t go in through the nostrils.”
The monk then asked Zhaozhou, “How is it when ‘the ancient valley stream is cold from the source’?”
Zhaozhou said, “Painful.”
The monk said, “What about one who drinks of it?”
Zhaozhou said, “He dies.”
Xuefeng heard this cited and said, “Zhaozhou is an ancient Buddha. I won’t answer questions anymore.”
Xuedou brought this up and said, “Everyone in the community says Xuefeng didn’t get out of this monk’s question, and that’s why Zhaozhou didn’t agree. Such a literal understanding is very unfair to the man of old. I am otherwise. Cutting nails and shearing iron is characteristic of a genuine master of the school. Taking to the low and leveling the high can hardly be considered adept.”
Xuefeng answers in that way because "[the monk's] question was saying his present state was like the cold spring of an ancient valley stream." Zhaozhou said that it is painful. Then he said that if your present state is like a cold spring and you drink from it, you die.
Yuanwu brings up this saying in his commentary, "The question is in the answer, the answer is in the question." If your present state is like a cold spring, that is up to you. It is not Zhaozhou's fault that your experience is painful. He just tells you where it comes down as soon as it's brought up.
If it doesn't go in through the mouth, the nose or the ears, how is anybody drinking from it?
###Welcome to /r/Zen!
Welcome to the /r/zen Meta Monday thread, where we can talk about subreddit topics such as such as:
* Community project ideas or updates
* Wiki requests, ideas, updates
* Rule suggestions
* Sub aesthetics
* Specific concerns regarding specific scenarios that have occurred since the last Meta Monday
* Anything else!
We hope for these threads to act as a sort of 'town square' or 'communal discussion' rather than Solomon's Court [(but no promises regarding anything getting cut in half...)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Koans/comments/3slj28/nansens_cats/). While not all posts are going to receive definitive responses from the moderators (we're human after all), I can guarantee that we will be reading each and every comment to make sure we hear your voices so we can team up.
The Five Lay Precepts are part of Zen culture.
Zen has an unparalleled 1,000-year historical record that isn't debated, spanning dozens of books and thousands of pages.
Scholars have proven that Zazen Shikantaza was based on fraud. And was never a Soto Zen practice.
The Four Statements of Zen spans Zen history and describe a tradition and culture incompatible with the eight-fold path of Buddhism.
Yo͞ok Welcome! Meet me My comment: Are there any questions about these or factual disputes?
Or should I have called this list
Buddhism Don't Like.
Introduction
Also known as Xiyun, Huangbo is one of the more chatty Zen Masters, whose “Transmission of Mind” text is one of the most infamous take-downs of philosophy and religion that the Zen lineage produced. The record is itself is a collection of sermons and questions from Preceptors in his community.
Case
A questioner asked Huangbo, "From all you have just said, Mind is the Buddha; but it is not clear as to what sort of mind is meant by this ‘Mind which is the Buddha'."
Huangbo replied, "How many minds have you got?"
The questioner continued, “But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?”
Huangbo replied, “Where on earth do you keep your ‘ordinary mind’ and your ‘Enlightened mind?”
The questioner could not reply.
Remarks
Yuanwu—a Zen Master a few centuries after Huangbo—said, “The wisdom of the character of reality is true knowledge: it is the one great matter where each of you stands, shining across past and present, far beyond knowledge and opinion; it is that which is clean and naked, bare and untrammelled.” The enlightenment in Zen isn’t the attainment of a spiritual state or the belief in some ideology or another. The purpose of Zen’s founder, Bodhidharma, was none other than transmitting the Mind which itself is unsullied and free from any sort of entanglements. How wonderful!