大慧普覺禪師宗門武庫 1.31

1.31

Master Fayun Gao traveled through the gates of various masters. When he arrived in the assembly of Practitioner Ji of Yuantong, during entering the room, [Ji] cited Zhaozhou asking Touzi: '"When a person who has died the great death comes back to life, how is it?" Touzi said, "Not permitted to walk by night; he must arrive by dawn." What is the meaning?' Gao said, 'The great kindness is hard to repay.' Yuantong praised him greatly. A few days later, he was appointed standing monk to hold the whisk; his wit was sluggish, and the hall burst into loud laughter. Gao looked ashamed. The next day, he specifically prepared tea for the assembly. Placing the tea utensils on the table, feeling so ashamed he did not know where to turn, he accidentally knocked over the tea utensils; the ladle fell to the ground and bounced several times, and he realized the answering word; his sharp wits became so swift that none dared to face him. He went again to Zhenjing's place, and upon seeing the Ancestral Master's verse: 'Mind is identical with the realm of empty space, / Revealing dharmas equal to empty space; / When one realizes empty space, / There is neither right nor wrong dharma'—he experienced a great awakening. Later, when he assumed the abbacy, he would often say to people during ascending the hall and informal gatherings, 'On the twenty-first day of the eleventh month of the third year of the Shaosheng era, this monk awakened to the Chan of the mind.' He also said, 'In this monk's registration document of the third year of the Xining era submitted to Fengxiang Prefecture, that year eighteen prefectures of Mount Hua were lost; how could you eggplants and gourds know about this?' By imperial decree he became abbot of Fayun. On the day of opening the hall, an imperial envoy arrived holding imperial incense, asking for his recorded sayings to present to the throne. At that time Hong Juefan was in his assembly; [Gao] had an attendant invite him to come and edit the recorded sayings, saying, 'Show some consideration for this old monk's face.' When Juefan had arranged them and presented them, [Gao] read them through and said to him, 'If it is Chan that settles birth and death, you must grant it to this monk; but if it is assembling flowers and clustering brocades, parallel prose and leisurely long-winded talk, it must be my Brother Hong who can do it.' In his life, Fayun had the spirit to swallow all quarters and treat his contemporaries like infants, for what he attained far surpassed others, and only thus did he dare to be so.