佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 10.45

10.45

"The followers of Chan love superficial cleverness; / though their bellies are stuffed from study, they cannot put it to use." This fellow could understand, but he simply could not apply it. Usually, gazing up into the clouds, they say: "How much Chan has he mastered?" But as soon as they are smelted in the fiery furnace, none of it can be put to work at all. My late teacher Wuzu said: "There is a sort of person studying Chan who is just like glutinous rice cake pounded inside a lapis lazuli bottle—it cannot turn or stir, nor can it be shaken out, and if you touch it, it breaks. If you want to be alive and brisk, just study 'leather skin bellows Chan': cast straight down from a high mountain peak, it neither shatters nor breaks." The ancients said: "Even if you grasp it before words, you are still mired in the shell and blind within boundaries; even if you achieve mastery under the spoken phrase, you will not avoid wild views whenever you encounter things." / "Pitiable and laughable is old Tianping: / yet he said he regretted his itinerant pilgrimage from the start." Xuedou says: pitiable that he could not speak it out before others; laughable that he had a bellyful of Chan yet could not apply the slightest bit. "Mistake, mistake!" As for these two "mistakes," some say: Tianping's lack of understanding was the mistake. Others say: his remaining speechless was the mistake. What connection is there? Little do they realize that these two "mistakes" are like sparks struck from flint, like a flash of lightning; they are the footsteps of a person of the transcendent. It is like taking a sword to slay a person, striking straight for the throat so their life-root is severed. If you can walk on this sword's edge, then you will have free rein in all directions. If you understand these two "mistakes," then you can see that "the clear breeze of Xiyuan was instantly eclipsed." When Xuedou entered the hall and cited this case, he intended to say "mistake." Let me ask you: how do Xuedou's two "mistakes" compare to Tianping's mistake? Go investigate it for thirty years!