佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 2.19

2.19

"An exposition facing one is exceedingly solitary and absolute"—Xuedou could not praise it enough. These words stand uniquely independent, solitary and precipitous, shining before and cutting off behind, just like a ten-thousand-fathom cliff, or like an army of millions where you find no place to enter. It is just exceedingly solitary and precipitous. An ancient said, "If you want intimacy, do not bring a question to question. The question is at the place of the answer; the answer is on the tip of the question." It is downright solitary and towering. And tell me, where is the solitary and towering place? Nobody in the world can do anything about it. This monk was also an adept, which is why he asked like this; Yunmen also answered thus, very much like driving a wedge again into an iron hammer without a hole. Xuedou's use of literary language was extremely skillful. "Laughing ha-ha beneath the jambu tree"—the *Sūtra on the Arising of the World* says: South of Mount Meru, the vaḍūrya tree reflects all green onto Jambudvīpa. This continent is named after the great tree, called Jambudvīpa. The tree is seven thousand yojanas in breadth and length. Beneath it is a mound of Jāmbūnada gold twenty yojanas high; because the gold is produced from beneath the tree, it is called the jambu tree. Therefore Xuedou said of himself that he was laughing ha-ha beneath the jambu tree. And tell me: what was he laughing at? Laughing that "last night, the black dragon's horn snapped." One can only gaze up at it; Xuedou has a share in praising Yunmen. Yunmen's saying "an exposition facing one"—what is it like? It is like snapping a horn of the black dragon. When arriving here, if one did not have such an affair, how could one speak such words? When Xuedou had finished the verse all at once, at the very end he said instead: "Distinctive, distinctive! The old man of Shaoyang obtained one half of the piece." Why did he not say he obtained the whole? Why did he only obtain one half of the piece? And tell me: where is that other half of the piece? It goes straight through to penetrate a second person.