佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 4.47

4.47

Grand Councilor Lu Gen had long studied with Nanquan; he usually paid attention to principle and nature, swimming in the treatises of Sengzhao. One day while sitting, he picked up these two lines, taking them to be extraordinary, and asked, saying, “Master Zhao said, ‘Heaven and earth share the same root with me; the myriad things are of one body with me.’ This is truly extraordinary.” Master Zhao was an eminent monk of the Jin dynasty; together with Daosheng, Sengrong, and Sengrui, he studied under Kumārajīva, and they were called the Four Philosophers. In his youth he loved reading Zhuangzi and Laozi; later, through copying an old Vimalakīrtinirdeśa-sūtra, he had an awakening, and only then did he realize that Zhuangzi and Laozi were not yet fully adequate. Thus, synthesizing the various sūtras, he composed the four treatises. The idea of Zhuangzi and Laozi was that heaven and earth are forms of great scale, and my form is also like this; both are born together within voidness. Zhuangzi’s great idea was only to discuss the equalization of things; Master Zhao’s great idea was to discuss nature as entirely returning to oneself. Do you not see where his treatise says, “The ultimate man is empty, vast, and formless, yet the myriad things are none other than my making. As for uniting the myriad things into oneself, is it not only the sage who can do so?” Although there are spirits, humans, worthies, and sages, each distinct, they all share one nature and one body. An ancient said, “The entire universe and the great earth are just a single self. When it is cold, universal heaven and universal earth are cold; when it is hot, universal heaven and universal earth are hot; when there is being, universal heaven and universal earth are being; when there is non-being, universal heaven and universal earth are non-being; when there is right, universal heaven and universal earth are right; when there is wrong, universal heaven and universal earth are wrong.” Fayan said, “He, he, he; I, I, I. South, north, east, west—all are fine. If not fine, only I have nothing not fine.” Therefore it is said, “Above the heavens and below the heavens, I alone am revered.” Shitou, because of reading Sengzhao’s treatises, when arriving at this point where the myriad things are united into oneself, had a great awakening; later he composed a text, the Can tong qi (Harmonious Union of Difference and Sameness), which also did not go beyond this meaning. Look at his asking in this way: tell me, what root is shared, and what body is the same? Arriving here, it is indeed extraordinary; how could it be like ordinary people who do not know the height of heaven and the thickness of earth? How could there be such a thing? Grand Councilor Lu Gen’s asking like this was exceedingly extraordinary, yet it simply did not go beyond the doctrinal meaning. If you say doctrinal meaning is the ultimate principle, why then did the World-Honoured One hold up a flower, and why did the ancestral master come from the west? Where Nanquan answered, he used the hold of a patch-robed monk, picked out his painful spot for him, and broke through his nest. He then pointed to a flower in the courtyard, called to the Grand Councilor, and said, “People of the time see this single stalk of flower as though in a dream.” It was like leading someone to a precipice of ten thousand fathoms and giving him a shove, causing him to lose his life. If you shove someone on level ground, even if Maitreya Buddha descends, he still will not know how to lose his life. It is also like someone in a dream, on the verge of waking but not yet awake, being called awake by someone. If Nanquan’s eyes had not been authentic, he would surely have been smeared and confused by him. Seeing him speak like this, it is indeed difficult to understand. If one’s eyes are steady and dynamic, hearing it alive is like the supreme flavor of clarified butter; if heard dead, it turns into poison instead. An ancient said, “If seen upon phenomena, one falls into common sentiment; if calculated under the faculty of intention, one can never find it.” Yantou said, “This is the livelihood of the transcendent person: only exposing a slight bit before the eyes, like the flash of lightning.” Nanquan’s great idea was like this; he had the skill to seize tigers and rhinoceroses and settle dragons and snakes. Arriving here, one must understand it for oneself before it works. Do you not see: “The transcendent path is not transmitted by a thousand sages; students labor their bodies like apes grasping at shadows”? Look at how Xuedou chanted it in verse: