佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 8.16

8.16

Jinniu was a venerable elder under Master Ma. Whenever it came to mealtime, he would personally bring the rice bucket, dance in front of the monks' hall, and with a great guffaw of laughter say, "Bodhisattva-children, come eat rice!" He did this for twenty years. Tell me: where was his intention? If you call it merely eating rice, normally striking the wooden fish and beating the drum is also announcement enough. Why then would he further need to bring the rice bucket personally and perform so many antics? Could he be crazy? Could he be promoting and establishing [the teaching]? If he were promoting this matter, why not go to the precious flower-throne, strike the bench, and erect the whisk? What need was there to act like this? People today completely fail to realize that the ancients' meaning lay outside of words. Why not just look at what the topic of the ancestral master when he first came said? It clearly said: a special transmission outside the teachings, sole transmission of the mind-seal. The ancients' skillful means were only to have you directly undertake it. Later people rashly guess and calculate, saying, "Where are there so many things? When cold, face the fire; when hot, take the shade; when hungry, eat rice; when tired, take a nap." If you interpret and gloss it with ordinary sentiments and conceptual explanations in this way, Bodhidharma's single lineage is swept into the dust and finished. They do not know that the ancients, throughout the twenty-four hours of the day, thought after thought did not abandon it, wanting to clarify this matter. Xuedou said, "Although this is so, Jinniu did not have a good mind." Over just this one phrase, how many people have misunderstood! It is what is called: the supreme flavor of ghee, prized by the world; meeting with such people, it turns instead into poison. Since Jinniu entered the weeds for others' sake, why did Xuedou say, "He did not have a good mind"? For what reason did he speak like this? A patch-robed monk must possess living dynamic function to attain it. Today's people do not reach the ancients' ground; they only insist, "What mind is there to see? What Buddha is there?" If you form this view, you ruin old master craftsman Jinniu. You must examine it closely before you get it. If you only talk glibly today and tomorrow, there will never be an end. Later, Changqing ascended the hall, and a monk asked, "The ancient said, 'Bodhisattva-children, come eat rice!' What was the meaning?" Changqing said, "It is much like celebrating and praising on the occasion of a feast." Venerable elders are excessively compassionate; they leak not a little. True enough, it is "celebrating and praising on the occasion of a feast"; but tell me, what does he celebrate and praise? See Xuedou's verse, which says: