佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 8.31

8.31

This monk asked Yunmen, "What are the words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs?" Yunmen said, "Sesame cake." Do you feel your body hair standing on end yet? When patch-robed monks ask about the Buddhas and patriarchs, ask about Chan and the Way, ask about the transcendent and the descending, and having asked all they can, they have nothing left to ask, they then bring up a query, asking about "the words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs." Yunmen is an adept; thus as the water rises the boat floats high, and where there is much clay the Buddha is big. So he answered, "Sesame cake." It can truly be said that his Way is not practiced in vain, and his labor is not wasted. Yunmen again instructed the assembly, saying, "You must not act [blindly]. Seeing someone speak of the ancestral master's intention, you immediately ask about the principle of words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs. For now, what do you call 'Buddha'? What do you call 'patriarch', that you speak of words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs? Then you ask about escaping the three realms. Take the three realms and look at them: what seeing, hearing, awareness, or knowing obstructs you? What sound and form, what Buddha-Dharma is there for you to resolve? What bowl are you resolving? What do you take to be divergent views? Those ancient sages could do nothing with you; they threw their bodies into the world for sentient beings, saying, 'The entire substance is completely real; thing after thing is directly manifest, unobtainable.' I say to you: right here, what matter is there? Already it has been buried away! If you understand these words, you will know the sesame cake." Wuzu said, "Donkey dung is compared to musk." As it is said, "Directly cutting off the source is what the Buddhas seal; plucking leaves and searching branches is what I cannot do." When you arrive here, if you wish to attain intimacy, do not bring questions to ask. Look at this monk asking, "What are the words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs?" and Yunmen saying, "Sesame cake." Do you know shame yet? Do you perceive the leakage? There is a sort of person who fabricates, saying, "Yunmen released the hawk upon seeing the rabbit, and so said 'sesame cake.'" If one views sesame cake in this way as the words that transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs, how could there be an active road? Neither understand it as sesame cake, nor understand it as transcending the Buddhas and going beyond the patriarchs—that is the active road. It is just like the "three pounds of hemp" and "knowing how to beat the drum." Although he only said "sesame cake," in truth it is hard to see. Later people mostly make theoretical sense of it, saying, "Coarse words and fine speech all return to the paramārtha." If you understand it in this way, you might as well go be a lecture master and win a lifetime of abundant knowledge and abundant understanding. Nowadays Chan fellows say, "When transcending the Buddhas and going beyond the patriarchs, all the Buddhas are trampled underfoot, and the ancestral masters are also trampled underfoot; therefore Yunmen merely said 'sesame cake' to him. Since it is a sesame cake, how could it transcend the Buddhas and go beyond the patriarchs?" Try investigating it and see! Across the various quarters, verses are extremely numerous, all making words around the question. Only Xuedou's verse eulogy is the best. Let us bring it up to see. The verse says: