佛果圜悟禪師碧巖錄 8.6

8.6

Yunyan served as attendant at Baizhang for twenty years. Later he went with Daowu to Yaoshan. Yaoshan asked, "What did you do while in Baizhang's assembly?"
Yunyan said, "I broke through birth and death."
Yaoshan said, "And have you broken through or not?"
Yunyan said, "That one has no birth or death."
Yaoshan said, "Twenty years at Baizhang, and your habitual tendencies are still not purged!"
Yunyan took his leave and went to see Nanquan, and later returned to Yaoshan; only then did he tally with awakening. Look at how the ancients investigated and inquired for twenty years, yet remained half green and half yellow, sticking to skin and clinging to bone, unable to break out smartly. It may be so, yet he had not reached the village ahead, nor overtaken the inn behind. Have you not heard it said:
"If words do not leave the rut,
How can one escape covers and entanglements?
White clouds lie across the valley mouth;
How many people are misled from the source?"
In the Dongshan lineage this is called 'striking against and breaking through'; hence it is said:
"Opening out the celestial attendants at the Phoenix Tower,
People of the day shrank from uttering the reigning sovereign's name."
Therefore it is said that one must break through the thorn forest before one has it. If one does not break through, one will always be involved in minute quibbles and unable to cut them off. Just now I said: he had not reached the village ahead, nor overtaken the inn behind. Yunyan only knew to inspect what belonged to others. Baizhang, seeing him like this, took him and killed him off at once. Xuedou's verse says: