萬松老人評唱天童覺和尚頌古從容庵錄 5.93

5.93

The Master said: Xuansha asked about yesterday's clamour, like the "Great and Venerable Teacher" chapter of *Zhuangzi*: "Now, hiding a boat in a ravine or hiding a mountain in a marsh may be called secure. Yet at midnight a strong man shoulders it and runs away, while the ignorant do not know. Hiding small in large is appropriate, yet there is still somewhere it slips away. But if you hide the world in the world so that there is nowhere it can slip away, this is the great reality of constant things." Tiantong takes Xuansha's questioning about yesterday and today as hiding the boat and secretly carrying it away to test Xiaotang; yet coming to the clear source and deep water, he still rows a lone boat. This is like the *Inscription on the Mysterious Center* fearing getting stuck in dead water; Xuansha's phrase had a living eye, wishing people to recognise the source of movement and stillness. Venerable Wolong Qiu said: "If you want to attain the essential shortcut, it is rather the mountains, rivers, and the great earth that bring you enlightenment. That affair is both constant and capable of ultimate reality. If one enters through the gate of Mañjuśrī, all conditioned things—earth, wood, tiles, and stones—help you trigger the dynamic. If one enters through the gate of Guanyin, all sounds—toads and earthworms—help you trigger the dynamic. If one enters through the gate of Samantabhadra, one arrives without moving a step. I use these three gates to show you by expedient means, like taking a single snapped chopstick to stir the great ocean water, causing those fish and dragons to know water as life. If you constantly know the source of movement, stillness, speech, silence, coming, and going, you have not spent your time in vain already." This praises Xuansha's way of helping people. If one is an adept—matching box and lid, arrow points meeting, the sounding pole, shadowing grass, holding fast and letting go—look at lifting the kāṣāya and "no relation"; see what principle this is. The *Records of the Grand Historian* on "Tortoise Divination" says: The Grand Historian says, "When I reached Jiangnan, I observed their affairs; it is said that after a thousand years, a tortoise swims on lotus leaves." This is "no relation." Submerged and withdrawn does not hinder playing and sporting; playing and sporting does not hinder submerged and withdrawn. Nowadays people paint pictures of fish and waterweeds; waterweeds are aquatic grasses, undulating with the waves and forming patterns of themselves. Furthermore, *zao* are patterned waterweeds, seen in the *Analects*: "mountain-shaped brackets and weed-patterned kingposts." Do you want to recognise the two old men? "When there is spirit, add spirit; / Where there is no refinement, there is also refinement."