5Case 5

Introduction 垂示

大凡扶竪宗教，須是英靈底漢，有殺人不眨眼底手脚，方可立地成佛。所以照用同時，卷舒齊唱，理事不二，權實並行。放過一著，建立第二義門，直下截斷葛藤，後學初機難為湊泊。昨日恁麼，事不獲已；今日又恁麼，罪過彌天。若是明眼漢，一點謾他不得；其或未然，虎口裏橫身，不免喪身失命。試舉看。

To hold up the teaching you have to be a live wire, with hands that can kill without blinking. Only then can you stand where you are and become a buddha. Light and action at once, rolling up and spreading out in one breath, principle and practice not two, the absolute and the relative walking side by side. But let one move slip past, set up the second-rate gate, hand out a few words, and the beginners can find nowhere to land. Yesterday I did it that way; I had no choice. Today here I go again, my crimes heaped to the sky. A man with clear eyes won't be fooled for an instant. Otherwise you lay your body across the tiger's mouth and lose your life. Let's see.

雪峯示眾云：「盡大地撮來，如粟米粒大，拋向面前，漆桶不會，打鼓普請看。」

Xuefeng addressed the assembly: "Scoop up the whole earth and it comes to the size of a grain of rice. Throw it down in front of you, and you lacquer-buckets still don't see. Beat the drum, call everyone out, and look."

Verse 頌

牛頭沒，馬頭回，
曹溪鏡裏絕塵埃。
打鼓看來君不見，
百花春至為誰開？

The ox-head vanishes, the horse-head turns back.
In Caoxi's mirror, not a speck of dust.
Beat the drum, look hard: still you don't see.
Spring arrives, a hundred flowers bloom. For whom?

Pointer

Xuefeng (822–908) ran one of the largest monasteries of the Tang, and his lineage produced Yunmen and others you meet all through this book. The case is a stunt: he scoops the entire planet down to the size of a rice grain, tosses it at his monks' feet, and tells them they still cannot see it. "Lacquer bucket" is his word for them, Chan slang for a head sealed shut and painted black inside, taking in nothing. "Beat the drum, call everyone out" was the monastery's signal for work or assembly, so he is sounding the alarm and summoning the whole community to come stare at the obvious thing they keep missing. The verse points to Caoxi, home of Huineng the sixth ancestor, who made his name rejecting the mirror image the line plays on: his rival Shenxiu likened the mind to a mirror-stand you wipe clean of dust, and Huineng answered that there is fundamentally not one thing, so where could dust ever land? The catch is built into the order: the harder you scramble to "look," the more you confirm you cannot see, while the flowers in the verse open for no one in particular and bloom anyway.