8Cuiyan's Eyebrows

Introduction 垂示

會則途中受用，如龍得水，似虎靠山；不會則世諦流布，羝羊觸藩，守株待兔。有時一句，如踞地獅子；有時一句，如金剛王寶劍；有時一句，坐斷天下人舌頭；有時一句，隨波逐浪。若也途中受用，遇知音，別機宜，識休咎，相共證明；若也世諦流布，具一隻眼，可以坐斷十方，壁立千仞。所以道：大用現前，不存軌則。有時將一莖草，作丈六金身用；有時將丈六金身，作一莖草用。且道：憑箇什麼道理？還委悉麼？試舉看。

Get it, and you put it to use right where you stand: a dragon reaching water, a tiger backed by its mountain. Miss it, and you drift along with the everyday world, a ram with its horns snagged in the fence, a fool by the stump waiting for another rabbit to run into it.

Sometimes a single line is a lion crouched to spring. Sometimes a single line is the diamond sword that cuts through anything. Sometimes a single line shuts every mouth on earth. Sometimes a single line just rolls with the waves.

Put it to use on the spot, and when you meet someone who truly hears you, you read the moment and answer it; you tell the sound from the rotten, and the two of you prove it together. Drift along with the everyday world, and even so, one good eye can shut down all ten directions and stand like a sheer thousand-foot wall.

So they say: when the great function comes forth, it keeps no fixed rules. Sometimes it takes a single blade of grass and uses it as a sixteen-foot golden Buddha. Sometimes it takes a sixteen-foot golden Buddha and uses it as a single blade of grass. Now tell me, what principle does this rest on? Do you get it? Let's look.

翠嵒夏末示眾云：「一夏以來，為兄弟說話，看翠嵒眉毛在麼？」保福云：「作賊人心虛。」長慶云：「生也。」雲門云：「關。」

At the end of the summer retreat, Cuiyan said to the assembly, "All summer long I've been talking to you brothers. Look, are Cuiyan's eyebrows still there?"

Baofu said, "The thief's heart is uneasy."

Changqing said, "Grown."

Yunmen said, "Barrier."

Verse 頌

翠巖示徒，
千古無對。
關字相酬，
失錢遭罪。
潦倒保福，
抑揚難得。
嘮嘮翠巖分明是賊。
白圭無玷，
誰辨真假。
長慶相諳，
眉毛生也。

Cuiyan teaches the crowd,
in a thousand years, no match for it.
Yunmen pays him back with "Barrier":
lose your money, take the fine.
Down-and-out Baofu,
who can match his praise and blame?
Talk, talk, talk: Cuiyan's plainly the thief.
Flawless white jade,
who can sort the real from the fake?
Changqing knows him through and through:
the eyebrows have grown back.

Pointer

This unfolds at the close of the summer retreat, the three months Chan monks spent in intensive practice together. An old belief held that a teacher who cheats his students with sloppy talk about the Dharma will lose his eyebrows, hair by hair, as karmic payback. So Cuiyan's question is a dare in disguise: I have been preaching at you all summer, did I swindle you, go ahead and check my face. Three sharp students answer from three angles. Baofu calls him a thief whose own heart is uneasy, Changqing says the eyebrows have actually grown back, and Yunmen (864–949, the fastest tongue of the Five Dynasties) slams down one word, "Barrier," a wall, a checkpoint, a gate shut in your face. There is no safe reply to "did I fail you," and the four of them are working the same impossible question from different sides. Skip hunting for the right answer and watch four professionals trade live rounds.