15Case 15

Introduction 垂示

殺人刀，活人劍，乃上古之風規，是今時之樞要。且道：如今那箇是殺人刀、活人劍？試舉看。

The sword that kills, the sword that gives life: that was the way of the old masters, and it's still what everything turns on today. So tell me, right now, which is which? Which one kills, which one saves? Let's look.

僧問雲門：「不是目前機，亦非目前事時如何？」門云：「倒一說。」

A monk asked Yunmen, "What about when it's not the thing in front of you, and not the matter in front of you either?"
Yunmen said, "Upside down."

Verse 頌

倒一說，
分一節。
同死同生為君訣。
八萬四千非鳳毛，
三十三人入虎穴。
別，別！
擾擾怱怱水裏月。

Upside down —
he splits it clean in two.
Live together, die together: that's the bargain he strikes with you.
Eighty-four thousand of them, and not one a phoenix feather;
thirty-three step straight into the tiger's den.
Look! Look!
A churning, racing world, and the moon down in the water.

Pointer

Yunmen Wenyan (864–949) was the Five Dynasties master famous for single words that knock a questioner sideways, and you just met one in the case before this. Here the monk tries to be subtle: he asks about what lies beyond "the thing in front of you" and beyond "the matter in front of you," angling for a grand word about the absolute, the deep stuff that is not mere everyday experience. Yunmen flips him over with one stroke, "Upside down." By straining past what is right here to reach some special "beyond," the monk has the whole thing inverted. The verse runs with it, masters leading students to live and die together, and lands on the moon shaking in churning water: the real thing is in the ordinary, not in an elsewhere you have to go fetch. Check where you put the "beyond," and whether the search itself is the inversion.