50Yunmen's Rice and Water

Introduction 垂示

度越階級，超絕方便，機機相應，句句相投。儻非入大解脫門、得大解脫用，何以權衡佛祖、龜鑑宗乘？且道：當機直截，逆順縱橫，如何道得出身句？試請舉看。

Step past the ranks. Skip the shortcuts. Mind meets mind, line answers line. But if you've never walked through the gate of total freedom and learned to use that freedom, how will you measure the buddhas and ancestors, how will you judge the whole tradition? So tell me: meeting the moment head-on, cutting straight through, going with the grain or against it, free in every direction. How do you say the line that gets you out alive? Let's see.

僧問雲門：「如何是塵塵三昧？」門云：「鉢裏飯，桶裏水。」

A monk asked Yunmen, "What is the samadhi where every speck of dust is the whole universe?"
Yunmen said, "Rice in the bowl. Water in the bucket."

Verse 頌

鉢裏飯，桶裏水，
多口阿師難下嘴。
北斗南星位不殊，
白浪滔天平地起。
擬不擬，止不止，
箇箇無裩長者子。

Rice in the bowl, water in the bucket.
Even the loudmouth teacher can't get a word in.
North Star, South Star, each in its place;
on flat ground, white waves rise to the sky.
You hesitate or you don't, you stop or you can't:
every one of us a rich man's son with no pants.

Pointer

Yunmen, the tenth-century master whose one-line answers land like a slap, gets a question loaded with gear. "Samadhi" is deep meditative absorption, and "every speck of dust is the whole universe" is a real teaching: all of reality fully present in the tiniest thing. So the monk is asking after some cosmic state where the infinite shows up in a grain of sand, and he's clearly reaching for it as something lofty and elsewhere. Yunmen points at lunch instead. Rice in the bowl, water in the bucket. If the whole universe really is in every speck, it's already sitting in your dishes, and the reaching is the only thing keeping you from it. The verse twists the knife with its rich man's son who owns everything and still walks around with no pants: that's the position you're in while you go looking for what you already hold.