72Baizhang Asks Yunyan

百丈又問雲巖：「併却咽喉唇吻，作麼生道？」巖云：「和尚有也未？」丈云：「喪我兒孫。」

Baizhang put the same question to Yunyan: "Shut your throat, seal your lips. Now say it."
Yunyan said, "Master, can you do it yet?"
Baizhang said, "I've lost my heirs."

Verse 頌

和尚有也未，
金毛獅子不踞地。
兩兩三三舊路行，
大雄山下空彈指。

"Master, can you do it yet?"
The golden-haired lion won't crouch to spring.
Two by two, three by three, they plod the same old road.
Below Great Hero Mountain, he snaps his fingers at nothing.

Pointer

Last of the three back-to-back tests (cases 70–72). Baizhang hits each student with the same impossible demand: say something true with your throat closed and lips sealed, no words allowed, a trap built to knock you off the verbal track. The first two gave answers he could work with. Yunyan flips it and lobs the question back: master, can you do it yet? That move can be a brilliant counterpunch or a way to duck, and Baizhang reads it as a duck. "I've lost my heirs" is him writing Yunyan off as a successor, a stinging verdict made odder by the fact that Yunyan went on to become a major teacher, the master of Dongshan and a root of the whole Caodong line. The "golden-haired lion" in the verse is the student who pounces without stalling, and "Great Hero Mountain" is Baizhang's own peak. The jab is plain: a real lion doesn't crouch and hesitate before it springs.