78The Bathhouse Awakening

古有十六開士，於浴僧時隨例入浴，忽悟水因。諸禪德，作麼生會？他道：「妙觸宣明，成佛子住。」也須七穿八穴始得。

Long ago, on bath day, sixteen bodhisattvas filed into the baths and took their turn like everyone else. Suddenly they woke to what water is. You Chan worthies, how do you understand it? They said, "The subtle touch reveals itself, and we arrive as children of the Buddha." But you have to be pierced clean through, riddled with holes, before you've got it.

Verse 頌

了事衲僧消一箇，
長連床上展脚臥。
夢中曾說悟圓通，
香水洗來驀面唾。

A monk done with his business wants one thing only:
to stretch out flat on the long bench and sleep.
Once, in a dream, he held forth on perfect awakening.
Wash him with the scented water and he spits it back in your face.

Pointer

This comes from the Shurangama Sutra, where the Buddha goes around the room asking each student how they broke through. Sixteen give the same answer: it happened in the bath. They stepped into the water, felt it on their skin, and something gave way. Their line about "the subtle touch revealing itself" means the plain sensation of warm water on the body was the entire doorway, nothing more exotic than that. Xuedou's warning is aimed at the obvious temptation, which is to make a cozy religious experience out of it. A few warm words about "perfect awakening" are dream-talk, he says, and the verse closes with the sort of person who would spit your pretty answer back in your face. Awakening through the most ordinary sensation there is, and the catch is that you cannot keep the sensation and lose the ordinariness.