82Dalong's Indestructible Body

Introduction 垂示

竿頭絲線，具眼方知；格外之機，作家方辨。且道：作麼生是竿頭絲線、格外之機？試舉看。

A silk line dangling from the tip of the pole: only the clear-eyed catch it. The move that breaks every rule: only a master can spot it. So tell me, what is that silk line at the pole's tip, that move past all the rules? Here's a case to test you.

僧問大龍：「色身敗壞，如何是堅固法身？」龍云：「山花開似錦，㵎水湛如藍。」

A monk asked Dalong, "The body of flesh rots and falls apart. What is the solid, indestructible body of truth?"

Dalong said, "Mountain flowers blooming like brocade. Valley water deep and blue as indigo."

Verse 頌

問曾不知，
答還不會。
月冷風高，
古巖寒檜。
堪笑路逢達道人，
不將語默對。
手把白玉鞭，
驪珠盡擊碎。
不擊碎，
增瑕纇。
國有憲章，
三千條罪。

He asks, and never knew.
He answers, and still won't see.
Cold moon, high wind,
old cliff, frozen cypress.
Funny: you meet someone who's found the way
and you can't answer with words or with silence.
Take the whip of white jade in your hand
and smash the black dragon's pearl to bits.
Don't smash it,
and the flaw only spreads.
The country has its laws:
three thousand counts of guilt.

Pointer

The monk is chasing the oldest worry there is: this body rots and dies, so where is the part of me that lasts? He wants Dalong to point at some permanent soul tucked behind the meat. Dalong answers with the scenery outside the window, mountain flowers, a blue stream. The indestructible body is not a ghost stashed away from the world that decays, it is the world, the whole flickering parade of it with nothing held in reserve. The verse stacks up images of cold, knife-edged clarity, high wind and frozen cypress, then turns playful: when you finally meet someone who has it, you cannot pin it down with talk, and you cannot pin it down with pointed silence either. The "black dragon's pearl" is the absolute, and the warning is sharp, that hedging or refusing to commit is itself a crime against it. There is no safe neutral non-answer on offer here. The body you are trying to outlast is the only one that was ever the real thing.