86Yunmen's Light

Introduction 垂示

把定世界，不漏絲毫；截斷眾流，不存涓滴。開口便錯，擬議即差。且道：作麼生是透關底眼？試道看。

Lock down the whole world and not a thread slips through. Cut off every stream and not a drop remains. Open your mouth and you're already wrong; hesitate and you've missed it. So tell me: what is the eye that sees clean through the barrier? Try and say it.

雲門垂語云：「人人盡有光明在。看時不見，暗昏昏。作麼生是諸人光明？」自代云：「厨庫三門。」又云：「好事不如無。」

Yunmen put it to them: "Everyone has their own light. But look for it and you can't see it: nothing but the dark. So what is everyone's light?" No one answered, so he answered for them: "The kitchen, the storeroom, the front gate." Then he added: "A good thing isn't as good as no thing at all."

Verse 頌

自照列孤明，
為君通一線。
花謝樹無影，
看時誰不見？
見不見，
倒騎牛兮入佛殿。

It shines alone, one solitary flame.
For your sake he opens a single line.
Flowers fall, the tree casts no shadow.
Look now: who does not see?
See, not see:
backwards on the ox, into the Buddha hall.

Pointer

Yunmen (864–949, Five Dynasties) trades in blunt, oddball one-liners, and here he tells a room of monks that each of them carries an inner light, then yanks the rug: reach for it, stare straight at it, and there is nothing there but the dark. When no one bites, he answers his own question by naming the most boring objects in the place, the kitchen, the storeroom, the front gate. That is the move, because the light is not a glowing private secret you keep, it is already smeared across the dull stuff right in front of you. His kicker, "a good thing isn't as good as no thing at all," is the warning that does the work: the instant you turn the light into a special possession, you have bolted on a layer that was never needed and lost it. By this point in the book you have met Yunmen enough to expect the bait; the foothold he is after is the one where you stop hunting for the light and notice you are standing in it.