87Yunmen's Medicine and Sickness

Introduction 垂示

明眼漢沒窠臼，有時孤峯頂上草漫漫，有時鬧市裏頭赤灑灑。忽若忿怒那吒，現三頭六臂；忽若日面月面，放普攝慈光，於一塵現一切身，為隨類人，和泥合水。忽若撥著向上竅，佛眼也覻不著，設使千聖出頭來，也須倒退三千里。還有同得同證者麼？試舉看。

A man with clear eyes fits no mold. Sometimes he's up on a lonely peak where the weeds run wild; sometimes down in the crowded market, naked and exposed. Sometimes he flares up like the demon-king Nezha, three heads and six arms. Sometimes, with a face like the sun, a face like the moon, he pours out warmth on everyone alike. In a single speck of dust he appears in every form there is, wading into the mud and water to meet people where they stand. And sometimes he turns the one door that opens straight up, and even a Buddha's eye can't find him. Bring out a thousand saints in a row and they'd still fall back three thousand miles. Is there anyone who's been there, who's seen it for himself? Let's check.

雲門示眾云：「藥病相治，盡大地是藥，那箇是自己治？」

Yunmen spoke to the assembly: "Medicine and sickness cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. So which one is you?"

Verse 頌

盡大地是藥，
古今何太錯。
閉門不造車，
通途自寥廓。
錯錯，
鼻孔遼天亦穿却。

The whole earth is medicine.
Past and present, how could they go so wrong?
Shut the door, but don't build your cart behind it;
the open road runs wide and clear on its own.
Wrong, wrong.
Nostrils high as the sky, and still bored clean through.

Pointer

Yunmen (864–949, Five Dynasties) specialized in one-line gut-punches, and this one starts from an old Buddhist picture: the Buddha's teachings are medicine prescribed for the sickness of a confused mind, different cures for different ills. Yunmen pushes the metaphor until it snaps. If everything that exists is medicine, every thing, every teaching, every experience, all of it curing something, then where does that leave you, the patient swallowing it? You are not standing outside the pharmacy choosing remedies, you are inside the whole arrangement, dose and dosed at once. The bait is the wish for a clean separation between the one who is sick, the cure, and the one who gets cured, and the case quietly dissolves all three into each other. The verse's punchline about not building your cart behind a closed door flips a proverb: stop engineering the perfect answer in private, the road is already open. So when the whole earth is the medicine, which one is you?