94The Buddha's Not-Seeing

Introduction 垂示

聲前一句，千聖不傳；面前一絲，長時無間。淨裸裸，赤灑灑，露地白牛，眼卓朔，耳卓朔。金毛獅子則且置，且道：作麼生是露地白牛？

The one phrase that comes before any sound: a thousand sages couldn't hand it to you. The single thread right in front of your face never breaks, not for an instant. Naked, bare, stripped clean: the white ox standing out in the open field. Eyes wide, ears up, alert all over: the golden-maned lion. But leave all that aside. Tell me, what is the white ox in the open field?

楞嚴經云：「吾不見時，何不見吾不見之處？若見不見，自然非彼不見之相；若不見吾不見之地，自然非物，云何非汝？」

The Surangama Sutra says: "When I am not seeing, why don't you see the place where I am not seeing? And if you could see my not-seeing, then plainly that isn't not-seeing at all. But if you don't see the ground of my not-seeing, then clearly it is no thing out there. And what could it be but you?"

Verse 頌

全象全牛瞖不殊，
從來作者共名模。
如今要見黃頭老，
剎剎塵塵在半途。

The whole elephant, the whole ox:
to a clouded eye, all one.
The old masters traced the same outline,
gave it the same name.
You want to see the old gold-faced one?
In every land, on every speck of dust,
still only halfway there.

Pointer

This case is not the usual teacher-and-student exchange but a knotty quote lifted straight from the Surangama Sutra, where the Buddha is needling his disciple Ananda about what "seeing" even is. The point underneath the paradox: the thing that does the seeing is never an object you could turn around and look at, like a cup or a tree, so when you go hunting for it out there you come up empty, because it was never out there. It is you. The intro stacks up stock images for that same naked, ungraspable nature, a white ox standing plain in an open field, a golden lion with its ears up. The trap is the brain-knotting line in the middle, where trying to "see your own not-seeing" ties you up, and that knot is the whole instrument, because it is exactly the knot the Buddha wants Ananda to feel snap. Stop looking for the looker and notice what is already doing the looking.