99Huizhong's Ten-Body Buddha

Introduction 垂示

龍吟霧起，虎嘯風生。出世宗猷，金玉相振；通方作略，箭鋒相拄。遍界不藏，遠近齊彰，古今明辨。且道是什麼人境界？試舉看。

When the dragon sings, mist rises; when the tiger roars, wind springs up. A real master's working rings like gold struck against jade. An adept's moves are arrowtips meeting point to point. Nothing in the whole universe stays hidden; near and far, all of it shows plain. Past and present, perfectly clear. So tell me, whose ground is this? Here's a case to test you.

肅宗帝問忠問師：「如何是十身調御？」國師云：「檀越踏毘盧頂上行。」帝云：「寡人不會。」國師云：「莫認自己清淨法身。」

Emperor Suzong asked National Teacher Huizhong, "What is the Buddha of ten bodies?"
The Teacher said, "Walk on top of Vairocana's head, Your Majesty."
The Emperor said, "I don't follow."
The Teacher said, "Don't take even that for your own pure body of truth."

Verse 頌

一國之師亦強名，
南陽獨許振嘉聲。
大唐扶得真天子，
曾踏毘盧頂上行。
鐵鎚擊碎黃金骨，
天地之間更何物。
三千剎海夜沈沈，
不知誰入蒼龍窟。

"Teacher to a whole nation"—even that's a label pasted on.
Nanyang alone earned such fine fame.
He propped up great Tang's true son of heaven,
the one who walked once on Vairocana's head.
An iron hammer smashes the golden bones to dust.
What is left then, anywhere between heaven and earth?
Across three thousand worlds, ocean upon ocean, the night sinks deep.
Who enters the blue dragon's cave? No one knows.

Pointer

National Teacher Huizhong, also called Nanyang after where he lived, was the imperial Zen master to two Tang emperors, roughly the spiritual advisor to the most powerful man in China. Emperor Suzong asks about "the Buddha of ten bodies," a doctrinal term for the cosmic, all-encompassing Buddha; Vairocana is the name for that boundless one. The trap is built into the question, since the emperor wants a grand answer about the highest holy thing. Huizhong tells him to walk on the cosmic Buddha's head, stomp straight over the thing he is venerating, then warns him not to turn even his own "pure body of truth" into one more idol to bow before. That second move is the sharper one, because the obvious trap is worshipping Vairocana and the hidden trap is worshipping your own enlightenment. The verse's iron hammer smashing the golden bones to dust is the same instruction: enshrine nothing, not even awakening itself.