5The Price of Rice in Luling清源米價

Introduction 示眾

闍提割肉供親，不入孝子傳；調達推山壓佛，豈怕忽雷鳴。過得荊棘林，斫倒栴檀樹。直待年窮歲盡，依舊盂春猶寒。佛法身在甚麼處也？

Prince Jāti carved the flesh from his own body to feed his parents, and never made the book of model sons. Devadatta toppled a whole mountain onto the Buddha; what had he to fear from a clap of thunder? Get clear through the thornbushes, chop the sandalwood tree to the ground. Wait out the year to its very end, and the first month of spring is cold as ever. So where, exactly, is the body of the Buddha's truth?

僧問清源：「如何是佛法大意？」源云：「盧陵米作麼價？」

A monk asked Qingyuan, "What is the great meaning of the Buddha's teaching?"

Qingyuan said, "What's rice going for in Luling?"

Verse 頌

太平治業無象，
野老家風至淳。
只管村歌社飲，
那知舜德堯仁。

A reign of perfect peace, ruling with no visible hand.
The old farmer keeps the plainest of ways at home.
They sing village songs, drink at the festival, nothing more.
What would they know of the virtue of Shun, the kindness of Yao?

Pointer

Qingyuan is a Tang teacher, an early heir of the Sixth Patriarch and the root of the line this whole collection descends through. The monk hands him the largest possible question, the entire meaning of Buddhism, plainly hoping for something vast and cosmic in return. Qingyuan answers with the price of rice in Luling, the local market town. That swap is the teaching: the great meaning is not stored in some heaven, it is the going rate for grain, the ordinary day, the thing in front of your face. The verse seals it with a picture of a perfectly run kingdom where the farmers are too busy living to notice they have a good ruler, Yao and Shun being the stock sage-kings of Chinese legend. The deepest order, like the deepest truth, leaves no fingerprints, and you are meant to feel where Qingyuan left the question by not answering it grandly.