7Yaoshan Takes the Seat藥山陞座

Introduction 示眾

眼耳鼻舌，各有一能。眉毛在上，士農工商各歸一務。拙者常閑，本分宗師如何施設？

Eyes, ears, nose, tongue: each has its one job. The eyebrows sit up top. Farmer, craftsman, merchant, scholar, each minds his own trade. The clumsy one stays idle all day. So what is left for a real master to teach?

藥山久不陞座，院主白云：「大眾久思示誨，請和尚為眾說法。」山令打鐘，眾方集，山陞座，良久便下座，歸方丈。主隨後問：「和尚適來許為眾說法，云何不垂一言？」山云：「經有經師，論有論師，爭怪得老僧。」

For a long while Yaoshan had not taken the high seat to preach. The temple director said to him, "Everyone has been waiting for your teaching. Please, master, give the assembly a talk." Yaoshan had the bell rung. The monks gathered. He climbed up, sat a good while, then came down and went back to his quarters. The director followed and asked, "You agreed to preach to the assembly. Why didn't you say a single word?" Yaoshan said, "For the sutras there are sutra teachers. For the treatises there are treatise teachers. How can you blame an old monk?"

Verse 頌

癡兒刻意止啼錢，
良駟追風顧影鞭。
雲掃長空巢月鶴，
寒清入骨不成眠。

The foolish child clutches the coin
that buys his crying quiet.
The fine horse bolts on the wind,
whipped at its own shadow.
Clouds sweep the wide sky clean;
a crane roosts in the moon.
The cold sinks to the bone,
and there is no sleep tonight.

Pointer

Yaoshan is a major Tang teacher in this book's own ancestral line. In a monastery, "taking the high seat" means climbing the teaching platform for a formal Dharma talk, the big public sermon the whole community turns out for. The setup is a trap baited with expectation: the staff and monks pester him into preaching, he rings the bell, gathers everyone, sits a long while, then climbs down and leaves without a word. Pressed on why he said nothing, he points out that there are professional lecturers who will gladly unpack the scriptures, and that explaining was never his job. The silence was the talk, and the people waiting for sentences were waiting for the wrong thing. The verse twists the knife with images of a child bribed quiet by a coin and a horse spooked into bolting by its own shadow, both chasing the look of a thing instead of the thing.