13Linji's Blind Donkey臨際瞎驢
Introduction 示眾
一向為人，不知有己；直須盡法，不管無民。須是拗折木枕惡手脚，臨行之際合作麼生？
Give your whole life to others and you forget you have a self. Push the teaching to the limit, no matter who follows. You must be the kind of teacher who'd snap a wooden headrest in two: rough hands, rough feet. So when the time comes to leave, what do you do?
臨際將示滅，囑三聖：「吾遷化後，不得滅却吾正法眼藏。」聖云：「爭敢滅却和尚正法眼藏？」際云：「忽有人問汝，作麼生對？」聖便喝。際云：「誰知吾正法眼藏，向這瞎驢邊滅却。」
Linji was about to die. He told Sansheng, "After I'm gone, don't let my true Dharma eye die out."
Sansheng said, "How could I ever let your true Dharma eye die out?"
Linji said, "Someday someone will ask you about it. What will you say?"
Sansheng shouted.
Linji said, "Who would have guessed: my true Dharma eye dies out with this blind donkey."
Verse 頌
信衣半夜付盧能，
攪攪黃梅七百僧。
臨際一枝正法眼，
瞎驢滅却得人憎。
心心相印，
祖祖傳燈。
夷平海嶽，
變化鵾鵬。
只箇名言難比擬，
大都手段解飜騰。
At midnight the robe of faith passed to Huineng,
and seven hundred monks at Huangmei reeled.
Linji handed on his one sprig of the true Dharma eye,
the blind donkey snuffs it out, and no one can bear it.
Mind seals mind,
ancestor hands the lamp to ancestor.
He levels the seas, flattens the mountains,
he turns from giant fish to giant bird.
Such a name is hard to match,
yet it is mostly the move that knows how to wheel and soar.