29Fengxue's Iron Ox風穴鐵牛

Introduction 示眾

遲棊鈍行，爛却斧柯；眼轉頭迷，奪將杓柄。若也打在鬼窟裏，把定死蛇頭，還有變豹分也無？

Drag your feet, stall your moves, and the axe handle rots in your hand. Your eyes swim, your head goes foggy, and someone snatches the ladle away. But settle into a ghost cave and clamp down on a dead snake's head — is there any chance left of turning into a leopard?

風穴在郢州衙內，上堂云：「祖師心印，狀似鐵牛之機，去即印住，住即印破。只如不去不住，印即是？不印即是？」時有廬陂長老出問云：「某甲有鐵牛之機，請師不搭印。」穴云：「慣釣鯨鯢澄巨浸，却嗟蛙步𩥇泥沙。」陂佇思。穴喝云：「長老何不進語？」陂擬議，穴打一拂子云：「還記得話頭麼？試舉看。」陂擬開口，穴又打一拂子。牧主云：「佛法與王法一般。」穴云：「見箇什麼？」牧云：「當斷不斷，返招其亂。」穴便下座。

Fengxue was at the government office in Yingzhou. He took the high seat and said, "The mind-seal of the ancestors works like an iron ox. Pull it back and the seal stays pressed in; leave it in place and the seal breaks. But if you neither pull back nor leave it — is stamping the seal right, or is not stamping it right?"

At that, Elder Lupi stepped out and said, "I have the iron ox's working myself. I ask you, master: don't stamp the seal."

Fengxue said, "I'm used to fishing for whales, churning up the deep ocean. Funny, instead I get a frog hopping through the mud." Lupi stood there, turning it over.

Fengxue shouted, "Elder, why don't you say something?" Lupi began to frame a reply, and Fengxue gave him one stroke of the whisk. "Do you even remember the question? Try and bring it up." Lupi began to open his mouth, and Fengxue struck him again with the whisk.

The governor said, "Buddha's law and the king's law are one and the same."

Fengxue said, "What do you see in that?"

The governor said, "When it's time to cut and you don't cut, you only invite chaos."

Fengxue stepped down from the seat.

Verse 頌

鐵牛之機，
印住印破。
透出毘盧頂𩕳行，
却來化佛舌頭坐。
風穴當衡，
盧陂負墮。
棒頭喝下，
電光石火。
歷歷分明珠在盤，
眨起眉毛還蹉過。

The iron ox's working:
the seal stays, the seal breaks.
It blasts up past the crown of Vairocana's head and walks,
then comes back down to sit on a manifested buddha's tongue.
Fengxue holds the scales.
Lupi takes the fall.
Under the stick, under the shout,
lightning flash, sparks off flint.
Clear and clear, a pearl rolling on a tray.
Lift an eyebrow, and already it has slipped past.

Pointer

Fengxue is running a public Dharma session inside a provincial government office, the regional governor seated in the audience, which pays off at the end. The "mind-seal" is the wordless transmission from master to student, named after a wax seal that stamps its exact pattern into the next mind. An iron ox is a famous flood-control statue, too massive to drag and too hard to dent, so stamping it changes nothing either way; Fengxue builds that immovability into an impossible either/or (stamp it? don't?) and dares the room to answer without tripping. Elder Lupi struts up claiming he owns the iron ox's working, then locks up, and every time he reaches for words Fengxue's whisk lands before he can finish, since the grab for an answer is itself the miss. The governor caps it with a soldier's proverb about fatal hesitation, and Fengxue, having made the point on Lupi's body, steps down. Watch the whisk: it strikes the instant the mouth opens, not after.