38Linji's True Person臨濟真人

Introduction 示眾

以賊為子，認奴作郎。破木杓豈是先祖髑髏？驢鞍鞽亦非阿爺下頷。裂土分茅時，如何辨主？

You take a thief for your son, the servant for the master. A broken wooden ladle is no ancestor's skull; a donkey's saddle is no father's jawbone. When the land gets carved up and the titles handed out, how do you tell who's really in charge?

臨濟示眾云：「有一無位真人，常向汝等面門出入。初心未證據者，看！看！」時有僧問：「如何是無位真人？」濟下禪床，擒住這僧，擬議，濟托開云：「無位真人，是甚乾屎橛！」

Linji addressed the assembly: "There is a true person of no rank, always going in and out through the gates of your face. Whoever hasn't seen it yet, look. Look!"

A monk stepped up and asked, "What is this true person of no rank?"

Linji came down off his seat, grabbed the monk, and said, "Speak! Speak!"

The monk hesitated. Linji shoved him away and said, "True person of no rank? What a dried turd."

Verse 頌

迷悟相返，
妙傳而簡。
春坼百花兮一吹，
力迴九牛兮一挽。
無奈泥沙撥不開，
分明塞斷甘泉眼。
忽然突出肆橫流。

Lost and awake change places,
the marvel handed on, plain and bare.
One breath, and spring splits a hundred flowers;
one tug, and nine oxen turn.
But the mud and sand won't clear,
they plug the sweet spring's eye dead shut.
Then all at once it breaks through and floods everywhere.