41Luopu on His Deathbed洛浦臨終

Introduction 示眾

有時忠誠，扣已苦屈難申；有時殃及，向人承當不下。臨行賤折倒，末後最慇懃。泪出痛腸，更難隱諱。還有冷眼者麼？

Sometimes you're loyal to the bone, and it earns you nothing but grief no one will hear out. Sometimes the trouble lands on you, and there's no way to pass the blame to anyone else. On the way out he took a hard fall; at the very end he tried his hardest. Tears, a gut twisted in pain, and past that nothing stays hidden. Anyone here watching with a cold eye?

洛浦臨終示眾云：「今有一事，問爾諸人：這箇若是，即頭上安頭；若不是，即斬頭覓活。」時首座云：「青山常舉足，白日不挑燈。」浦云：「是甚麼時節，作這箇說話？」有彥從上座出云：「去此二途，請師不問。」浦云：「未在，更道。」從云：「某甲道不盡。」浦云：「我不管爾道盡道不盡。」從云：「某甲無侍者祇對和尚。」至晚，喚從上座：「爾今日祇對，甚有來由，合體得先師道：『日前無法，意在目前；他不是目前法，非耳目之所到。』那句是賓？那句是主？若揀得出，分付鉢袋子。」從云：「不會。」浦云：「汝合會。」從云：「實不會。」浦喝云：「苦哉！苦哉！」僧問：「和尚尊意如何？」浦云：「慈舟不棹清波上，劍峽徒勞放木鵝。」

On his deathbed Luopu spoke to the assembly: "There's one thing I'll put to all of you. Say it IS this, and you're stacking a head on top of your head. Say it ISN'T, and you're cutting off your head to go looking for life. What then?"

The head monk said, "The green mountain is always lifting its feet. In broad daylight you don't light a lamp."

Luopu said, "What time of day is it, that you talk like that?"

A senior monk named Yancong stepped out. "Leave those two roads aside, and please, master, don't put the question to me."

Luopu said, "Not good enough. Say more."

Yancong said, "I can't say it all the way."

Luopu said, "I don't care whether you can say it all the way or not."

Yancong said, "I've no attendant to wait on you, master."

That evening Luopu sent for Yancong. "Your answer today had something to it. You must have caught the late master's saying: there is no Dharma before your eyes, yet the meaning is right there before your eyes; and it isn't the Dharma before your eyes, it's not what eye or ear can reach. So which line is guest and which is host? Pick them apart for me, and I'll hand over the bowl and bag."

Yancong said, "I don't get it."

Luopu said, "You ought to get it."

Yancong said, "Honestly, I don't get it."

Luopu shouted, "What a shame! What a shame!"

A monk asked, "Master, what do you mean?"

Luopu said, "The boat of mercy won't row on the clear waves. Down the sword-gorge it's wasted effort to float a wooden goose."

Verse 頌

餌雲鉤月釣清津，
年老心孤未得鱗。
一曲離騷歸去後，
汩羅江上獨醒人。

Cloud for bait, the moon for hook, fishing the clear ford,
old now, heart alone, and still no fish on the line.
One round of the Li Sao, and then he turns for home:
on the Miluo River, the one man still awake.

Pointer

Luopu Yuan'an, the same master who once stood cocky before Jiashan (35), is dying and hunting for someone fit to inherit his "bowl and bag," the gear that marks the next teacher in the line. His final question is rigged so neither answer survives: say "yes, that's it" and you've stacked a fake head on the real one; say "no" and you've cut off your own head to go looking for life. The head monk reaches for stock Zen-sounding lines and gets slapped for parroting. Yancong answers sharper, Luopu's hopes rise, then he presses him that evening to actually carve apart guest from host in the old saying, and Yancong can only say "I don't get it," three times over. So the old man dies with the line unpassed, shouting "what a shame." The verse closes on Qu Yuan, the poet who drowned himself in the Miluo after declaring everyone drunk and himself alone sober. It casts Luopu as that man: right, unheard, walking off the page beside a rescue boat that never launched.