42Nanyang's Water Jug南陽淨瓶

Introduction 示眾

洗鉢添瓶，盡是法門佛事；般柴運水，無非妙用神通。為甚麼不解放光動地？

Washing the bowl, filling the jug: this is Buddha's work, the whole teaching right there. Hauling firewood, carrying water: every bit of it is power and wonder. So why doesn't it shoot out light and shake the ground?

僧問南陽忠國師：「如何是本身盧舍那？」國師云：「與我過淨瓶來。」僧將淨瓶到。國師云：「却安舊處著。」僧復問：「如何是本身盧舍那？」國師云：「古佛過去久矣。」

A monk asked National Teacher Zhong of Nanyang, "What is the true body of Vairochana Buddha?"

The Teacher said, "Hand me that water jug."

The monk brought it over.

The Teacher said, "Now put it back where it was."

The monk did, then asked again, "What is the true body of Vairochana Buddha?"

The Teacher said, "The old Buddha has been gone a long, long time."

Verse 頌

鳥之行空，
魚之在水。
江湖相忘，
雲天得志。
擬心一絲，
對面千里。
知恩報恩，
人間幾幾？

A bird flies through open sky.
A fish rests in the water.
River and lake forget each other.
Cloud and sky, each gets its wish.
The mind puts out one thread
and the face before you is a thousand miles off.
Know the kindness, repay the kindness:
how many in this world ever do?

Pointer

Vairochana is the cosmic Buddha, the whole universe pictured as one boundless body of light, about the grandest abstraction Buddhism owns. So the monk's question aims sky-high: where is that ultimate reality, the true body itself? National Teacher Zhong, a top-ranked monk who advised emperors, replies by handing him a chore, fetch the water jug, now put it back. The lofty body he's after is in his hands, in the jug, in the carrying. When the monk plows on and asks the same enormous question again, Zhong tells him the old Buddha has been gone a very long time, meaning the statue-version of truth he keeps fishing for died ages back. The reaching is itself the miss; aim at it as a thing out there and the jug already in your grip goes invisible. This is the bowl-washing of case 39 in another key, the towering question met by the nearest task.