54Yunyan's Hands and Eyes雲巖大悲

Introduction 示眾

八面欞櫳，十方通暢。一切處放光動地，一切時妙用神通。且道：如何發現？

Windows on all eight sides, open clear through in every direction. Everywhere it floods with light and shakes the ground; every moment it works its wonders. So tell me: how do you spot it?

雲巖問道吾：「大悲菩薩用許多手眼作麼？」吾云：「如人夜間背手摸枕子。」巖云：「我會也。」吾云：「汝作麼生會？」巖云：「遍身是手眼。」吾云：「道即大曬，道即得八成。」巖云：「師兄作麼生？」吾云：「通身是手眼。」

Yunyan asked Daowu, "What does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with all those hands and eyes?"
Daowu said, "It's like reaching back in the dark to fix your pillow."
Yunyan said, "I get it."
Daowu said, "What do you get?"
Yunyan said, "Hands and eyes all over the body."
Daowu said, "Well said. But you've only got eighty percent of it."
Yunyan said, "How would you put it, brother?"
Daowu said, "Hand and eye through the whole body."

Verse 頌

一竅虛通，
八面櫺櫳。
無象無私春入律，
不留不礙月行空。
清淨寶目功德臂，
遍身何似通身是？
現前手眼顯全機，
大用縱橫何忌諱？

One hole, open and clear,
windows on all eight sides.
No shape, no favorites: spring slips into the season.
Nothing held, nothing blocked: the moon crosses the sky.
Pure, jeweled eyes; arms of merit.
"All over the body": how does it match "through the whole body"?
Hands and eyes right here lay the whole works bare.
Great function runs every which way. What's there to flinch from?

Pointer

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion is Guanyin (Avalokiteshvara), often shown with a thousand arms, an eye set in every palm, a picture of compassion reaching all directions at once. Yunyan and Daowu were fellow students, which is why Yunyan calls him brother, and Yunyan is poking at the image: a thousand hands and eyes, what are they actually for? Daowu's answer is the case. It's like reaching back in the dark to fix your pillow, no looking, no deciding, the body just doing it. Compassion that works that way isn't a calculated good deed; it moves before the self gets involved. Then the two split hairs over wording, "all over the body" against "throughout the body," and Daowu's "eighty percent" needle is the real teaching. A right answer can still be standing a half-step outside the thing it names. This is Yunyan again from the memorial two cases back (49), the teacher whose every word both lands and slightly misses.