63Zhaozhou Asks About Dying趙州問死

Introduction 示眾

三聖、雪峯，春蘭秋菊；趙州、投子，卞璧燕金。無星秤上兩頭平，沒底舡中一處渡。二人相見時如何？

Sansheng and Xuefeng. Spring orchids, autumn chrysanthemums. Zhaozhou and Touzi. The famous jade of Bian, the priceless gold of Yan. A scale with no markings, and still both pans hang even. A bottomless boat, and everyone crosses in it. When two such men meet, what then?

趙州問投子：「大死底人却活時如何？」子云：「不許夜行，投明須到。」

Zhaozhou asked Touzi, "A man has died the Great Death and come back to life. What then?"

Touzi said, "No traveling by night. Get there in daylight."

Verse 頌

芥城劫石妙窮初，
活眼環中照廓虛。
不許夜行投曉到，
家音未肯付鴻魚。

Mustard-seed city, kalpa-grinding stone: the mind probes the first beginning.
The living eye, dead center, lights the empty vast.
No traveling by night; arrive when day has come.
Word from home, not yet trusted to wild goose or fish.

Pointer

Zhaozhou, one of the great Chan masters, is quizzing the teacher Touzi with a test question. The "Great Death" isn't literal dying; it's Chan slang for the total collapse of your old self, ego and every certainty wiped clean. The catch is what comes next, because a real practitioner doesn't stay parked in that blank emptied-out state. So Zhaozhou asks, in effect, once you've died to everything, then what? Touzi answers with a folksy proverb, no traveling by night, wait and walk in broad daylight, his way of saying don't get stuck creeping through the void, come all the way back out in the open and fully alive. This is the cooler twin of the same demand you meet at Mazu's sun-face moon-face (case 36): emptiness is only half the road. The verse's "mustard-seed city" and "kalpa-grinding stone" are old images for a nearly endless stretch of time, and the "wild goose and fish" were traditional letter-carriers, so the real word can't be mailed; you have to arrive in person.