70Jin Asks About Nature進山問性

Introduction 示眾

聞香象渡河底，已隨流去；知生不生性底，為生之所留。更論定前定後、作笋作篾，劍去久矣，爾方刻舟。蹋轉機輪，作麼生別行一路？試請舉看。

The fragrance-smelling elephant has already reached the riverbed and gone off with the current. A man who knows the nature of birth-that-is-not-born is still held back by birth. And here you are arguing over whether to fix things before or after, turning shoots into bamboo, bamboo into woven strips. The sword fell in the water long ago, and only now do you carve a notch in the boat to mark the spot. Turn the wheel of the works. How do you walk a road of your own? Let's see.

進山主問脩山主云：「明知生不生性，為甚麼為生之所留？」脩云：「筍畢竟成竹去，如今作篾使還得麼？」進云：「汝向後自悟去在。」脩云：「某甲只如此，上座意旨如何？」進云：「這箇是監院房，那箇是典座房。」脩便禮拜。

Abbot Jin asked Abbot Xiu, "I know clearly that the nature of things is unborn. Then why does birth still hold me?"

Xiu said, "A shoot becomes bamboo in the end. But right now, can you take it and weave it into strips?"

Jin said, "Later on you'll wake to it yourself."

Xiu said, "This is only how I see it. What do you mean, sir?"

Jin said, "This is the manager's room. That's the cook's room."

Xiu bowed.

Verse 頌

豁落亡依，
高閑不羈。
家邦平怗到人稀，
些些力量分階級，
蕩蕩身心絕是非。
是非絕，
介立大方無軌轍。

Wide open, nothing to lean on,
high and idle, off the leash.
The country at peace, few people come around.
A little force, and you have ranks and grades;
body and mind swept clear, right and wrong gone.
Right and wrong gone,
stand alone in the open, no ruts, no tracks.

Pointer

Two heads of mountain temples are talking shop about the deepest teaching in the school: that nothing is ever really "born," things merely arise and pass with no fixed self standing behind them. Abbot Jin's question is the honest one every practitioner hits. If I genuinely understand that, why am I still stuck in the ordinary churn of living and dying? Xiu answers with bamboo: a shoot becomes bamboo eventually, but you cannot weave strips from it today, so stop being so impatient about your own ripening. They feint at each other over who actually sees it, and then Jin quits philosophizing and just points, this is the manager's room, that is the cook's room. The unborn is not stored somewhere finer than here; it is the plain furniture of the day, the rooms you already walk through. Xiu's bow says he caught the turn from theory to the thing itself.