72Zhongyi's Monkey中邑獼猴

Introduction 示眾

隔江鬪智，遯甲埋兵；覿面相持，真鎗實劍。衲僧所以貴全機大用也。從慢入緊，試吐露看。

Matching wits across the river. Hidden tactics, buried troops. Then face to face: real spears, live blades. This is why a monk prizes having his whole capacity ready to use. We'll ease in, then tighten the screws. Let's see what comes out.

仰山問中邑：「如何是佛性義？」邑云：「我與爾說箇譬喻。如室有六窓，中安一獼猴，外有人喚云『狌狌』，獼猴即應。如是六窓俱喚俱應。」仰云：「只如獼猴睡時，又作麼生？」邑乃下禪床，把住云：「狌狌，我與爾相見。」

Yangshan asked Zhongyi, "What is the meaning of Buddha-nature?"

Zhongyi said, "Let me give you a comparison. Picture a room with six windows, and inside it one monkey. Someone calls in from outside, 'Hey, monkey!' and the monkey answers right back. Call at any of the six windows, and you get an answer every time."

Yangshan said, "And when the monkey's asleep, what then?"

Zhongyi climbed down off his seat, grabbed hold of him, and said, "Hey, monkey. You and I have just met, face to face."

Verse 頌

凍眠雪屋歲摧穨，
窈窕蘿門夜不開。
寒槁園林看變態，
春風吹起律筒灰。

Frozen sleep in a house of snow, the year wearing down,
the vine-grown gate hangs deep and dark, shut tight all night.
The cold garden, the bare trees: watch them start to turn.
The spring wind blows, and ash lifts from the pitch-pipe's mouth.

Pointer

Yangshan and Zhongyi are two Tang-dynasty monks, and "Buddha-nature" is the wake-up potential everyone is said to carry inside. Zhongyi answers with a tidy picture: you are a room with six windows, the six senses, and Buddha-nature is the monkey inside who calls back no matter which window someone knocks on. Neat. But Yangshan spots the leak in the metaphor and pushes his thumb into it: what about when the monkey is asleep, when you are dull, not alert, not answering at all? Rather than patch the theory, Zhongyi abandons it, climbs down off his seat and physically grabs him, here we are, awake or not, no diagram required. Hongzhi runs the same move through the seasons, everything frozen and shut and dead-looking, then the spring qi stirs on its own, which old Chinese astronomers claimed to catch as ash puffing from tuned bamboo pitch-pipes. Nothing was ever actually asleep.