74Fayan on Names法眼質名

Introduction 示眾

富有萬德，蕩無纖塵。離一切相，即一切法。百尺竿頭進步，十方世界全身。且道：甚麼處得來？

Rich with every virtue. Swept clean of the last speck of dust. Past all forms, it is everything there is. Step off the top of the hundred-foot pole and your whole body fills the ten directions. So tell me: where did it come from?

僧問法眼：「承教有言：『從無住本立一切法。』如何是無住本？」眼云：「形興未質，名起未名。」

A monk asked Fayan, "The teaching says all things are set up on a groundless ground. What is the groundless ground?"
Fayan said, "Shape arises before there is substance; a name comes up before there is a name."

Verse 頌

沒蹤跡，
斷消息。
白雲無根，
清風何色。
散乾蓋而非心，
持坤輿而有力。
洞千古之淵源，
造萬象之模則。
剎塵道會也，處處普賢；
樓閣門開也，
頭頭彌勒。

No tracks.
No word.
A white cloud, rootless.
The clear wind, what color is it?
It scatters across the sky's dome, and is not a mind.
It holds up the whole earth, and has that much force.
It runs the deep source of all the ages,
it casts the mold for the ten thousand things.
Every speck of every land wakes, and everywhere is Samantabhadra.
The tower gate swings open,
and every head is Maitreya.

Pointer

Fayan Wenyi (885–958, Five Dynasties) founded one of the major Chan houses and was known for catching monks inside their own words. Here the monk quotes a slogan from the teachings, that everything which exists is built on something with no fixed ground beneath it, "the rootless root," and he wants Fayan to point at that bottomless bottom. The trap is the wanting itself: he is fishing for a thing to grab, and the whole claim is that there is nothing to grab. So Fayan goes earlier than the question, shape shows up before there is anything solid to be shaped, a name lands before there is anything for it to name. Samantabhadra and Maitreya are two great bodhisattvas, and Hongzhi's verse closes on the payoff: once this lands, every dust mote and every passing face is already them, with nothing held back to find.