75Ruiyan Asks About the Eternal瑞巖常理

Introduction 示眾

喚作如如，早是變也。智不到處，切忌道著。這裏還有參究分也無？

Call it "thusness" and already it has shifted. Where thinking can't reach, whatever you do, don't name it. Is there room here to dig in and work it through?

瑞巖問巖頭：「如何是本常理？」頭云：「動也。」巖云：「動時如何？」頭云：「不見本常理。」巖佇思。頭云：「肯即未脫根塵，不肯即永沈生死。」

Ruiyan asked Yantou, "What is the original, eternal truth?"
Yantou said, "It moves."
Ruiyan said, "And when it moves?"
Yantou said, "Then you don't see the original, eternal truth."
Ruiyan stood there, turning it over.
Yantou said, "Agree, and you're still stuck in the dust of the senses. Refuse, and you drown forever in birth and death."

Verse 頌

圓珠不穴，
大璞不琢。
道人所貴無稜角，
拈却肯路根塵空，
脫體無依活卓卓。

A perfect pearl has no hole.
Raw jade goes uncarved.
What a true person prizes: no edges, no corners.
Throw away the road of yes, and the dust of the senses empties.
Free of the body, leaning on nothing, alive and standing clear.

Pointer

Yantou Quanhuo and his student Ruiyan are sparring, and Ruiyan wants the one fixed eternal truth behind everything handed over, the bedrock that never shifts. Yantou will not hold still for it: "It moves." The whole trap lives in the word "eternal." Ruiyan is hunting something solid to stand on, and Yantou keeps pulling the floor out from under each grab. The last line is the killer. Agree, nod along, and you have turned the answer into one more object to clutch, snagged again in the "dust" of sense-experience you hoard; refuse, dig in and argue, and you sink back into the endless churn of birth and death. Both doors are wired. Ruiyan stands there turning it over, which is the only honest response, since the instruction is to quit looking for a handle: a perfect pearl has no hole to thread, and Hongzhi means that as praise.