86Linji's Great Awakening臨濟大悟

Introduction 示眾

銅頭鐵額，天眼龍睛，雕觜魚顋，熊心豹膽。金剛劍下，是計不納，一籌不獲。為甚麼如此？

A head of bronze, a forehead of iron. A god's eye, a dragon's pupil. An eagle's beak, a fish's gills. A bear's heart, a leopard's nerve. And still, under the diamond sword, not one scheme gets through, not one trick lands. Why is that?

臨濟問黃蘗：「如何是佛法的的大意？」蘗便打。如是三度，乃辭蘗，見大愚。愚問：「甚麼處來？」濟云：「黃蘗來。」愚云：「黃蘗有何言句？」濟云：「某甲三問佛法的的大意，三度喫棒，不知有過無過。」愚云：「黃蘗恁麼，老婆為爾得徹困，更來問有過無過！」濟於言下大悟。

Linji asked Huangbo, "What is the real point of the Buddha's teaching?"

Huangbo hit him. Three times this happened.

So Linji left, and went to see Dayu.

Dayu asked, "Where have you come from?"

"From Huangbo."

"And what did Huangbo have to say?"

"Three times I asked him the real point of the Buddha's teaching, and three times I got the stick. I don't know what I did wrong."

Dayu said, "Huangbo is that kind. He wore himself out like a grandmother to set you free, and here you are asking what you did wrong."

At these words, Linji woke up.

Verse 頌

九包之鶵，
千里之駒。
真風度籥，
靈機發樞。
劈面來時飛電急，
迷雲破處太陽孤。
捋虎鬚，
見也無？
箇是雄雄大丈夫。

A fledgling out of the deep nest,
a colt that runs a thousand miles.
The true wind through the pipe,
the spirit-spring sprung from its hinge.
Straight at your face it comes, quick as forked lightning;
where the fog of confusion tears, the sun stands alone.
He yanked the tiger's whiskers.
Did he see it, or not?
Here is a real man.

Pointer

Linji (died 866) went on to found the most aggressive school of Chan in China, the one that runs on the shout and the blow; this is the story of how he got there. As a young monk he asks his teacher Huangbo an earnest question, what is the actual point of the Buddha's teaching, and gets beaten for it three times with no word of explanation. Crushed, he goes to Dayu expecting comfort, and Dayu turns it over: Huangbo wasn't cruel, he was kind to the point of wearing himself out like a grandmother, and Linji is too busy with self-pity to see it. The thing he kept hunting, a doctrine to seize as "the real point," was never going to arrive as a sentence; hearing that, something breaks open. The verse cheers the prize colt who finally bolts free. The man minted here is the same one we meet drawing a line in the dirt in case 95.