92Yunmen's One Treasure雲門一寶

Introduction 示眾

得游戲神通大三昧，解眾生語言陀羅尼。拽轉睦州秦時𨍏輅鑽，弄出雪峯南山鱉鼻蛇。還識得此人麼？

He has mastered the great trance where miracles come out to play, and holds the spell that cracks open every tongue living things speak. He can take hold of Muzhou's ancient war-chariot drill and spin it, and flush Xuefeng's turtle-nosed snake out of South Mountain. So: do you know who this man is?

雲門大師云：「乾坤之內，宇宙之間，中有一寶，祕在形山。」拈燈籠向佛殿裏，將三門來燈籠上。

Master Yunmen said, "Within heaven and earth, out in the wide cosmos, there is one treasure, hidden in the mountain of your body." Then he picked up a lantern, carried it into the Buddha hall, and set the temple gate on top of the lantern.

Verse 頌

收卷餘懷厭事華，
歸來何處是生涯。
爛柯樵子疑無路，
挂樹壺公妙有家。
夜水金波浮桂影，
秋風雪陣擁蘆花。
寒魚著底不吞餌，
興盡清歌却轉槎。

Rolling up the last of my longing, sick of the world's bright noise,
I come home, but where is a life to be found?
The woodcutter, his axe handle rotted through, doubts the road back exists.
The old man who hung the world in a gourd keeps a marvelous house inside.
On the night river, golden ripples lift the shadow of the cassia moon.
The autumn wind drives ranks of snow, reed-flowers scattered like a charge.
The cold fish lies on the bottom and won't take the bait.
Joy spent, I sing a clear song and turn the raft around.

Pointer

Yunmen (864–949, Five Dynasties) was among the sharpest masters of his era, known for one-line jolts. He quotes an old line from a Buddhist text, "within heaven and earth, in the cosmos, there is one treasure hidden in the mountain of form," where "mountain of form" means your own body. Most ears take that as poetry about a precious buddha-nature to be mined out of you. Yunmen drops the mystery entirely: he grabs a lantern, carries it into the Buddha hall, and balances the giant temple gate on top of it, ordinary objects handled as if the whole place weighed nothing. The treasure isn't buried in some special vault; it's the lantern, the gate, this. The verse parades people who searched elsewhere, the woodcutter whose axe-handle rots while he watches immortals at their game and the sage who kept a paradise inside a gourd, then ends on a fish too wise to take the hook. Quit fishing for it.