37The Cypress in the Garden庭前柏樹

趙州因僧問。如何是祖師西來意。州云。庭前柏樹子。

A monk asked Zhaozhou, "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?"
Zhaozhou said, "The cypress tree in the garden."

Wumen's Comment 無門曰

若向趙州答處。見得親切。前無釋迦。後無彌勒。

If you can see straight into Zhaozhou's answer, then there is no Shakyamuni before you and no Maitreya behind.

Verse 頌曰

言無展事
語不投機
承言者喪
滯句者迷

Words lay out nothing.
Speech meets nothing.
Cling to the words, and you are undone.
Linger on the line, and you are lost.

Pointer

"Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" is the standard Chan way of asking the biggest question there is: what is the whole point, of the teaching, of practice, of any of it. Bodhidharma carried Zen from India to China, so his "coming from the West" stands for the very heart of what he brought, and monks asked this fishing for a grand pronouncement. Zhaozhou just names whatever happens to be in the yard, that cypress out front. The bait is to take the tree as a symbol and start decoding it, reading the answer as a riddle with a hidden meaning. The verse slams that shut: words lay out nothing, cling to the line and you are lost. He met a cosmic question with a household object, the same flatness he uses everywhere (case 31), refusing to let the point shrink into something you can chew. So what is the cypress before you turn it into a clue?