39Yunmen: Caught by Your Own Words雲門話墮

雲門因僧問。光明寂照遍河沙。一句未絕。門遽曰。豈不是張拙秀才語。僧云是。門云話墮也。後來死心。拈云。且道那裏是者僧話墮處。

A monk began quoting to Yunmen: "Radiant light shines silent over numberless sands—"

Before he could finish the line, Yunmen cut in: "Isn't that the scholar Zhang Zhuo's poem?"

"It is," said the monk.

"You just blew it," said Yunmen.

Years later Sixin took this up and asked: "So tell me, where exactly did the monk blow it?"

Wumen's Comment 無門曰

若向者裏。見得雲門用處。孤危者僧。因甚話墮。堪與人天為師。若也未明。自救不了。

See right here what Yunmen was doing, see why this monk, poised and sharp as he was, still blew it, and you are fit to teach gods and humans alike. Miss it, and you cannot even save yourself.

Verse 頌曰

急流垂釣
貪餌者著
口縫纔開
性命喪卻

A hook dropped in the rushing current.
Greedy for the bait, he bites.
The moment his mouth cracks open,
his life is gone.

Pointer

Yunmen, the tenth-century master (Five Dynasties, 864–949) famous for cutting people off mid-sentence, springs his trap on a monk who is not fumbling at all. The monk is confidently reciting a respected line by the layman-poet Zhang Zhuo, "radiant light shines silent over numberless sands," the kind of polished spiritual phrase that normally earns a nod. The moment he confirms it is Zhang Zhuo's, he has shown he is leaning on borrowed words and a stranger's experience instead of speaking from his own, and that admission is the fall. "Caught by your own words" (話墮, literally "speech fallen") is the charge: he talked himself into the pit, biting a baited hook the instant his mouth opened. The later teacher Sixin then turns the screw on the reader, refusing to let you just agree, and asking you to put your finger on the exact word where the monk went under. So which word was it?