46Step Forward from the Top of the Pole竿頭進步

石霜和尚云。百尺竿頭如何進步。又古德云。百尺竿頭坐底人。雖然得入。未為真。百尺竿頭須進步十方世界現全身。

Master Shishuang said, "You're at the top of a hundred-foot pole. How do you step forward?"

And an old master put it this way: "The one sitting atop the hundred-foot pole has gotten somewhere, true, but it isn't the real thing yet. From the top of the pole you have to step forward and show your whole body throughout the ten directions."

Wumen's Comment 無門曰

進得步翻得身。更嫌何處不稱尊。然雖如是。且道百尺竿頭如何進步。嗄。

Take that step, turn your whole body around, and where then would you not be at home? Fine. But tell me: at the top of a hundred-foot pole, how exactly do you step forward? Hah!

Verse 頌曰

瞎卻頂門眼
錯認定盤星
拚身能捨命
一盲引眾盲

He blinds the eye atop his head,
misreads the marker on the scale.
He throws the body off, gives up his life,
one blind man leading a crowd of the blind.

Pointer

Shishuang and the unnamed "old master" are early Chan teachers, and the hundred-foot pole is their image for spiritual progress. You climb to the very top, total stillness, the breakthrough everyone is after, and the trap snaps shut the moment you decide you have arrived. Shishuang calls the summit a dead end if you camp there. The instruction is to step off the top, past your own awakening, back down into the ordinary mess where the "ten directions" simply means everywhere, and to live it with your whole body instead of perching above the world admiring the view. That is the same return that runs through "ordinary mind is the way" (19): the pole was never the destination. Read the verse as a warning, not applause. A teacher who hugs his enlightenment goes blind to what is in front of him and becomes one blind man leading a crowd of the blind. So, standing at the top: which way is forward?