47Doushuai's Three Barriers兜率三關

兜率悅和尚。設三關問學者。撥草參玄只圖見性。即今上人性在甚處。識得自性。方脫生死。眼光落時。作麼生脫。脫得生死。便知去處。四大分離。向甚處去。

Master Doushuai Cong set three barriers to test his students:

You part the weeds and probe the depths only to see your own nature. So right now, where is that nature?

Once you know your own nature, you break free of life and death. So when the light goes out of your eyes, how do you break free?

Once you're free of life and death, you know where you're bound. So when the body falls apart, where do you go?

Wumen's Comment 無門曰

若能下得此三轉語。便可以隨處作主。遇緣即宗。其或未然、麤餐易飽、細嚼難飢。

Give the turning word for all three and you are master wherever you stand, meeting whatever comes from the source itself. Fail, and you're the man who bolts coarse food and is soon hungry again, while the one who chews slowly never goes hungry at all.

Verse 頌曰

一念普觀無量劫
無量劫事即如今
如今覷破箇一念
覷破如今覷底人

A single thought takes in the endless ages;
the endless ages are nothing but now.
See clean through this one present thought,
and you see through the one who is looking.

Pointer

Doushuai Congyue was a Song-dynasty Chan master, and his three barriers are really one question asked three ways, each version harder to slip out of. "Your own nature" is what every monk is supposedly chasing: what you actually are underneath the running commentary. The first barrier asks where that nature is right now. The second asks how you break free of death when the light is actually leaving your eyes. The third asks where you go once the body comes apart. All three want the answer in the living moment, not a doctrine you recite, and "I'll sort it out when I die" is exactly the dodge they are built to refuse. The verse hands you the angle: past and future collapse into this one present thought, so stop searching the timeline and turn the looking back on the one who is looking. Where is your nature, this second?