1Layman Pang's Life行狀

襄州居士龐蘊，字道玄，衡州衡陽縣人也。世本儒業，少悟塵勞，志求真諦。唐貞元初，謁石頭禪師，乃問：「不與萬法為侶者是甚麼人？」頭以手掩其口，豁然有省。一日，石頭問曰：「子見老僧以來，日用事作麼生？」士曰：「若問日用事，即無開口處。」頭曰：「知子恁麼方始問子。」士乃呈偈曰：
日用事無別，唯吾自偶諧。
頭頭非取捨，處處沒張乖。
朱紫誰為號，丘山絕點埃。
神通并妙用，運水與搬柴。
頭然之曰：「子以緇耶？素耶？」士曰：「願從所慕。」遂不剃染。

Layman Pang of Xiangzhou was named Yun, styled Daoxuan. He came from Hengyang County in Hengzhou. His family had been Confucian scholars for generations, but early on he saw through the grind of ordinary life and set his heart on the real thing.

At the start of the Zhenyuan era, he went to see the Chan master Shitou and asked, "Who is the one who isn't a partner to the ten thousand things?"

Shitou clapped a hand over Pang's mouth. Something opened up in him.

One day Shitou asked, "Since you came to me, how have you been spending your days?"

Pang said, "If you ask about my days, there's no place to open my mouth."

Shitou said, "Knowing you're like that is just why I ask."

So Pang offered a poem:

Nothing special about my days—
I only keep step with myself.
Grab at nothing, push nothing away,
nowhere left to trip and snag.
Who pins a name on red or purple?
The hills hold not a speck of dust.
Spiritual powers, miraculous works:
hauling water, carrying firewood.

Shitou approved. He asked, "Will you wear the black robe or the white? Monk or layman?"

Pang said, "Let me follow what I love." And he never shaved his head or put on the robes.

Pointer

This opens the record with its whole argument in one life: Layman Pang (died 808), the householder who woke all the way up without ever shaving his head, "layman" meaning he kept the wife, the clothes, and the day job. His first question to the master Shitou, "Who is the one not partnered with the ten thousand things," uses stock phrasing for everything that exists, so he is reaching for the self that isn't tangled into all of it, and Shitou's answer is to clap a hand over his mouth, at which something opens. The gesture works because the instant you name that self you have turned it back into one more item in the inventory, partnered with the rest. Pang's poem then plants enlightenment in hauling water and carrying firewood, done without grabbing at things or shoving them away, and when he is offered the monk's robe at the end he shrugs and stays an ordinary man, which is the bait set for every case ahead. So where exactly is the holy life supposed to happen, if not at the woodpile?