12Ordinary, Nothing to Do示眾

師示眾云：「道流！佛法無用功處，秖是平常無事——屙屎、送尿、著衣、喫飯，困來即臥。愚人笑我，智乃知焉。古人云：『向外作工夫，總是癡頑漢。』爾且隨處作主，立處皆真，境來回換不得。縱有從來習氣、五無間業，自為解脫大海。今時學者總不識法，猶如觸鼻羊，逢著物安在口裏，奴郎不辨，賓主不分。如是之流，邪心入道，鬧處即入不得，名為真出家人，正是真俗家人。夫出家者，須辨得平常真正見解，辨佛、辨魔，辨真、辨偽，辨凡、辨聖。若如是辨得，名真出家。若魔、佛不辨，正是出一家入一家，喚作造業眾生，未得名為真出家。秖如今有一箇佛魔同體不分，如水乳合，鵝王喫乳。如明眼道流，魔、佛俱打。爾若愛聖憎凡，生死海裏浮沈。」

Linji addressed the assembly: "Followers of the Way! In the Buddha's teaching there's nothing to work at. It's ordinary, with nothing to do: you shit, you piss, you put on your clothes, you eat, and when you're tired you lie down. Fools laugh at me; the wise understand. As the old master said, 'Work at it from the outside and you're just a stubborn fool.'

Wherever you are, be the master, and every place you stand is true. Then nothing that comes at you can turn you. Even old habits, even the five unforgivable crimes, become of themselves the great ocean of liberation.

Students these days don't know the teaching at all. They're like sheep that take whatever bumps their nose and stuff it in their mouths. They can't tell servant from master, guest from host. People like that enter the Way with a crooked heart; the moment things get noisy they're lost. Call them real monks if you like, but they're householders in robes.

A real monk has to grasp the plain, true view: tell a buddha from a devil, the real from the false, the ordinary from the holy. Sort them out like that and you're a real monk. If you can't tell devil from buddha, you've only walked out of one house into another. You're a creature heaping up karma, not yet a real monk.

Now take buddha and devil fused in one body, undivided, like water and milk poured together. The king of geese drinks off only the milk. A clear-eyed follower of the Way strikes down both devil and buddha. Love the holy and hate the ordinary, and you'll go on bobbing in the ocean of birth and death."

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The famous line lands here: awakening is "ordinary, with nothing to do," you shit, you piss, you dress, you eat, and when you're tired you lie down. The "five unforgivable crimes" are Buddhism's classic list of acts beyond pardon (killing your parents and the like); Linji's claim is that even those dissolve into the "great ocean of liberation" once you stop straining after holiness. Then the turn. Most religious people assume the goal is to choose the holy over the ordinary, buddha over devil, and Linji says a genuinely clear person clings to neither side. The king of geese was believed to drink the milk and leave the water behind, a stock image for picking out the pure, but Linji one-ups it: drop the whole milk-and-water sorting game and strike down both devil and buddha. Loving holiness is just one more rope keeping you in the ocean of birth and death. He'll make this anti-holiness savage in the long sermons ahead (17, 18, 22).