31Can You Sell This?勘辨

師問院主：「什麼處來？」主云：「州中糶黃米去來。」師云：「糶得盡麼？」主云：「糶得盡。」師以杖面前畫一畫，云：「還糶得這箇麼？」主便喝，師便打。典座至，師舉前語。典座云：「院主不會和尚意。」師云：「爾作麼生？」典座便禮拜，師亦打。有座主來相看次，師問座主：「講何經說？」主云：「某甲荒虛，粗習《百法論》。」師云：「有一人於三乘十二分教明得，有一人於三乘十二分教明不得，是同？是別？」主云：「明得即同，明不得即別。」樂普為侍者，在師後立，云：「座主，這裏是什麼所在，說同？說別？」師回首問侍者：「汝又作麼生？」侍者便喝。師送座主回來，遂問侍者：「適來是汝喝老僧？」侍者云：「是。」師便打。

Linji asked the temple steward, "Where have you been?"

"Down in town, selling off the millet."

"Sell all of it?"

"Every bit."

With his staff Linji drew a line on the ground in front of him. "Can you sell this?"

The steward shouted. Linji hit him.

Later the head cook came by, and Linji told him what had happened.

"The steward didn't catch your meaning," the cook said.

"And you?"

The cook bowed. Linji hit him too.

A lecture-master came to pay his respects. Linji asked, "What sutra do you teach?"

"I'm only a clumsy amateur, but I've worked through the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas a little."

Linji said, "Take one man who has mastered the whole canon, the three vehicles and the twelve divisions of the teaching, and another who has mastered none of it. Same, or different?"

"The one who has mastered it, same," said the master. "The one who hasn't, different."

Lepu, standing behind Linji as his attendant, spoke up. "Master, what kind of place do you take this for, that we should be talking 'same' and 'different'?"

Linji turned to him. "And you, what do you say?"

Lepu shouted.

When Linji had seen the lecture-master off, he came back and asked the attendant, "Was it me you shouted at just now?"

"It was."

Linji hit him.

Pointer

One of the longer stretches of testing, four people stress-tested back to back. The thread to watch is the borrowed move: students had learned that a sudden shout supposedly proved you had cut through ordinary mind, and that a smooth gesture could pass for insight, and they keep trying these on Linji to win his nod. The steward sells off the monastery's millet and figures he can "sell" the line Linji scratches in the dirt too, treating a live demand like more inventory. The cook explains the steward instead of showing his own hand. The lecture-master, a scholar-monk who teaches scripture, files Linji's "same or different" question into a tidy textbook answer. Lepu, Linji's young attendant, shouts to look like he has it. Every one of them gets hit, and the lesson is not that the shout is wrong but that any move performed to earn approval is just another place to hide. Compare case 41, where Linji lays out what a real shout is, and case 35, where Lepu tries this same shout and eats the same stick.