33Gold Dust in the Eye勘辨

王常侍一日訪師，同師於僧堂前看，乃問：「這一堂僧還看經麼？」師云：「不看經。」侍云：「還學禪麼？」師云：「不學禪。」侍云：「經又不看、禪又不學，畢竟作箇什麼？」師云：「總教伊成佛作祖去。」侍云：「金屑雖貴，落眼成翳，又作麼生？」師云：「將為爾是箇俗漢。」

One day Minister Wang came to see Linji. As they stood together in front of the monks' hall, Wang asked, "Do the monks in this hall read the sutras?"

Linji said, "No, they don't read the sutras."

"Do they practice meditation?"

"No, they don't practice meditation."

"They don't read, they don't meditate. So what on earth do they do?"

"I'm turning every last one of them into a buddha, into an ancestor."

Wang said, "Gold dust is precious, but get it in your eye and you can't see. What about that?"

Linji said, "Here I took you for an ordinary man."

Pointer

Minister Wang is a senior government official and a patron of the monastery, so this is a sharp, educated layman trading blows with the abbot, not a tourist out of his depth. Linji's school was known for throwing out the usual monk routine, no scripture-chanting, no sitting meditation, so when he says his monks do neither, Wang is really asking what the place is even for. Linji answers big: he is turning every last one of them into a buddha and an ancestor. Then Wang lands the cleaner shot, "gold dust is precious, but get it in your eye and you cannot see," meaning even Linji's lofty buddha-talk becomes grit that blinds you the second you clutch it, the highest teaching turning into the obstruction. That is Linji's own medicine, the warning that the thing you came to acquire is the thing in your way, used on him by a layman, and his reply, "here I took you for an ordinary man," is the tip of the hat.