35Both Miss勘辨

師問樂普云：「從上來，一人行棒，一人行喝，阿那箇親？」普云：「總不親。」師云：「親處作麼生？」普便喝，師乃打。

Linji asked Lepu, "All along, one master hits with the stick and another shouts. Which one gets it?"

Lepu said, "Neither gets it."

Linji said, "Then what does getting it look like?"

Lepu shouted. Linji hit him.

Pointer

Two house methods sit side by side here: whacking a student with the stick, the way Deshan worked (case 32), and barking a sudden shout, the way Linji did, both aimed at knocking the mind off its rails. Linji asks his attendant Lepu which one actually reaches the mark, "gets it." Lepu plays safe and says neither does, a tidy bit of fence-sitting. So Linji closes the exit: then show me what reaching the mark looks like. Lepu shouts, and Linji's stick comes down at once, which is itself the reply, stick answering shout. The question alive in it is whether Lepu's shout was a move arising on the spot or just the master's gesture copied to look sharp, the exact failure that got him hit in case 31. Linji is not collecting a winning method, he is watching for the difference between a live act and a borrowed one.