45Puhua Walks Off in His Coffin勘辨

普化一日於街市中就人乞直裰，人皆與之，普化俱不要。師令院主買棺一具，普化歸來，師云：「我與汝做得箇直裰了也。」普化便自擔去，繞街市叫云：「臨濟與我做直裰了也，我往東門遷化去。」市人競隨看之。普化云：「我今日未，來日往南門遷化去。」如是三日，人皆不信，至第四日無人隨看，獨出城外，自入棺內，倩路行人釘之，即時傳布，市人競往開棺，乃見全身脫去，秖聞空中鈴響隱隱而去。

One day Puhua went around the market begging people for a robe. Everyone offered him one, but he turned them all down. So Linji had the monastery steward buy a coffin. When Puhua came back, Linji said, "There, I've got your robe ready."

Puhua hoisted the coffin onto his shoulder and carried it off himself, parading through the market and shouting, "Linji made me a robe! I'm off to the East Gate to die!" The whole town crowded after him to watch.

"Not today," Puhua said. "Tomorrow I'll die at the South Gate."

This went on for three days, until people stopped believing him. By the fourth day no one bothered to follow. Alone, he walked out beyond the city walls, climbed into the coffin, and asked a passing traveler to nail down the lid. Word spread at once. The townspeople raced out and pried the coffin open, and found it empty. He was gone, body and all. The only trace was the faint ringing of his bell, fading off somewhere up in the sky.

Pointer

Puhua is the holy fool who shadows Linji through this record, ringing a little bell and acting crazy in ways that cut deeper than the serious monks ever managed; Yangshan's prophecy in case 52 set him up as the strange helper Linji would find when he went north. Begging the townsfolk for a robe, he turns down every one they offer, because the robe he wants is a shroud, and Linji is the only one who hears it: he sends for a coffin. Then comes the trickster's masterstroke. Puhua announces his death day after day, parading the coffin through the market until the crowd gives up on the show, and only when nobody is watching does he climb in, get the lid nailed shut, and slip off for real. The vanished body and the bell fading in the sky are the kind of tall-tale flourish these records love, but the joke underneath is sober: he made the crowd's appetite for a spectacle the very thing that let him die unobserved, on no one's terms but his own.