52The Letter to Guishan行錄

師為黃蘗馳書去溈山，時仰山作知客，接得書便問：「這箇是黃蘗底？那箇是專使底？」師便掌，仰山約住云：「老兄知是般事便休。」同去見溈山，溈山便問：「黃蘗師兄多少眾？」師云：「七百眾。」溈山云：「什麼人為導首？」師云：「適來已達書了也。」師却問溈山：「和尚此間多少眾？」溈山云：「一千五百眾。」師云：「太多生。」溈山云：「黃蘗師兄亦不少。」師辭溈山，仰山送出，云：「汝向後北去有箇住處。」師云：「豈有與麼事？」仰山云：「但去。已後有一人佐輔老兄在，此人秖是有頭無尾、有始無終。」師後倒鎮州，普化已在彼中。師出世，普化佐贊於師。師住未久，普化全身脫去。

Huangbo sent Linji off to carry a letter to Guishan. Yangshan was serving as guest-receiver, and when he took the letter he asked, "This part is Huangbo's. Which part is the messenger's?" Linji slapped him. Yangshan caught his arm and said, "All right, old man, you know how it goes. Enough." Then the two of them went in to see Guishan.

Guishan asked, "How many monks does my brother Huangbo have over there?"

Linji said, "Seven hundred."

Guishan said, "And who leads them?"

Linji said, "I already delivered the letter." Then he turned it back on Guishan: "And how many do you have here?"

Guishan said, "Fifteen hundred."

Linji said, "That's a lot."

Guishan said, "Brother Huangbo has no small number himself."

When Linji left, Yangshan saw him off and said, "Head north and there's a place waiting for you."

Linji said, "How could that be?"

Yangshan said, "Just go. Later a man will turn up to back you, old man. But all he has is a head with no tail, a beginning with no end."

Later Linji landed in Zhenzhou, where Puhua already was. When Linji set up his teaching, Puhua helped him along. Before long Puhua walked off, body and all, and vanished.

Pointer

Huangbo sends Linji on an errand carrying a letter to Guishan, a major master with a huge community, and the trip becomes the bridge from Linji's training to his own teaching seat. At the door Yangshan, Guishan's sharp young disciple, opens with a riddle: he splits the letter into "Huangbo's part" and "the messenger's part" and dares Linji to say which is which. Linji answers with a slap, and Yangshan calls it good. The small talk that follows, how many monks does each house have, is the same trap in plainer clothes, and Linji keeps refusing to be pinned to a number or a name. The payoff is Yangshan's parting prophecy that Linji will head north and find a helper with "a head and no tail, a beginning and no end," brilliant and wild but unfinished. That helper is Puhua, and the case quietly fast-forwards to his arrival and his vanishing death, the same scene case 45 tells in full.