54Bow to Buddha or Bow to the Ancestor?行錄

師到達磨塔頭，塔主云：「長老先禮佛？先禮祖？」師云：「佛、祖俱不禮。」塔主云：「佛、祖與長老是什麼冤家？」師便拂袖而出。

Linji came to the shrine holding Bodhidharma's remains. The keeper asked, "Will the elder bow to the Buddha first, or to the Ancestor first?"

Linji said, "I bow to neither."

The keeper said, "What did the Buddha and the Ancestor ever do to make an enemy of you?"

Linji shook out his sleeves and walked off.

Pointer

Now the record turns to Linji on the road, dropping in on shrines and other teachers, and this is the first stop. Bodhidharma is "the Ancestor," the monk credited with carrying Zen from India to China, so the hall holding his remains is about as holy as ground gets, and the keeper assumes any visiting elder is here to worship. His question is a courteous trap: which figure gets the first bow, the Buddha or the Ancestor, taking for granted that bowing is the whole reason Linji came. Linji throws out the premise, "I bow to neither," because treating those two as external authorities to kneel before is exactly the dependence his teaching exists to cut; the live person is supposed to be the temple, not the corpse in the stupa. The keeper presses, why make enemies of them, and Linji doesn't debate it. He flicks his sleeves and walks, and in this world the exit is the argument.