65Linji's Last Words行錄

師臨遷化時據坐云：「吾滅後不得滅却吾正法眼藏。」三聖出云：「爭敢滅却和尚正法眼藏？」師云：「已後有人問爾，向他道什麼？」三聖便喝。師云：「誰知吾正法眼藏向這瞎驢邊滅却。」言訖端然示寂。

As he was about to die, Linji sat upright and said, "After I'm gone, don't let my True Dharma Eye be wiped out."

Sansheng stepped forward. "Who would dare wipe out the Master's True Dharma Eye?"

"Later, when someone asks you about it, what will you tell them?"

Sansheng gave a shout.

Linji said, "Who'd have thought my True Dharma Eye would be snuffed out by this blind donkey." And with that, sitting bolt upright, he passed away.

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This is Linji's deathbed, the man whose shouting and hitting fill the whole record now down to his last words (he died in 866). The "True Dharma Eye" is shorthand for the living core of his teaching, the real thing handed straight from teacher to student rather than the talk about it. So he charges his top student Sansheng not to let it be wiped out, then immediately tests whether the charge can even be kept: when someone asks you about it later, what will you say? Sansheng answers with one of Linji's own trademark shouts, throwing the master's method back at him. Linji's reply, calling him a "blind donkey," reads like an insult and that is the knot of the case. He could be saying the kid fumbled it, or he could be half-proud that his student just proved the teaching is already loose in the world, alive past anyone's power to "preserve." Then he dies upright, mid-question, and the ambiguity is the last thing he leaves on the table.