Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (136 page)

Zen master Baofeng entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, “What a beautiful snowfall! It’s like white rice ashes covering everything! Those of you who are cold—go gather around the stove and get warm. Those of you who are tired—go pull your bed cover up over your head and sleep.

“Good brothers! You who have just come down from the monks hall—turn around and go back!”

Baofeng then shouted, got down from his seat, and left the hall.

Baofeng addressed the monks, saying, “Time passes quickly. What about that matter? Though it’s like this, I dare not make deceptions here among you, because you are all buddhas. Some old awakened one said, ‘All hindrances are complete enlightenment.’”

Baofeng suddenly lifted his staff and said, “They are not complete enlightenment!”

He then threw down the staff and said, “Throwing it back and forth. Where’s the hindrance?”

He then shouted and got down from his seat.

Baofeng is recorded to have had thirty-eight Dharma heirs. His words have been passed down in
The Record of the Snow Hut
. Upon his death, he received the posthumous title “True Purity.”

HUITANG ZUXIN, “HUANGLONG”

HUITANG ZUXIN (1025–1100) was a disciple of Huanglong Huinan. He came from Guangdong Province. He left home at the age of nineteen to live at Mt. Long’s Huiquan Temple. His first Zen teacher was named Yunfeng Wenyue.
²⁰⁰
After studying for three years, the young monk had achieved no breakthrough, so he advised Yunfeng of his desire to leave. Yue said, “You must go see Zen master Huinan at Huangbo.” Huanglong then went to study under that teacher, but after four years he still hadn’t gained clarity. He then departed and returned to Yunfeng.

Huitang discovered that Wenyue had passed away, and so he stayed at Shishuang. One day he was reading a lamp record when he came upon the passage, “A monk asked Zen master Duofu, ‘What is Duofu’s bamboo grove?’ Duofu replied, ‘One stalk, two stalks slanted.’ The monk said, ‘I don’t understand.’ Duofu then said, ‘Three stalks, four stalks crooked.’” Upon reading these words Huitang experienced great awakening and finally grasped the teaching of his previous two teachers.

Huitang returned to see Huanglong Huinan. When he arrived there and prepared to set out his sitting cushion, Huinan said, “You’ve already entered my room.”

Huitang jumped up and said, “The great matter being thus, why does the master teach kōans to the disciples and study the hundred cases [of the kōan collections]?”

Huinan said, “If I did not teach you to study in this manner, and you were left to reach the place of no-mind by your own efforts and your own confirmation, then I would be sinking you.”

A monk asked, “What was it before you ascended the Dharma seat?”

Huitang said, “There weren’t any affairs.”

The monk asked, “How about after you ascended the seat?”

Huitang said, “Lifting my face toward the sky, I don’t see the sky.”

Huitang said, “Those who want to understand the source of life and death must first clearly understand their own selves. Once they’re clear about this, then afterward they can act appropriately according to circumstances, never missing the mark.

“Before the sword appears, there is no ‘positive’ or ‘negative.’ But when it comes forth, then there are the five elements, mutually giving rise to or overcoming one another. The alien and familiar are manifested, and the four natures come into abiding. Everything becomes pigeonholed, and the sword of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ arises.

“But this leads to that which is true and false not being distinguished, to water and milk not being separated. When a disease enters into the solar plexus of a person, how can he be saved? If a weary and lost traveler doesn’t have the bright sun to assist him, he won’t find his way back home. When a person truly beholds the great function, then all delusional views are immediately forgotten. When all views are forgotten, the mist and fog are not created. When great wisdom is understood, then there is nothing else. Take care!”

Huitang entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, “‘It’s not the wind that moves. It’s not the flag that moves.’ A clear-eyed fellow can’t be fooled. But you worthies’ minds are moving slowly. Where will you look to see the ancestral teachers?”

Huitang then threw down the whisk and said, “Look!”

Huitang addressed the monks, saying, “If someone understands the self without understanding what is before the eyes, then this person has eyes but no feet. If he only awakens to what is before his eyes without understanding the self, then this person has feet, but no eyes. Throughout all hours of the day these two sorts of people possess something that is located in their chests. When this thing is in their chests, then an unsettled vision is always before their eyes. With this vision before their eyes, everything they meet gives them some hindrance. So how can they ever find peace?

“Didn’t the ancestors say, ‘If anything is grasped or lost, one enters the heretical path. When things are left as they are, the body neither goes nor stays’?”

Huitang entered the hall. Striking the meditation platform with his staff, he said, “When a single speck of dust arises, the entire earth fits inside it. A single sound permeates every being’s ear. If it is like a lightning swift eagle, then it’s in accord with the vehicle. But in stagnant water, where the fish are lethargic, it’s hard to whip up waves!”