Ascending the Hall
上堂
Eight short, formal sermons delivered in the dharma hall — Linji's first recorded shout, his teaching on "the true person of no rank" who goes in and out through everyone's face, a monk called a dry shit-stick for hesitating, and the opening statement of his "three statements" and "three mysteries," the technical core of what later tradition would systematize as Linji-house doctrine.
- This part covers
- Eight separate ascents to the teaching seat (上堂), each a self-contained sermon: the assembly convened by Prefect Wang Changshi, an exchange with Magu over "which is the true eye," the true person of no rank, two monks shouted at for bowing, a monk who wanted a beating and got one, the matter atop a sword's edge, the person on the solitary peak and the person at the crossroads, and the opening of the three statements and three mysteries.
- Why it matters
- This is the first genre of "recorded sayings" (語錄) on this site — dialogue and blunt pedagogical shock rather than sustained discourse or verse. Read it as it comes: a question, a shout or a blow, and no further explanation in the text itself.
Translation Method
The Chinese source is Taishō T1985, 《鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄》, recorded by Linji's disciple Huiran (慧然) and preserved in the redaction compiled at Baoen Chan Monastery under the Yuan-dynasty abbot Cunjiang and his successors. This text belongs to the Chan genre of yülu (語錄, "recorded sayings") — dialogue and sermon set down by a disciple, not a translation from an Indic original — the same genre as this site's Platform Sūtra, though Linji's text never claims the title "sūtra" for itself. Linji's own rhetoric is blunt, colloquial Tang-dynasty vernacular; this translation resists the temptation to smooth it into philosophical prose. Where he shouts, the translation says he shouted — not that he "expressed the futility of conceptualization." Where a monk hesitates and is struck with no further explanation given, the translation leaves it exactly that abrupt; the reading notes below each exchange are where explanation belongs, never the translation itself. See also this site's note on translation method.
1. The First Shout
府主王常侍與諸官請師升座，師上堂，云：「山僧今日事不獲已，曲順人情方登此座。若約祖宗門下稱揚大事，直是開口不得，無爾措足處。山僧此日以常侍堅請，那隱綱宗，還有作家戰將直下展陣開旗麼？對眾證據看。」僧問：「如何是佛法大意？」師便喝，僧禮拜。師云：「這箇師僧却堪持論。」
Prefect Wang Changshi, together with the assembled officials, requested that the master ascend the seat. The master ascended the hall and said: "This mountain monk today has no choice in the matter — only in deference to human feeling do I climb onto this seat at all. If I were to speak of the great matter as the patriarchs' own house proclaims it, I could not open my mouth, and you would have no foothold whatsoever. Since Changshi has firmly requested it today, how could I conceal the essential doctrine? Is there some battle-hardened general among you who will step forward at once, unfurl a banner, and array his ranks? Prove it before the assembly." A monk asked: "What is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?" The master immediately shouted. The monk bowed. The master said: "This monk here is actually worth debating with."
This is the text's opening scene, and its first shout arrives before any doctrine has been stated at all — a monk asks the single most generic question a student can ask ("what is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?"), and Linji answers with a shout rather than a sentence. The monk's response, a bow, is itself notable: he does not ask what the shout meant, and Linji praises him for it ("worth debating with") precisely because he did not turn the shout into a question requiring a further answer. The pattern set here — a shout in place of an explanation, accepted rather than parsed — recurs across nearly every page that follows.
2. Driving Stakes Into Empty Space
問師：「唱誰家曲？宗風嗣阿誰？」師云：「我在黃蘗處，三度發問，三度被打。」僧擬議，師便喝，隨後打，云：「不可向虛空裏釘橛去也。」
Someone asked the master: "Whose tune do you sing? Whose house style do you carry on?" The master said: "When I was at Huangbo's place, I asked three times and was beaten three times." The monk hesitated. The master immediately shouted, then struck him, saying: "One cannot go on driving stakes into empty space."
Linji answers a question about lineage with an anecdote of his own beatings under Huangbo — the full story is told at length in Part 6's biographical record. The monk's hesitation ("擬議," literally "intending to deliberate") is itself the fault the shout and blow are aimed at: any pause to formulate a considered reply is already, in Linji's idiom, an attempt to nail a peg into thin air — reaching for something solid in a place that offers no purchase at all.
3. The Lecture-Master's Wild Grass
有座主問：「三乘十二分教豈不是明佛性？」師云：「荒草不曾鋤。」主云：「佛豈賺人也？」師云：「佛在什麼處？」主無語。師云：「對常侍前擬瞞老僧，速退速退，妨他別人諸問。」
A lecture-master asked: "Don't the twelve divisions of the three vehicles' teachings illuminate buddha-nature?" The master said: "The wild grass has never once been hoed." The lecture-master said: "Would the Buddha ever deceive people?" The master said: "Where is the Buddha, then?" The lecture-master had no reply. The master said: "In front of Changshi you tried to fool this old monk. Get back, get back at once — you're in the way of everyone else's questions."
A "lecture-master" (座主) is a scholar-monk trained in doctrinal exposition rather than Chan practice — a recurring foil throughout this text, standing for the very "concerning phrases and points" scholasticism Linji's sermons repeatedly warn against. "The wild grass has never been hoed" answers a question about scriptural learning with an image of untended land: the teachings themselves are not the problem, but reciting them has done nothing to clear the ground of the lecture-master's own habitual view. When challenged, he falls back on "where is the Buddha" and the lecture-master, unable to answer without invoking the very scriptural authority just dismissed, has nothing to say.
4. The First Sermon's Close
復云：「此日法筵為一大事故，更有問話者麼？速致問來，爾纔開口，早勿交涉也。何以如此？不見釋尊云：『法離文字，不屬因、不在緣故。』為爾信不及，所以今日葛藤恐滯常侍與諸官員，昧他佛性，不如且退。」喝一喝，云：「少信根人終無了日。久立珍重。」
He continued: "Today's dharma assembly is held for the sake of the one great matter. Is there anyone else with a question? Ask it quickly — the instant you open your mouth, it will already have nothing to do with the matter. Why is this so? Have you not heard how Śākyamuni himself said: 'The Dharma is apart from words, belongs to no cause, and rests on no condition'? Because you cannot believe this, today's tangled talk risks only detaining Changshi and the assembled officials, clouding over their buddha-nature — better that I withdraw now." He gave one shout and said: "Someone with so little root of faith will never come to the end of this. You have stood here long enough. Take care."
"Tangled talk" (葛藤, literally "vines and creepers") is one of this text's recurring self-deprecating terms for its own discourse — language itself pictured as a choking vine that must eventually be cut through rather than followed to its end. Linji closes his very first sermon by naming the paradox that structures the whole text: the Dharma cannot be spoken, and yet he goes on speaking about it at length for six more parts.
5. Magu and the Thousand Hands
師因一日到河府，府主王常侍請師升座。時麻谷出問：「大悲千手眼，那箇是正眼？」師云：「大悲千手眼，那箇是正眼？速道速道。」麻谷拽師下座，麻谷却坐，師近前，云：「不審。」麻谷擬議，師亦拽麻谷下座，師却坐，麻谷便出去，師便下座。
One day the master went to the river prefecture, and Prefect Wang Changshi invited him to ascend the seat. At that time Magu came forward and asked: "Of the great compassionate one's thousand hands and eyes, which one is the true eye?" The master said: "Of the great compassionate one's thousand hands and eyes, which one is the true eye? Speak quickly, speak quickly!" Magu pulled the master down from the seat and sat in it himself. The master went up close to him and said: "How do you do." Magu hesitated. The master in turn pulled Magu down from the seat and sat in it himself. Magu then walked out, and the master got down from the seat.
Magu is a fellow Chan master, not a student, and this is a contest of equals rather than a teacher testing a disciple — the seat itself changes hands twice, and neither man ever answers the opening question about Avalokiteśvara's thousand eyes in words. The whole exchange plays out as a wordless struggle over who occupies the position of authority at any given moment, ending only when both have declined to hold it: a demonstration, not an argument, of what it might mean to have a "true eye" that is not fixed to any one seat.
6. The True Person of No Rank
上堂云：「赤肉團上有一無位真人，常從汝等諸人面門出入，未證據者看看。」時有僧出問：「如何是無位真人？」師下禪床把住，云：「道道。」其僧擬議，師托開，云：「無位真人是什麼乾屎橛？」便歸方丈。
The master ascended the hall and said: "On this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who is constantly going in and out through the gates of your face. Those of you who have not yet witnessed this — look, look!" At that time a monk came forward and asked: "What is the true person of no rank?" The master got down from his chair, seized hold of him, and said: "Speak! Speak!" The monk hesitated. The master shoved him away and said: "The true person of no rank — what a dry shit-stick!" Then he returned to his quarters.
This is the single most famous passage in the entire text, and the phrase "true person of no rank" (無位真人) became one of Chan's most quoted formulas. "No rank" (無位) means outside the entire scheme of the fifty-two bodhisattva stages and every other hierarchical ladder Buddhist scholasticism had built — not a higher attainment than those ranks but categorically apart from ranking as such, already fully present in "this lump of red flesh," an intentionally coarse phrase for the physical body. When a monk turns the teaching into a question — "what is" this person — Linji seizes him bodily and demands he speak from the very thing he is asking about, rather than about it; the hesitation shows he has already stepped outside himself to look for an answer, and the "dry shit-stick" is Linji's judgment on the very act of conceptualizing what can, by definition, only be lived from the inside. This teaching's insistence that the sought-after thing is not elsewhere and not attainable finds an echo in this site's own Platform Sūtra, where Huineng likewise locates self-nature as already whole rather than as a destination to travel toward.
7. Two Shouts, and the Grass Bandit
上堂，有僧出禮拜，師便喝。僧云：「老和尚莫探頭好。」師云：「爾道落在什麼處？」僧便喝。又有僧問：「如何是佛法大意？」師便喝，僧禮拜，師云：「爾道好喝也無？」僧云：「草賊大敗。」師云：「過在什麼處？」僧云：「再犯不容。」師便喝。是日，兩堂首座相見，同時下喝。僧問師：「還有賓主也無？」師云：「賓主歷然。」師云：「大眾要會臨濟賓主句，問取堂中二首座。」便下座。
The master ascended the hall. A monk came forward and bowed. The master immediately shouted. The monk said: "Old master, better not go fishing." The master said: "Tell me — where has it landed?" The monk shouted. Another monk asked: "What is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?" The master shouted. The monk bowed. The master said: "Tell me — was that a good shout, or not?" The monk said: "The grass bandit is utterly defeated." The master said: "Where was the fault?" The monk said: "A second offense cannot be forgiven." The master shouted. That same day, the head monks of the two halls met each other and shouted at the same moment. A monk asked the master: "Was there a guest and a host in that, or not?" The master said: "Guest and host stand out perfectly clear." The master said: "If the assembly wants to understand Linji's own saying on guest and host, go and ask the two head monks in the halls." Then he got down from his seat.
"Guest and host" (賓主) names a technical distinction later systematized as the "four kinds of guest and host" (四賓主) — who, in a given exchange, is testing and who is being tested, a relationship this text insists can shift moment to moment within a single encounter rather than tracking fixed roles of teacher and student. Zhizhao's Song-dynasty compilation Rentian Yanmu (人天眼目, T2006) devotes an entire section to this saying, quoting verses by Ciming Chuyuan and Zhu'an on the two head monks' simultaneous shout as the moment "guest and host divide" with no interval for deliberation at all — precisely because it happens between two masters at once, with no one in the position of judge.
8. The Beating Freely Given
上堂，僧問：「如何是佛法大意？」師竪起拂子，僧便喝，師便打。又，僧問：「如何是佛法大意？」師亦竪起拂子，僧便喝，師亦喝。僧擬議，師便打。師乃云：「大眾！夫為法者，不避喪身失命。我二十年在黃蘗先師處三度問佛法的的大意，三度蒙他賜杖，如蒿枝拂著相似。如今更思得一頓棒喫，誰人為我行得？」時有僧出眾云：「某甲行得。」師拈棒與他，其僧擬接，師便打。
The master ascended the hall. A monk asked: "What is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?" The master raised his whisk upright. The monk shouted. The master struck him. Again a monk asked: "What is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?" The master again raised his whisk upright. The monk shouted. The master also shouted. The monk hesitated. The master struck him. The master then said: "Everyone! One who truly practices the Dharma does not shrink from losing life or limb. For twenty years, at my late master Huangbo's place, I asked three times about the precise great intent of the Buddhadharma, and three times he granted me his staff — it felt no worse than being brushed by a sprig of mugwort. Now I long once more to receive a good beating. Who among you can give it to me?" At that time a monk stepped out from the assembly and said: "I can do it." The master picked up his staff and handed it to him. The monk moved to take it — and the master struck him.
The final turn is the sharpest: Linji openly offers his staff to whoever will strike him, and the moment a monk steps forward to accept it, Linji strikes him instead. The volunteer has fallen into the same trap as every hesitating monk before him — treating "giving Linji a beating" as an achievable task to be carried out, rather than recognizing that the offer itself, like the question "what is the great intent," was never a real transaction to complete. The full story of Linji's own three beatings under Huangbo, referred to here in passing, is told at length in Part 6 of this collection.
9. The Sword's Edge, and the Solitary Peak
上堂，僧問：「如何是劍刃上事？」師云：「禍事，禍事。」僧擬議，師便打。問：「秖如石室行者，踏碓忘却移脚，向什麼處去？」師云：「沒溺深泉。」師乃云：「但有來者不虧欠伊，總識伊來處。若與麼來，恰似失却；不與麼來，無繩自縛。一切時中莫亂斟酌，會與不會都來是錯。分明與麼道，一任天下人貶剝。久立珍重。」
上堂，云：「一人在孤峯頂上，無出身之路；一人在十字街頭，亦無向背。那箇在前？那箇在後？不作維摩詰、不作傅大士。珍重。」
上堂，云：「有一人論劫在途中不離家舍、有一人離家舍不在途中，那箇合受人天供養？」便下座。
The master ascended the hall. A monk asked: "What is the matter atop the sword's edge?" The master said: "Disaster, disaster!" The monk hesitated. The master struck him. Someone asked: "When the lay-worker at Stone Chamber, treading the pestle, forgot to move his feet — where did he go?" The master said: "Drowned in a deep spring." The master then said: "Whoever comes to me, I hold nothing back from him — I recognize entirely where he is coming from. If he comes in a certain fashion, it is exactly as if he has lost something; if he does not come that way, he binds himself with no rope at all. In every moment, do not calculate wildly — whether you understand or fail to understand, both alike are a mistake. I have said it this plainly; let the whole world pick it apart as it likes. You have stood here long enough. Take care."
The master ascended the hall and said: "One person stands on the summit of a solitary peak, with no path by which to step free of it; another stands at the crossroads in the middle of the street, with no direction either forward or back. Which of the two comes first? Which comes after? Do not make him into Vimalakīrti; do not make him into Layman Fu. Take care."
The master ascended the hall and said: "There is one person who, kalpa after kalpa, stays on the road without ever leaving home; there is another who has left home yet is not on the road. Which of the two deserves the offerings of gods and men?" Then he got down from his seat.
Three short sermons grouped here for their shared form: each poses a pair of alternatives — the sword's edge, the solitary peak and the crossroads, staying home and being on the road — and refuses to resolve which side is correct. Vimalakīrti and Layman Fu (Fu Dashi, a semi-legendary sixth-century lay teacher revered alongside him) are both classical exemplars of lay awakening indistinguishable from ordinary life; Linji's instruction not to "make him into" either figure warns against resolving the paradox by matching it to a known type. The unresolved pairing recurs as a structural habit throughout this text — see also the fourfold "taking away and not taking away" scheme that opens Part 2.
10. The First Statement, the Second, and the Third
上堂，僧問：「如何是第一句？」師云：「三要印開朱點側，未容擬議主賓分。」問：「如何是第二句？」師云：「妙解豈容無著問，漚和爭負截流機。」問：「如何是第三句？」師云：「看取棚頭弄傀儡，抽牽都來裏有人。」師又云：「一句語須具三玄門，一玄門須具三要，有權、有用。汝等諸人作麼生會？」下座。
The master ascended the hall. A monk asked: "What is the first statement?" The master said: "When the seal of the three essentials opens, the vermilion mark is set to one side; before any hesitation can even arise, guest and host are already divided." Someone asked: "What is the second statement?" The master said: "How could subtle understanding tolerate even Asaṅga's own question? How could skillful means fail the opportunity that cuts across the current?" Someone asked: "What is the third statement?" The master said: "Just watch the puppets dancing on the stage above — every pull of every string comes from the person hidden behind." The master further said: "A single statement must be complete with three mysterious gates; each mysterious gate must be complete with three essentials — there is expedient means in it, and there is actual function in it. How do all of you understand this?" Then he got down from his seat.
This is the first statement of what later tradition systematized as Linji's "three statements" (三句) and "three mysteries and three essentials" (三玄三要) — among the most heavily annotated formulas in the entire Linji-house tradition, and among the least explained by Linji himself anywhere in this text. Zhizhao's Song-dynasty compilation Rentian Yanmu (人天眼目, T2006) preserves Fengxue Yanzhao's own gloss on the three statements — "answer with a shout the instant it is spoken" for the first — and records Ciming Chuyuan's blunt summary of what mastering each level costs: grasping the first statement makes one fit to be "teacher of buddhas and patriarchs," the second, "teacher of gods and men," and the third, unable even "to save oneself." The verse imagery here — a seal whose vermilion mark is set aside before it can be read, puppets whose motion comes entirely from an unseen hand — recurs as this text's preferred way of pointing at a source of action that cannot itself become an object of inspection without ceasing to be what it is. This site's translation-method page discusses further how such formulas resist explanation by design.
Part 1 Complete
This closes Part 1: eight formal sermons in the dharma hall, from Linji's first shout through the true person of no rank to the opening of the three statements. Part 2 turns to the long "instructions to the assembly" (示眾) that make up more than half of this text — beginning with the fourfold scheme of "taking away and not taking away" the person and the surrounding circumstance, and Linji's central call to seek nothing outside oneself.