Testing and Discernment
勘辨
A change of genre: short, often wordless contests between Linji and his fellow Chan masters, his own senior students, a nun, a lecture-master, and the eccentric wandering monk Puhua, who overturns meal tables, brays like a donkey, rings a bell through the streets calling out his own teaching, and finally climbs into his own coffin and vanishes.
- This part covers
- Roughly twenty short encounters: testing Huangbo through the rice-steward, wordless tests with a raised whisk, Puhua overturning meal tables and finally dying in his own coffin, an old elder called a "grass bandit," a post that is just a post, a lecture-master's Hundred Dharmas Treatise, Deshan's "thirty blows either way," Wang Changshi on scripture and Chan, the four kinds of shout, a nun who shouts back, Longya beaten twice for the same question, and Jingshan's five hundred students scattering after a single shout.
- Genre note
- Unlike Parts 1–4, almost nothing here is explained. A question is asked, something happens — a shout, a blow, a table overturned — and the text moves on. This is deliberate: read each encounter exactly as abruptly as it comes, and treat the reading notes as commentary, never as a hidden key smuggled into the translation itself.
1. Testing Huangbo Through the Rice-Steward
黃蘗因入厨次，問飯頭：「作什麼？」飯頭云：「揀眾僧米。」黃蘗云：「一日喫多少？」飯頭云：「二石五。」黃蘗云：「莫太多麼？」飯頭云：「猶恐少在。」黃蘗便打。飯頭却舉似師，師云：「我為汝勘這老漢。」纔到侍立次，黃蘗舉前話，師云：「飯頭不會，請和尚代一轉語。」師便問：「莫太多麼？」黃蘗云：「何不道來日更喫一頓？」師云：「說什麼來日？即今便喫。」道了便掌。黃蘗云：「這風顛漢又來這裏捋虎鬚。」師便喝出去。後溈山問仰山：「此二尊宿意作麼生？」仰山云：「和尚作麼生？」溈山云：「養子方知父慈。」仰山云：「不然。」溈山云：「子又作麼生？」仰山云：「大似勾賊破家。」
Huangbo went into the kitchen one day and asked the rice-steward: "What are you doing?" The steward said: "Sorting rice for the monks." Huangbo said: "How much do they eat in a day?" The steward said: "Two piculs and five pecks." Huangbo said: "Isn't that too much?" The steward said: "I'm still afraid it isn't enough." Huangbo struck him. The steward later told the master about this, and the master said: "Let me test this old fellow for you." When he next went to attend Huangbo, Huangbo brought up the earlier exchange, and the master said: "The steward didn't understand — please, teacher, give a turning phrase in his place." The master then asked: "Isn't that too much?" Huangbo said: "Why not say instead, 'Have another meal tomorrow'?" The master said: "Why speak of tomorrow? Eat it right now." So saying, he slapped Huangbo. Huangbo said: "This crazy fellow, coming here again to pull the tiger's whiskers!" The master shouted and walked out. Later Guishan asked Yangshan: "What did these two venerable ones mean by this?" Yangshan said: "What do you think, teacher?" Guishan said: "Only by raising a son does one know a father's kindness." Yangshan said: "Not so." Guishan said: "Then what do you say?" Yangshan said: "It is exactly like a thief breaking into his own house."
This is the first appearance of a device this part uses repeatedly: a later exchange between two other masters, Guishan Lingyou and Yangshan Huiji (founders of the Guiyang house of Chan), commenting on what Linji did without ever settling the question outright. Yangshan's closing image — "a thief breaking into his own house" — suggests Linji's slap was not an attack on Huangbo but a demonstration performed inside their own shared understanding, indistinguishable from the inside.
2. Two Silent Tests With the Whisk
師問僧：「什麼處來？」僧便喝，師便揖坐。僧擬議，師便打。師見僧來便竪起拂子，僧禮拜，師便打。又見僧來，亦竪起拂子，僧不顧，師亦打。
The master asked a monk: "Where have you come from?" The monk shouted. The master bowed and offered him a seat. The monk hesitated. The master struck him. When the master saw a monk coming, he raised his whisk upright. The monk bowed. The master struck him. Seeing another monk come, he again raised his whisk. The monk paid no attention to it. The master struck him too.
Three monks, three different responses — a shout, a bow, indifference — and all three are struck. The text offers no criterion for why each response fails, and none should be invented; the point is that no single formula for responding to the raised whisk survives contact with Linji, whatever the response happens to be.
3. Puhua Overturns the Meal Table, Twice
師一日同普化赴施主家齋次。師問：「毛吞巨海、芥納須彌，為是神通妙用？本體如然？」普化踏倒飯床。師云：「太麁生。」普化云：「這裏是什麼所在，說麁、說細？」師來日又同普化赴齋。問：「今日供養何似昨日？」普化依前踏倒飯床。師云：「得即得，太麁生。」普化云：「瞎漢！佛法說什麼麁細？」師乃吐舌。
One day the master went with Puhua to a meal at a donor's house. The master asked: "A single hair swallows the great ocean, a mustard seed contains Mount Sumeru — is this the wondrous function of supernatural power, or is it simply how the fundamental substance already is?" Puhua kicked the meal table over. The master said: "Too coarse." Puhua said: "What kind of place do you think this is, talking about coarse and fine?" The next day the master again went with Puhua to a meal. He asked: "How does today's offering compare with yesterday's?" Puhua again kicked the table over as before. The master said: "Fine as far as it goes, but still too coarse." Puhua said: "Blind fool! What does the Buddhadharma have to do with coarse and fine?" The master then stuck out his tongue.
Puhua Heshang was an eccentric wandering monk, not formally Linji's student, who appears throughout this part as something close to Linji's equal or even his goad — the only figure in the entire text who repeatedly gets the last word over Linji himself, as the sequence of six encounters in this part shows. Linji's stuck-out tongue, a wordless gesture of being caught out, is as close as this text ever comes to Linji conceding a point outright.
4. Puhua's One Eye, and Puhua the Donkey
師一日與河陽木塔長老同在僧堂地爐內坐，因說：「普化每日在街市掣風掣顛，知他是凡？是聖？」言猶未了，普化入來。師便問：「汝是凡？是聖？」普化云：「汝且道我是凡？是聖？」師便喝。普化以手指云：「河陽新婦子、木塔老婆禪、臨濟小廝兒，却具一隻眼。」師云：「這賊。」普化云：「賊賊。」便出去。
一日普化在僧堂前喫生菜。師見云：「大似一頭驢。」普化便作驢鳴。師云：「這賊。」普化云：「賊賊。」便出去。
One day the master was sitting with the elders Heyang and Muta around the floor-stove in the monks' hall, and remarked: "Puhua carries on every day in the marketplace acting like a madman — who knows whether he's an ordinary man or a sage?" Before he had even finished speaking, Puhua walked in. The master asked him: "Are you an ordinary man, or a sage?" Puhua said: "You tell me first — am I an ordinary man, or a sage?" The master shouted. Puhua pointed at the three of them and said: "Heyang, a young bride; Muta, an old woman's Chan; Linji, a mere houseboy — yet each of you has one good eye." The master said: "You thief!" Puhua said: "Thief! Thief!" and walked out.
One day Puhua was eating raw vegetables in front of the monks' hall. The master saw him and said: "You look exactly like a donkey." Puhua immediately brayed like a donkey. The master said: "You thief!" Puhua said: "Thief! Thief!" and walked out.
Both encounters end with the identical exchange — Linji calling Puhua a "thief," Puhua echoing the accusation straight back at him — a formula that seems to function here as something closer to a shared joke between the two than an actual insult, marking the end of a round rather than declaring a winner.
5. Puhua's Bell, and Linji's Long-Held Doubt
因普化常於街市搖鈴云：「明頭來明頭打、暗頭來暗頭打，四方八面來旋風打，虛空來連架打。」師令侍者去，纔見如是道，便把住云：「總不與麼來時如何？」普化托開，云：「來日大悲院裏有齋。」侍者回舉似師。師云：「我從來疑著這漢。」
Puhua was in the habit of ringing a bell through the streets, calling out: "When brightness comes, strike the brightness; when darkness comes, strike the darkness; when it comes from all four directions and eight quarters, strike it like a whirlwind; when it comes from empty space, strike it like a flail." The master sent his attendant to go find Puhua, and the instant the attendant heard him say this, he seized hold of him and said: "What about when it doesn't come like any of that at all?" Puhua shoved him away and said: "Tomorrow there's a meal at the Great Compassion Hall." The attendant came back and told the master what had happened. The master said: "I have always had my doubts about this fellow."
Puhua's four-part street cry — strike whatever comes, from whatever direction, by whatever means fits it — reads almost as a folk summary of Linji's own pedagogy of shouts and blows matched to the occasion. His answer to the attendant's genuinely sharp question ("what about when nothing comes at all?") is a complete non sequitur about tomorrow's meal — and Linji's closing remark, "I have always had my doubts about this fellow," is left open as to whether the doubt is suspicion or admiration.
6. The Old Elder's Grass Bandit, and the Two Head Monks' Faults
有一老宿參師，未曾人事便問：「禮拜即是？不禮拜即是？」師便喝，老宿便禮拜。師云：「好箇草賊。」老宿云：「賊賊。」便出去。師云：「莫道無事好。」首座侍立次，師云：「還有過也無？」首座云：「有。」師云：「賓家有過？主家有過？」首座云：「二俱有過。」師云：「過在什麼處？」首座便出去。師云：「莫道無事好。」後有僧舉似南泉。南泉云：「官馬相踏。」
An old elder came to see the master, and, before even exchanging the usual courtesies, asked: "Is it right to bow, or right not to bow?" The master shouted. The old elder bowed. The master said: "What a fine grass bandit." The old elder said: "Bandit! Bandit!" and walked out. The master said: "Don't go around saying nothing happened here." The head monk was attending nearby, and the master said to him: "Was there a fault in that, or not?" The head monk said: "There was." The master said: "Was the fault the guest's, or the host's?" The head monk said: "Both were at fault." The master said: "Where exactly was the fault?" The head monk walked out. The master said: "Don't go around saying nothing happened here." Later a monk told Nanquan about this exchange. Nanquan said: "Government horses trampling each other."
"Grass bandit" (草賊) recurs from Part 1 as a term of grudging respect for a worthy opponent rather than a genuine insult, confirmed here by the old elder's delighted echo, "Bandit! Bandit!" Nanquan Puyuan's closing remark, coming from an entirely different generation and lineage than Linji, is preserved here as an outside voice on the encounter — "government horses trampling each other" suggesting two evenly matched forces colliding without either gaining ground, much like the guest-and-host encounters of Part 3.
7. A Post Is Just a Post, and the Prior Who Sold All the Rice
師因入軍營赴齋，門首見員僚，師指露柱問：「是凡？是聖？」員僚無語。師打露柱，云：「直饒道得，也秖是箇木橛。」便入去。
師問院主：「什麼處來？」主云：「州中糶黃米去來。」師云：「糶得盡麼？」主云：「糶得盡。」師以杖面前畫一畫，云：「還糶得這箇麼？」主便喝，師便打。典座至，師舉前語。典座云：「院主不會和尚意。」師云：「爾作麼生？」典座便禮拜，師亦打。
The master went to a meal at an army camp, and at the gate saw an official standing there. Pointing at an exposed pillar, the master asked: "Is this ordinary, or is it sagely?" The official had no reply. The master struck the pillar and said: "Even if you could have answered, it would still be nothing but a wooden post." Then he went inside.
The master asked the prior: "Where have you come from?" The prior said: "I've been in town selling off the yellow rice." The master said: "Did you sell it all?" The prior said: "Sold every last bit." The master drew a line on the ground in front of him with his staff and said: "Can you sell this too?" The prior shouted. The master struck him. The head cook then arrived, and the master repeated the exchange to him. The cook said: "The prior didn't understand what you meant." The master said: "And what about you?" The cook bowed. The master struck him as well.
Linji's answer to his own question about the pillar — "even if you could have answered, it would still be nothing but a wooden post" — undercuts the entire exercise of finding a clever reply, since no verbal answer could have changed what the pillar actually is. The cook's confident bow fares no better than the prior's shout; claiming to understand what another failed to understand is itself treated as no better a position than the original failure.
8. The Hundred Dharmas Treatise, and Leipu's First Shout
有座主來相看次，師問座主：「講何經論？」主云：「某甲荒虛粗習《百法論》。」師云：「有一人於三乘十二分教明得、有一人於三乘十二分教明不得，是同？是別？」主云：「明得即同，明不得即別。」樂普為侍者，在師後立，云：「座主這裏是什麼所在？說同？說別？」師回首問侍者：「汝又作麼生？」侍者便喝。師送座主，回來遂問侍者：「適來是汝喝老僧？」侍者云：「是。」師便打。
A lecture-master came to visit, and the master asked him: "What sūtras and treatises do you lecture on?" The lecture-master said: "I have made a rough, unpolished study of the Hundred Dharmas Treatise." The master said: "Suppose one person fully understands the twelve divisions of the three vehicles' teachings, and another does not understand them at all — are they the same, or different?" The lecture-master said: "Understanding makes them the same; not understanding makes them different." Leipu, serving as attendant, was standing behind the master and said: "Lecture-master, what kind of place do you think this is, talking about same and different?" The master turned and asked the attendant: "And what do you say?" The attendant shouted. After seeing the lecture-master off, the master returned and asked the attendant: "Was that you shouting at this old monk just now?" The attendant said: "It was." The master struck him.
The lecture-master's "same or different" answer is a textbook-correct doctrinal distinction, and it earns no rebuke from Linji at all — the rebuke comes from Leipu, his own attendant, correcting a guest in his master's presence. Linji's response is not to defend the lecture-master but to turn immediately on Leipu himself, striking him for the very shout that had just seemed, a moment earlier, to be exactly the right move.
9. Deshan's Thirty Blows, Either Way
師聞第二代德山垂示云：「道得也三十棒，道不得也三十棒。」師令樂普去問：「道得為什麼也三十棒？待伊打汝，接住棒送一送，看他作麼生？」普到彼如教而問，德山便打，普接住送一送，德山便歸方丈。普回舉似師，師云：「我從來疑著這漢，雖然如是，汝還見德山麼？」普擬議，師便打。
The master heard that the second-generation Deshan gave this instruction to his assembly: "Answer correctly, and it's thirty blows; answer wrongly, and it's also thirty blows." The master sent Leipu to go and ask him: "Why is it thirty blows even for a correct answer? Wait until he strikes you, then catch hold of the staff and give it a push — see what he does then." Leipu went and asked exactly as instructed. Deshan struck him. Leipu caught the staff and gave it a push. Deshan simply turned and went back to his quarters. Leipu returned and reported this to the master, who said: "I have always had my doubts about that fellow. Even so — did you actually see Deshan?" Leipu hesitated. The master struck him.
Deshan Xuanjian, famous in his own right for beating students regardless of their answer, is tested here at a distance through Leipu's staged challenge — and simply withdraws in silence rather than escalating, an answer Linji seems to accept ("I have always had my doubts about that fellow") before immediately testing whether Leipu himself actually understood what he had witnessed, or only successfully executed the instructions he was given. Leipu's hesitation, and the blow that follows, shows the difference was not academic.
10. Wang Changshi on Scripture and Chan, and Xingshan's White Ox
王常侍一日訪師，同師於僧堂前看，乃問：「這一堂僧還看經麼？」師云：「不看經。」侍云：「還學禪麼？」師云：「不學禪。」侍云：「經又不看、禪又不學，畢竟作箇什麼？」師云：「總教伊成佛作祖去。」侍云：「金屑雖貴，落眼成翳，又作麼生？」師云：「將為爾是箇俗漢。」
師問杏山：「如何是露地白牛？」山云：「吽吽。」師云：「啞那。」山云：「長老作麼生？」師云：「這畜生。」
One day Wang Changshi came to visit the master, and, looking together with him over the monks' hall, asked: "Do the monks in this hall read the sūtras?" The master said: "They do not read the sūtras." Changshi said: "Do they study Chan meditation, then?" The master said: "They do not study Chan meditation." Changshi said: "If they neither read the sūtras nor study Chan meditation, what exactly are they doing?" The master said: "I have them all become buddhas and become patriarchs." Changshi said: "Gold dust may be precious, but if it falls in the eye it still becomes a cataract — what about that?" The master said: "And here I took you for nothing more than an ordinary layman."
The master asked Xingshan: "What is the white ox in the open field?" Xingshan said: "Moo, moo." The master said: "Struck dumb, are you?" Xingshan said: "And you, elder — what would you say?" The master said: "You dumb animal."
Wang Changshi's rejoinder — even something as precious as gold dust becomes a cataract if it lands in the eye — is one of the sharpest lines any layperson delivers to Linji anywhere in this text, matching Linji's own repeated warning against clinging even to buddhahood itself; Linji's reply concedes the point by revising his estimate of Changshi upward rather than deflecting it. The "white ox in the open field" is a stock image from the Lotus Sūtra for the single vehicle of buddhahood; Xingshan's lowing in reply and Linji's "dumb animal" both play on the ox itself rather than explaining the image away.
11. Staff and Shout, and Two Coins for a Riddle
師問樂普云：「從上來，一人行棒、一人行喝，阿那箇親？」普云：「總不親。」師云：「親處作麼生？」普便喝，師乃打。
師見僧來，展開兩手，僧無語，師云：「會麼？」云：「不會。」師云：「渾崙擘不開，與爾兩文錢。」
The master asked Leipu: "Among those who have come before us, one used the staff and one used the shout — which of the two comes closer to the truth?" Leipu said: "Neither comes close at all." The master said: "Then what would come close?" Leipu shouted. The master struck him.
The master saw a monk approaching and spread both his hands open. The monk had no reply. The master said: "Do you understand?" The monk said: "I don't understand." The master said: "A solid, undivided lump that cannot be split open — here, take these two coins for it."
Leipu's answer, "neither comes close," is itself a defensible Chan position — refusing to rank two expedient devices against each other — yet the moment he demonstrates his own understanding with a shout, he is struck anyway, the same pattern as his earlier shout at the lecture-master's expense in Section 8. The "two coins" Linji offers the second monk read as mock payment for an honestly admitted "I don't understand," which this text elsewhere treats as no worse a position than a confident wrong answer.
12. Dajue's Silent Test, and Zhaozhou Washing Feet
大覺到參，師舉起拂子，大覺敷坐具。師擲下拂子，大覺收坐具入僧堂。眾僧云：「這僧莫是和尚親故？不禮拜，又不喫棒。」師聞，令喚覺，覺出，師云：「大眾道汝未參長老。」覺云：「不審。」便自歸眾。
趙州行脚時參師，遇師洗脚次，州便問：「如何是祖師西來意？」師云：「恰值老僧洗脚。」州近前作聽勢，師云：「更要第二杓惡水潑在。」州便下去。
Dajue came to visit the master. The master raised his whisk. Dajue spread out his sitting-mat. The master threw down the whisk. Dajue picked the mat back up and walked into the monks' hall. The other monks said: "Is this monk some old friend of the master's? He neither bowed nor got beaten." The master heard this and had Dajue called back. Dajue came out. The master said: "Everyone is saying you haven't yet properly greeted the elder." Dajue said: "How do you do," and returned to the assembly on his own.
Zhaozhou, while on pilgrimage, came to see the master, and found him washing his feet. Zhaozhou asked: "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?" The master said: "As it happens, this old monk is washing his feet." Zhaozhou came closer, leaning in as if to listen more carefully. The master said: "You'll want a second ladle of dirty water thrown at you, at this rate." Zhaozhou walked off.
Dajue's sequence — spreading his mat as if to formally bow, then simply picking it back up and walking away without ever bowing or receiving a blow — passes a test the other monks cannot even see was administered; his casual "how do you do" on being called back suggests the whole exchange had already concluded to his own satisfaction before anyone else noticed. Zhaozhou Congshen, already a senior master in his own right by the time of this encounter, gets the driest treatment in the entire text: Linji answers a question about ultimate Chan transmission by pointing at his own dirty feet, and threatens a literal second bucket of dirty water if Zhaozhou keeps leaning in for something more.
13. Elder Ding's Sudden Awakening, and Magu's Twelve-Faced Guanyin
有定上座到參，問：「如何是佛法大意？」師下繩床，擒住與一掌便托開，定佇立。傍僧云：「定上座何不禮拜？」定方禮拜，忽然大悟。
麻谷到參，敷坐具，問：「十二面觀音，阿那面正？」師下繩床，一手收坐具，一手搊麻谷，云：「十二面觀音，向什麼處去也？」麻谷轉身擬坐繩床，師拈拄杖打，麻谷接却，相捉入方丈。
Elder Ding came to see the master and asked: "What is the great intent of the Buddhadharma?" The master got down from his rope-seat, seized hold of him, gave him a slap, and shoved him away. Ding stood there frozen. A monk beside him said: "Elder Ding, why don't you bow?" Only then did Ding bow — and suddenly he was greatly awakened.
Magu came to see the master, spread out his sitting-mat, and asked: "Of the twelve faces of Avalokiteśvara, which one is the true face?" The master got down from his rope-seat, gathered up the mat with one hand, seized Magu with the other, and said: "Where has the twelve-faced Avalokiteśvara gone off to now?" Magu turned as if to sit down on the rope-seat himself. The master picked up his staff and struck at him. Magu caught the staff, and the two of them, grappling each other, went together into the master's quarters.
Ding's awakening comes not from the slap itself but from the ordinary courtesy of bowing, suggested by a bystander only after the confrontation had already ended — a rare moment in this text where the text explicitly names the result ("suddenly he was greatly awakened") rather than leaving the outcome unstated, as it does in almost every other encounter in this part. Magu's question about the many-faced Avalokiteśvara recalls his own thousand-eyed question to Linji in Part 1's opening sermon, suggesting a running rivalry between the two masters across the whole text.
14. The Four Kinds of Shout
師問僧：「有時一喝如金剛王寶劍、有時一喝如踞地金毛師子、有時一喝如探竿影草、有時一喝不作一喝用，汝作麼生會？」僧擬議，師便喝。
The master asked a monk: "Sometimes a single shout is like the vajra king's jeweled sword; sometimes a single shout is like a golden-maned lion crouched on the ground; sometimes a single shout is like a fishing pole's grass-tipped lure trailing over the water; and sometimes a single shout does not function as a shout at all. How do you understand this?" The monk hesitated. The master shouted.
This is the only place in the entire text where Linji classifies his own signature device, the shout, into named types — later systematized as the "four shouts" (四喝), one of the five pillars of Linji-house doctrine alongside the three statements, three mysteries and essentials, four kinds of taking away, and four kinds of guest and host. Zhizhao's Rentian Yanmu (T2006) preserves the Song-dynasty monk Juefan Huihong's own verse gloss on all four: the vajra sword cuts through the instant it is spoken of; the crouching lion needs no den to spring from; the grass-tipped lure tests without committing to a strike; and "a shout that is not a shout" is glossed, half-jokingly, as no more mysterious than an ordinary toothache — Juefan's way of warning against turning even this classification into a doctrine to master. Shoushan Shengnian, a still later master quoted in the same source, makes the warning explicit: treating any of the four as a fixed technique to apply "is nothing but doctrine and debate," missing the very immediacy the four shouts are meant to illustrate. Fittingly, the monk here who hesitates over how to classify the shout is answered with nothing but another shout.
15. The Nun's Shout, and Longya's Two Beatings
師問一尼：「善來？惡來？」尼便喝，師拈棒，云：「更道，更道。」尼又喝，師便打。
龍牙問：「如何是祖師西來意？」師云：「與我過禪板來。」牙便過禪板與師，師接得便打。牙云：「打即任打，要且無祖師意。」牙後到翠微問：「如何是祖師西來意？」微云：「與我過蒲團來。」牙便過蒲團與翠微，翠微接得便打。牙云：「打即任打，要且無祖師意。」牙住院，後有僧入室請益，云：「和尚行脚時參二尊宿因緣，還肯他也無？」牙云：「肯即深肯，要且無祖師意。」
The master asked a nun: "Have you come in welcome, or come in hostility?" The nun shouted. The master picked up his staff and said: "Say it again, say it again." The nun shouted again. The master struck her.
Longya asked: "What is the meaning of the Patriarch's coming from the West?" The master said: "Hand me the meditation board." Longya handed the master the meditation board, and the moment the master took hold of it, he struck Longya with it. Longya said: "Strike away, if you must — but there still is no meaning to the Patriarch's coming." Later Longya went to Cuiwei and asked the same question. Cuiwei said: "Hand me the cushion." Longya handed Cuiwei the cushion, and the moment Cuiwei took hold of it, he struck Longya with it. Longya said: "Strike away, if you must — but there still is no meaning to the Patriarch's coming." After Longya himself became abbot of a monastery, a monk came to his room seeking instruction and asked: "When you were on pilgrimage and met with those two venerable masters, do you now accept what they did?" Longya said: "Accept it I do, deeply — but there still is no meaning to the Patriarch's coming."
The nun's identical shout draws an identical challenge and a beating both times, refusing her any credit for repetition alone — the same principle at work in Part 1's "a second offense cannot be forgiven." Longya's refrain across three separate tellings of essentially the same story — struck twice by two different masters using his own borrowed object against him, and still maintaining decades later that there was "no meaning" to the Patriarch's coming — reads as this text's most persistent character study: a monk who accepts his teachers' method completely while still declining to pretend the specific question was ever actually answered.
16. Jingshan's Five Hundred Monks Scatter
徑山有五百眾，少人參請，黃蘗令師到徑山，乃謂師曰：「汝到彼作麼生？」師云：「某甲到彼自有方便。」師到徑山，裝腰上法堂見徑山。徑山方舉頭，師便喝。徑山擬開口，師拂袖便行。尋有僧問徑山：「這僧適來有什麼言句便喝和尚？」徑山云：「這僧從黃蘗會裏來，爾要知麼？且問取他。」徑山五百眾太半分散。
At Jingshan's monastery there were five hundred monks, yet few of them ever came to ask him questions. Huangbo sent the master there, saying to him: "What will you do once you get there?" The master said: "Once I arrive, I will have my own way of handling it." The master arrived at Jingshan, tied up his robe at the waist, and went up to the dharma hall to see Jingshan. The moment Jingshan raised his head, the master shouted. Jingshan started to open his mouth. The master shook out his sleeves and walked straight out. Shortly afterward a monk asked Jingshan: "What did that monk just say, that made you shout — I mean, that made you unable to answer him?" Jingshan said: "That monk has come from Huangbo's assembly. If you want to know, go and ask him yourself." More than half of Jingshan's five hundred monks scattered and left after this.
This is one of only two episodes placed outside Linji's own monastery, with Huangbo dispatching him as a kind of corrective agent to a community where formal numbers (five hundred monks) mask an absence of genuine engagement (few actually asking questions). Linji never explains his method beforehand beyond "I will have my own way of handling it," and the single shout that follows dissolves more than half the assembly — the text's most extreme demonstration that raw numbers of monks prove nothing about the vitality of a teaching.
17. Puhua's Extraordinary Death
普化一日於街市中就人乞直裰，人皆與之，普化俱不要。師令院主買棺一具，普化歸來，師云：「我與汝做得箇直裰了也。」普化便自擔去，繞街市叫云：「臨濟與我做直裰了也，我往東門遷化去。」市人競隨看之。普化云：「我今日未，來日往南門遷化去。」如是三日，人皆不信，至第四日無人隨看，獨出城外，自入棺內，倩路行人釘之，即時傳布，市人競往開棺，乃見全身脫去，秖聞空中鈴響隱隱而去。
One day Puhua went begging through the marketplace for a monk's robe. People offered him all kinds, but Puhua refused every one of them. The master had the prior buy a coffin, and when Puhua came back, the master said: "Here — I've made you a robe." Puhua immediately shouldered it himself and walked through the marketplace, calling out: "Linji has made me a robe! I am going to the East Gate to pass away." The townspeople competed with each other to go and watch. Puhua said: "Not today — tomorrow I will go to the South Gate to pass away instead." This went on for three days, until no one believed him any longer, and by the fourth day not a single person came to watch. He went out of the city alone, climbed into the coffin himself, and asked a passerby on the road to nail it shut. The news spread at once, and the townspeople rushed to pry the coffin open — only to find that he had vanished, body and all, leaving nothing behind but the faint sound of his bell, ringing fainter and fainter as it receded into the empty sky.
Puhua's death closes his entire role in this text on his own terms: Linji's "gift" of a coffin, offered as a wry answer to Puhua's refusal of every ordinary robe, becomes the instrument of a departure that outdoes every other death recorded anywhere in this collection — not simply passing away, but making the townspeople lose interest through three days of false alarms before vanishing bodily on the fourth, unwitnessed, leaving only the bell's fading sound. This is the last appearance of Puhua in the text; his death here, before Linji's own final passing recorded in Part 7, is echoed in the biographical record's own note that Puhua's death fulfilled a prophecy of the master Yangshan.
Part 5 Complete
This closes Part 5, and with it the "testing and discernment" encounters. Part 6 turns to the 行錄, the biographical record of Linji's own life — beginning with his three questions and three beatings under Huangbo, his awakening under Dayu, and his return to Huangbo to plant pine trees on the mountain.