Notes Beside the Bamboo Window — Second Collection, Part 4

Jiefu, in his poem imitating Hanshan, wrote: "I was once an ox or a horse, and rejoiced at the sight of grass and beans; I was once also a woman, and rejoiced at the sight of a man. If this 'I' were truly myself, it ought to remain constant through it all — amid these petty, shifting changes, do not mistake the thing for the self." Jiefu's words here are certainly insightful — and yet why did he not also say: "I have heard flattering words, and felt joy on hearing them enter my ear; I have also heard blunt, honest words, and felt that joy vanish and anger rise in its place. If this 'I' were truly myself, it ought to remain constant through it all — amid these petty, shifting changes, do not mistake the thing for the self." And yet he delighted in flattery and despised honest speech — still mistaking the thing for the self! From this we know: it is not difficult for a person of great intelligence to talk about Chan — it is attaining Chan that is difficult.

When I first entered the Way, I recalled Zisi's teaching that "before joy, anger, sorrow, and delight arise is called the mean" — and I took this "mean" to be one's own self before the empty kalpa itself. Later, investigating the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, I found it says: "Even should one extinguish all seeing, hearing, awareness, and knowing, and inwardly hold to a hidden stillness, this remains only a shadow-play of discrimination among mental objects." Seeing and hearing extinguished, awareness and knowing cut off — this resembles the state before joy, anger, sorrow, and delight arise — and yet the sutra calls it a discrimination of mental objects. Why?

The mind is the faculty; mental objects are the dust. Faculty and dust meet one another: a favorable condition arises and joy and delight follow; an unfavorable condition arises and anger and sorrow follow — this is the mind-faculty discriminating mental dust. Before these arise, dust has not yet met the outer world, and the faculty has not yet stirred within — silent, still, this seems to be the original substance itself. But one fails to realize: formerly the mind clung to moving conditions, and now it clings to still conditions instead; the former was a coarse discrimination of mental dust, and the latter is merely a subtle discrimination of the very same dust — both are mere shadow-plays, not the real thing at all. What the sutra calls "hidden stillness" is only stillness surpassing exposure, quiet surpassing noise — one's own self before the empty kalpa remains still worlds away. This point calls for the most careful, exhaustive investigation, examined again and again, never treated carelessly.

Yang Cihu once said: "I have clearly seen that Zisi and Mencius share the same underlying error." And yet Cihu's own account of what he realized in stillness — vast and empty, boundless on every side — is exactly the state Zisi describes as "before joy, anger, sorrow, and delight arise." Zisi's statement, examined through the lens of the deepest, most subtle scriptural investigation, is indeed still short of one's own self before the empty kalpa; but within the Confucian tradition itself, it may fairly be called a subtle grasp of Confucius's own mind-teaching, expressed with the utmost precision and correctness — what fault could it possibly have, that Cihu should criticize it so? If Cihu himself upholds Confucius and advocates the Learning of the Way, and yet criticizes Zisi, then even Confucius himself would no longer be worth following — whom, then, should he follow instead? Had Cihu genuinely attained a subtle understanding of Buddhist principle, he ought to have argued the similarities and differences between Confucianism and Buddhism directly and thoroughly — he ought not to have made a claim like this so carelessly, with no real ground to stand on.

Master Zhongfeng of Tianmu instructed the assembly, saying: "If you lack great capacity, better to shelter under half a hut of thatch, wearing rags and begging for food, than to trespass on other people's crops." This is a truly penetrating statement. Monks today mostly devote themselves to conditioned meritorious works, running about busily their whole lives, while paying no attention whatsoever to the great matter of birth and death right beneath their own feet — is this not a serious mistake?

Someone might say: "If every monk were like you, the images would go unrepaired and the halls would collapse, and monks would be left sleeping in the open, starving!" I answered: "Not necessarily so. If your own capacity is great, do as you please — but Master Zhongfeng's words here were meant to teach those of us with lesser capacity what our first, most urgent priority ought to be. First, when the great matter is not yet clear, one grieves as though for the death of one's own parents, and has no time to spare for anything else. Second, when one's own understanding is not yet thorough, one risks confusing cause and effect — as the saying goes, 'conditioned merit brings many faults; before heaven's hall is built, hell is already complete' — and so one dares not act rashly."

Master Zhongfeng also said: "Make the one mind the root, and the ten thousand practices may follow as its branches." This too is a truly penetrating statement. Consider Farong of Ox-Head Mountain in his stone cell, or Mazu at the Chuanfa Cloister — such lofty, ancient conduct as theirs, I fear, can never be seen again. Alas!

When Daoist priests finish performing a ritual, they invariably hold a rite of thanks to the guardian generals — the larger version slaughters a sheep or a pig, the smaller buys ready-made offerings of the "three sacrificial animals." Their explanation is: "This repays the generals for guarding the ritual space — otherwise, we would incur their displeasure." Alas! "Yesterday a vegetarian feast was held; this morning six kinds of livestock are slaughtered — one act builds heaven's hall, a hundred acts build hell instead." Does this not describe exactly such a case?

As for the generals themselves, I cannot speak to the others, but consider only Lord Guan Yunchang's own innate sense of great righteousness, or Marshal Wang's own utterly loyal and upright heart — would either of them truly hold it against anyone for withholding a sacrificial offering? This practice has been handed down from ancient times to the present, and among the whole body of Daoist priests, not a single one of truly high conduct has ever stopped it — a genuinely lamentable thing.

And if one truly fears incurring the generals' displeasure, consider this: recently a disreputable wanderer, praying for rain, actually shackled a statue of one of these very generals in chains to compel the rain — and yet the general brought no misfortune down on him at all, precisely because he does not stoop to contend with a petty, ill-mannered man. How, then, could these same generals possibly bring misfortune down on a family sponsoring a ritual of genuine merit, merely for the sake of a meal? Is there any reason in that at all? I venture to say this to men of principle who understand reason.

Under Tang law, officials did not take up new posts in the first, fifth, or ninth months — because taking up a new post always meant a great banquet, and a great banquet always meant much slaughtering of animals; refraining from taking office in these months was itself a form of refraining from killing. The world has mistakenly come to regard these three months as inauspicious, and avoids all celebratory occasions within them — simply failing to trace the custom back to its actual origin.

Today, too, the first, fifth, and ninth months, along with the ten vegetarian days each month, are set aside as months and days when executions may not be carried out — showing that the sage-kings' compassion for living things, ancient and modern, is one and the same heart. And yet it is a real pity that when praying for clear skies or for rain, officials always forbid butchering at that time — which shows they clearly know killing to be wrong! Why, then, do they not simply observe the ancient prohibition on killing during the vegetarian months and days themselves, rather than waiting for a real calamity before forbidding it? Alas — waiting until calamity strikes before forbidding it, and lifting the prohibition again the moment the calamity has not even fully passed — how this deserves real lament!

A certain Mr. Zhao of Huating traveled to Qingpu to visit relatives. While his boat was underway, he saw a man standing on it, and looking closely, recognized him as a servant of his who had died. Startled, he asked what was happening. The man answered: "I am now serving in the office of the underworld, and today I am to take the lives of three people." Zhao asked who the three were. The man answered: "One is a man from Huguang, and one is the very relative you are going to visit." He did not answer about the third. Zhao asked again: "Could the third not be me myself?" The man answered: "It is." Zhao was greatly alarmed. When he arrived at his relative's house, he could already hear weeping inside, and grew still more alarmed, and hurried back to his boat to return home.

The servant said to him: "Do not be afraid — if I have not come for you by the middle of the night, you will be safe." Zhao asked why. The man answered: "On the road I met someone pleading on your behalf, because your entire household has always refrained from killing." That night, the servant indeed did not come, and Zhao remained unharmed — he is still alive today, ten years after this happened. I record this in the seventh month of the bingwu year of the Wanli era.

From the Song through the Yuan dynasty, there have been no shortage of lay practitioners who attained genuine awakening. The Song layman Liu Xingchao described his own realization in great detail in his own Collection on Awakening the Way — clearly a man of genuine attainment. The Yuan-dynasty Oxherd Layman attained awakening through Elder Wumen's repeated response of "not this, not this," and the treatise he composed on it, Barrier of Right and Wrong, argues its point from every angle — only someone of truly great insight could have written it. Neither man's traces are especially well known — Xingchao's story is at least recorded in the Continued Transmission of the Lamp, but the Oxherd Layman is known to almost no one — and so I set them both down here, to bring them into the light.

Among the exchanges of the Chan school, there is what is called "a saying without ordinary meaning" — something that cannot be grasped through reasoning, nor penetrated through deliberate thought. Later people, trying to force an explanation through the discriminating mind, only drift further and further from the truth the more they speak; not only do they explain it wrongly, but even should they happen to speak with real accuracy, they would still be doing no more than a parrot repeating human speech. The elder Yuanwu said: "Simply exhaust every trace of your own discriminating consciousness and intellectual understanding, every scattered thought, and you will naturally come to understand this on your own." This is a method already tested and confirmed by the masters of the past, by no means an empty saying — it is something we ourselves ought to believe deeply and put into vigorous practice.