Seppō and the Final Word

Engo's commentary on the case

Generally, to support and establish the lineage teaching, one must distinguish the immediate occasion, know advance and retreat, right and wrong, and clarify killing and giving life, capture and release. If one's eyes are blurred and tangled, one simply asks whenever encountering a question and answers whenever encountering an answer, unaware that one's nostrils are in someone else's hands. Seppō and Gantō both studied with Tokusan. This monk studied with Seppō, but his understanding reached only this point. When he met Gantō, he still accomplished nothing. He needlessly troubled the two old adepts through question and answer, capture and release. Down to the present, people throughout the world make knots and complications from it and cannot explain them. Where are the knots? Although Seppō had traveled throughout the regions, only at the inn at Aoshan, when Gantō provoked him, did he completely cut through and awaken greatly.¹ Later, during a Buddhist suppression, Gantō worked as a ferryman beside a lake. A board hung on each bank. When someone wanted to cross, they struck a board once. Gantō called, “Are you crossing from that side?” and came dancing with the oar through the reeds. Seppō returned to Lingnan and lived in a hermitage. The monk who visited was himself an experienced practitioner. Seeing him come, Seppō braced the door, thrust his body out, and said, “What is it?” Some people today, questioned this way, chew upon the words. This monk too found it strange and merely returned, “What is it?” Seppō lowered his head and entered the hermitage. Often people call this speechlessness and understand that he simply went away. The monk could not feel his way forward. Some say Seppō was rendered wordless by the monk's question. They do not know that Seppō's intent contains poison and harm. Though Seppō gained the advantage, what can be done when concealing the body exposes its shadow? The monk later left Seppō, carrying the case to Gantō for judgment. Gantō asked where he came from. “Lingnan.” “Did you reach Seppō?” To see Seppō, look urgently at this single question. The monk said yes. Gantō asked what words Seppō had; this too did not pass emptily. The monk did not understand and simply followed the vein of Gantō's words. When Gantō asked what Seppō said, the monk answered, “He had no words, lowered his head, and returned.” He did not know that Gantō had already put on sandals and walked around inside his belly many times. Gantō said, “Ah! I regret not telling him the final word. Had I told it to him, no one in the world could handle old Xue.” Gantō supports the strong, not the weak. The monk remained in darkness, unable to distinguish black from white. With a belly full of doubt, he genuinely thought Seppō did not understand. At summer's end he raised the exchange again. Gantō asked why he had not asked earlier—calculation had arisen in this old fellow. The monk said he did not dare treat it lightly. Gantō answered, “Although Seppō and I were born on the same branch, we do not die on the same branch. If you want to know the final word, this alone is it.” Gantō risks his eyebrows completely. How do all of you ultimately understand it? When Seppō served as rice cook under Tokusan, the meal was late one day. Tokusan carried his bowl down to the Dharma hall. Seppō said, “The bell has not rung and the drum has not sounded. Where is this old fellow going with his bowl?” Tokusan had no words, lowered his head, and returned to his quarters. Seppō reported this to Gantō. Gantō said, “Great Tokusan does not yet understand the final word.” Hearing this, Tokusan had an attendant summon Gantō and asked, “Do you not approve this old monk?” Gantō privately disclosed his meaning. The next day Tokusan's public teaching differed from usual. In front of the monks' hall, Gantō clapped and laughed: “How delightful that the old fellow understands the final word! Later no one in the world will handle him—although it will last only three years.”² In this case, when Seppō saw Tokusan speechless, he thought he had gained an advantage, unaware that he had met a thief. Because he had once met a thief, later he too knew how to become one. Thus an ancient said, “Only at the final word does one reach the secure barrier.” Some say Gantō defeated Seppō; this is a mistaken understanding. Gantō often used this mechanism in teaching: “A clear-eyed person has no nest or mold. Turning things is superior; pursuing things inferior.” Even if one personally met the ancestral teacher, this final word could not be intellectually understood. When Tokusan's meal was late, the old man himself carried his bowl to the hall. Gantō said, “Great Tokusan does not yet understand the final word.” Setchō commented, “I had heard of a one-eyed dragon; originally he possessed only one eye.” He did not know Tokusan was a toothless tiger. Had Gantō not recognized and exposed him, how would anyone know yesterday differed from today? Do you wish to understand the final word? “Permit the old foreigner to know, but do not permit him to comprehend.” From antiquity to now, the thousand distinctions and ten thousand differences among public cases resemble a thorn forest. Penetrate it and no one in the world can handle you; buddhas of the three times stand downwind. Fail to penetrate and Gantō's phrase—“Although Seppō and I were born on the same branch, we do not die on the same branch”—naturally has a place to emerge. Setchō's verse says: “The final word—I speak it for you.” Setchō versifies the final word. His intent lowers itself into the weeds to help others. He versifies it to death, touching only a little of its fur and color. To penetrate and see it is still beyond him. He dares open his great mouth and say, “The time when bright and dark come paired.” He opens one narrow road for you, yet also kills you with a single phrase. At the end he further annotates it. Zhaoqing once asked Razan, “Gantō said, ‘So, so; not so, not so.’ What does this mean?” Razan called, “Great Teacher!” Zhaoqing responded. Razan said, “Doubly bright and doubly dark.” Zhaoqing bowed and left. Three days later he asked again, “The other day you compassionately instructed me, but I still cannot see through it.” Razan said, “I told you everything with all my feeling.” Zhaoqing said, “Master, you walk carrying fire.” Razan said, “If so, ask based on where you doubt.” Zhaoqing asked, “What is doubly bright and doubly dark?” Razan said, “Born together and die together.” Zhaoqing bowed and left. Later a monk asked Zhaoqing, “What about when born together and dying together?” Zhaoqing said, “Shut your dog's mouth.” The monk said, “Great Teacher, close your mouth and eat your food.” The monk then asked Razan, “What about being born together but not dying together?” Razan said, “Like an ox without horns.” “What about being born together and dying together?” “Like a tiger wearing horns.” The final word is precisely this principle. A monk in Razan's community used this intent to frame a question to Zhaoqing. Zhaoqing said, “Each knows the other.” Why? If I speak one phrase in Pūrvavideha in the east, Aparagodānīya in the west knows it. Speak one phrase in heaven and humanity knows it. Mind knows mind; eye illumines eye. Being born on the same branch is still relatively easy to see. Not dying on the same branch remains utterly singular; Śākyamuni and Bodhidharma cannot feel their way to it. “North, south, east, and west—returning, departing, coming.” There is a little fine realm here. “Deep at night, together they view snow upon a thousand cliffs.” Tell me: is this doubly bright and doubly dark? Is it birth on the same branch, or death on the same branch? Patch-robed monks with eyes, try to distinguish it.³