Dōgo Will Not Say Alive or Dead

Engo's commentary on the case

Dōgo and Jianyuan went to a household to offer condolences. Jianyuan struck the coffin and asked, “Alive or dead?” Dōgo said, “I will not say alive; I will not say dead.” If you can enter directly beneath the phrase, then beneath the words you immediately know the return. This alone is the key to breaking through and shedding life and death. If not, you repeatedly miss it straight on. Look at the ancients: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, they kept this matter in mind. As soon as they reached the household to offer condolences, Jianyuan struck the coffin and asked Dōgo, “Alive or dead?” Without altering so much as a strand of silk, Dōgo answered him, “I will not say alive; I will not say dead.” Jianyuan missed it before his face. Chasing after Dōgo's words and phrases, he further asked, “Why will you not say?” Dōgo said, “I will not say! I will not say!” Dōgo can be called sincerity in every piece: taking up the error, he followed the error. Jianyuan was still not alert. On the return journey, when they reached the middle of the road, he again said, “Reverend, quickly tell me. If you do not, I will strike you.” What did this fellow know of good and bad? As the saying goes, good intentions receive no good reward. Dōgo's grandmotherly concern remained earnest. He further told him, “Strike if you will; say it I will not.” Jianyuan immediately struck him. Even so, Jianyuan thereby won one point. Dōgo worked for him with fresh blood dripping, yet Jianyuan did not glimpse it at all. After Dōgo had been struck, he said to Jianyuan, “For now, you should leave. I fear that if the monastery officers discover this, they will make trouble for you.” He secretly sent Jianyuan away. Dōgo was excessively compassionate. Later Jianyuan reached a small cloister. He heard an attendant reciting the Guanyin scripture: “To one who can be delivered through the body of a monk, [Guanyin] immediately appears in the body of a monk and teaches the Dharma.”¹ Suddenly he greatly awakened and said, “At the time I wrongly blamed my late teacher. How could I have known that this matter does not rest upon words and phrases?” An ancient said, “A person of immeasurable stature is instead turned around within the pulse of words.” Some who make intellectual interpretations say, “When Dōgo said, ‘I will not say! I will not say!’ he had already said it.” This is called turning a somersault with your back to the matter, leaving people unable to get hold of it. If you understand it this way, how can you ever reach stability? If your feet tread solid ground, you are not separated by a strand of silk. Have you not heard how seven wise women visited the charnel ground? Pointing to a corpse, one asked, “The corpse is here; where is the person?” The eldest sister said, “What? What?” The whole group together realized the patient acceptance of the nonarising of dharmas.² Tell me: how many were there? A thousand or ten thousand—there is only one. Later Jianyuan went to Sekisō and raised the earlier exchange. As before, Sekisō said, “I will not say alive; I will not say dead.” Jianyuan asked, “Why will you not say?” Sekisō said, “I will not say! I will not say!” Jianyuan then awakened. One day he carried a spade into the Dharma hall and walked from east to west, then from west to east, intending to present his own understanding. As expected, Sekisō asked, “What are you doing?” Jianyuan said, “I am seeking the late teacher's numinous bones.” Sekisō immediately cut off his heels, saying, “Here, vast billows stretch boundlessly and white waves flood the sky. What late teacher's numinous bones are you seeking?” Since Jianyuan was seeking the late teacher's numinous bones, why did Sekisō speak to him this way? At this point, if beneath the words you can recognize the place of “I will not say alive; I will not say dead,” you will then know that from beginning to end the whole functioning is available for use. If you construct a rationale, deliberate, and search through thought, it is truly difficult to see. Jianyuan said, “Just the place to exert strength.” See how, after awakening, what he says is naturally extraordinary. A piece of Dōgo's crown bone is the color of gold; when struck, it sounds like copper. Setchō added the words, “Heavens! Heavens!” His meaning falls on both sides. Taigen Fu said, “The late teacher's numinous bones are still here.” Naturally, his statement is stable and fitting. This whole tangle is at once picked up and set to one side. Tell me: what is the economical, essential place? What is the place to exert strength? Have you not heard it said, “Penetrate one place, and a thousand and ten thousand places are penetrated at once”? If you penetrate the place of “I will not say! I will not say!” you cut off the tongues of everyone in the world. If you do not penetrate it, you must investigate and awaken for yourself. You must not pass your days casually and waste so much time. Setchō's verse says: Setchō especially knows how to add a note beneath the text. He is a descendant in Unmon's line. In every single phrase he has the pincers and hammer of three phrases. He breaks open what is difficult to say, pries open what cannot be opened, and brings the essential point out in verse. He comes straight out with: “Rabbits and horses have horns; cattle and sheep have none.” Tell me: why do rabbits and horses have horns, while cattle and sheep instead have none? Only if you penetrate the preceding story will you know that Setchō has a place where he acts for people. Some misunderstand and say, “Not saying is saying; a phrase of nothing is a phrase of something. Rabbits and horses have no horns, but he says they have horns; cattle and sheep have horns, but he says they do not.” This has no connection at all. They fail entirely to realize that the ancients changed a thousand times and transformed ten thousand ways, displaying spiritual powers like these solely to break apart your clever-spirit ghost cave. If you penetrate, you do not need even the single word “understood.” “Rabbits and horses have horns; cattle and sheep have none. Cut off from hair, cut off from down—like mountains, like peaks.” These four phrases resemble a single wish-fulfilling jewel. Setchō has spat it out whole before your face. Everything at the end settles the case according to the confession: “The golden numinous bones are present even now. White waves flood the sky—where can they be placed?” This versifies the words of Sekisō and Taigen Fu. Why is there nowhere to place them? “The single sandal returning west was once lost.” The numinous turtle drags its tail.⁴ This is the place where Setchō turns his body to act for people. An ancient said, “He investigated the living phrase, not the dead phrase.” Since it was lost, why does that whole band instead rush to compete for it?