Unmon's Sesame Cake

Engo's commentary on the case

The monk asks for a statement transcending buddhas and patriarchs. Unmon says, “Sesame cake.” Do the hairs on your body stand up? Patch-robed monks ask about Buddha and patriarchs, Zen and the Way, upward and downward. When nothing remains to ask, this monk frames one more question about transcendent speech. Unmon is an adept: as the water rises, the boat rises; with more clay, the buddha is larger. He answers “Sesame cake.” The Way does not travel in vain, and its work is not applied uselessly. Unmon also told the assembly: “Do not finish things merely by hearing someone mention the patriarchs' intent and then asking about transcending buddhas and patriarchs. What do you call Buddha? What do you call patriarch? If you speak of transcending them, bring me the three realms and show me. What sight, hearing, awareness, or knowing obstructs you? What sound, form, Buddha-Dharma is there for you to settle? What bowl are you settling? What do you take as a discriminating view? “The ancient sages can do nothing with you. To say that the whole body is wholly true and each thing directly embodies it is impossible. Even if I tell you that directly there is no affair, I have already buried you.” Understand these words and you recognize sesame cake. Wuzu said, “Donkey dung compared with musk.” As the saying has it: “Directly cut off the root-source stamped by the buddhas; I cannot pluck leaves and seek branches.” If you want intimacy here, do not bring a question to ask. The monk asks; Unmon says cake. Do you know shame? Do you notice the leakage? Some invent the claim that Unmon saw a rabbit and released the hawk, and therefore said “cake.” If you take the cake as the transcendent statement, how can there be a living road? Do not understand it as cake; do not understand it as transcending buddhas and patriarchs. That is the living road. It is like “three pounds of hemp” and “knows how to beat the drum.” Though the answer is only cake, it is difficult to see. Later people reason that “coarse words and subtle speech all return to ultimate meaning.” Understood that way, go become a lecture master and spend your life accumulating knowledge. Others say that when transcending, buddhas and patriarchs are both trampled underfoot, so Unmon says cake. But since it is cake, how could it know how to transcend anything? Examine it carefully. Many verses merely make language around the question; Setchō's is best. “Zen travelers ask far too often about transcendent talk.” Unmon once said: “You carry your staffs crosswise and claim to study Zen and the Way, then seek a principle transcending buddhas and patriarchs. Throughout the twelve periods—in walking, standing, sitting, lying down, defecating, urinating, down to worms in a latrine or mutton sold on a market butcher's block—is there a principle that transcends buddhas and patriarchs? Anyone who can speak, come forward. If not, do not obstruct my going east or west.” Then he left the seat.³ Some cannot distinguish good and bad and make a circle, adding mud to soil, a cangue and chains. “The seam gapes open—do you see it?” The monk's question had an enormous gap. Unmon saw it split and blocked the seam with sesame cake, but the monk still would not stop and asked further. Thus Setchō says that even stopped with cake he does not stay, and confusion remains throughout the world. Today's Zen travelers keep interpreting the cake; otherwise they reason about transcendence. If it is in neither of these two ends, where ultimately is it? Thirty years from now, when this mountain monk comes out after changing his bones, I will tell you.