Dairyū's Enduring Dharma Body

Engo's commentary on the case

If you seek this matter in language, it is like waving a stick to strike the moon—entirely unrelated. An ancient plainly said, “If you want intimacy, do not bring a question to ask.” Why? The question is in the answer, and the answer in the question. This monk trades one shoulder-load of recklessness for one of muddle and frames a question with many defects. Were it not Dairyū, how could the response cover heaven and earth? The question and answer form a single joined configuration without shifting one hair-tip, like releasing a hawk on seeing a rabbit or fitting a wedge on seeing a hole. Do the three vehicles and twelve divisions of teaching contain such an occasion? It is exceptional, yet the words are tasteless and stop people's mouths. Thus: “One sheet of white cloud stretches across the valley mouth; how many returning birds lose their nests at night?” Some say Dairyū answered whatever came to his mouth. Understood so, they extinguish the lineage. The ancients' every mechanism and scene knocked off cangues and broke locks; every phrase was whole gold and uncut jade. A patch-robed monk with eyes sometimes holds fast and sometimes releases; illumination and function occur together; person and environment are both taken, both released, both gathered. Without great function, how could one envelop heaven and earth like a bright mirror showing foreigner or Han exactly as each arrives? This resembles the flowering-hedge case but differs in intent. The monk's question is unclear and Dairyū's answer exactly right. When asked what it is like when trees wither and leaves fall, Unmon said, “The body exposed in the golden wind”—arrowpoints meeting tip to tip. Here Dairyū goes in the opposite direction: “Mountain flowers … ravine water.” Moving as Unmon did is easier to see; not moving that way is harder. Dairyū's three inches are exceedingly dense. Setchō's verse is exceptionally skillful. Elsewhere he said of Unmon, “The question has its source; the answer accords with it.” Here he instead says questioner did not know and answerer did not understand. Dairyū's answer glances aside and is truly exceptional. The monk was already defective before asking. Dairyū stooped to fit the occasion with flowers and water. How do you understand his intent? Setchō shows it through cold moon and high wind, ancient crag and wintry cypress. Those first four lines complete the verse. Fearing conceptual explanation, Setchō adds: “Meeting an accomplished person on the road, do not confront him with speech or silence.” This affair is neither sensory knowing nor thought and discrimination. He borrows Kyōgen's verse: “Exact, with nothing alongside; moving alone, on what could it rely? Meeting an accomplished person on the road, do not confront him with speech or silence.” A monk asked Jōshū what to use if neither speech nor silence; Jōshū said, “Present a lacquer vessel.” That accords with Dairyū and does not fall into emotional dust or ideation. The white-jade whip smashing dragon pearls depicts the ancestral command carried out, cutting off the ten directions. This is an affair on a sword edge. Without such strategy one betrays the former sages. Here having no smallest affair is itself good—the conduct of a person of the upward way. If the pearls are not smashed, blemishes increase and leakage appears. How can it finally be right? “The state has statutes, three thousand articles of crime.” The five punishments were said to comprise three thousand crimes, none greater than lack of filiality. Setchō violates them all at once because he does not receive people with the matter of the original share. Dairyū would never act that way.³