Tōhō's Tiger

Engo's commentary on the case

From Daxiong's line came four hermits: Daibai, Baiyun, Huxi, and Tōhō. These two have intimate eyes and discerning hands—where is their confusion? Ancient mechanisms and sayings arose according to the moment and were vividly alive when the eye was sound. Setchō raises this to distinguish crooked and straight, gain and loss. Yet an accomplished person, while situated in gain/loss, has none. See the ancients only through gain/loss and you miss them. One must reach no-gain/no-loss and then use gain/loss to distinguish people. Unmon rebuked travelers who collect idle phrases, copy classifications, gather around fires, and claim knowledge of Buddhism while only “talking dreams after eating.” The ancients' momentary play did not contain fixed victory, defeat, right, or wrong. Tōhō, a student of Rinzai living deep in the mountains, roared when asked about a tiger. The monk met error with error by acting afraid; Tōhō laughed; the monk called him a thief; Tōhō challenged him. Yet neither settled it and later people could check them. They arrayed an army of a million only to fight with brooms. This affair requires hands and feet that “kill without blinking,” yet always releasing without capture or killing without giving life invites ridicule. The ancients themselves had no mass of complication; both simply acted upon the moment. Later people, their heels off the ground, judge only gain and loss. Setchō says both encounters contain a letting-pass: the roar itself and Tōhō's final challenge. Every move falls into the secondary mechanism. “When use is needed, use it.” This does not mean enforcing blindly. Tokusan struck at entry and Rinzai shouted at entry—what was their intent? How does one avoid covering one's ears while stealing the bell? At the perilous point neither could act. When Tōhō asked what could be done, the monk should have supplied the fodder of the original share and drawn out a later statement. Both knew release, not gathering. Failing to take what is seen is already clouds ten thousand miles away. The tiger can hide fang and claw but cannot bite. Setchō then invokes Hyakujō and Ōbaku. Returning from gathering mushrooms, Ōbaku roared when Hyakujō asked if he had seen a tiger. Hyakujō reached for an axe; Ōbaku stopped the motion and slapped him. That evening Hyakujō warned the assembly that he had met a tiger and personally received one bite. Isan later said Hyakujō should have chopped him down. Kyōzan disagreed: Ōbaku “not only rode the tiger's head; he also knew how to gather its tail.” Isan praised the perilous phrase. Setchō uses this to illuminate the present case: its sound and light shake the earth, with free transformation and a road of emergence within the phrase. Do you see the grown man? Gathering tail and stroking whiskers must belong to the original share. Yet even if you do both, your nostrils are still pierced at once.