Unmon's Medicine and Disease

Engo's commentary on the case

Do you have a place to emerge? Set aside Tokusan's rain of blows and Rinzai's thunder of shouts. Śākyamuni is himself; Maitreya is himself. Those who do not know where the phrase lands often understand it merely as medicine matching disease. The World-Honored One's forty-nine years and more than three hundred assemblies gave teaching according to the occasion—medicine in response to disease, exchanging honeyed fruit for bitter gourd. Once karmic roots are washed and you become freely clear, the whole earth is medicine. Where can you put your mouth? If you can, you turn and breathe and personally see Unmon; if you hesitate, Unmon is beneath your heels. “Medicine and disease treat one another” is ordinary discourse. Attach to being and I tell you nonbeing; attach to nonbeing and I tell you being; attach to neither and I manifest a sixteen-foot golden body atop a dung heap, appearing and disappearing. Now the whole earth, its manifold forms, and your own self are medicine at once. Which then is your self? Call everything “medicine” and even when Maitreya descends you will not have dreamed of Unmon. Recognize the hook's intent; do not fix the calibrating star. Mañjuśrī told Sudhana, “Bring me what is not medicine.” Sudhana searched everywhere and found nothing that was not. Mañjuśrī then said, “Bring what is medicine.” Sudhana handed him one blade of grass. Mañjuśrī raised it: “This medicine can kill and can give life.” The saying is especially difficult. Elder Jine, an adept of Rinzai's line, discussed it with Setchō through the night before exhausting its excellence. Learned interpretation and calculation are useless here. Setchō later praised their discussion: the waves of the sea of learning dried up in one night. His verse places intent with both guest and host. If you understand by calling it medicine, past and present are wrong at once. Setchō said some cannot cut off Daibai's heels and only call him too eager to travel; but he himself knows how to cut off Unmon's heels, because this phrase confuses the world. Unmon once said, “The staff is a wave; I allow you freedom in every direction. The whole earth is waves—let us see you appear and disappear.” “Behind closed doors, do not build a cart; the open road is naturally vast.” Setchō opens one thread. The proverb says a cart built behind closed doors will fit the tracks outside, but what does that save? Here no cart is built; outside the road is naturally open. Setchō reveals a small seam so people may see, then hastily says, “Wrong! Wrong!” Front and back are wrong; even his opening is wrong. If one's nostrils tower to heaven, why are they pierced? Study for thirty years. If you have a staff, I give you one; if you have none, someone will pierce your nostrils.