Dōgo's Whole Body Is Hands and Eyes

Engo's commentary on the case

Ungan and Dōgo both studied with Yakusan, for forty years not letting their ribs touch the mat. From Yakusan's line, Ungan produced Dongshan, Dōgo produced Shishuang, and Chuanzi produced Kassan. Bodhisattva Great Compassion has eighty-four thousand arms bearing mudrās. Do you have so many hands and eyes? Hyakujō said all language and writing turn and return to oneself. Ungan often followed Dōgo for inquiry. When he asked this question, Dōgo compassionately explained instead of striking him. At midnight with no lamp, one reaches behind for a pillow—where then is the eye? Ungan says “all over”; Dōgo says it is eighty percent, then “whole body.” Which is right? Though resembling rotten mud, they are free and clean. Many readers say the first is wrong and second right, biting the ancients' phrases and dying beneath them. The intent is not in the words, which are used only because there is no alternative. Do not establish a rule that realization means touching your body, lanterns, and pillars and calling all “whole body.” Study the living phrase, not the dead. Only beyond emotional dust and ideation can one see the Great Compassion saying. Sōzan asked about manifesting form in response to beings like the moon in water. A monk answered, “Like a donkey looking into a well.” Sōzan called it eighty percent and said, “Like the well looking at the donkey.” The intent is the same. Seek it in wording and you cannot escape Ungan and Dōgo's snare. If you identify the pillow-touch or touching the body as the answer, you work in a ghost cave. Ultimately neither “all over” nor “whole body” is it. Emotional consciousness leaves you a hundred thousand miles away. Setchō praises their exceptional place with the giant roc, which beats wind and waves apart to swallow dragons. Yet beside Great Compassion's thousand hands and eyes, this grandeur is a mote arising or hair-tip still stirred by wind. Bodily touching has not reached the saying. Setchō claims to brush away tracks, then leaks again by giving an analogy: “netted jewels.” Indra's net before the god's hall consists of jewels each reflecting hundreds of thousands of others, and all reflecting each one, host and companions without end. Huayan describes four Dharma realms: principle, phenomena, their nonobstruction, and the nonobstruction of phenomenon with phenomenon. One event enters all events and all encompass one another. One mote raised gathers the whole earth; each contains boundless Dharma realms. Fazang's mirror-and-lamp demonstration arranged ten mirrors around one lamp so each reflected all. The image explains the Huayan teaching's simultaneous interpenetration and its six characteristics—whole/particular, same/different, formation/disintegration. Setchō uses Indra's net as a model for Great Compassion. If within this net you clarify the staff's unobstructed wondrous functioning, you may see the hands and eyes. Thus: “From where do hands and eyes arise at the staff-tip?” Where are they when Tokusan strikes or Rinzai shouts? Why does Setchō finally add “Bah!”