Nagarjuna Reveals the Moon Disc

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from western India. He was also called Nāgārjuna the Mighty and Nāgavijaya. At that time the Thirteenth Ancestor had received ordination and transmission and traveled to western India. A prince named Cloud Sovereignty revered his reputation and invited him to receive offerings in the palace. Kapimala said, “The Tathāgata left an instruction: renunciants must not draw near kings, ministers, or powerful households.” The prince said, “North of our capital is a great mountain with a stone cave. Would you practice meditation quietly there?” Kapimala agreed. After walking several miles into the mountain, he met a great python. He went straight ahead without looking back. The python came and coiled around his body. Kapimala gave it the three refuges; after hearing them, it went away. As he approached the cave, an old man in plain clothing came out, joined his palms, and greeted him. Kapimala asked, “Where do you live?” The old man answered, “Long ago I was a monk. I greatly enjoyed quiet and lived hidden in the mountain forest. A novice monk repeatedly came to ask for instruction. I became annoyed at having to answer and gave rise to anger. When I died, I fell into a python's body and lived in this cave. A thousand years have now passed. I happened to meet you and hear the Dharma of the precepts, so I came to thank you.” Kapimala asked, “Does anyone else live on this mountain?” He said, “Ten miles north of here is a great tree whose shade covers five hundred great dragons. Its king is named Nāgārjuna and constantly teaches the dragon assembly. I too have listened.” Kapimala went there with his followers. Nāgārjuna came out to welcome him: “This deep mountain is lonely and quiet, a dwelling of dragons and pythons. Why has the supremely honored great sage bent his spiritual steps to come here?” Kapimala said, “I am not supreme or honored. I have come to visit a worthy.” Nāgārjuna silently thought, “Has this teacher realized decisive nature and clarified the eye of the way? Is he a great sage who continues the true vehicle?” Kapimala said, “Although you speak in your heart, I already know your thought. Simply attend to leaving home. Why worry whether I am a sage?” Hearing this, Nāgārjuna repented, apologized, and left home. Kapimala ordained him, and the five hundred dragons received the full precepts as well.² Nāgārjuna followed Kapimala for four years. When the Thirteenth Ancestor answered a dragon king's invitation, the king presented him with a wish-fulfilling jewel. The teacher asked the words beginning “This jewel is the supreme treasure of the world” through “The teacher heard this and awakened deeply.” At last he joined the lineage as the Fourteenth Ancestor. Nāgārjuna had studied outside paths and possessed spiritual powers. He regularly traveled to dragon palaces and saw scriptures of the seven buddhas. Merely seeing a title, he knew a sutra's meaning. In addition he converted five hundred dragons. Dragon kings such as Nanda and Upananda were all bodhisattvas of virtual awakening. They had received the entrustment of former buddhas and preserved the scriptures. When Śākyamuni's teaching has exhausted its affinity among humans and gods, it too is said to be stored in the dragon palace.³ Although Nāgārjuna possessed such great power and regularly conversed with dragon kings, he was not yet a genuine person of the way. He had only studied an outside path. Once he returned to the Thirteenth Ancestor, he truly opened the great clear eye. People commonly think Nāgārjuna was not only the Fourteenth Ancestor of this ancestral gate but founder of many schools: mantra takes him as an original ancestor; Tiantai takes him as its root; arts of yin-yang, silkworm raising, and others claim him as well. He had studied many arts in the past, but abandoned them after joining the ancestral rank. Their practitioners say, “Nāgārjuna is our original ancestor too.” Anyone who makes these abandoned arts into Nāgārjuna himself confuses right and wrong, cannot distinguish jade from stone, and belongs to the company of demons and animals. Only Kāṇadeva correctly transmitted Nāgārjuna's Buddha-Dharma. The rest are schools he discarded. Know this from the present encounter. Even though Nāgārjuna instructed five hundred dragons, when Venerable Kapimala arrived he came out, welcomed him, bowed, and tried to test him. Kapimala temporarily concealed the correct tradition and did not disclose it. Nāgārjuna silently thought, “Is he a great sage continuing the true vehicle?” Kapimala said, “Simply attend to leaving home. Why worry whether I am not a sage?” Nāgārjuna was ashamed and succeeded the Thirteenth Ancestor. The present encounter clarifies it. Nāgārjuna asked, “This jewel is the world's supreme treasure. Does it have form, or is it formless?” In truth he already knew enough to ask whether it had form or was formless. But he was moving and grasping views of being and nonbeing. Kapimala therefore instructed him. Though it is a worldly jewel, when discussed truly it is neither possessed of form nor formless. It is simply jewel. How much more the jewel embedded in the strongman's forehead, the jewel wrapped in a wheel-turning king's topknot, a dragon king's jewel, or the jewel inside a drunken man's robe. None passes through another person's view; each is difficult to distinguish as formed or formless.⁴ Yet all the jewels just mentioned are worldly jewels. None is the supreme treasure within the way. How much less could Nāgārjuna know that this jewel too is not a jewel? You must be truly meticulous. Gensha said, “The whole body is the jewel—whom would you have know it?” He also said, “The whole ten-direction world is one bright jewel.” This cannot be distinguished through the views of humans or gods.⁵ Yet even worldly jewels do not come from outside. All manifest from the heart of each person. Śakra uses one as a wish-fulfilling jewel or mani jewel. When there is sickness, placing the jewel cures it. When there is grief, wearing the jewel removes it. Its spiritual transformations arise from the jewel. Among the seven treasures of a wheel-turning king is the mani jewel, from which all precious things emerge for limitless use. Human and heavenly rewards differ in superiority and inferiority. Among humans, even a grain of rice is called a wish-fulfilling jewel and treated as treasure. Compared with a heavenly jewel it is fabricated and constructed, yet it is still called a jewel. When the Buddha-Dharma disappears, the Tathāgata's relics are said to become wish-fulfilling jewels, rain down everything needed, become grains of rice, and help beings.⁶ Whether it appears as Buddha-body, grain of rice, ten thousand dharmas, or one jewel, your own heart appears as a five-foot body, a three-headed form, a form wearing fur and horns, and the whole forest of myriad appearances in all their kinds. In every case, distinguish that heart-jewel. Do not be like the former monk who desired quiet and hid in the mountain forest. The same error exists today. People say, “Mixing shoulders with everyone and going back and forth in study is not quiet. I will live alone in the mountains and sit quietly in meditation.” Many who speak like this hide in valleys and practice recklessly, and most turn toward wrong roads. Why? They do not know what is true and idly put themselves first. They say, “Master Daibai Chang wore an iron stupa on his head and sat amid pine smoke. Isan Dayuan kept tigers and wolves as companions and practiced beneath cloud and mist. We should practice like them.” This is laughable. The people of old had all realized the way and received confirmation from a true teacher. They practiced this way for a time to mature the way while awaiting their conditions. Daibai had received Baso's true seal. Isan had received Hyakujō's entrustment. Only then did they live as they did. Their conduct is beyond foolish views. None of the ancient people such as Yinshan and Razan lived alone before realizing the way. They displayed their virtue in their own time and left their names to later ages. They were great clear-eyed sages, genuine people of realization. If you fail to study what must be studied and fail to reach what must be reached, then live in a mountain valley like a monkey, this shows an extreme lack of the mind of the way. If the eye of the way is not clear, a person who regulates and trains himself alone becomes only a hearer or solitary buddha—a vain, scorched seed. A scorched seed cannot sprout; it cuts off Buddha-seed.⁷ All of you should train carefully in the monastic community, seek teachers for a long time, clarify the great matter entirely, and finish distinguishing yourself. Afterward, temporarily deepening the root and making the stem firm may accord with an ancestor's entrustment. Within this line especially, the founder Eihei Dōgen warned against living alone so that people would not turn toward wrong roads. My late teacher Keizan, when he first attended Ancestor Koun and later received the instruction of the second generation, said: “My disciples must not live alone. Even if they have realized the way, they should mature their training in the monastic community. How much more must students never live alone. Anyone who violates this rule does not belong to my lineage.”⁸ Engo said, “After obtaining the purport, the ancients went into deep mountains, thatched huts, and stone chambers, where a little broken-legged pot cooked their rice. For ten or twenty years they greatly forgot the human world and forever took leave of the dusty realm. Today I dare not hope for this.”⁹ Huanglong Huinan said, “Rather than guarding one's way alone and growing bent with age in a mountain forest, how could it equal drawing an assembly into the monastery?” The great recent masters did not delight in solitary residence. Human capacities today are all inferior to those of people of old. Practice and train only within the monastic community. Even the ancient monk in this story, because his care remained coarse, recklessly delighted in quiet. When a novice came for instruction, he answered when he should not have answered and became angry. Know that his body and heart were not regulated. If you separate from a teacher and live quietly alone, then even if you teach like Nāgārjuna, it may be only a kind of karmic result. Because all of you have deeply planted roots of goodness, you have correctly heard the Tathāgata's true Dharma: do not draw near kings and ministers; do not delight in living alone and idle quiet. Practice the work of the way vigorously and devote yourself to penetrating the source of Dharma. This is the Tathāgata's true oral instruction. Today, in raising the encounter just given, I have a humble verse. Do you wish to hear it?