Tempyō's Two “Wrongs”

Engo's commentary on the case

Siming first studied with Dajue and later inherited Baoshou. Asked what it was like after breaking through the conjured city, Baoshou said, “A sharp sword does not cut a dead man.” Siming cried “Cut!” and was struck. This repeated ten times before Baoshou shouted him out; another monk who defended Siming was also struck and expelled. Both later inherited Baoshou. In an encounter with Nanyuan, Siming offered a “Jiangxi razor” though coming from Xuzhou. The source's bracketed continuation says Siming pinched Nanyuan's hand, Nanyuan told the attendant to take it, Siming brushed his sleeve and left, and Nanyuan exclaimed approval. This is preserved as an embedded textual note rather than Engo's capping phrase. Tempyō had studied under Jinshan but carried “turnip-head Zen” in his belly and boasted everywhere. Before buddhas appeared, before Bodhidharma came, before questions and cases, was there Zen? Ancients spoke according to occasions only because they had no choice; later people called these “public cases.” Before the flower was raised or Ānanda asked Kāśyapa about separate transmission, where could a case be found? People stamped by winter-melon seals claim hidden special understanding. Tempyō was such a person. Xiyuan's two “wrongs” left him frightened and unable to explain. Do not say merely that speaking of Bodhidharma's western intent was already wrong. Study the living phrase, not the dead. At the first call Tempyō was already second or third. He did not recognize present use. After the second “wrong,” he remained dark. Asked whose wrong, he accepted a literal accusation and fell to the seventh or eighth head. His departure has some monastic breath, but he could not keep pace. Later he claimed he knew when heading south; that too is remote and irrelevant. Do not interpret it as pre-travel innocence corrupted by teachers. Buddha-Dharma is not a fashionable blank simplicity. Carry a shoulder-load of Zen around the world and a clear-eyed person exposes it as useless. Setchō verses exactly this. Tempyō understood something but could not use it. Ordinarily he gazed at clouds and boasted of his Zen; in the furnace not one point worked. Wuzu compared such study to pounding rice cake inside a glass bottle: it cannot move or be shaken out and breaks when touched. Better “skin-bag Zen” flung from a high mountain, neither broken nor damaged. Even recognition before words may remain trapped in a shell; mastery beneath phrases may produce mad views at every encounter. Setchō laments Tempyō's inability to speak and laughs at the bellyful he cannot use. Some say his nonunderstanding was the wrong; others his silence. Neither connects. The two wrongs are like fire struck from stone or lightning—the conduct of an upward person, a sword taking the throat. Walk on this edge and move freely in all directions. Understand the two wrongs and see Xiyuan's clear wind melt. Setchō raised the case and himself intended “Wrong.” How do Setchō's two compare with Tempyō's? Study thirty years.