Rahulata and the Mirror

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from Kapilavastu. The “former cause” was this. When Venerable Kāṇadeva had received ordination and was traveling to teach, he reached Kapilavastu. An elder named Brahmapure Virtue lived there. One day a great ear-shaped growth appeared on a tree in his garden. It was like a mushroom and tasted exceptionally good. Only the elder and his second son, Rāhulata, could pick and eat it. After they picked it, it immediately grew again. When they finished it, it reappeared. None of the other relatives could even see it. Venerable Kāṇadeva knew its former cause and came to the house. The elder asked why this was happening. Kāṇadeva said, “Long ago your household made offerings to a monk. Although that monk practiced, the eye of the way was not clear. Because he wrongly consumed offerings made in faith, his recompense is to become this tree-mushroom. Only you and your son made offerings with complete sincerity, and therefore only you can enjoy it. The others cannot.” He then asked, “How old are you?” The elder answered, “Seventy-nine.” Kāṇadeva spoke a verse: Entering the way without penetrating principle, One returns in another body to repay faith-offerings. When you reach eighty-one years, No more ears will grow upon this tree.¹ Hearing the verse, the elder admired and submitted to him even more. He said, “Your disciple is old and weak and cannot serve you. I ask to give you my second son so that he may follow you and leave home.” Kāṇadeva said, “Long ago the Tathāgata predicted that this child would become a great teacher during the second five-hundred-year period. Our meeting today accords with a former cause.” He shaved Rāhulata's head and placed him in the lineage as the Sixteenth Ancestor.² From ancient times to the present, when admonishing shameless students who ignorantly mingle in the pure stream and vainly receive offerings made in faith, people have often cited this encounter. Truly, you should be ashamed because of it. As a monk, you have abandoned the household and entered the way. Your dwelling place is not your land. Your food is not your property. Your clothing is not your handiwork. Not one drop of water or blade of grass is simply yours to use. Why? All of you are carried within a country. Under the whole sky, there is no land or water that is not the ruler's territory. When people remain at home, they serve their parents; when they remain in the country, they serve the ruler. At such a time heaven and earth protect them, and they naturally receive the benefits of yin and yang. Yet under the name of seeking the Buddha-Dharma, you do not serve the parents you should serve or the ruler you should serve. How will you repay the kindness by which father and mother brought you forth? How will you repay the ruler's kindness in providing land and water? To enter the way without the eye of the way would be like becoming a traitor to the country. You say that you abandon obligations and enter the unconditioned, leaving the threefold world. After leaving home, you no longer bow to parents or ruler. You have borrowed the form of a Buddha-child and lodged your body in the pure stream.³ Even if you receive what a former spouse or children offer, it is not the same as receiving it while remaining in lay life. There is nothing you receive that is not an offering made in faith. An ancient said, “Before the eye of the way is clear, even one grain is hard to bite through.” When the eye of the way is clear, however, even if you made empty space your bowl and Mount Sumeru your meal and received them every day and every night, you would not be defeated by offerings made in faith. Yet without considering whether they possess the eye of the way, people recklessly become monks expecting to receive support. If the offerings are small, they resent humanity in vain. Remember: when you abandoned home and left your native place, you had not one stored grain and wore not one thread. You wandered alone and exposed. Entrust your body solely to the eye of the way and abandon your life for Dharma. How could your first raising of the mind have been for reputation and gain, clothing and food? Each person should therefore look back without waiting to be asked. Examine the place that is right and examine the place that is not. Thus it is said, “It is difficult to take as much care at the end as at the beginning.” In truth, if you maintained the beginner's mind, who would not become a person of the way? Although everyone becomes monks or nuns, without this they merely become traitors. The former monk's eye of the way was unclear, but because his practice never retreated, he could repay the debt by becoming the tree-mushroom. As for monks today, when this life ends Yama may be unable to pardon you. Today's gruel and rice may become molten iron or iron pellets. When you swallow them, body and heart may burn red and rot.⁴ Zen Master Yunfeng Yue said: Have you not seen the ancestral teacher's words: “Entering the way without penetrating principle, one returns in another body to repay faith-offerings”? This is a settled matter and will never prove false. Elders, daylight is precious and time waits for no one. Do not wait until one morning the light falls from your eyes, with not one basketful of merit from the black-robed field, and then fall within the Iron Ring to suffer a hundred punishments. Do not say I did not tell you.⁵ All of you have fortunately encountered the Tathāgata's wheel of true Dharma. This is rarer than meeting a tiger in the marketplace, rarer than the single appearance of an udumbara flower. Apply yourselves carefully. Study closely. The eye of the way must become clear. Have you not seen today's encounter? Do not divide sentient from insentient or environmental result from living result. The monk of the former life has become today's mushroom. As mushroom he does not know, “I have become this from a monk.” As monk he did not know, “I have appeared as all dharmas.” Now you are sentient and possess a little conscious knowing. You distinguish pain from itch. Even so, you do not differ from the mushroom. Why? The mushroom does not know you—is that not ignorance? You do not know the mushroom; it is entirely the same. This is why there appears to be a division between sentient and insentient and grades of environment and living result. When you clarify yourself, what will you call sentient? What will you call insentient? It is neither ancient, coming, nor present; neither faculty, object, nor consciousness. There is no cutter and nothing cut, no making by self and no making by another. Investigate and penetrate with very great care. Let body and heart drop away, and see. Do not boast idly of taking monastic form or stop at recklessly leaving the dusty household. Even if you escape a water ordeal, a fire ordeal may afflict you. Even if you break through worldly strain, escape may still be difficult within “Buddha.” How much more if you have not done even this? Those who follow other people's things and are confused by others are like light feathers or floating dust. They race east and west, rise and fall between court and countryside, without feet on real ground or heart arriving at a real place. Such people do not merely cheat their way through one life. They pass many lives emptily. Do you not know? From long ago until today it has never missed and never been divided. Because you have not known what is present, you become floating dust in vain. If you do not exhaust it today, what time will you wait for? To express the encounter just given, I have humble words. Do you wish to hear them?