Gayasata and the Wind Bell

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from Magadha and belonged to the Udraka clan. His father was Heavenly Canopy and his mother Directional Sage. His mother once dreamed of a great deity holding a mirror and became pregnant. After only seven days she gave birth. The child's skin and body were clear as crystal. He was never washed, yet was naturally fragrant and clean. From the time of his birth, one round mirror appeared and accompanied him constantly. The child always preferred quiet and was never stained by worldly conditions. When he sat, the round mirror was before him. There was no buddha-work of ancient or present that did not float within it. It was clearer even than illuminating heart by relying on sacred teachings. When the child went somewhere, the mirror followed behind him like a round halo without concealing his form. When he lay down, it covered him above the bed like a canopy. In walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, the mirror always followed him. Venerable Saṅghanandi traveled to teach in Magadha. A cool breeze suddenly touched the assembly, bringing extraordinary ease to body and heart, though no one knew why. Saṅghanandi said, “This is the wind of the way and virtue. A sage must be appearing who will continue the ancestral lamp.” Using spiritual power, he led the assembly through mountains and valleys. In the time it takes to eat, they reached the foot of a peak. He told them, “A purple cloud covers this summit like a canopy. A sage lives there.” After wandering with the assembly for a long time, he saw a mountain hut and a child holding a round mirror. The child came directly before him. Saṅghanandi asked, “How old are you?” He said, “One hundred years.” Saṅghanandi said, “You are still young. Why say one hundred?” The child said, “I do not understand principle, so I am exactly one hundred.” Saṅghanandi asked, “Are you skilled in the working?” The child said, “The Buddha said, ‘If a person lives one hundred years without understanding the working of the buddhas, it does not equal living one day and decisively comprehending it.’”² Saṅghanandi asked, “What does the object in your hand express?” The child replied: The great round mirror of the buddhas Has no flaw or cloud within or without. When the two of us see it together, Our heart-eyes are entirely alike. Hearing their son's words, his parents gave him permission to leave home. Saṅghanandi took him back, gave him the full precepts, and named him Gayaśāta. Later, when he attended Saṅghanandi, the wind-bell encounter occurred, and he joined the lineage as the Eighteenth Ancestor. When the child left home, the round mirror suddenly disappeared. Truly, every person has one expanse of light, entirely like this round mirror without flaw or cloud inside or outside. From birth, the child always praised buddha-work and did not mingle in worldly affairs. Facing the bright mirror, he saw the buddha-work of ancient and present. Although he knew that the heart-eyes were alike, he still thought that he did not understand the working of the buddhas. Therefore he said “one hundred years.” Even if you live only one day, if you understand the working of the buddhas you surpass not merely one hundred years but measureless lives. For this reason he finally discarded the round mirror. The encounter shows that the buddhas' one great causal matter is neither casual nor easy. If one completely understands the buddhas' great round mirror, what could remain? Yet this is still not the genuine bottom. What great round mirror of the buddhas could there be? What could “the two of us both see” mean? What inside or outside could be without flaw? What would you call a flaw? What is heart-eye, and how could the two be alike? The round mirror therefore disappears. Is this not losing the child's skin and flesh? Even if your view is like his—heart-eyes not separated, “the two of us see it together”—this is genuinely the view of two. It does not yet clarify the true self. All of you, do not form a view of a circle and do not form a view of a body. Investigate and penetrate with great care. Swiftly let environmental and living result shatter at the same time, and obtain that self too is not understood. Without reaching this ground, you are only beings of karmic recompense and have not understood the working of the buddhas. Gayaśāta repented, bowed, left home, received the full precepts, and attended Saṅghanandi for years. Once they heard the wind sounding a bronze bell on the temple hall. Saṅghanandi asked, “Is the bell sounding, or is the wind sounding?” Examine this encounter very carefully. Even without finally seeing bell or wind, what matter did Saṅghanandi want him to know by asking this? Do not understand it through an ordinary windbell. This was a bell hung at the corner of a temple hall, called a bell-clapper. They are still hung on the halls and towers of the southern capital to distinguish temples from ordinary houses. Although halls in the northern capital began to hang them, the custom has recently declined and its meaning is lost. India had the same convention.³ When wind blew this bell, the present case occurred. The teacher answered, “Neither wind nor bell. It is only my heart sounding.” Truly, not one dust-mote comes out beyond its boundary. Thus it is neither wind nor bell sounding. Even the view “If I think it sounds, then it sounds” is not yet heart and all together still. Therefore Gayaśāta said, “It is my heart sounding.” People hear this encounter and all understand it wrongly: “It is not necessarily the wind that sounds; only heart perceives the sounding, and that is why Gayaśāta spoke this way.” If nothing at all arose in a naive natural state, how could he even say it was not the bell sounding? He therefore said, “It is my heart sounding.” Gayaśāta and the Sixth Ancestor were separated by centuries, yet they were not separated at all. Thus Huineng said, “It is not the wind moving and not the banner moving; your heart is moving.”⁴ When all of you penetrate that ground of heart, the three times have never been divided, and realization and accord continue through ancient and present. What same or different could be distinguished? Do not decide it through ordinary views. First know it by neither wind nor bell sounding. If you wish to know this matter, know it as “my heart sounds.” The form of that sounding is mountain rising abruptly high, sea lying level and deep, grasses and trees growing dense, and each person's eyes clear and distinct. These are forms of heart's sounding. Do not think only audible sound is sounding. Sound too is heart sounding. The four elements, five aggregates, and all ten thousand dharmas are entirely heart sounding. This heart is never not sounding. Therefore it finally bears no echo and is not heard by the ear. The ear itself is the sounding. When you see it as “both are still,” no dharma has a place to put out its head. Mountain has no mountain form, sea has no sea form, and not one dharma bears fixed shape. It is like floating a magnolia boat in a dream and traveling across the blue sea. Whether you raise the pole and divide the waves or stop the boat and measure the current, there is no sky in which to float and no bottom in which to sink. What mountain or sea could stand outside? What self could play within the boat? This is why it is pointed out in this way. Though there are eyes, there is no hearing; though there are ears, there is no seeing. Therefore it cannot be called the interpenetration of the six faculties. There are no six faculties to bear. Thus both are still. Try to take them, and no six faculties exist; try to discard them, and no six faculties exist. Faculty and object both drop away; heart and field are forgotten together. Seen closely, there are no faculty and object to drop and no heart and field to extinguish. Genuine stillness is not a debate about same and different or a feeling of inside and outside. When you reach such ground, you receive and maintain the Dharma treasury of the buddhas and stand in the rank of buddhas and ancestors. If you do not reach it, then even if you understand that all dharmas never miss, you still preserve self, speak of other, and keep dharma separate from dharma. If they remain separate, how can you pass directly into buddhas and ancestors? It is like building boundary walls in empty space. Can space be obstructed? You only make the barrier yourself. When the boundary breaks once, what will you call inside or outside? Old Śākyamuni is not the beginning, and none of you is the end. The buddhas have no fixed face, and you have no fixed form. At such a time it is exactly like clear water making waves. Buddhas and ancestors arise and continue. Though this is neither increase nor decrease, water flows and waves surge. Investigate closely and reach this ground. From vast ages through the endless future, we provisionally make boundaries and arrange the three times, yet from kalpa to kalpa it has only been this way. To comprehend this bright, original nature, do not labor through skin and flesh or distinguish it through bodily movement and stillness. This ground cannot be known through body and heart or distinguished through movement and stillness. Investigate closely. Rest and come to a stop yourself. Take responsibility yourself; only then will you obtain it. If you do not clarify it this way, you carry body and heart through all twelve hours like a heavy load on the shoulders, and body and heart never become easy. Put body and heart down. Let the ground of heart become open, vast, and most ordinary. Even so, if you cannot speak and clarify the place where heart sounds in the encounter just given, you will not know the emergence of the buddhas or the awakening of beings. To speak the sounding of heart, I want to attach humble words. Do you wish to hear them?