Fuketsu's Iron Ox

Banshō's commentary on the case

Hō Wujin related the following. When Rinzai took leave of Isan, Kyōzan was attending at Isan's side. Isan asked, “How will this man's Dharma path fare in the future?” Kyōzan said, “In the future his Dharma path will spread greatly through Wu and Yue. When it encounters Feng, it will stop.” Isan asked who would succeed Rinzai. Kyōzan said, “The time is far distant; it cannot yet be told.” Isan pressed him: “I too want to know.” Kyōzan said, “Does the scripture not say, ‘I offer this profound mind throughout lands numerous as dust; this alone is called repaying the Buddha's kindness’?” The layman said, “From this I know that Fuketsu was Kyōzan reborn.”³ Fuketsu first studied with Seppō for five years. One day he asked for instruction about two hall leaders in Rinzai's assembly who raised their heads, looked at each other, and each gave a shout. A monk had raised this with Rinzai, asking, “Did they possess the eye of host and guest?” Rinzai said, “Although it was so, host and guest were perfectly distinct.” Seppō recounted this to Gantō and Kinzan. On his journey he had found that Rinzai had already died and had been unable to study with him. They said, “If you want to understand, you should ask his descendants.” Fuketsu raised the story with Nanyuan Yong. Nanyuan said, “Seppō is an ancient buddha.” Later Fuketsu lived at Guanghui Zen Monastery on Mount Fuketsu in Ruzhou. During the warfare of the Five Dynasties, the prefect of Yingzhou invited him to spend the summer retreat in the prefectural offices. One day the prefect asked him to ascend the seat. Fuketsu instructed the assembly: “The ancestral teachers' mind-seal resembles the mechanism of an iron ox. It differs from arcane chants and arcane propositions concerning stone people and wooden horses. Directly, it is like an iron ox: there is nowhere for you to draw near. The instant you go, its hook pulls you back; the instant you stay, it strikes you into a hundred fragments. But suppose you neither go nor stay: is it right to seal, or is it right not to seal?” This may be called bait upon the hook. Elder Lupi was also a descendant of Rinzai. He immediately turned Fuketsu's topic around and posed a remarkably unusual question: “I possess the mechanism of the iron ox. Please, teacher, do not set your seal upon it.” But Fuketsu acted according to the command and said, “Accustomed to angling for whales and clearing the vast deep, I instead lament a frog stepping and floundering in mud and sand.” Whales are great fish that range across the sea. In the Zhuangzi, Prince Ren used fifty oxen as bait and once caught such a fish.⁴ Concerning “a frog stepping and floundering in mud and sand,” one explanation tells of a director named Baoli under Emperor Wu of Han. Beside the Wowa waters he saw a herd of wild horses. An extraordinary horse among them came to drink. He made a clay human figure, put bridle and tether beside it, and let the horses become accustomed to the sight. Then he replaced the figure with a person and captured the horse. Wanting to make the animal marvelous, he said it had emerged from the water; it was accordingly transmitted as a dragon-breed horse. On that reading Fuketsu meant that a horse emerging from clear water instead lay floundering in mud and sand. This explanation is circuitous. Fuketsu's Collection of the Assembly's Roars clearly writes “frog steps.” Have you not seen that after Setchō versified the rhinoceros-fan story, he added, “If you want the pure wind to stir again and horned head to be reborn, I ask a Zen traveler to give a turning word”? He then said, “The fan is already broken. Bring me back my rhinoceros.” A monk came forward and said, “Assembly, go to the hall.” Setchō shouted, “Casting a hook to fish for a great whale, I caught a toad.” These two lines correspond to the upper and lower lines of Fuketsu's saying. There is no doubt about the graph “frog.”⁵ Lupi stood thinking. By presenting a mechanism in his question, he wanted to meet Fuketsu. Abruptly he was struck by a point. He wanted to seek another way out and make a long cast. By the time he displayed his spear-work, one carrying-pole stroke had knocked him down. This was the fault of not understanding how to seize the mechanism, enact the command, and exchange host and guest. The prefect had studied with Fuketsu for a long time and did not lack insight. He said, “Buddha-Dharma and royal law are alike.” Having secured the south, Fuketsu again worried about the northern frontier and asked the prefect, “What do you see?” Here the prefect could well have redressed Lupi's grievance. Instead he merely said, “Fail to decide when decision is due, and instead you invite disorder.” He did indeed speak to the point. Because the prefect was a lay official, Fuketsu swallowed breath and voice and descended from the seat. The two venerable adepts, one dragon and one snake, played the hard and the soft, sounding and drumming the house style of Rinzai. Tendō adds his judgment in verse. The mechanism of the iron ox: the seal holds; the seal breaks. When the King of Min sent an envoy bearing a vermilion warrant, Hofuku ascended the hall and said, “Go, and the seal holds you. Stay, and the seal breaks.” A monk said, “Neither going nor staying—what use is the seal?” Hofuku struck him. The monk said, “If so, everything in the mountain ghost's cave depends entirely on today.” Hofuku was silent. Banshō says: What a pity—dragon's head, snake's tail. Had Fuketsu not gone beyond and realized the great gate of liberation that neither abides nor depends, he could not have broken through and walked atop Vairocana's crown. Tang Emperor Suzong asked National Teacher Zhong, “What is the samadhi beyond contention?” The National Teacher said, “Patron, you are walking atop Vairocana's crown.” This clarifies what goes upward beyond the Dharma body; it is not an affair beside a dead stump. Fuketsu first acted from this command, then returned within the gate of buddha-work, wielding unsurpassed awesome authority. He decided unresolved public cases, swept away the conceptual measures of ordinary and sage, and sat astride the heads of reward-body and transformation-body buddhas. Rinzai's extensive discourse says, “Where this mountain monk sees, I sit astride the crowns of reward-body and transformation-body buddhas.” Holding the balance in this way, even an adept such as Lupi sometimes incurs defeat. Indian non-Buddhists propounded theses; when one failed, this was called “incurring defeat.” They cut off head or arm to apologize for their inadequacy. This is a doxographical trope reported by Banshō, not an endorsed practice.⁶ Hammering from atop the staff and beneath the shout, and the transformations of lightning flash and stone-struck spark, are all momentary scenes of light. Take care not to use them to determine gain and loss or decide victory and defeat. Like a pearl running on a tray, it is missed in the blink of an eye. Banshō struck the Zen seat with his whisk and said, “Finished.”