Gon’yō's One Thing

Banshō's commentary on the case

The Venerable Gon’yō of Xinxing in Wuning County, Hongzhou, first visited Jōshū and asked, “What about when one does not bring a single thing?” This resembles a monk asking Baozi, “When feeling arises, wisdom is obstructed; appearances change and essence differs. What about before feeling has arisen?” Baozi said, “Obstructed.” Dim-witted fellow! If feeling has not yet arisen, what is obstructed? This is greatly the same as saying, “When one does not bring a single thing, what is there to put down?”—a regular Meng Balang fool. When Jōshū said, “If you cannot put it down, carry it away,” Gon’yō greatly awakened at the words.³ In a Dharma talk Foguo raised Huanglong's verse: Not bringing a single thing, two shoulders cannot carry it. Foguo: A clear-eyed person is hard to deceive. At the words, suddenly he knew his error. Foguo: Stepping backward, he falls into a deep pit. Within his heart, limitless joy. Foguo: Like a poor person obtaining treasure. Poison and harm now forgotten from his heart, Foguo: When beginningless past karma is exhausted, purity appears. snake and tiger became intimate friends. Foguo: Different species understand equally. Through the empty distance of a thousand years, the clear wind has still not ceased. Foguo: Who does not look up to him? Where the teacher lived there was always a snake and a tiger, which he fed from his hand. Therefore he was called a venerable like one who had attained the fruit.⁴ Jōshū, the ancient Buddha, and the Venerable—a person whose status as sacred or ordinary could not be measured—produced one statement and launched one question. For a thousand years afterward they have served people as turtle shell and mirror. Tendō saw that the coarse minds of recent monastics were growing still coarser. Therefore he beat the grass to startle the snake. Old Wang Jiefu composed a riddle about holding a Go stone: The other does not dare go first; this one also does not dare go first. Only because neither dares go first is there nothing for them to contest. Only because there is nothing to contest do they enter neither death nor birth. Go is a method of contesting the initiative. To win is to win the first move; to lose is to take the blow to the head. Before you had placed a stone, Jōshū had already seen several moves ahead. Gon’yō merely kept flying crosswise and leaping straight, occupying extra routes. He did not know that his axe handle had already rotted. The Wang Clan's Biographies of Immortals says that during the Long'an era of the Jin, Wang Zhi of Xin'an County went gathering firewood and reached Xuanshi Slope. He saw four youths in a stone chamber playing Go. They gave him something resembling a date; holding it in his mouth, he did not grow hungry. When the game ended, the handle of the axe at his waist had rotted and his sleeves fluttered in the wind. By the time he returned home at dusk, several decades had passed.⁵ Jōshū's two turning phrases, “Put it down” and “Carry it away,” draw out sinews, remove marrow, replace bones, and wash intestines. At once Gon’yō walks hand in hand with Jōshū, stepping through emptiness and rising lightly.⁶ Some say: Clear leisure is the true basis of the Way; having no affairs makes a minor immortal. Even so, do not take having no affairs as “no affairs.” Affairs often arise from no affairs.