Seirin's Dead Snake

Banshō's commentary on the case

Zen Master Shiqian, third generation at Dongshan in Junzhou, first came from Kassan to visit Wuben of Dongshan. Wuben asked, “What place have you recently left?” Seirin said, “Wuling.” Wuben asked, “How does the Dharma Way at Wuling compare with here?” Seirin said, “In the Hu lands, bamboo shoots emerge in winter.” Wuben said, “Cook fragrant rice in a separate steamer and make an offering to this person.” The teacher then went out. Wuben said, “Later this fellow will run everyone in the world to death.”³ While Seirin was planting pines at Dongshan, an old man named Liu asked him for a verse. Seirin showed him: Pointed, pointed, more than three feet high; luxuriant, luxuriant, covering wild grass. I do not know what generation's person will get to see this old pine. The old man presented it to Wuben. Wuben said, “Congratulations on your good fortune, old man. This person is the third generation of Dongshan.” Seirin took leave of Wuben and went to Mount Qingcuo in Shannan Prefecture, where he lived in a hermitage for ten years. Suddenly recalling Wuben's final words, he said, “I ought to benefit the multitude of the confused. How could I be constrained by minor observances?” He therefore went to Suizhou. Conditions converged; at the assembly's request he lived at the small Seirin monastery at Tumen, and so was called Seirin.³ He once said, “All of you must investigate apart from mind, thought, and consciousness, and study after emerging from the roads of ordinary and sacred. Only then can you preserve it. If you do not do this, you are not my descendants.”⁴ A monk asked, “What about when this student goes straight on?” This monk wants to go from beneath the Pavilion of Great Compassion to the central capital, then boasts that he knows the direct and essential road. He hardly realizes that directness itself is already far too circuitous. Seirin blocks him with a dead snake across the main road. Disregarding danger and death, the monk asks, “What about meeting it head-on?” He has already suffered the poison. Some say, “Why did Seirin not enforce his command with staff and shout?” Yet when did Seirin ever let him pass? He said, “You lose your life-root.” Feeling pain from itch, the monk looks for a road by which to get his body out: “What about not meeting it head-on?” Seirin says, “There is still no place to evade it.” Even Seirin himself cannot escape this. His sinews relaxed and strength exhausted, the monk asks, “At precisely such a time, when neither side offers anything to be done, what is it?” Seirin says, “Instead it is lost.” Here one sees the method of bringing a person to life: able to send and summon, with a share of capture and release. Place it upon your body and you cannot remove it; pick it off for you and it has somewhere to come down. The monk asks, “Where has it gone?” Seirin says, “The grass is deep; there is nowhere to seek it.” He does not say it is absent, only that it cannot be seen. This monk too is extraordinary. He says, “Reverend, you also must be careful.” Seirin used one dead snake to beckon and provoke this monk, but at the end it instead wrapped around his own waist and feet. He therefore clapped once and said, “Just the same poisonous energy!” Banshō says: It smokes heaven and scorches earth. The Inexhaustible Lamp says, “Seirin's pivotal mechanism was urgent and severe. It was not only the light of one time, but a model across distant ages.” Banshō says: Disturbing the spring wind, never coming to rest. Watch further as Tendō blows the flowers and sways the willows. Zen Master Chun of Danxia versified: The Long River, limpid and clear, imprints the moon's radiance; clear light filling the eyes is not yet home. May I ask where the fishing boat is going? Deep at night it lodges again among reed flowers. The two elders alike versify that even in a limpid source and still water, the solitary boat is still rowed. Danxia uses Setchō's verse on Reverend Gensha: Originally a guest aboard a fishing boat, by chance he shaved hair and beard and donned the robe. The rank of patriarchs and buddhas could not hold him; last night he lodged again among reed flowers.⁵ Banshō says: I thought there might be something else. The Ancient and Modern Talks on Poetry says that in the Sichuan gorges a helmsman or pole-handler is called a “long-years elder boatman.” Du Fu's poem says: Sichuan salt and Wu hemp have traded since ancient times; a ten-thousand-measure boat travels like the wind. In the long-years boatman's long song, by daylight they spread gambling stakes amid high waves.⁶ This matter resembles a person traveling by boat: not attached to either bank, not abiding in midstream. Danxia lodges at night among reed flowers; Tendō trusts the wind and plays the flute crosswise. Now say: what happens when the rudder turns and the boat comes about? Deep at night, it does not lodge in the reed-flower bay; it emerges far beyond the middle and both ends.