Ryūge Passes the Board

Banshō's commentary on the case

Zen Master Judun of Mount Ryūge in Hunan first studied with Suibi and Rinzai, then with Tokusan and Dongshan. One day he asked Dongshan, “What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher's coming from the west?” Dongshan said, “When Dong Stream flows backward, I will tell you.” At this, the teacher awakened.³ Foguo said, “When Ryūge picked up the meditation board, could he not have known he would be struck? After he became abbot, a monk asked whether, when he saw the two honored elders, he approved or disapproved of them. Ryūge said, ‘I approved them, certainly. Still, there is no ancestral meaning.’” Foguo continued, “This mountain monk is different. Approval is still not approval. Still, there is no meaning of the ancestral teacher's coming from the west.” Zen Master Gao of Furi versified: Ziqing did not bow before the chanyu; from beginning to end he observed the Han emperor's rites. Only after snow do we know pine and cypress constancy; only when affairs are difficult do we see a resolute man.⁴ Setchō consistently suppressed Ryūge. Zhenru Zhe said, “Suibi and Rinzai can be called teachers of the fundamental matter. Ryūge equally probed through grass and watched the wind, becoming a tortoise-shell and mirror for people who came later.” He raised the later monk's question and said, “Ryūge looked ahead and behind, giving medicine according to illness. Great Gui would be different. Wait until someone asks whether those two elders originally understood, then immediately strike him across the spine. This would not only support Suibi and Rinzai; it would also avoid failing the one who came to ask.” Banshō says: Zhenru is precisely a Rinzai-line drill and hammer and cannot let anyone through. To see Ryūge's divine talisman hidden behind his elbow, one needs the eyes of Tendō within this same stream. Ryūge's cushion and meditation board: Suibi and Rinzai ordered him, before the assembly, to bring them. Why did he not bring forth their function? After Hyakujō raised the wild-fox story, Ōbaku asked, “An ancient answered one turning word wrongly and fell into a wild-fox body for five hundred lives. If each turning word had not been wrong, what would he have become?” Hyakujō said, “Come closer and I will tell you.” Ōbaku approached and first slapped Hyakujō. Hyakujō said, “I had thought the foreigner's beard was red; here is a red-bearded foreigner.” This is truly an expert at the moment of opportunity.⁵ It is not that Ryūge was not an expert. “He did not intend to complete it beneath clear eyes”: he did not wish, at that moment, to race like thunder or sweep like lightning in a single display of severity. An old poem says: A thousand li of color—the mid-autumn moon; the sound of a hundred thousand troops—the midnight tide. This is called cold and beggarly, lacking reserve. A monk asked Kyōsei, “I have not yet reached the source. I ask the teacher for a skillful means.” Kyōsei asked, “What source?” The monk said, “The source.” Kyōsei said, “If it is the source, how could it accept skillful means?” An attendant asked, “Just now, did you complete him?” Kyōsei said, “No.” The attendant asked, “Did you fail to complete him?” Kyōsei said, “No.” The attendant asked, “What was the venerable's meaning?” Kyōsei said, “One dot of ink in water; dragons form in two places.” 成褫 means something like completing and binding up. Wanshi fears that completing it would make it circulate publicly and disgrace the house style. Dongshan instructed Sōzan, “At my late teacher Ungan's place, I personally received the seal of the Precious Mirror Samadhi, exhausting the matter's exact essential. I now entrust it to you. Guard it well and do not let it be cut off. Later, only when you meet a true vessel of Dharma may you transmit it. You must keep it hidden and must not expose its form, lest it circulate and become difficult for later people to receive.”⁶ A monk asked Tong'an Cha, “What is it when there are no weapons?” Tong'an said, “Empty sky does not hang a sword; the jade rabbit is not covered in scales.” A popular tradition says the River of Heaven connects to the sea and that every eighth month rafts come and go from the seashore without missing their time. Marquis Bowang Zhang Qian supposedly took abundant provisions and departed by raft. Losing awareness of days and nights, he suddenly reached a place with walls and houses, many weaving women, and one man leading an ox to drink by the bank. The ox would not drink; the astonished man asked who had arrived. Zhang Qian asked where he was. The man told him to ask Yan Junping in Shu. When Zhang did so, Junping said that in a certain year and month a guest star had intruded upon Ox and Dipper. The Record of Stories says the Book of Han records Zhang Qian tracing the Yellow River's source to emphasize the distance of his embassy; it actually says nothing about the River of Heaven. Only the Bowu zhi says someone took provisions on a raft to the Milky Way, saw a man watering an ox, and asked Junping; the guest star entering Ox and Dipper was that person.⁷ This versifies Ryūge letting the occasion pass when it was time to function, then establishing another mastery after letting it pass. A monk asked Sōzan, “Why can unsprouted grass hide a fragrant elephant?” Sōzan said, “Ācārya, fortunately you are an expert.” The monk also asked what Sōzan called unsprouted grass and a bottomless basket. These are Ryūge's great function of not functioning. Thus the fragrant elephant is not trampled by donkeys and mules, and the live snake does not die beneath a phrase. Ryūge instructed the assembly, “People who travel to investigate must penetrate buddhas and ancestors. Master Xinfeng said, ‘Only when the spoken teachings of buddhas and ancestors are like living enemies does one have a share in investigation and study. If you cannot penetrate them, buddhas and ancestors deceive you.’” A monk immediately asked, “Do buddhas and ancestors have an intention to deceive people?” Ryūge said, “Do rivers and lakes have an intention to obstruct people?” He also said, “Although rivers and lakes have no intention to obstruct people, because people of the time cannot pass through, rivers and lakes become obstructions. You cannot say they do not obstruct people.”⁸ Ryūge penetrated ancestral meaning as though it were a living enemy. Therefore he said, “They understood, certainly. Still, there is no meaning of the ancestral teacher's coming from the west.” How could rivers and lakes obstruct anyone? A common proverb says, “Unable to float oneself, one blames the river bend.” An old master said, “Unable to float oneself, one blames the pit for being hot.”