Kyōzan's Formal Announcement

Banshō's commentary on the case

At seven years old Kyōzan entered concentration. He saw himself together with the Teacher of the Teaching, Kashyapa, and the twenty-seven ancestors, gathered in one monastery hall. The hall stood in empty space without pillars or stones, and the ground looked like lapis.³ Remaining aware, he and the ancestors all had brahma-like forms, wore golden-bordered robes, went barefoot, and occupied ranked places; he was eighth. An honored one advanced in age and appearance called, “Gautama, I now will conduct the Dharma affair.” Kyōzan descended from his seat, went to the sounding instrument, and formally announced: “Assembly, purify your minds. The Dharma of Mahayana is apart from the four propositions and cuts off the hundred negations.” Having spoken, he returned to his seat. The assembled monks all discussed only the interpretation of this meaning. Kyōzan also personally reported dreaming that he went to Maitreya's place and was installed in the third seat. The Zongyao also says “third seat,” agreeing with the original record.² An honored one struck the gavel and announced, “Today the third seat will teach the Dharma.” This mountain monk then rose, struck the gavel, and said, “The Dharma of Mahayana is apart from the four propositions and cuts off the hundred negations. Listen carefully! Listen carefully!” The Sanskrit mahāyāna means Great Vehicle. As for the four propositions and hundred negations, Baso's “Zang's head is white, Hai's head is black” case has already analyzed and distinguished them clearly; it is not repeated here. Dawei Xiu said, “In interpretation following the text, it certainly has something. But if suddenly there were an adept in Maitreya's assembly, the moment he heard Kyōzan say, ‘The Dharma of Mahayana,’ he would say, ‘Close those two pieces of skin.’ This would not only stop Kyōzan's sleep talk; it would also prevent later people from dreaming within a dream.” Banshō says: If Great Gui knew how to turn the light around and illuminate back, neither he nor Banshō would have any place to put the body. Is there anyone vividly clear in a dream and alert within drunkenness? In the northeast there is said to be a country where people are always awake and never dream. In the central region there is a country where dream and waking are always divided equally; people take what is done in dreams as false and what is done awake as real. In the southwest there is a country where people constantly dream and wake once every fifty days; they take waking as false and dream as real.⁴ The false and real of waking and dreaming are not easy to know. Ryūge's verse says: While dreaming, how could one know the dream is false? Only on waking does one know the dream contained nothing. When confused, one is just like a person within a dream; after awakening, still like someone rising from sleep. Within the teaching, a dream is explained as independent mental consciousness surveying a solitary-image object. Kyōzan had long been without inverted dream-conceptions. How did he make this arrangement?⁵ The Lotus Sutra says, “One constantly has these good dreams.” The ten-stage bodhisattvas in the Golden Light Sutra have ten kinds of dream objects. Some dreams become increasingly auspicious. Great Master Quan of Daming in Cizhou delighted in humor and laughter. Master Heng of Renshan instructed attendant Ding always to restrain and inspect him. The Great Master said, “A human life is one dream. To be happy for a lifetime is a good dream; to be constrained and inspected for a lifetime is a bad dream. I would rather have a good dream.” The next day the attendant removed his name slip and left the assembly.⁶ Though Kyōzan was dreaming, he still played within the Dharma of Mahayana. This too was the habit-energy of the sacred assembly. Ghanta does not mean only the formal gavel announcement. Bells and wooden fish that alert the assembly are all ghanta, translated as “sounding.” On “lion's roar,” the Song of Realizing the Way says, “The lion roars, speaking fearlessly.” On “mind settled like the sea,” the Lotus Sutra says, “His mind settled like the sea, I heard and the net of doubt was cut.” The Records of Shu says Minister of State and Great General Jiang Wei, courtesy name Boyue, was popularly said to have “courage by the bushel.” Tendō's Jiang Wei: not one character lacks a textual source.⁷ Ren Fang's Record of Strange Things says merpeople of the Southern Sea live in water like fish and do not cease weaving at the loom; when they weep, their tears become pearls. A continuation of strange reports says that when Emperor Wu of Han visited the Huzi River, a person little more than a foot tall offered one cavern pearl. Dongfang Shuo said, “At the river's bottom is a cavern hundreds of zhang deep. A red creature there grows this pearl in its gut, an inch across and brighter than anything in the world.”⁸ Kyōzan only knew tears emerging from an aching gut and did not notice his tongue outside his mouth. Wine ferments the true nature; dreams disclose heaven's mechanism. He vomited forth the four propositions and hundred negations all at once. A monk asked Master Ma's father and sons about being apart from the four propositions and cutting off the hundred negations. An earlier monk used “the meaning of coming from the west” as the question heading. Kyōzan supplied the Mahayana annotation. Kyōzan too was a great-grandson of Baso. Why did the medicine differ? Because the illness differed. Emerging from the body may still be easy; speaking with the whole body should be difficult.