Daoxin and Liberation

Keizan's commentary

The teacher's personal name was Daoxin, and his family name was Sima. His family had long lived in Henei and later moved to Guangji County in Qizhou. From birth the teacher was extraordinary. As a child he admired the teaching of emptiness and its gates of liberation, as though continuing practice from a former life. At only fourteen he met the Third Ancestor and said, “I beg the reverend in compassion,” continuing through the case until he greatly awakened at the words. He labored in service for nine years. Later he received the precepts in Jizhou and attended Sengcan with exceptional care. The ancestor repeatedly tested him with the darkly subtle, knew his affinity had ripened, and entrusted him with robe and Dharma. The teacher continued the ancestral wind. He gathered heart without sleep; for nearly sixty years his ribs did not touch the mat.² In the thirteenth year of Daye under the Sui, he led his followers to Jizhou. Bandits had surrounded the city for seventy days without withdrawing, and the entire population was terrified. Pitying them, the teacher instructed them to recite the Great Prajñā. The bandits then looked toward the battlements and seemed to see divine troops. They said to one another, “There must be an extraordinary person inside the city. It cannot be attacked,” and gradually withdrew.³ In the cyclical year jiashen during Wude under the Tang, the teacher returned to Qi. In spring he lived on Potou Mountain, where students gathered like clouds. One day he personally received Hongren on the Huangmei road. A branch also extended sideways from the summit of Oxhead.⁴ In the cyclical year guimao during Zhenguan, Emperor Taizong had heard of the flavor of the teacher's way and wished to see his bearing. He issued an edict summoning him to the capital. The teacher submitted a memorial politely declining. Three summons came and went, and each time he finally declined because of illness. The fourth time the emperor ordered the envoy, “If he truly will not rise, bring back his head.” The envoy reached the mountain and announced the command. The teacher extended his neck to the blade, his expression solemn and unchanged. Astonished, the envoy returned and reported what had happened. The emperor admired him still more and sent precious silk, allowing him to fulfill his resolve.⁵ On the fourth day of the intercalary ninth month in the cyclical year xinhai, during Yonghui under Emperor Gaozong, the teacher suddenly admonished his disciples: “All dharmas are entirely liberated. Each of you guard this awareness for yourselves and let its teaching flow into the future.” After speaking, he sat peacefully and died. He was seventy-two. A stūpa was raised on his home mountain. On the eighth day of the fourth month the next year, the stūpa door opened by itself without cause. His bearing and appearance were as in life. From then on his disciples did not dare close it again. He was later granted the title Zen Master Dayi, “Great Healer.”⁶ Although none of the teachers' conduct can be ranked superior or inferior, Daoxin admired the emptiness teaching from childhood as though from former practice. Throughout his life he did not approach king or minister. He practiced and trained in the way with one resolve that never retreated. At the beginning he proclaimed the Dharma gate of liberation, and at the time of death he opened it again. He finally made known that birth and death do not bind. He was truly an extraordinary person encountered only once in a thousand years. Training in the gate of emptiness is originally called the Dharma gate of liberation. Why? Sentient beings and buddhas do not bind you. What further birth and death could involve you? Therefore it cannot be measured by body and heart or distinguished by delusion and awakening. Though one speaks of heart and object, affliction and awakening, all are different names for oneself. Mountains and rivers therefore have no separation; supporting environment and embodied recompense are not separately different.⁷ For this reason, when it is cold, the cold kills the ācārya; when it is hot, the heat kills the ācārya. When you leap once beyond even this barrier, it is no longer this principle. This is called no binding and no liberation, no other and no this. Thus paired names are not established and individual things are not divided by form. Achievement and merit are exhausted. How could this depend on partial and upright positions? In the hall there is finally no share of sitting correctly. Do not remain in the mechanisms at either end, vertical or horizontal. If you see and attain in this way, you do not even use the name liberation. How could you dislike the affair of bondage? Even so, you truly have light. Seeing it is called the three realms. Your tongue has lingering flavor. Seasoning it is called the six tastes. Therefore light is released in place after place and meals are prepared at time after time. Though flavor comes, where there is no savor there is deep savor. Though seeing comes and goes, where there is no color-dust there is true color.⁸ Thus there is no king or minister you should approach, and no body or heart that should sit or lie down. If you can reach this ground, Great Master the Fourth Ancestor is precisely all of you. All of you are precisely Great Master the Fourth Ancestor. Is this not the gate in which everything is liberated? Is this not letting the teaching flow into the future? The door and window of the seamless stūpa abruptly open, and his familiar countenance comes forth, calm and at ease. Today I again have a humble verse to point directly to the encounter just raised. Great assembly, do you wish to hear it?