Sekitō Kisen and the Patriarchs Teaching

Keizan's commentary

The teacher's personal name was Xiqian. He was a son of the Chen family in Gao'an, Duanzhou. When his mother first became pregnant, she disliked meat and pungent vegetables. Though an infant, the teacher did not trouble a nurse. On reaching adulthood, he made and kept his own commitments. The indigenous Liao people in the mountain valleys, the source says, feared spirits, conducted many illicit sacrifices, slaughtered cattle, and poured wine as customary practice. The teacher repeatedly went and destroyed clusters of shrines, seized the cattle, and returned. He did this dozens of times in a year, and the village elders could not stop him.³ At fourteen he first met Huineng at Sōkei and was ordained, though he had not yet received the full precepts. When the Sixth Ancestor was about to die, the teacher asked, “After the reverend reaches one hundred years, upon whom should Xiqian rely?” The ancestor said, “Go seek Xingsi.”⁴ After Huineng followed the world in death, the teacher sat upright in quiet places, still as though he had forgotten life. Nanyue Huairang, then head seat, asked, “Your teacher has died. What are you doing sitting vacantly?” The teacher said, “I received his final instruction, so I am seeking and pondering.” Huairang said, “You have a Dharma elder named Xingsi who now lives at Seigen. Your affinity lies there. The ancestor's words were perfectly direct; you alone confused yourself.” The teacher bowed farewell before Huineng's shrine and went directly to Seigen. Seigen asked, “Someone says there is news from Lingnan.” The teacher said, “Someone does not say there is news from Lingnan.” Seigen asked, “If so, from where do the great and small scriptural collections come?” The teacher said, “All go out from right here.” Seigen approved. From then on they regularly exchanged questions and answers. Once Seigen raised his whisk and asked, “Does Sōkei have this?” The teacher said, “Not only does Sōkei not have it; even India does not have it.” From ancient to present, teachers have raised a whisk to show the source, open a pivotal barrier, cut off a person's forked road, or cause direct pointing at once. Seigen's gesture here is also a test. But the teacher had not yet understood this affair. He still fastened his eye upon the place where the whisk was raised and said that neither Sōkei nor India had it. At the place of such a raised whisk, what Sōkei or India could stand? Sekitō's view still made an intellectual interpretation of an object. Seigen therefore pressed him: “You have not perhaps been to India?” Still not understanding, Sekitō did not swiftly forget himself but said, “If I had gone, then it would be there.” Even when words hit the mark, one who does not know its being is finally not that person. Thus Seigen said, “Not yet. Say more.” With great compassion, dragging through mud and carrying water, he instructed him so completely. With nowhere to arrange a self, Sekitō said, “Reverend, you must also say your half. Do not rely entirely on this student.” When teacher and student meet and speak like this, each transmits one half. How could either say the whole? Even if heaven and earth collapse and the whole body appears alone, this is still only halfway. Here one does not borrow another's method but arrives oneself. How much less, when taking another step beyond halfway and secretly communicating intimate words, could one borrow conditions or make another know? One can only turn back and originally attain it oneself. Seigen therefore said, “I do not refuse to say it to you. I fear that afterward no one will shoulder it.” Even if the teacher speaks pain and shows bitterness, without a share that penetrates the student's bones and breaks the tongue there is finally no passage. There can be no portion shouldered merely through words. Thus a true teacher does not scatter words recklessly or act in vain, but protects and maintains the matter. Sekitō still understood it as a place that accompanies no thing. Not knowing the intimate passage or looking with exact care, he said, “There is no lack of someone to shoulder it, but no one can say it.” I fear that Xiqian really spoke this way. At this ground, how could a person be unable to say it? If one reaches this ground, what is there to shoulder? He still sought outside the boundary and uselessly abandoned inner realization. To make him quickly know that this affair exists and know his original head, Seigen struck once with the whisk. He struck the grass to startle the snake. The teacher immediately greatly awakened.⁵ Through this encounter, carefully examine learning from beginning to end and true penetrating realization. Your seeing must be exact and your arrival intimate. Sekitō had already said it was absent not only from Sōkei but even from India. Though heaven and earth had split and he had obtained the whole body exposed alone, there remained the calamity of knowing oneself. This let him speak so grandly. In the end, however, he knew the whole body exposed alone at the raised whisk and knew again “there is” at the blow. Recent practitioners merely run through sound and color and seek within seeing and hearing. Though they memorize Buddha-words and ancestor-words, weave a little conceptual entanglement, and say it is absent from India and Sōkei, they have still attained nothing. Even if they shave their hair, dye robes, and make their form resemble Buddha, they do not escape the prison bonds of the three realms. How could their travel through the six paths cease? How regrettable—a patched robe hung uselessly upon a block of wood. The Buddha's intended meaning is that this is not a Buddha-child and has no proper name, no different from wood.⁶ After wasting the faithful's offerings for a lifetime, when the worry of swallowing iron balls finally comes, regret will surely be great. Investigate completely. Reach the place of Sekitō's first whole body exposed alone, where neither Sōkei nor India remains. Where could there be coming and going? Such vision does not recklessly hang on the patched robe. Much more, know “there is” at the blow; swiftly forget yourself and also know yourself. Come alive within death, the true eye bright in darkness. This is the intimate matter beneath the patched robe. Having seen in this way, early in the Tianbao era Sekitō was recommended to Nansi Monastery on Hengshan. East of the monastery was a stone platform like a couch. He built a hermitage there and was called Reverend Sekitō, “Stone Head.” Once, reading Sengzhao's treatise, he reached: “Is it not only the sage who unites the myriad things as self?” He struck the desk and said: “The sage has no self, and there is nothing that is not self. The Dharma-body has no image—who says self or other? The round mirror numinously illuminates; within it the myriad images, dark in substance, appear of themselves. Object and wisdom are not one—who says going or coming? These words are consummate.”⁷ He closed the book and fell asleep. He dreamed he rode one turtle together with the Sixth Ancestor, swimming in a deep pool. On waking he interpreted it: the numinous turtle was wisdom, the pool the sea of nature; he and the ancestor rode numinous wisdom together through that sea. He then composed the Harmony of Difference and Equality, which circulated widely throughout the realm.⁸ His numinous wisdom was equal to Huineng's and not separate from Seigen's. Once he said in the hall: “My Dharma gate was transmitted by former buddhas. It does not discuss meditation-concentration or effort but reaches Buddha's knowing and seeing. “This very body is Buddha. Heart, Buddha, sentient beings, awakening, and affliction differ in name but are one in substance. “Know that your own heart's numinous nature is in substance beyond annihilation and permanence, in nature neither defiled nor pure, clear and perfectly complete, equal in ordinary and holy. Its responsive function has no fixed direction and is beyond heart, thought, and consciousness. “The three realms and six paths appear only from heart itself, like the moon in water and an image in a mirror. How could they have arising or extinction? If you can know this, nothing is lacking.”⁹ Unless he had the view of standing alone after heaven and earth collapsed, he could not speak this way. Because he shouldered the blow and clearly saw, he joined the line as the Thirty-Fifth Ancestor. How could the numinous nature of all of you be separated from another? How could heart-ground fail to pass through? Only because resolve is aroused or not, and a clear teacher is met or not, do rising and sinking take different forms and kinds of suffering and joy differ. How do you see the encounter just raised? Great assembly, do you wish to hear?