Yunju Daoying and the Wind

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was from Yutian in Youzhou, of the Yu family. As a child he left home at Yanshou Monastery in Fanyang. At twenty-five he became a fully ordained monk. His teacher had him study śrāvaka classifications, but they did not suit him. He abandoned them and traveled in search of the way. At Suibi he asked, “When you make offerings to arhats, do the arhats return?” Suibi said, “What do you gobble every day?” Later Tōzan asked whether these words had truly been spoken. When Daoying confirmed them, Tōzan said, “Your visit to an adept was not in vain.” Tōzan then asked his name, continuing through the transmission case. The teacher saw Tōzan's stream and awakened to the way. He reported the purport to Tōzan, who said, “My way will flow without end through you; otherwise it could not.” Once Tōzan said he had heard that Great Reverend Nanyue Huisi was born as a king in Japan and asked whether it was so. The teacher said, “If it were truly Master Huisi, he would not even become Buddha. How much less a king?” Tōzan approved.³ One day Tōzan asked where he had been. The teacher said, “Walking in the mountains.” Tōzan asked, “Which mountain is fit to live on?” The teacher said, “Which mountain is not fit to live on?” Tōzan said, “Then you have occupied the whole country.” The teacher said, “Not so.” Tōzan said, “Then you have found a road of entry.” The teacher said, “There is no road.” Tōzan asked, “If there is no road, how did you meet this old monk?” The teacher said, “If there were a road, I would be separated from the reverend by a lifetime.” Tōzan said, “Afterward, a thousand or ten thousand people will not be able to hold this child.” While teacher and disciple crossed water, Tōzan asked, “How deep is the water?” The teacher said, “Not wet.” Tōzan said, “Coarse fellow.” The teacher said, “Please, master, speak.” Tōzan said, “Not dry.”⁴ Tōzan once recounted Nansen asking a monk what scripture he lectured on. The monk said the Sūtra of Maitreya's Descent. Nansen asked when Maitreya would descend. The monk said Maitreya was presently in heaven and would descend in the future. Nansen said, “In heaven there is no Maitreya; below there is no Maitreya.” The teacher asked Tōzan, “If there is no Maitreya in heaven or below, who gave him the name?” At the question Tōzan's Zen seat shook. He said, “Ācārya Ying, when I was with Ungan I once asked the old man and made the brazier shake. Today your question makes my whole body stream with sweat.” Teacher and disciple had no separate affair in question and answer. No one in the assembly stood shoulder to shoulder with him. Later the teacher built a hermitage at Three Peaks. For ten days he did not attend the hall. Tōzan asked, “Why have you not come to meals lately?” The teacher said, “Every day divine beings bring me offerings.” Tōzan said, “I had thought you were a person, yet you still hold this view. Come tonight.” That evening Tōzan called, “Hermitage Master Ying!” The teacher answered. Tōzan asked, “Without thinking good and without thinking evil, what is it?” The teacher returned to the hermitage and sat silently and peacefully. From then on the divine beings searched but could not find him. After three days their offerings ceased.⁵ Tōzan asked what he was doing. The teacher said, “Making sauce.” Tōzan asked, “How much salt do you use?” The teacher said, “I add it as I go.” Tōzan asked, “What flavor does it make?” The teacher said, “Attained.” Tōzan asked, “When the great icchantika commits the five heinous acts, where is filial care?” The teacher said, “Only then is filial care accomplished.”⁶ From then on Tōzan approved him as leader of the inner room. At first he lived at Three Peaks and his teaching did not spread widely. Later he opened the Dharma at Yunju, where the fourfold assembly gathered. From his first meeting with Suibi through entering Tōzan's assembly and becoming Sōzan's Dharma brother, his encounters with the teacher and resolution of doubts were complete. Tōzan's prediction that his way would flow endlessly through Daoying was not empty. Through successive entrustment it has reached today. The Tōzan stream has flowed here; its way remains dry and crisp. Transmitted in the clear-white house, its source has not dried and remains cold and limpid. When Daoying asked one question, he carried the great capacity: Tōzan's seat shook and his whole body sweated, a rare thing ancient or modern. Yet when divine beings brought food to his Three Peaks hermitage, Tōzan said, “I thought you were a person, but you still hold this view.” He called him at night, and Daoying answered. The one who answers this way cannot receive heavenly food. Tōzan asked, “Without thinking good or evil, what is it?” Penetrate this ground in detail and see in this way: the devas finally have no path on which to offer flowers, demons and outsiders cannot secretly spy it, buddhas and ancestors are still enemies, and the buddha-eye finally cannot see it. Shouldering it so, one goes making sauce and adding salt moment by moment, fully attained and relying on no other. Thus the great icchantika kills father and mother, Buddha and ancestor, committing the five heinous acts repeatedly. At this time no conception of filial care remains in the heart. Asked where the gratitude between father and child is, one says only then is it accomplished—the same expression Sōzan gave.⁷ The special encounter through which Daoying became leader of the room and received the intimate pouring transmission was Tōzan's question, “What is your name?” One who meets teacher and disciple does not view a person through old familiarity. Tōzan surely knew the name, yet asked for a reason. The teacher answered, “Daoying.” Asked and answered through a thousand transformations, it would still be just so, with no other source. This view was not disapproved, but Tōzan tested whether he also possessed the capacity to pass the barrier and exceed the pattern: “Speak further, beyond.” The teacher's six faculties were already incomplete and seventh consciousness not whole, like a person ruined by disease or a straw dog. Therefore: “If I speak beyond, I am not named Daoying.”⁸ Reaching this ground is exceedingly difficult. Before study arrives here, one is not seed-stock of an adept and remains confused by conceptual vines. Because Daoying maintained this ground exactly, his final icchantika response had no contradiction. If all of you see through it, you will be patch-robed monks of original color who have finished the affair. What word today will show that you have seen through this encounter? Do you wish to hear? After a long pause: