Dōan Kanshi and the Head

Keizan's commentary

The teacher's personal name was Guanzhi. His conduct and biography are not recorded in detail. He met Earlier Dōan and attained a deep place. When Earlier Dōan was about to die, he ascended the hall and said: “Before the Many-Sons Stūpa the lineage heir excels. What of the affair before Five Elders Peak?” He raised this three times, but no one answered. At last Guanzhi came forward and said: Outside the night-bright curtain they stand ranked in rows; Across ten thousand miles songs proclaim great peace.³ Dōan said, “It must be a donkey fellow who can do it.” From then on Guanzhi lived at Dōan and was called Later Dōan. “Before the Many-Sons Stūpa the lineage heir excels” refers to Śākyamuni Buddha meeting Mahākāśyapa before the Many-Sons Stūpa. At a single meeting he transmitted both robe and Dharma. Kāśyapa afterward practiced the twelve ascetic disciplines and later sat upon the half-seat. Though he was absent from the assembly when the Buddha entered nirvana, the whole community was entrusted to him. This is the intent of “the lineage heir excels.”⁴ Now Great Master Dōan, as Dongshan's legitimate grandson, made the Seigen family's house style reverse the current and turn back upon itself. At the point of death he wished to reveal his legitimate child and therefore asked three times about the affair before Five Elders Peak. The assembly did not understand and no one answered. Mount Sumeru towers above all peaks, and the sun blazes before the multitude of forms. Therefore “outside the night-bright curtain they stand ranked in rows.” Nothing can compare with it. Because the whole body is free and relies on nothing, there is directly no second person. Fine dust is cut off for ten thousand miles; where are strategic ministers and fierce generals now? Everyone sings of great peace. He was an extraordinary patch-robed monk. Only on reaching this ground in study can one attain it. Such outstanding conduct and surpassing attainment had already revealed his bearing. Therefore he said, “Where worldly people love, I do not love. What is the place the reverend loves?” What worldly people love is self and other. This love gradually grows: one loves the supporting world and embodied recompense. Attachment deepens further, adding one iron shackle upon another, until one loves Buddha and loves ancestor.⁵ Defilement by love grows increasingly soiled. The karmic causes of sentient beings continue without break. From a place of no freedom they are born; toward a place of no freedom they die. This is solely because of this love. Love attached to marks—sentient beings and buddhas, male and female, sentient and insentient—must be swiftly swept away. But a place with no standard and not one thing, where one cannot distinguish what anything is and altogether does not know or recognize, is itself a formless object of love. Do not remain there either. Attachment to form can sometimes be penetrated once resolve is aroused. But if you cling to a view of formlessness and abide in the formless realm through many kalpas, when that heavenly lifespan ends you may fall instead into the uninterrupted hell. This is called mindless extinction of perception. Both form and no-form are again places worldly people love. Within form one sees self and other; within no-form one annihilates self and other. Both are mistaken. Therefore, venerable practitioners and beginning students, you have gratefully become descendants of Śākyamuni and receive Buddha's enjoyment. How could you be the same as worldly objects of love? First be liberated from every false view that discriminates right and wrong, good and evil, male and female. Next, do not remain in a place of the unconditioned, no affair, no form, or quiescent extinction.⁶ If you wish to shoulder this place, do not seek toward another or search outside. Fasten your eye intimately before this body was received and before this substance had shown the first sign. Not a thousand differences or ten thousand distinctions, not a hair-tip, can sprout there. Yet do not become dark and murky like a black mountain and demon cave. This heart is originally wondrously bright, blazing and not dark. It is spaciously empty and illuminates completely. Within it there is finally not a hair of skin, flesh, bone, or marrow. How much less could there be six faculties and six objects, delusion and awakening, defilement and purity? No Buddha preaches for you, and no self practices with a teacher. It is not merely that sound and color have not divided; ears and eyes have not yet come furnished. Even so, the moon of heart shines perfectly bright, and the flower of the eye blooms with vivid pattern.⁷ Reach it exactly and accord this way. Venerable practitioners, how can you understand this principle? I will put one phrase in your place: quickly fasten the eye before the body.