Liangshan Yuanguan and the Moon

Keizan's commentary

No one knows where the teacher came from. His personal name was Yuanguan. He met Later Dōan, served him for four years, and became his robe-and-bowl attendant. Once Dōan entered the hall for morning practice and was to put on the patched Dharma robe. Yuanguan presented it. As Dōan took the robe, he asked, “What is the matter beneath the patched robe?” The teacher had no answer, and the exchange continued until he greatly awakened. He bowed, and tears of feeling wet his robe. Dōan said, “Since you have greatly awakened, can you also say it?” The teacher said, “Yuanguan can say it.” Dōan asked, “What is the matter beneath the patched robe?” The teacher said, “Intimate.” Dōan instructed him, “Intimately present! Intimately present!”² From then on Yuanguan accorded with capacities and often used the words “intimately present.” After he became a resident teacher, students often asked about the matter beneath the patched robe. Once a student asked, “What is the matter beneath the patched robe?” The teacher said, “The gathered sages do not reveal it.” At another time a student asked, “What about when the household thief is difficult to guard against?” The teacher said, “Recognize it and you will not suffer injustice.” The student asked, “After recognizing it, what then?” The teacher said, “Banish it into the land of no birth.” The student asked, “Is that not his place to settle body and establish life?” The teacher said, “Dead water does not conceal a dragon.” The student asked, “What is the dragon of living water?” The teacher said, “It raises waves but does not make breakers.” The student asked, “What if it suddenly overturns the pool and topples the mountain?” The teacher descended from the seat, seized him, and said, “Do not let it wet the corner of this old monk's kāṣāya.”³ At another time someone asked, “What is the student's own self?” The teacher said, “The emperor within the realm; the general beyond the frontier.” Teaching others this way, he always presented intimate presence. In the encounter just raised Dōan says, “For one who studies Buddha, nothing is more painful than failing to reach this ground.” These words are true. Even if you break the meditation seat through concentration, forget fatigue through effort, and become a person of lofty conduct and pure practice, without reaching this ground you still have difficulty leaving the prison of the three realms. Even if you possess four unobstructed eloquences and eight qualities of voice, ingenious speech rises like mist and verbal action rolls like the sea, your Dharma preaching startles heaven and earth, rains flowers, and moves stones—if you have not reached this ground, old Yama does not fear your many words.⁴ Even if after long months of practice thought is exhausted and feeling quiet, form like a dead tree and heart like cold ash; even if, meeting objects, heart does not arise and, encountering affairs, thought is not disturbed; even if you seem free within birth and death and can depart while seated or die while standing—unless you reach this ground, you are useless in the house of buddhas and ancestors. Thus people of old said all adepts made this affair the one great matter. A monk once asked Founding Ancestor Dongshan what was most painful in the world. Someone answered that hell was most painful. Dongshan said, “Not so. Failing to clarify the great matter under this robe and thread is called the greatest pain.” His disciple Yunju repeated: “My former teacher said hell is not yet suffering; failing to clarify the great matter under the robe is suffering.” He urged students to add a little vitality so as not to betray lifelong pilgrimage or the monastery. An ancient said, “To guard and maintain this affair, you must stand on the summit of the highest mountain and walk along the bottom of the deepest sea. Only then is there a little breath. If the great matter is unresolved, for now you must tread the dark road.”⁵ Śākyamuni Buddha also says in the opening of the Five Buddhas that all world-honored buddhas appear in the world only because of one great causal matter: to cause beings to open, be shown, awaken to, and enter Buddha's knowing and seeing.⁶ Clarifying this one great causal matter is the great matter. Do not rejoice merely in resembling a disciple of Buddha. Without clarifying it, in the end how do you differ from a householder? Seeing color with the eye and hearing sound with the ear are no different. You not only confront conditions outside; inwardly you cannot forget conditioned deliberation. Only the outward form has changed. When breath ends and both eyes close, the vital spirit follows things and is turned by them, streaming through the three realms. Even if you gain a graded birth among humans or in heaven, it is like a wheel endlessly turning. Why were people originally caused to leave household life and escape dusty labor? Only so they could reach Buddha's knowing and seeing. Monasteries are established and the fourfold assembly gathered only to open and clarify this affair. Thus the monks' hall is called the “place where buddhas are selected,” and an elder is called a guiding teacher. This is not to gather a crowd recklessly and make noise, but to cause every person to clarify self. Even if you assume the form of a renunciant and force yourself into the monastic community, without clarifying this affair you labor vainly without result. Students in a late and difficult age may wish to learn bodily bearing and mental conduct according to former buddhas' standards but lack the capacity. Recent monks do not calmly place hand or foot and do not study large and small deportment or inner and outer disciplines; they seem to lack monastic bearing. Yet even if bearing and mental conduct were exactly ancient, without clarifying heart-ground it would yield only excellent human or heavenly fruit, still conditioned and outflowing. How much more those who neither clarify heart-ground nor regulate bearing, but idly receive the faithful's offerings? Keizan condemns this as a path toward hell.⁷ Even so, a former worthy said that although the age declines and people are sparse, one who lacks the ancient saints' perfect bearing but clarifies the great matter with exact, continuous care may not differ from the buddhas of the three times and will be sibling to the six ancestral teachers and ancient sages. There is originally no three-realm prison to leave and no six-path cycle to travel. Therefore investigate exactly and study intimately, clarifying the matter beneath the patched robe. This one great causal matter is not divided by true, semblance, and final Dharma, or different in India, China, and Japan. Do not lament a final evil age or reject people of remote borderlands. Even if a thousand buddhas raced here wishing to give this matter, buddha-power could not finally reach it. It is not a way handed to a child or received from a father. One must practice oneself, awaken oneself, and attain through one's own body.⁸ Practice may continue through immeasurable dust-kalpas, but self-realization occurs in one instant. Once the force of resolve erupts, the entire cosmos cannot change it by a hair. Arrive here once, and it is not dark from vast kalpas onward. How could buddhas bestow it? If you wish to arrive exactly, first set aside the myriad affairs. Do not seek even the realms of buddhas and ancestors—how much less self/other, hatred/love. Without raising a hair-tip of conceptual understanding, look directly down. There is necessarily something without skin and flesh, its body like empty space without separate color, like clear water transparent to the bottom. It is openly and brightly manifest, simply lucidly knowing. Now say: how can this principle be revealed?