Shinketsu Seiryō and the Dead Tree

Keizan's commentary

The teacher's personal name was Qingliao. His way-name was Shinketsu, and Wukong was his title. While his mother carried him in swaddling clothes, she entered a monastery. Seeing a buddha image, he happily moved his eyebrows and eyelashes. Everyone regarded this as extraordinary.³ At eighteen he lectured on the Lotus Sūtra and received ordination. He went to Daci in Chengdu, where he studied sūtras and treatises and grasped their general meaning. Leaving Sichuan, he reached the Jiang and Han region and knocked at Tanka's room. Tanka asked, “What is yourself before the empty kalpa?” The encounter continued until the teacher suddenly awakened in accord. He went straight back and stood attending Tanka. Tanka slapped him once and said, “I thought you knew it is present.” The teacher joyfully bowed.⁴ The next day Tanka ascended the hall and said: Sunlight greens the solitary peak; The moon above the stream makes its water cold. The ancestral teachers' dark and wondrous key— Do not lodge it in the inch-sized mind. He then descended from the seat. The teacher went directly forward and said, “Today's ascent to the seat cannot deceive me any longer.” Tanka said, “Try bringing up my ascent to the seat today so I may see.” The teacher remained silent for a long while. Tanka said, “I thought you had caught sight of the ground.” The teacher immediately left.⁵ Later he traveled to Godaisan and the capital. He floated down the Bian River and went directly to Changlu, where he visited Zuzhao. They accorded in a single phrase, and Zuzhao appointed him attendant. After more than a year he shared the teaching seat. Not long afterward Zuzhao pleaded illness and retired, appointing the teacher to succeed to the seat. Students returned to him as though coming home. At the end of the Jianyan era he traveled through Siming and reached Putuo. He resided at Tianfeng in Taizhou and Seppō in Fujian. By imperial command he became abbot of Ayuwang, then moved to Longxiang in Wenzhou. In Kōshū he resided at Jingshan, and Empress Dowager Cining ordered him to open Gaoning Chongxian.⁶ Truly, from the time he was in swaddling clothes he did not move with the common herd but differed from others. Yet when he turned his aspiration toward Zen, his work still had an urgent place. Therefore, when Tanka asked about “yourself before the empty kalpa,” he was about to answer. Tanka did not approve him and dismissed him for the time being. One day, on the summit of Bowl Peak, the walls fell away in all ten directions. On every side there was no gate. When the ten directions stood directly before his eyes, he shouldered it. Therefore he returned, did not carry through a single word, and simply stood in attendance. Tanka knew that Qingliao now knew it is present, and said, “I thought you knew it is present.” The teacher joyfully bowed. Tanka finally ascended the hall and gave his confirmation.⁷ After the teacher appeared in the world, he ascended the hall and said: Under one slap from my former teacher, all my skills were exhausted. I searched for a place to open my mouth and could not find one. Are there now any fellows who are so happy yet have not penetrated through to the bottom? If there are none, bite the iron bit and carry the saddle; each of you apply yourselves as circumstances require.⁸ Truly, where ancestral teachers meet, they step before the kalpa and immediately reveal the scenery of the original ground. If you have not yet seen this ground, what use would it be to sit for tens of thousands of years without speaking, stiff and upright like a dead tree or cold ashes? Yet when people hear “before the empty kalpa,” they often think mistakenly. They imagine: there is neither self nor other, neither before nor after, neither birth nor death, neither sentient beings nor buddhas. It cannot be called one and cannot be called two. One will not distinguish it as same or call it different. Calculating and measuring in this way, they think that if they utter even one word they have already missed, and if they turn even one thought they have immediately turned away. Recklessly they guard a withered ghost and dead thing and become like a corpse.⁹ Others say that whatever one calls it cannot be wrong. One may call it mountain or explain it as river; one may call it self or explain it as other. Then they add, “What is called mountain is not mountain; what is called river is not river. It is just mountain; it is just river.” What use are such words? All of them proceed down mistaken roads. Some cling to marked form; others fall into the same view of annihilating emptiness. How could this ground fall into existence or nonexistence? Therefore there is nowhere to insert your tongue and nowhere to turn your calculations. Depending on neither heaven nor earth, neither before nor after, with no place for the soles of your feet to tread—look! There will necessarily be a place where you accord in some measure. Some say, “It cuts off all standards.” Others say, “No breath passes through.” All these are matters at the edge of a directed approach. In the end they have already turned away from themselves.¹⁰ How much more so when one speaks of moon or snow, water or wind. In every case there may be a cataract in one's own eye and flowers in empty space fall in confusion. What should be called mountain? Ultimately no single dharma is seen. What can be touched and called cold or warm? In the end no single dharma gives itself to you. Therefore you attach to trees and cling to grasses. Sweep away worldly dharmas and buddha-Dharma all at once, then see again, and you truly will not doubt.¹¹ Do not look inward. Do not seek outward. Do not try to settle thought. Do not try to make the body peaceful. Simply know intimately and understand intimately. Cut through all at once and sit for a little while. Though there is no place in the four directions to raise one step and no place between heaven and earth to insert your body, in the end you must not borrow another's power. When you see in this way, skin, flesh, bones, and marrow are not parceled out on your behalf. Birth and death, going and coming, do not change you. Skin falls away, and there is only the one real—shining in antiquity and radiant now, undivided by quantity, time, or kalpas.¹² How could it merely be called “before the empty kalpa”? At this place there is altogether no way to distinguish before and after. Why? This ground is not shifted by formation, duration, decay, and emptiness. How could it be distinguished as self and other or together said to lack a cause? Outside, forget objects; inside, abandon conditioned thought. Even the blue sky receives the staff. Clean and naked, completely bare. When seen in detail, it is empty yet numinous, vacant yet wondrous. If you are not exact, you will never reach this place.¹³ Truly, clarifying the affairs of dust-mote kalpas lies within a single snap of the fingers. For even a little while, do not possess the feeling that weighs and compares; do not sprout intellectual understanding. Directly confront it and open your eyes wide. You will necessarily be independently released, relying on nothing. Yet you who study turn the head of the mind and immediately proceed in a mistaken direction. Know that even if you think the divergence is only the tip of a hair, in this way you will have no share in rest through a thousand births and ten thousand kalpas. Consider it closely and see with complete precision. Depending on no other, your open awakening will be vast like empty space. Now say: how can you penetrate even a small portion of this principle?