Tendō Rujing Drops Body and Mind

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was a man of Yue. His personal name was Rujing. At nineteen he abandoned doctrinal study and visited the seats of the ancestral teachers. He joined Setchō's assembly and remained for a year. In his ordinary seated meditation he surpassed the assembly. At one time he sought the office of cleaner. Setchō asked, “How will you purify the place that has never been defiled? If you can say it, I will appoint you cleaner.”³ The teacher had no way to respond. Two or three months passed, and he still could not answer. At one time Setchō summoned him to the abbot's quarters and asked, “Can you answer the encounter from the other day?” The teacher was about to deliberate. Setchō showed him, “Pure One, how will you purify the place that has never been defiled?” The teacher did not answer. More than a year passed. Setchō asked again, “Can you say it?” The teacher still could not. Setchō said, “Shed the old nest and you will gain an advantage. Why can you not say it?” From then on the teacher gained strength from what he heard, sharpened his resolve, and worked at it. One day he suddenly awakened openly. He went up to the abbot's quarters and said, “I can answer.” Setchō said, “This time can you say it?” The teacher said, “Strike the place that has never been defiled.” Before the sound of his words had ended, Setchō struck him. Sweat poured from the teacher, and he bowed. Setchō immediately approved him.⁴ Later, while at Jingci, the teacher took the office of cleaner to repay the conditions of that opening. Once, as he passed before the Arhat Hall, an unusual monk faced him and said, “Jingci's cleaner, Pure Elder Brother: repay the way, repay the teacher, repay the people of the assembly.” Having spoken, the monk suddenly disappeared. When a chief minister heard about this, he divined its meaning and said, “It is an omen permitting the sage to preside at Jingci.” Later the teacher did in fact preside at Jingci. Everywhere people said, “The teacher's repayment of virtue was truly complete.”⁵ From the time he aroused the aspiration at nineteen and hung his staff in a public monastery, he never returned to his home region. Moreover, he did not converse with people from his home area. He never went about among the various quarters and did not casually converse with the people in neighboring positions above or below him. He only sat wholeheartedly. He vowed, “I will sit through and break the vajra seat.” Because he sat in this way, at times the flesh of his buttocks became ulcerated. Even then he did not stop sitting. From his first arousal of aspiration until he resided at Tendō at age sixty-five, there was no day or night when he was apart from the sitting cushion.⁶ From his first abbacy at Jingci through Zuigan and Tendō, his conduct differed from others. He vowed to be one with the monks' hall. Therefore, although he possessed a patched robe transmitted from Fuyō, he did not wear it. In ascending the hall and entering the room, he wore only a black kāṣāya and robe. Although the Jiading emperor bestowed a purple robe and teacher's title, he submitted a memorial declining them. He also maintained secrecy and never disclosed his succession during ordinary life. At his death he burned incense for his Dharma predecessor. He not only despised worldly love of fame; he also feared the fine reputation that comes within a lineage house. Truly, his virtue in the way was unequaled in his time, and his conduct did not move with the crowd in ancient or modern times.⁷ He often said of himself, “The ancestral teachers' way has decayed for one or two hundred years. Therefore, for one or two hundred years no teacher like me has appeared.” Everywhere people consequently feared and trembled before him. The teacher never praised the teachers of other places. He ordinarily said, “Since I aroused aspiration and began pilgrimage at nineteen, there has been no person who possesses the way. “Most abbots in the various places attend only to meeting officials and guests and pay no attention at all inside the monks' hall. They always say, ‘Each person should understand buddha-Dharma for himself.’ Speaking this way, they provide no care for the assembly. “Even as abbots of great monasteries, they take this carefree state of their own breast as the way and never consider Zen study necessary. What buddha-Dharma could there be in their place? “If the way were as they say, why would there have been ancient veterans who visited teachers in search of the way? It deserves laughter. There are those who have not seen the ancestral teachers' way even in a dream.”⁸ Attendant Ping's daily record included many accounts of the teacher's virtue. Among them was this: When a prefectural official once requested an ascent to the hall, Rujing could not produce a single appropriate phrase. Therefore he returned ten thousand ingots of silver and did not accept them. When he could not say one phrase, not only did he refuse another's offering; he also refused fame and profit. Therefore he did not cultivate intimacy with kings and ministers and did not accept even the conventional courtesies of cloud-and-water monks from other regions. His virtue in the way truly did not move with the crowd.⁹ Among the Daoist stream there was an elder named Daosheng. He and five followers vowed, “If we do not master the ancestral teachers' way in the teacher's assembly, we will not return to our old home in this lifetime.” The teacher rejoiced in their aspiration and permitted them to enter his room without requiring them to change their status. In the assembly order he placed them immediately after the bhikṣuṇīs. This was considered rare in the world.¹⁰ Shanru also said, “During this lifetime in the teacher's assembly, I will never take one step south.” Many people carried their aspiration in this way and did not leave the teacher's assembly. The one called Garden Overseer Pu had never learned written characters. He first aroused aspiration after sixty. Yet because the teacher cared for and trained him in minute detail, he finally clarified the ancestral way. Although he was garden overseer, from time to time he uttered extraordinary words and marvelous phrases. Therefore the teacher once ascended the hall and said, “The elders of the various places do not equal Garden Overseer Pu.” He transferred him to become librarian.¹¹ Truly, in an assembly possessing the way there are many people possessing the way and many people with the heart of the way. Ordinarily the teacher simply encouraged people to sit. He constantly instructed: “Do not use incense burning, prostrations, buddha-recitation, repentance rites, or scripture reading. Just sit wholeheartedly.” He did nothing other than have them sit.¹² He often said, “In Zen study, the heart of the way is the beginning.” Truly, even if people possess partial knowledge and incomplete understanding, if they lack the heart of the way they do not preserve what they have understood. In the end they fall into distorted views, become crude and self-indulgent, and turn into outsiders attached to buddha-Dharma. Therefore, venerable practitioners, above all do not forget the matter of the heart of the way. Bring the heart completely to every single thing. Make truth your sole concern and do not move with your contemporaries. Advance and study the ancient style. If you are genuinely like this, even if you yourself say you do not understand, you will be a person never defiled from the beginning. If you have never been defiled, how could you not be a person originally bright and pure? Therefore Setchō said, “It has never been defiled from the beginning. What will you purify?” and “Shed the old nest and gain the advantage.”¹³ The preparation of an ancient buddha does not from the beginning cause a person to generate partial knowledge or incomplete understanding. It makes one train in one place, unify aspiration around the one meaning, and be without selfishness. Thus, throughout the twelve periods, there is no view of pure or impure. Naturally, this is undefiled. Nevertheless, one has still not escaped a view of defilement. There remains an eye that would employ a broom. Unable to clarify this, the teacher passed more than a year. Once he understood that there was no skin that could be shed and no body or mind that could drop away, he said, “Strike the place that has never been defiled.”¹⁴ Even so, this already made a single point. Therefore, before the sound of the words had ended, Setchō immediately struck. At that time sweat flowed over Rujing's whole body. He had immediately abandoned the body and finished gaining strength. Truly know: originally bright and pure, it altogether receives no defilement. Therefore the teacher ordinarily said, “Zen study is body and mind dropping away.”¹⁵ Now say: what is this one who is undefiled?