Ōbaku's “No Zen Teachers”

Engo's commentary on the case

Ōbaku stood seven feet tall, had a round pearl-like mark on his forehead, and by natural capacity understood Zen. Once, traveling on Tiantai, he met a monk. They talked and laughed like old acquaintances. Looking closely, Ōbaku saw light shoot from his eyes and recognized an unusual appearance. They traveled together until a flooded stream stopped them. Ōbaku planted his staff and removed his hat. The monk urged him to cross. Ōbaku said, “Go ahead.” The monk lifted his robe and walked on the waves as on level ground. Looking back, he called, “Cross! Cross!” Ōbaku shouted, “You fellow concerned only with your own liberation! Had I known you would perform a marvel, I would have cut off your shins.” The monk sighed, “A true vessel of the Great Vehicle,” and vanished.² When Ōbaku first reached Hyakujō, Hyakujō asked, “Towering and imposing—where have you come from?” “Towering and imposing, from the mountains.” “Why have you come?” “For no other matter.” Hyakujō esteemed him deeply. The next day Ōbaku took leave, saying he would go to Jiangxi to bow to Master Ma. Hyakujō told him Baso had died. Ōbaku lamented that his karmic fortune was too shallow to meet him and asked to hear his words. Hyakujō recounted a meeting with Baso. Baso raised his whisk. Hyakujō asked, “Do you function through this or apart from this?” Baso hung the whisk on the corner of the Zen seat. After a long time he asked, “Later, when you flap your two lips, how will you serve people?” Hyakujō raised the whisk. Baso asked, “Do you function through this or apart from this?” Hyakujō hung it on the seat. Baso gave a mighty shout; Hyakujō was deaf for three days. Ōbaku involuntarily shuddered and stuck out his tongue. Hyakujō asked, “Will you not succeed Master Ma?” “No. Today, through your account, I have seen Master Ma's great working and great function. If I succeeded him, I would lose my descendants.” Hyakujō said, “So it is. Seeing equal to the teacher diminishes the teacher's virtue by half; wisdom surpassing the teacher is worthy of transmission. Your seeing now clearly has the capacity to surpass the teacher.”³ Tell me: did Ōbaku ask while knowing, or without knowing? You must personally see the conduct of this father and son. Ōbaku once asked Hyakujō, “How has the ancestral vehicle been shown since antiquity?” Hyakujō remained silent a long time. Ōbaku said, “You cannot let later people be cut off.” Hyakujō said, “I had thought you were someone.” He rose and returned to the abbot's quarters. Ōbaku and Minister Pei Xiu were friends outside worldly convention. When Pei governed Wanling, he invited Ōbaku and showed him a volume containing his understanding. Ōbaku set it on the seat without opening it. After a long time he asked, “Do you understand?” “I do not.” “If you understood precisely this way, you would be somewhat close. If it takes form in paper and ink, where would my teaching be?” Pei offered a verse praising Ōbaku's stature, forehead mark, travels, and vast assembly, asking to whom he would entrust the Dharma. Ōbaku showed no pleasure and replied: Mind is like the great sea, without boundary. The mouth emits red lotuses to nourish a sick body. I naturally have two hands with nothing to do; I have never bowed to an ordinary person. After Ōbaku became abbot, his edge was steep. Rinzai studied there while Bokushū served as head monk. Bokushū urged Rinzai to ask “the exact essential meaning of Buddha-dharma.” Three times Rinzai asked; three times Ōbaku struck and expelled him. Rinzai prepared to leave, fearing his affinity was elsewhere. Bokushū told him to take leave formally, then privately asked Ōbaku to bore and carve this rare questioner into a tree that could shade later people. When Rinzai came, Ōbaku directed him straight to Dayu. Rinzai told Dayu the story and asked where he had erred. Dayu said, “Ōbaku exhausted such grandmotherly kindness and went to the limit for you. Why speak of error or no error?” Rinzai suddenly greatly awakened: “Ōbaku's Buddha-dharma is not much.” Dayu seized him. “A moment ago you asked about your error; now you say Ōbaku's Dharma is not much. What did you see?” Rinzai punched Dayu beneath the ribs three times. Dayu pushed him away: “Your teacher is Ōbaku. This has nothing to do with me.”⁴ Ōbaku once said that even Master Niutou Farong, for all his horizontal and vertical discourse, did not know the upward pivot. At the time, students of Sekitō and Baso filled the country talking Zen and the Way. Why did Ōbaku speak so? He told the assembly, “You all gorge on wine lees. Traveling this way, you make yourselves ridiculous. You see a place with eight hundred or a thousand people and immediately go there, seeking only commotion. If everything were as easy as you make it, how could there be the matter of today?” Tang people liked the insult “wine-lees glutton.” Many call this merely Ōbaku abusing people. Those with eyes see where he lands. In essence he lowered a hook to fish for a question. A student willing to abandon body and life stepped forward: “What of those guiding communities everywhere?” A fine press. The old fellow could not explain himself and leaked: “I did not say there is no Zen—only no teacher.” Where is his intent? The ancestral teaching sometimes captures and sometimes releases, kills and gives life, lets go and gathers in. I ask you: what is a teacher within Zen? In saying even this, this mountain monk has already sunk head and all. Where are your nostrils? After a long pause Engo said, “They have been pierced.” Setchō's verse resembles a portrait encomium of Ōbaku, but do not understand it merely as one. Beneath his phrases are places of emergence. “Severe, severe—his solitary wind does not boast.” Ōbaku's instruction was not a contest in which others betrayed him, nor self-display. Understand this news and move freely: stand alone atop a solitary peak or lay your body across a crowded market. Why cling to one corner? The more you abandon, the less it ceases; the more you seek, the less you see; the more you shoulder it, the more you drown. An ancient said, “Without wings it flies beneath heaven; having a name, it circulates through the world.” Completely release Buddhist principle, mystery, and the extraordinary. Put them down at once and you are somewhat close; every contact is naturally complete. “Seated upright within the encircling seas, he determines dragon from snake.” Dragon or snake—he tests it as it enters the gate. This is called an eye that determines dragons and snakes and a working that captures tigers and rhinoceroses. Setchō turns to “the Dazhong emperor.” Engo attributes the following story to a continuation of the Xiantong Biographies. Emperor Xuanzong, whose reign title was Dazhong, was said to have escaped persecution by Emperor Wuzong and lived for a time as a novice.⁶ Traveling with Kyōgen, he completed a waterfall poem. Zhixian began: Piercing clouds and penetrating rock, it does not begrudge the labor; only from afar is the source's height known. The future emperor continued: How could a mountain stream hold it back? In the end it returns to the great sea and makes waves. Zhixian recognized that he was no ordinary person. Later at Enkan, the future emperor served as secretary and Ōbaku as head monk. Seeing Ōbaku bow to the Buddha, he asked, “Not seeking through Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha—what do you seek by bowing?” Ōbaku said, “Not seeking through Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha, one always bows this way.” “Then why bow?” Ōbaku slapped him. The future emperor said, “Extremely crude!” Ōbaku said, “What place is this, that you speak of crude and refined?” He slapped him again. After taking the throne, Xuanzong bestowed on Ōbaku the title “Monk of Crude Conduct.” Minister Pei later petitioned to change it to “Zen Master Duanji.”⁷ Setchō knew the line of the story and used it skillfully. Is anyone here now who can play claws and fangs? Engo struck.