The Nan’yō Echū's Seamless Stupa

Engo's commentary on the case

Suzong and Daizong were descendants of Xuanzong and loved to inquire into Zen as crown princes. During the An Lushan rebellion, Xuanzong fled to Sichuan and Suzong assumed power. At the time Nan’yō Echū Huizhong lived in a hermitage on White Cliff Mountain in Dengzhou, the present Kyōgen monastery, and had not descended for more than forty years. His reputation reached the capital. In 761 an imperial envoy summoned him; the emperor honored him as teacher. Engo reports that when offended ministers meant to remonstrate, Huizhong supernaturally knew their thoughts and compared worldly emperors before Śakra to scattered millet and lightning. The emperor revered him still more. Daizong later housed him at Guangzhai Monastery for sixteen years; he died in 775.⁴ The Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, Engo says, identifies Daizong as the questioner here. Suzong instead asked about “the ten-body tamer.” Near death Huizhong took leave of Daizong, who asked the ordinary question, “What will you need after death?” The old man made waves without wind: “Build me a seamless stupa.” Why “seamless”? Daizong, himself an expert, pressed: “Please show the design.” Huizhong remained silent and asked, “Do you understand?” This small point is strangest and hardest. Yet do not say the place where he did not speak was the design. That would sweep the lineage away. If long silence itself were it, mute people would understand Zen. An outsider once asked the Buddha neither for speech nor silence. The Buddha remained silent; the outsider bowed, praising his compassion for opening the clouds of delusion. The Buddha later told Ānanda that a fine horse moves at the shadow of a whip. Many make a livelihood in silence, but it offers no handle. Huizhong asked, “Do you understand?” The emperor said no—which is somewhat close. Is this “do not understand” the same as Emperor Wu's “do not know”? Similar, but not the same. Huizhong referred him to Danyuan. Setchō says, “One palm alone does not clap resoundingly.” Set aside Daizong's failure: did Danyuan understand? Wuzu asked why the national teacher could not answer and pushed it to a disciple. Danyuan supplied the four-line verse. He was Huizhong's attendant, named Yingzhen, and later taught at Danyuan Monastery in Jizhou. Kyōzan once studied with him but found his speech heavy and temper fierce. Earlier Kyōzan had heard Zen teacher Xingkong tell a monk: “Bring out a person from a thousand-foot well without an inch of rope, and I will answer the patriarch's intent.” Kyōzan asked Danyuan how to bring the person out. Danyuan shouted, “Fool! Who is in the well?” Kyōzan did not accord. Later he asked Isan. Isan called, “Huiji!” Kyōzan answered. Isan said, “He is out.” Kyōzan greatly awakened and later said, “At Danyuan I attained essence; at Isan I attained function.”⁵ Danyuan's verse has provoked many crooked explanations: treating “Xiang” as meeting and “Tan” as discussion, reading the gold as the stupa between them, the shared boat as emperor and teacher, and the beryl hall as the emperor's nonunderstanding. Others make Xiangzhou and Tanzhou geographical coordinates and mime an imperial glance as the stupa. All remain within emotional interpretation. How do you understand each line and Setchō's four turning remarks? “South of Xiang, north of Tan”—“One palm alone does not clap resoundingly.” “Gold enough to fill a country”—“A mountain-shaped staff.” An ancient said, “Recognize the staff and the work of a lifetime's study is finished.” “Beneath the shadowless tree, all share one boat”—“Sea calm, river clear,” opening every window at once. “In the beryl hall there is no one who knows”—“Picked up already.” Setchō has spoken everything at once. It remains hard to see. Even seeing can go slightly wrong by following words. The final “picked up already” is somewhat close. Setchō then separately versifies the seamless stupa. Setchō begins, “The seamless stupa is still hard to see.” Though it stands alone, exposed and impartial, seeing remains difficult. Out of excessive compassion he says, “The clear pool does not permit the blue dragon to coil.” Wuzu said that of Setchō's whole volume of verses, he loved only this line. How many people make a livelihood in the Nan’yō Echū's long silence! Understand that way and everything is wrong. It is said: A sleeping dragon does not mirror still water. Where there is no place, moon and waves are clear; where there is a place, waves rise without wind. And: “A sleeping dragon always fears a blue pool's clarity.” Even amid vast floods and sky-high waves, such a person does not coil there. Setchō has completed the verse. Then he adds an eye and carves out the seamless stupa: Layer upon layer, distinct; its shadow round and whole. Through a thousand ages, it is shown to people. How do you see it? Where is it now? Even if you see distinctly, do not mistake the fixed mark on the balance.