Ryūge's “No Intent in Coming from the West”

Engo's commentary on the case

Suigan Zhi said, “That was so then. Do patch-robed monks today still have blood beneath the skin?” Dawei Zhe said Suibi and Rinzai were teachers of the fundamental matter, while Ryūge parted grass to observe the wind and became a mirror for later people. After Ryūge became abbot, a monk asked whether he had approved the two elders. Ryūge said, “Approve them, yes. Still, there was no patriarchal intent in coming from the west.” Ryūge looked forward and back, giving medicine for the illness. Dawei would instead have struck the questioner across the back, supporting both teachers without betraying the question. Shimen Cong said Ryūge was tolerable until a monk pressed him; then he lost one eye. Setchō said Rinzai and Suibi knew only how to hold fast, not release. Had Setchō been Ryūge, when they asked for board and cushion he would have hurled each into the teacher's face. Huanglong Xin said Ryūge drove away the farmer's ox and took food from the hungry. If he understood, why was there still no patriarchal intent? “The staff's tip has an eye bright as the sun; to know true gold, look in the fire.” To raise the ancestral vehicle, clarify beneath the first working and cut off every tongue. Hesitate and fall into the second. Though the two elders struck wind and rain and shook heaven and earth, they did not strike a clear-eyed person. The ancients struggled through mountains seeking teachers. Ryūge visited Suibi and Rinzai, then Tokusan. He asked Tokusan, “What if this student holds the sword Moye and means to take your head?” Tokusan extended his neck and shouted. Ryūge said, “Your head has fallen.” Tokusan smiled and stopped. Later Dongshan asked where Ryūge had come from and what Tokusan said. Hearing the story, Dongshan asked, “What did he say?” “He had no words.” “Do not say he had no words. Show me Tokusan's fallen head.” Ryūge gained insight, burned incense toward Tokusan, bowed, and repented. Tokusan heard and said, “Old Dongshan cannot distinguish good from bad. This fellow has been dead how long? What use is rescuing him? Let him carry my head around the world.” Ryūge carried a bellyful of Zen. He questioned Suibi and Rinzai to see the elders on their curved seats and clarify his own great matter. His words were not idly set out and his workings not randomly launched. Wuxie once resolved that if one word from Sekitō accorded he would stay, otherwise leave. Sekitō remained seated; Wuxie departed. At the gate Sekitō called, “Reverend!” Wuxie looked back. Sekitō said, “From birth to death, it is only this. Do not turn your head and seek elsewhere.” Wuxie awakened. Mayoku circled Zhangjing's seat three times, shook his staff, and stood. Zhangjing said, “Yes.” He performed identically before Nansen, who said, “No. This is turned by wind-force and will decay.” Mayoku protested that Zhangjing had said yes. Nansen replied, “Zhangjing is right. You are wrong.”² The ancients sought to penetrate this one affair. People today show no work: today and tomorrow identical without end. One must rouse energy before any correspondence. Ryūge knew Suibi meant to strike. Why hand over the board? When immediate responsibility was required, he did not use living water but made a livelihood in dead water, declaring afterward, “Strike if you will; still no patriarchal intent.” He repeated the pattern with Rinzai. Why did teachers of different successions answer similarly and function alike? Ancient words were not random. Ryūge later said he approved them, yet still denied intent. There is a thorn in the mud: releasing others is already secondary. Engo would say, “Approve them—not yet. Still no patriarchal intent.” When Daibai was asked the western intent, he said, “The coming from the west had no intent.” Enkan called it one coffin with two dead men; Gensha called Enkan an expert; Setchō added a third. Understand “no intent” as nothing-to-do quietism and you fall into a dead realm. Investigate the living phrase, not the dead phrase. Recognize beneath a living phrase and never forget; beneath a dead phrase and you cannot save yourself. Ryūge's statement was in one sense fully good, with provisional and real, illumination and function, guest and host interchanging. Yet in intimacy he remained secondary. The teachers wanted to use what was in his own breast, although their use was exceedingly severe. Why, then, was there no patriarchal intent? Here is another extraordinary point. Setchō raises it. Setchō decides according to the charge. Where is the eyelessness and dead water? Here transformation is required. A clear pool does not permit a blue dragon to coil; dead water never stores a fierce dragon. A living dragon goes into vast floods and sky-high waves. Ryūge entered dead water. Struck, he declared “Strike if you will.” Thus Setchō says dead water never stirred ancient wind. Is Setchō supporting Ryūge or diminishing him? Many misunderstand “Entrust them only to Master Lu.” In fact, Ryūge entrusts them to others. Inquiry must discriminate within the working. Ryūge's handing over the board was clearly giving him a blue dragon he could not ride. “Cannot be used.” “Master Lu” is often called the sixth patriarch, but that is wrong. Setchō called himself Master Lu. In a poem he wrote of loving Dongting's painted seventy-two green peaks and, now reclining, adding Master Lu leaning on a stone screen.⁴ Setchō means to walk above Ryūge, but fears misunderstanding, so he composes another verse to cut off doubt: “Once Master Lu has entrusted them, what reliance remains?” What evidence or reliance? Understand directly here; do not guard a stump for a rabbit. Smash everything at once before the skull, with not one affair in the breast, clean and free. What need for reliance? Sitting or leaning, do not construct Buddhist principle. Thus: “Sitting or leaning, do not use them to continue the ancestral lamp.” Setchō has raised it all at once and has a turning place. At the end he exposes a little news: Fit to face evening clouds returning, not yet closed— distant mountains, limitless blue, layer on layer. What is his intent at the moment evening clouds gather but have not closed? The distant mountains remain layered blue. Yet this again strikes you into a ghost cave. Cut off gain and loss, right and wrong at once and stand clean and free; then you are somewhat close. Are those distant blue mountains Mañjuśrī's realm, Samantabhadra's, or Avalokiteśvara's? Whose affair is it?