Chencao Visits Shifuku

Engo's commentary on the case

Minister Chencao lived in the time of Pei Xiu and Li Ao. Whenever a monk came, he first offered a meal and three hundred coins, then tested him. When Unmon visited, Chencao asked, “I will not ask about the Confucian books. The three vehicles and twelve divisions have their scripture lecturers. What is the traveling affair of patch-robed monks?” Unmon asked how many people he had questioned. “Right now I ask you.” “Set right now aside. What is the intent of the teaching?” Chencao said, “Yellow paper and red rollers.” “Those are written words. What is the teaching's intent?” Chencao said, “The mouth would speak, but words perish; the mind would engage, but thought expires.” Unmon said, “Words perishing corresponds to what has words; thought expiring corresponds to delusive thinking. What is the teaching's intent?” Chencao had no answer. Unmon asked whether he read the Lotus Sūtra. Chencao said yes. Unmon said, “The scripture says that all livelihood and productive work do not contradict the true mark. Tell me: in the Heaven of Neither Perception nor Nonperception, how many people have now left their rank?”¹ Again Chencao had no words. Unmon warned him not to be careless. Monks abandon the classics and enter communities for ten or twenty years and still struggle; how could a minister readily understand? Chencao bowed and acknowledged his fault. Another day, seeing monks approach while he stood with officials on a tower, Chencao denied they were necessarily Zen monks. When they reached the tower he suddenly called, “Reverends!” They raised their heads. Chencao told the officials, “Did I not say so?” He admitted only Unmon could not be tested this way; Unmon had studied with Bokushū. When Chencao visited Shifuku, Shifuku drew a circle. Shifuku was an elder in the Isan–Kyōzan line and often received people by presenting a scene. But Chencao was an expert and inspected himself: “Coming like this is already inopportune; how much more a circle.” Shifuku shut the door. This kind of case is called “discerning the target within words, hiding the working within a phrase.” Setchō says Chencao had only one eye. What is his intent? Setchō too deserves a circle. If everyone acted like this, how would monks serve people? If you were Chencao then, what could you say to avoid Setchō's one-eyed judgment? Setchō overturns the matter in his verse. Setchō directly versifies the circle-mark. Understand it and you are like a tiger wearing horns. The bottom must fall from the bucket and every mechanism be exhausted. Release gain and loss, right and wrong at once; do not interpret it doctrinally or mystically. How, then, should it be understood? Here one must see “a horse loads it, a donkey carries it, onto an iron boat.” It cannot be entrusted elsewhere, only to the guest without affairs amid sea and mountain. If the belly contains the slightest affair, one cannot take responsibility. It requires a person whom affairs and nonaffairs, adverse and favorable conditions, buddhas and patriarchs cannot control. If there is Zen to investigate or measurements of ordinary and holy, one cannot receive it. After receiving it, how understand? “When fishing for the giant turtle, lower one coiled loop.” Fishing for that turtle requires such a loop. Fuketsu said, “Accustomed to fishing whales and sea monsters in the clear vastness, one laments the frog's steps grinding mud and sand.” He also said, “Great turtle, do not carry the three mountains away; I want to walk atop Penglai.”² Setchō adds that no monk can leap free. A giant turtle never forms a monk's interpretation; a monk never forms the giant turtle's interpretation.