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object:1.03 - To Layman Ishii
book class:Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
class:chapter


To Layman Ishii
LETTER 3, 1734

This letter, dating from Hakuin's forty-ninth year, is addressed to his friend and student Ishii Gentoku
(1671-1751), a physician who resided in Hina village, six miles west of the Hara post station.

Fifteen years Hakuin's senior, Ishii began practicing at Shin-ji in 1728, eight years after Hakuin was installed as abbot, a little over a year after Hakuin's decisive enlightenment at the age of forty-one.

The closeness of the relationship that formed between the two men is evident in Hakuin's letters to
Ishii, as well as from the fact that Hakuin at times secluded himself in Ishii's retirement retreat for periods of rest and writing (Chronological Biography, 1731). A number of miscellaneous pieces inscribed to Layman Ishii that are included in Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn confirm that he was considerably advanced in his Zen study, a point further substantiated by the difficulty of the teaching Hakuin addresses to him in this letter.


MY ATTENDANT BOKU, while on a trip to his native place, stopped by the residence of Layman Ishii and claiming to be indisposed threw himself at the Layman's feet and implored him for his help. He took possession of the Layman's private chambers and for ten days devoted himself diligently to zazen.a
I recently overheard several of Boku's comrades discussing him. "Boku hit on a truly splendid plan," they decided. "He is sure to return with a much deeper attainment." I wasn't so sure. "Boku," I said to myself. "This is not a good idea. Being a kind and deeply compassionate man, when the
Layman sees how troubled you are, he is sure to be greatly concerned and want to help you. But whatever help you receive now, even though you may gain something from it, it is going to stick to your bones and cling to your hide, and will prevent you from experiencing the intense joy that should accompany the sudden entrance into satori. You will remain a humble little stable boy the rest of your life, your wisdom never completely clear, your attainment never truly alive and vital. b A most regrettable outcome!"
Yesterday, the evening of the twelfth, Boku returned to Shin-ji. I sat waiting for him with a black snake in my sleeve.c By and by, an unkempt and disheveled Boku entered the temple gates. His face looked unchanged, no different from when he had left.

"What words did the Layman have for you?" I asked.

"He didn't utter a single word to help me," Boku said, tears raining down his face.

Unable to keep from bursting into laughter, I cried out, "How wonderful! If you had come back here with even a grain of Zen understanding, I would have snatched your robe and begging bowl from you, given you thirty blows with my staff, and chased you out the gate. You had a very close shave! You might have ended up achieving nothing for your efforts but to involve the Layman in your personal troubles. I had no idea he would be so rigorous in dealing with you!
"Boku, the great and essential matter is like partaking of a peach. You mustn't be hasty. You have to wait patiently until the fruit is fully ripe. Then, when the soft, pink fruit is cut in two, the kernel
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falls out of itself, and the flesh, with its wonderful configurations, can be enjoyed in all its marvelous fragrance and delicious flavor. How marvelous and edifying it is to witness this taking place!
"Watch the way a mother hen warms an egg. When she has warmed the egg sufficiently so that the conditions are ripe for hatching, instead of pecking the egg, she waits, she holds back until she hears faint pecking sounds inside the shell. She gives the shell a single peck, and the baby chick emerges. It is truly heartwarming to watch her forthrightly attending to her task, cocking her head this way and that, up and down, as she restrains herself from pecking. Yet if she did not hold back, if she pecked the shell too early, she would have ruined everything, producing a sight too terrible to behold.

"Or consider the case of a pregnant woman. Although her time has not yet arrived, she and her husb and have taken every possible precaution and secured in advance the services of a physician.

Now, a physician of only middling talents, eager to achieve results and hasten the delivery, may decide to force the birth prematurely or to attempt a perilous breech delivery, gravely imperiling the lives of both mother and child.

"Or take the example of a man who comes down with the ague, and suffers periodic bouts of convulsive shivering. If the physician attempts to cure the man quickly after he has suffered only one or two paroxysms, the infection will remain in his system, only to recur later in more virulent form.

Hence the saying, 'A mediocre physician neither helps nor harms. A poor physician harms without helping. It is wisest not to send for either.'
"One day when I was in Mino Province, I observed a cicada casting its skin in the shade. It managed to get its head free, and then its hands and feet emerged one after the other. Only its left wing remained inside, adhering to the old skin. It didn't look as though the cicada would ever get that wing unstuck. Watching it struggling to free itself, I was moved by feelings of pity to assist it with my fingernail. 'Excellent,' I thought. 'Now you are free to go on your way.' But the wing I had touched remained shut and would not open. The cicada never was able to fly the way it should have. Watching it, I felt ashamed of myself, regretting deeply what I had done.

"When you consider it, present-day Zen teachers act in much the same way in guiding their students. I've seen and heard how they take young people of exceptional talent-those destined to become the very pillars and ridgepoles of our school-and with their extremely ill-advised and inopportune methods, end up turning them into something half-baked and unachieved. This is the primary reason for the decline of our Zen school, why the Zen groves are withering away.

"Now and again, you come across superior seekers of genuine ability who are devoting themselves to hidden application and secret practice. As they continue steadily forward, accumulating merit until their efforts achieve a purity that infuses them with strength, their emotions gradually cease to arise altogether. They find themselves at an impasse, unable to move forward despite the most strenuous application. It is as though they are trapped inside an invincible enclosure of diamond-like strength, or are sitting in a bottle of purest crystal-unable to move forward, unable to retreat, they become dunces, utter blockheads.

"Suddenly the moment arrives when they become one with their questing mind. Mind and koan both disappear. Breathing itself seems to cease. This, although they are not aware of it, is the moment when the tortoise shell cracks and fissures, when the Luan-bird emerges from its egg. They are experiencing the auspicious signs that appear when a person is about to attain the Buddha Way.

"What a shame if at such a critical moment someone who is supposed to be their good friend and teacher succumbs to tender emotions, indulges them in grandmo therly kindness, and serves them up various intellectual explanations that knock them back into the old familiar nest of conceptual understanding, that drag them down into the cavernous old den of darkness and delusion. That,
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however, is not the end of the damage they do them, for they then produce a phony winter-melon seal, impress it on a piece of paper, and award it to them: d 'You are like this,' they say. 'I am like this, too.

Preserve and protect it with care.' The trouble is, the roots binding the students to life are still not severed. The gardens of the patriarchs still lie beyond their farthest horizons. Any teacher who does this, though he may love his student dearly, causes him irreparable harm. For their part, the students start dancing around, rolling their heads this way and that way, wagging their tails joyfully, eagerly lapping away at the fox slobber doled out to them, completely unaware it is a virulent poison they consume.e They waste their entire lives stuck in a half-drunken, half-sober state of delusion. Not even the hand of a Buddha can cure them.

"A foolish man long ago heard that if you put a leech out under the sun in very hot weather, it would transform into a dragonfly and soar into the sky. One summer day, he decided to put it to the test. Wading into a marsh, he poked around until he found a particularly large old leech. Throwing it on the hot ground, he watched very carefully as the worm squirmed and writhed in agony. Suddenly, it flipped over on its back, split in two, and transformed into a ugly creature with a hundred legs like a centipede. It scowled furiously at him, snapping its fangs in anger. Ahh! This creature that was supposed to soar freely through the skies had turned into a repulsive worm that could only crawl miserably over the ground. A truly terrifying turn of events!
"There was a servant in ancient China who worked in the kitchen of a temple in the far western regions of the country. The temple was filled with monks engaged in the rigors of training. All the time the servant wasn't engaged in his main job preparing meals for the brotherhood, he spent doing zazen. One day, he suddenly entered a profound samadhi, and since he showed no sign of coming out of it, the head priest of the temple directed the senior monk in charge of the training hall to keep an eye on him. When the servant finally got up from his zazen cushion three days later, he had penetrated the heart and marrow of the Dharma, and had attained an ability to clearly see the karma of his previous lives. He went to the head priest and began setting forth the realization he had attained, but before he had finished, the head priest suddenly put his hands over his ears. 'Stop! Stop!' he said.

'The rest is something I have yet to experience. If you explain it to me, I'm afraid it might obstruct my own entrance into enlightenment.'
"How invaluable that story is! There was nothing halfhearted about ancients' practice of the Way; it was difficult and demanding in the extreme. One of them said, 'It is like passing through a region infested with venomous insects. You must pass through with all possible haste. Not stop to accept even a single drop of water from someone you meet.'1 The great master Yun-men said, 'While you are engaged in practice, if anyone comes up and tries to teach you Zen, I want you to take a dipper of warm shit and empty it over his head.'f
"That is why to outstanding students who are engaged in negotiating the hidden depths I say, 'I would rather you sink into the sea of birth-and-death and remain there until the skin on your body is covered all over with festering sores, than for you ever to look to others for your strength.'"
Before I had even finished speaking, Boku performed two prostrations. "Master," he said, "thank you for the great compassion you have shown in giving me this teaching. Although I cannot hope to comprehend it all, I do not doubt it in the least. I do have a few questions about it, however.

"In the past when teachers engaged their students, there was no room for any hesitation-they dealt with them as if they had a naked sword blade raised over their heads. They were like the giant golden-winged Garuda, monarch of the feathered kingdom, cleaving through the whale-backed seas and deftly seizing live dragons beneath the waves. Zen monks are like red-finned carp when the peach trees are in blossom, butting their way upstream into the tremendous current, braving the perilous
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forked lightning of the Dragon Gate.g They enter realization at the utterance of a single word. They attain cessation at the sound of a single shout. If those who call themselves teachers all behave like dead otters2 and those who call themselves students all behave like dumb sheep,3 the halls of Zen throughout the land, training grounds where Buddhas are singled out, will be rendered utterly useless
-they'll be no better than coffins for the dead-and the assertions of the perverse silent-illumination
Zen teachers with their box-shrub Zen will carry the day. 4 If that happens, the supreme teaching of the
Buddha-mind school will plunge to earth forever, and its true and rigorous traditions will disappear from the ancestral groves."
I gave a sigh, and said, "Boku, come over here. I want you to listen to what I say. In studying Zen, it is necessary to pierce completely through when you penetrate to the source. It is the same with all the workings of heaven and earth. The wonderful transformation of springtime does not take place without the winter's severity, the intense cold that makes the hundred plants and grasses fade and shrivel, the bamboo split and shatter. But with the advent of spring, the ten thousand buds and blossoms emerge, rivaling one another with their charms and beauties. Hence the saying, 'To make something grow and develop, you must cut it back. To make something flourish, you must check its progress.'
"Long ago, when the First Patriarch Bodhidharma was living in seclusion doing zazen at Shao-shih, he had a student named Hui-k'o. Hui-k'o possessed outstanding talent and learning, and a dauntless and heroic spirit. For three years he continued to refine his attainment while serving as
Bodhidharma's attendant. Untold hardship and suffering were his constant companions.

"Today's students practice the Way clothed in warm garments and get plenty to eat, and they are as soft and weak as the eldest son of a wealthy family. Could any of them venture to stand stalwart and resolute in a courtyard on a bitterly cold night like Hui-k'o? Buried up to the waist in icy snow like a stack of firewood? Suffering of this intensity cannot be endured unless one is made of stone or metal, or has wooden legs like a statue. The marrow-chilling cold of the northern Wei winter constantly penetrated the thin cotton robe he wore, but he stood resolutely and silently through that adversity until dawn, never relaxing his efforts for a second, or weeping a single tear. Bodhidharma never offered him the slightest help whatsoever. Finally, Hui-k'o took a knife and cut off his left arm. h Hsisou Shou-t'an was perfectly justified in holding Hui-k'o up as a model for all Zen monks throughout the world.

"When the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng raised the Dharma standard at Ts'ao-hsi, the priest Nan-yueh came to study with him. Hui-neng asked, 'What is this that thus comes?' Nan-yueh stood in a daze, unable to respond. Hui-neng did not utter a single word to relieve his confusion, and it was not until
Nan-yueh had practiced arduously for eight more years that the patriarch finally offered him a turning word.i Ahh! This good teacher, a person who had accumulated great merit over eighty rebirths, j now, when the time was ripe, used his marvelous means with incomparable skill to bring about Nan-yueh's liberation. Why didn't he employ them at the start, just lead Nan-yueh to the immense joy of liberation? The incandescent fire to forge fine Pin-chou steel is not obtained by stoking the furnace with kindling. The oranges of Chiang-nan do not assume their delicious sweetness until they have endured bitter frosts. Any honest farmer would be ashamed to cook unripened grain for his meals, would he not?
"Students who have not yet penetrated the source should not be troubled if their entrance into enlightenment is slow in coming; they should be troubled only if their practice fails to attain a state of genuine purity. Students who have already penetrated to attainment should not be troubled if people fail to revere them; they should be concerned only about the difficulty of making their attainment
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complete.

"Long ago, when Lin-chi practiced for three years at Huang-po's temple, he received words of sanction from Huang-po's disciple Chen Tsun-su: 'Someone whose practice is this pure and genuine is certain to become a great shade tree for the beings of the world.'k Lin-chi was by that time widely versed in the sutras and commentaries, and he had exhaustively investigated the precepts as well.

Today's students lack this extensive knowledge of the scriptures or precepts. Because of that, they confound their own feelings, perceptions, and understanding for absolute truth, go around shooting off their mouths and retailing their half-baked ideas to others, and end up making a total waste of their lives.

"Observe the manner in which a clear-eyed teacher like Chen Tsun-su was able unequivocally to affirm Lin-chi: 'Your practice is pure and genuine!' That purity and that genuineness of practice are extremely difficult to attain, even if a student devotes an entire lifetime to Zen training. However, once you attain it, you are, without any doubt, a tiger that has sprouted wings.l You should never doubt that you yourself have such a capacity.

"Yet Lin-chi went three times to ask Huang-po about the cardinal meaning of the Buddha Dharma.

Each time he received painful blows from Huang-po's stick, and withdrew in tears. But he was still not liberated, so he set out to see Master Ta-yu. Huang-po did not offer him the least bit of help. After experiencing a significant understanding at Ta-yu's, Lin-chi returned to Huang-po and reported what
Ta-yu had told him. Huang-po said, 'If that blabbermouth dares show his face around here, he'll get thirty blows from this stick of mine!'m
"An au thentic Zen teacher like Huang-po is like a solitary peak towering forbiddingly into the sky.

Today, you could comb the entire earth and not come up with a single person like him.

"The great teacher Hsuan-sha practiced arduously at Hsueh-feng's mountain hermitage, forgetting both food and sleep, but was unable to achieve a breakthrough of any kind. He left the temple with tears in his eyes, yet Hsueh-feng did not utter a single word to help him. At this point, you can be sure that one of today's teachers would have burdened him with a copious load of warm shit. As it turned out, when Hsuan-sha reached the foot of the mountain, he tripped and fell, and experienced a sudden realization.n
"It is like a melon grower harvesting his crop. He waits until their fragrance and flavor are at their peak before he goes into the melon patch. When he does, he has no need to carry a knife with him, only a bamboo basket. As the melons are fully ripe, the roots and tendrils and stems don't have to be cut; they have fallen away of themselves, leaving the fruit lying there on the ground. All he has to do is to go and pick them up.

"Don't you see? Hsuan-sha's enlightenment had fully matured just like those melons. It was a stinking fruit whose smell has wafted through the centuries. It has taken the lives of countless pilgrims who partook of it. Yet if Hsuan-sha's teacher Hsueh-feng had taken out his knife at the critical moment and stepped in and cut the stem, Hsuan-sha's Zen would never have been transmitted to future generations.

"Hsiang-yen trained at his teacher Kuei-shan's temple for many years without attaining even a glimpse of realization. Making up his mind to leave, he went to inform Kuei-shan with tears in his eyes. Kuei-shan was completely unsympa thetic. He didn't even look at him. Hsiang-yen traveled around, and then took up residence in a solitary hermitage. One day as he was sweeping, his broom threw a fragment of tile against a bamboo trunk. When the sound it made reached his ears, all the barriers suddenly fell away. He bathed and put on a clean robe. Facing in the direction of the Kueishan's temple, he offered some incense, performed three prostrations, and said, 'It is not my late
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teacher's religious virtue I revere. I revere the fact that he never once explained everything to me.'o
"A story is told about a monk who visited a Zen teacher and begged insistently for the principles of
Zen. The teacher never paid him the least attention. The monk bided his time, waiting for a chance.

Then one day he suddenly grabbed the master and hurried him to a secluded spot at the rear of the temple. He seated the master on the ground, spread out his prostration cloth before him, and performed three bows. 'I appeal to your great mercy and compassion,' he said. 'Please teach me the principles of Zen. Guide me to sudden enlightenment.' The master ignored him, enraging the monk, who flew into a fit of passion, sprang to his feet and, eyes red with anger, broke off a large branch from a nearby tree. Brandishing it, he stood in front of the master glaring scornfully at him. 'Priest!' he cried. 'If you don't tell me what you know, I am going to club you to death, cast your body down the cliff, and leave this place for good.' 'If you want to beat me to death, go ahead,' replied the master. 'I'm not going to teach you any Zen.' What a pity. This monk was obviously gifted with special capacity and spiritual strength. He had what it takes to penetrate the truth and perish into the great death. But notice what great caution and infinite care these ancient teachers exercised when leading students to self-awakening.

"Zen Master Tao-wu responded to a monk with the words, 'I won't say living. I won't say dead.'
'Why is that?' asked the monk. 'I won't say. I won't say,' replied Tao-wu. p Tao-wu did not refuse to speak because he was reluctant to teach the monk. He was trying to protect him. Anything he had tried to teach him would only have harmed him. In fact, there is no way a teacher can teach the Buddhapatriarchs' marvelous, untransmittable Dharma to others. If a priest tells you he has liberated students by teaching them the Dharma, you can be sure of two things: he has not penetrated the source, and he is not a genuine Zen teacher. But for you what is essential is not whether he is genuine or not. What is essential is to pledge that you will never have anything to do with false teachers like him. Zen practice must be true and au thentic, and it must be practiced under a true and au thentic teacher. Could you call Zen sages like Bodhidharma, Hui-neng, Huang-po, Hsueh-feng, and Tao-wu dead otters?
Would you charac-terize venerable teachers like Hui-k'o, Nan-yueh, Lin-chi, Hsuan-sha, and Hsiangyen as dumb sheep?
"The exchanges that took place when teachers and students faced each other in the past did not necessarily dispense with words, but when the students asked questions, they were generally for the purpose of seeking instruction, receiving appraisal of an opinion, probing the other's insight, resolving a troubling problem, or making a personal assertion.q They were nothing like the half-baked encounters carried out by the pseudo-Zennists of today, with teachers who can't tell the difference between fine and coarse, between rock and precious jade, wading in from the outset, doing what they can to free up the cicada's wings, r spewing out great quantities of the worst imaginable filth and lacquering their students' faces with the stuff."
Boku said, "But there are students who reach satori by studying the words and teachings of the
Buddha-patriarchs, and there are students who achieve great and final cessation by following a teacher's advice. By comparing them to inhabitants of Uttarakuru, people addicted to worldly wisdom and skillful words, to lump them with the dried buds and dead seeds of the Two Vehicles-wouldn't that mean they have no hope of ever attaining the Buddha's Dharma? s Surely there should be some expedient means within the Dharma that could be used to help them?"
I sighed and replied, "The ocean of true reality is boundless and profoundly deep. The Buddha
Way is immeasurably vast. Some priests do nothing but seek fame and success until their dying day, never showing the slightest interest in the path of Zen or the Buddha's Dharma. Others become enthralled in literary pursuits or become addicted to sake or women, oblivious of the hell fires
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flaming up under their very noses. Some, relying on insignificant bits of knowledge they pick up, shamelessly try to deny the law of cause and effect, though woefully lacking any grasp of its working.

Some find ways to attract large numbers of people to their temples, believing to the end of their days that this is proof of a successful teaching career. Now it is true that compared to fellows of that stamp, students who reach satori thanks to teachings they hear, or arrive at cessation thanks to advice they receive from a teacher, are indeed wonderful occurrences-as rare as lotus flowers blossoming amid a raging fire. They owe the attainment they achieve to the large store of karmic merit they accumulated in previous existences. Attainment such as theirs is not easy to achieve, it is not insignificant, and it must be valued and deeply respected.

"But for all that, there is still no getting around the fact that genuine practicers of Zen must once achieve kensh (see their true nature), and bring the one great matter of their life to final cessation.

Satori and final cessation are one thing, they are not two. But differences inevitably appear in the profundity of the satori and the strength or power that results from it. Let me try to describe this to you by explaining how progress toward final cessation, and lack of progress as well, appears in four types of students following their initial kensh.

"First you have the students who, after engaging in genuine Zen practice for a long time until principles and wisdom are gradually exhausted, emotions and views eliminated, techniques and verbal resources used up, wither into a perfect and unflappable serenity, their bodies and minds completely dispassionate. Suddenly, satori comes. They are liberated. Like the phoenix that soars up from its golden cage. Like the crane that breaks free of its pen. Releasing their hands from the cliffside, they die the great death and are reborn into life anew. These are students who have thoroughly penetrated, who have bored through all forms and penetrated all sounds and can see their self-nature as clearly as if it was in the palm of their hand. After painstakingly working their way through the final barrier koans set up by the patriarchal teachers, their minds, in one single vigorous effort, abruptly transform. Such students are possessed of deep discernment and innate ability that enables them to enter liberation at a single blow from the iron hammer. They are foremost among all the outstanding seeds and buds of our school. The only thing they lack is the personal confirmation of a genuine teacher.

"Next there are students who move forward in their koan practice until they gain strength that is almost mature. Thanks to a word or phrase of the Buddha-patriarchs or perhaps some advice from a good friend, they suddenly achieve kensh, breakthrough into satori. Let us call them "initial penetrators." Their penetration is complete in some areas, but not in others. They have a sure grasp of
Dharma utterances of the hosshin type, words such as 'White waves rise on the mountain peak. Red dust dances at the bottom of a well.'t But when they come up against the vital matter of the more advanced koans, they are as the deaf and dumb. As long as they are sitting quietly doing zazen, the principle of true reality is perfectly clear and the true form of things immediately manifested. But the minute they return into the everyday world and begin dealing with some worrisome matter or other, this clarity disappears. It withers away amid the constant disparity between the meditative and active aspects of their life, their inner wisdom and their ordinary activity.

"There are also students who spend much time and effort tenaciously engaged in hidden practice and secret activity until, one day, owing to the guidance of a teacher, they finally are able to reach a state of firm belief. We can call them the believers. They understand without any doubt about essential principles such as the self-nature being apart from birth-and-death and the true body transcending past and present. However, the great and essential matter of the Zen school is beyond them. They can't see it even dimly in their dreams. They are not only powerless to save others, they
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are unable to bring their own liberation to completion either.

"It was for students of the second and third type, who are engaged in the practice that one of the ancients described as gradual practice followed by sudden realization, that the step-by-step process set forth in the Ten Oxherding Pictures and the precious norms laid out in the Five Ranks were devised.u If they continue to practice assiduously, it is possible for them to advance into the ranks of those who have fully penetrated.

"Finally, there are students who come to believe in a teaching they hear, accepting it as true even though it has no more substance than a shadow, and cling fast to it until the day they die. These are the hoodwinked. They have been bamboozled by words, yet continue to follow them scrupulously. They have not penetrated the wondrous and perfect self-nature that exists within their own minds, nor do they understand that the true reality of all forms in the external world is no-form. They follow arbitrarily the movements of their own minds and perceptions, confounding them for manifestations of truth, picking up various plausible notions that they begin spouting to everyone they meet: 'It's like a precious mirror that reflects unerringly a Chinese or a foreigner in all their perfections and imperfections when they come before it. It's like a mani gem set out on a tray reflecting all shapes and all colors without a single trace remaining behind. Your own mind is like that intrinsically. There is no need to refine it. No need to attain it through practice.' Having no doubt that they themselves belong to the ranks of the genuine priests who have achieved final cessation, if they hear of someone engaging in secret training and hidden practice, they fall about clutching their bellies in paroxysms of laughter.v
"Ahh! They are plausible, all too plausible. The trouble is, having not yet broken free of that indestructible adamantine cage, they wander ever deeper into a forest of thorn, acknowledging a thief as their own son. It is because of this that the great master Ch'ang-sha said, 'The reason practicers fail to attain the Way is because they confound the ordinary working of their minds for truth. Although that has been the source of birth and death from the beginning of time, the fools insist on calling it their "original self."' They are like Temple Supervisor Tse before he visited master Fa-yen, like
Chen Tien-hsiung before his encounter with Huang-lung.5
"We might compare the ones who have fully penetrated this matter to a prince of royal blood, an heir apparent to the throne. Born of aristocratic stock, with intrinsic nobility that has no need of the benefits others must obtain through practice, he is universally acclaimed in all lands, and brings peace and prosperity to the world. The initial penetrators (those who have attained a partial realization) and the believers (those who have achieved a firm conviction) are like the Chinese emperors Liu Hsiu and Su Tsung, w who strove to establish their authority, but being surrounded on all sides by rebellious tribes who refused them tri bute, could never afford to neglect thoughts of armament and defense. Those I termed the 'hoodwinked' resemble rebels like Wang Mang and An
Lu-shan,x both of whom proclaimed themselves emperor but were unable to maintain their grip on wealth and power.

"As the priest Nan-t'ang declared, 'You must see your self-nature as clearly as if you are looking at it in the palm of your hand, so that each and every thing becomes perfectly and unmistakably your own wondrously profound field of Dharma truth.'y It is a matter demanding the greatest care. For this reason, the Zen school declares: 'Clarifying your self but not the things before your eyes gets you only half, and clarifying the things before your eyes but not your self gets you only half as well. You must know that if you press on, the time will come when it will all be yours.'z It also says, 'If students of the Way want to confirm whether they have truly entered realization, they must examine their mind
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thoroughly both in the activities of everyday life and amid the tranquillity of zazen: In the realm of active life is the mind different from the way it is during meditation? Do they hesitate or have any trouble in penetrating the various meanings of the words of the Buddha-patriarchs? Someone who has thoroughly grasped the marrow of the Buddha-patriarchs could not possibly fail to understand their words and sayings.'aa
"Therefore to patricians engaged in boring into the secret depths, I say: 'Those of you who have already achieved kensh should place yourselves in the hands of a genuine teacher, and follow and seek occasional advice from seasoned monks with deep experience as you continue the day-to-day refining of your attainment, concentrating yourself single-mindedly on exhausting the secret mysteries and penetrating completely through the bottomless source. Those who have not yet achieved kensh should be grappling with one of those meaningless koans. You might concentrate on Lin-chi's "person who is standing right here listening to me preach."bb Bore into him at all times, whether you are in a quiet place doing zazen or actively engaged in the activities of everyday life. Grasp the person who is engaged in this nonstop seeking. Where is he? What is the mind that at this very moment seeks him?
Entering ever deeper into these matters, when mind has ceased to function, when words and phrases have been exhausted, attack it from the sides, attack it from the front and from the rear, keep gnawing away at it, gnawing, gnawing, until there is no place left to gnaw.'
"You may feel as though you are clinging perilously to a steel barrier towering before you, as though you are gagging on a soup of wood shavings, as though you are grasping at clouds of green smoke, or probing a sea of red mist. When all your skills have been used up, all your verbal resources and reason utterly exhausted, if you do not falter or attempt to understand and just keep boring steadily inward, you will experience the profound joy of knowing for yourself whether the water is cold or warm. The practice of Zen requires you to just press forward with continuous, unwavering effort. If you only exert yourself every other day, like a person experiencing a periodic malarial fit, you will never reach enlightenment, not even with the passage of endless kalpas.

"There is a sea beach only several hundred paces from my native village of Hara. Suppose someone is troubled because he doesn't know the taste of seawater, and decides to sample some. He sets out down to the beach, but stops and comes backs before he has gone even a hundred steps. He starts out again, this time returning after taking only ten steps. He will never know the taste of seawater that way, will he? Yet if he keeps going straight ahead and he doesn't turn back, even if he lives far inland in a landlocked province such as Shinano, Kai, Hida, or Mino, he will eventually reach the ocean. By dipping his finger in the ocean and licking it, he will know instantly the taste of seawater the world over, because it has the same taste everywhere, in India, in China, in the southern or northern seas.

"It is the same for Dharma patricians exploring the secret depths. Proceeding straight ahead, pushing steadily forward, they bore into their minds with unbroken effort, never slackening or regressing. When the breakthrough suddenly arrives, they penetrate their own nature, the nature of others, the nature of sentient beings, the nature of evil passions and enlightenment, the nature of the
Buddha-nature, the nature of the gods, the Bodhisattva-nature, the nature of sentient and nonsentient beings, the craving-ghost nature, the contentious spirit nature, the beast nature-they are all of them grasped in a single instant of thought. The great matter of their religious quest is completely and utterly resolved, and there is nothing left for them to do. They are freed from birth and death. What a thrilling moment it is!
"But a matter of particularly bowel-wrenching intensity still remains, and that is the very heart of the matter that has been personally transmitted from one Zen patriarch to another and carefully
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maintained without alteration or diminution to the present day. Even students who have broken free of the adamantine cage and negotiated their way through the thicket of razor-edged briars, unless they also encounter a genuine teacher along the way and receive his personal instruction, they will be unable to grasp this matter even in their dreams. Why is that? Because from the very beginning, the sage teachers have been like celestial dragons grasping the precious night-shining gem tightly in their claws, not allowing turtles, sea urchins, fish, or other inhabitants of the deep to observe it. They are like venerable dragons, masters of the clouds and rain, whose essential role is totally beyond the ken of frogs and earthworms and other denizens of the waters. I speak of Zen masters like Nan-ch'uan,
Ch'ang-sha, Huang-po, Su-shan, Tz'u-ming, Shao-shih, Chen-ching, Hsi-keng, Dai, and Wu-hsueh
[Mugaku Sogen]."
Now, I don't want you to think I've been spinning out these stories to impress you with my insights and learning. I heard them thirty years ago from my teacher Shju Rjin. He was always lamenting the fading of the Zen transmission. It now hung, he said, by a few thin strands. These concerns of his became deeply engrained in my bones and marrow. They have been forever etched in my liver and bowels. But being afraid that if I spoke out I would have trouble making people believe what I said, I have for a long time kept my silence. I have constantly regretted that you, Mr. Ishii, and the two or three laymen who study here with you, were never able to meet Master Shju. For that reason I have taken up my brush and rashly scribbled down all these verbal complexities on paper. Having finished,
I find my entire back streaming with profuse sweat, partly in shame, partly in gratitude. My only request is that after reading this letter, you will pass it on to the fire god with instructions to consign it to his eternal storehouse. Ha. Ha.

HOZ, 2:166-79

Although a handful of friends and fellow villagers had been studying at Shin-ji during the first decade of Hakuin's incumbency, Ishii was one of the earliest of the lay students from outside Hara village, another indication that the unsung young Zen teacher's reputation had spread to other parts of the province, and probably beyond as well.

Ishii became an important patron of the impoverished temple, and later helped fund a number of
Hakuin's building and publishing projects. Most of the half-dozen or so other letters that Hakuin wrote Ishii are expressions of gratitude for donations and gifts received, or services rendered. In one letter, Hakuin thanks Ishii for a large supply of cut tobacco that Ishii had sent to fuel Hakuin's wellknown pipe habit. A long verse Hakuin sent Ishii, one of the most remarkable pieces in the Poison
Blossoms collection, is an expression of thanks for two large boulders Ishii had donated to the Shinji gardens. The verse is filled with vivid images describing the progress of the unwieldy objects as they are rafted down from the foothills of Mount Fuji, landed on the coast near Hara village, then manhandled overl and to Shin-ji, making us feel the excitement and impatience Hakuin experienced as he awaited their arrival (a translation is found in The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin, 129-
30).

Although remarks of a personal nature are scattered throughout this letter, reminding the reader that it is indeed a letter, it is for the most part a series of discourses that Hakuin apparently composed to express his gratitude to Ishii for having taken care of one of his monks, an attendant named Boku, who had fallen ill. Hakuin presents these as a word-for-word account of the instructions he gave Boku upon the attendant's return from Ishii's residence, although the message they contain seems intended
36

primarily for the recipient of the letter, Layman Ishii himself.

In content and style, the letter is an early example of the expositions of koan Zen-so-called
Dharma words-that Hakuin sent to individual students throughout his life, and more or less indistinguishable from the works he later wrote expressly for publication. He criticizes contemporary
Zen teachers who, by giving in to feelings of pity and offering untimely advice to struggling students, end up preventing them from carrying their practice through to completion, ruining their chance of ever reaching the release of final enlightenment. Hakuin contrasts this with the method used by himself, as well as the great Zen figures of the past, of refusing to give any such help until the critical moment is reached and the student is ready to benefit from a teacher's timely intervention. The classic image is that of a mother hen pecking an egg at the exact same time the baby chick is pecking from within the shell to make its way out. Hakuin also stresses the importance of the post-satori training that begins after the original kensh or satori is attained.

This letter is perhaps the earliest written enunciation of these themes, preceding by almost a decade their initial appearance in print, in Talks Introductory to Lectures on the Record of Hsi-keng
(1743). Several passages in the present letter appear almost verbatim in the printed version of the
Talks, and since the preface to that work states that Hakuin stayed at Ishii's private retreat for over a month while he was drafting the Talks, it is not difficult to imagine Ishii urging his friend to include portions of this letter in the Talks so they might be shared with others.

Attendant Boku's unspecified complaint may have been purely physical in nature, but it may also have been practice related, perhaps even a touch of the "Zen sickness" that had troubled Hakuin during his early years of training. The identity of this attendant monk is uncertain. The most logical candidate, Sui Genro (1717-89), Hakuin's successor at Shin-ji, who as a young monk used the name [E]Boku, has to be rejected, since Sui's study at Shin-ji did not begin until 1746, twelve years after this letter was written. The Hakuin specialist Rikugawa Taiun identified Boku as "a monk from western Japan who fell ill while training at Shin-ji and subsequently left the temple" (Detailed
Biography of Priest Hakuin, p. 252), but offered no details. An anonymous annotator inscribed another hypothesis in a copy of Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn: "Attendant Boku is not an actual person. The master seems to be using the name in an allegorical sense for a story on the oxherding theme" [Boku translates literally as "herder"]. Again, it would be entirely in character for
Hakuin, well-known for his yarn spinning, to create a fictitious character of this sort, but we have no way of confirming this supposition.

Despite its length this letter was never printed as an independent work, but it was included in the section entitled Sho (Letters) in Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn.

a The word chambers (hj), normally the quarters of a head priest, also alludes to the room where the great Layman Vimalakirti taught. An annotation states that the room may have been Ishii's teahouse. b Chij khai, the second of three kinds of "leakage" posited by Tung-shan Liang-chieh, in which the student, while trying to rid himself of delusory thoughts, still remains within the realm of dualism
(The Eye of Men and Gods, ch. 3). c That is, a shippei, or black-lacquered bamboo stick. d A false makeshift seal carved from melon rind.

37

e [Wild] fox slobber (koen, or yako-enda) is generally poison, used by Hakuin with a positive connotation for the "turning words" used by Zen teachers. For a recipe for making it, see Hakuin's
Precious Mirror Cave (244). f Hakuin loosely paraphrases a statement in the Comprehensive Records of Yun-men (Yun-men kuang-lu). An early Chinese commentary on this apprises us of the fact that warm excrement produced during the summer months has an especially foul smell. g The Dragon Gate is a three-tiered waterfall cut through the mountains of Lung-men to open up a passage for the Yellow River. It was said that on the third day of the third month, when peach trees are in flower, carp that succeeded in scaling this waterfall turned into dragons. h Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 1. Also Case 41 in the Gateless Barrier. i Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 3. j Based on lines in a verse by Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in: "I venerate the Sixth Patriarch, an au thentic old
Buddha who manifested himself in the human world as a good teacher for eighty lifetimes in order to help others" (cited in Trei's Snake Legs for Kaien-fusetsu, 21v). k The head monk in Huang-po's assembly at this time is not identified in the standard accounts of this episode in Record of Lin-chi and Records of the Lamp. He is given as Chen Tsun-su (Mu-chou Taotsung, n.d.) in some other accounts. In none of the versions does he utter such words directly to Linchi. l A winged tiger would be even more formidable. m In the Record of Lin-chi account (also Blue Cliff Record, Case 11), the head monk in Huang-po's assembly tells Lin-chi to ask Huang-po about the essential meaning of the Buddha Dharma. He goes to
Huang-po three times, each time receiving blows, and he decides to leave the temple. The head monk tells Huang-po, "That young fellow who's been coming to you [Lin-chi] is a real Dharma vessel. If he comes and tells you he's going to leave, please use your expedient means in dealing with him. I'm sure that if he can continue to bore his way through, he will become a great tree that will provide cool shade to all the world." Huang-po suggests to Lin-chi that he might visit Ta-yu. At Ta-yu's temple,
Lin-chi explained why he had left Huang-po, adding that he wasn't sure whether he was at fault or not. Ta-yu said, "Huang-po spared no effort. He treated you with utmost tenderness and grandmo therly kindness. Why do you talk about fault and no fault?" Lin-chi suddenly experienced enlightenment, and said, "There's not much to Huang-po's Dharma." Lin-chi returned to Huang-po and related what had happened at Ta-yu's place. Huang-po said, "I'd like to get hold of that fellow and give him a good dose of my stick!" n "One day Hsuan-sha took up a traveling pouch and left his temple to complete his training by visiting others teachers around the country. On the way down the mountain, he struck his toe hard on a rock. Blood appeared, but amid the intense pain he had an abrupt self-realization. 'This body does not exist. Where is the pain coming from?' he said, and promptly returned to Hsueh-feng" (Essentials of
Successive Records of the Lamp, ch. 23). o This generally follows the account in Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 9. p Tao-wu Yuan-chih (769-835) and his student Chien-yuan went to pay their respects to someone who had passed away. Chien-yuan rapped on the coffin and said, "Living or dead?" Tao-wu replied,
"I won't say living. I won't say dead." "Why won't you say?" asked Chien-yuan. "I won't say,"
38

replied Tao-wu. On their way back to the temple, Chien-yuan said, "If you don't say it right this minute, I'm going to hit you." "Hit me if you like," said Tao-wu. "I won't say living, I won't say dead." Chien-yuan hit him. When they were back at the temple, Tao-wu told Chien-yuan that the temple supervisor would give him a beating if he found out what he had done, and suggested that he go away for a while. Chien-yuan left and studied under Master Shih-shuang, attaining a realization upon hearing him repeat the words, "I won't say, I won't say" (Records of the Lamp, ch. 15. Also
Blue Cliff Record, Case 55). q These are some of the eighteen types of questions Zen students are said to ask their teachers. This is a formulation by Fen-yang (947-1024) in The Eye of Men and Gods. r Free up the cicada's wings . Although a similar expression is used in the Book of Latter Han to describe a lord showing great partiality to a favorite, here it refers to the statement made earlier about a teacher ruining a student's chances by stepping in to help the student prematurely. s Two of eight difficult places or situations (hachinan) in which it is difficult for people to encounter a Buddha, hear him preach the Dharma, and attain liberation: Uttarakuru, the continent to the north of
Mount Sumeru, because inhabitants enjoy lives of interminable pleasure; and being enthralled in the worldly wisdom and skillful words (sechibens) of secular life. Dried buds and dead seeds (shge haishu) is a term of reproach directed at followers of the Two Vehicles, who are said to have no possibility for attaining complete enlightenment. t In the system of koan study that developed in later Hakuin Zen, hosshin or Dharmakaya koans are used in the beginning stages of practice (see Zen Dust, 46-50). The lines Hakuin quotes here are not found in the Poems of Han-shan (Han-shan shih). They are attri buted to Han-shan in Compendium of the Five Lamps (ch. 15, chapter on Tung-shan Mu-ts'ung): "The master ascended the teaching seat and said, 'Han-shan said that "Red dust dances at the bottom of the well. / White waves rise on the mountain peaks. / The stone woman gives birth to a stone child. / Fur on the tortoise grows longer by the day." If you want to know the Bodhi-mind, all you have to do is to behold these sights.'" The lines are included in a Japanese edition of the work published during Hakuin's lifetime. u The Ten Ox-herding Pictures are a series of illustrations, accompanied by verses, showing the Zen student's progress to final enlightenment. The Five Ranks, comprising five modes of the particular and universal, are a teaching device formulated by Tung-shan of the Sto tradition. v Records of the Lamp, ch. 10. w Liu Hsiu (first century) was a descendant of Western Han royalty who defeated the usurper Wang
Mang and established the Eastern Han dynasty. Emperor Su Tsung (eighth century) regained the throne that his father had occupied before being been driven from power. x Wang Mang (c. 45 BC-23 AD) , a powerful official of the Western Han dynasty, and rebellious
T'ang general An Lu-shan (c. 703-757) both attempted to usurp the throne and declare themselves emperor. y Nan-t'ang is Ta-sui Yuan-ching (1065-1135), an heir of Fa-yen Wen-i. The quotation appears in
The Eye of Men and Gods, ch. 1. Hakuin, who liked to quote it, included it in Redolence from the
Cold Forest, a selection of quotations from Zen texts he made for students that was first published in
1769 by Trei. z In Detailed Study of the Fundamental Principles of the Five Houses of Zen (Goke sansh yro
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mon) Trei explains the Zen terms "gains you half" (literally, "raises it up halfway") and "gaining it all" as follows: "'Raising it totally up' refers to grasping the treasury of the Buddha's true Dharma eye and making it one's own activity. 'Raising it partially up' refers to not having yet achieved this total attainment; to having achieved only half, or only one tenth" (hoz, 7:157-58). aa No source has been found for this quotation; it may have been written by Hakuin. bb "If you cease your mind from its constant strivings, you are no different from the Buddhas and patriarchs. You want to grasp the Buddhas and patriarchs, but you yourself, the person listening to my teaching at this moment, are the Buddha-patriarch" (see Record of Lin-chi, 23).


NOTES TO CHAPTER 3
1. The following story appears in Records of the Lamp: "Asked by a monk, 'How should a monk comport himself throughout the twenty-four hours?' Ts'ao-shan replied, 'As if passing through a region filled with poisonous insects (ku), not letting a single drop of water pass his lips.'"
Understanding of this dialogue requires an explanation of the meanings attached to the word ku
(translated "poisonous insects"). In Tso-chuan (Tso's Narrative), the oldest of the Chinese narrative histories, we read: "Chao-meng asked, 'What is the meaning of the word ku?' The physician answered, 'It refers to anything that causes excess, agitation, delusion, or trouble. The ideograph ku represents a jar filled with insects. The grub that insinuates its way into grain stock is also a destructive ku insect. In the Book of Changes, women who seduce men and the wind that topples trees in the mountains are also described as ku.'" The word also occurs in the records of the Sung master Hsu-t'ang: "There was a custom in the Fu-chien District prevalent since the T'ang dynasty of throwing various insects such as venomous snakes, lizards, and spiders together, waiting until only one of them remained alive, and then mixing its venom and blood into a potion to ward off evil spirits or to kill people by casting a magic spell on them" (Dictionary of Zen Sayings, 121). In the Yuan dynasty medical treatise I-fang tai ch'eng lun: "It is said that people living in the mountain fastnesses of Min-kuang put three kinds of poisonous insects into a container and bury it in the ground on the fifth day of the fifth month. They allow the insects to devour each other until only one remains, called a ku.

They extract the poison from this insect, and when they want to harm someone, they put it into their food or drink."
2. Dead otter (shi-katsudatsu) Zen, according to a glossary of Zen terms dating from shortly after
Hakuin's time, refers to quietist practices employed in the St school's silent illumination Zen. The
Sung master Ta-hui speaks of "bands of miscreant shavepates who have not yet opened their own eyes, but who nonetheless strive to lead others into a state of quietistic stagnation in the realm of the blind otters" (Ta-hui's Letters, third Letter to Cheng Shih-lang). In his work Krju, the Tokugawa scholar-priest Mujaku Dch concludes that the term does not refer to an otter (he suggests instead a red-haired, wolflike animal): "Although I have been unable to discover precisely what this creature is, it is said to 'play possum,' pretending to be dead to draw people near so it can seize and devour them."
The term appears in a number of Hakuin's own works; the following are three examples.

1. "You often find students who lack the determination to place themselves under a teacher and study the Great Way and have no true understanding of the perfection of the self-nature within them, pointlessly trying to empty minds that are caught up in birth-and-death, and ending up like incense
40

burners lying forgotten in the back of an old mausoleum; and if later they do decide they want to attain the Way, they spend all their time in silent sitting. Such people are dead otters this year, they're dead otters next year, and fifteen years later, with white hair and yellow teeth, bad eyes and failing ears, they're still dead otters. Should one of them later acquire students and the students followed their teacher's instructions obediently, accepting silent sitting as ultimate and devoting themselves to practicing it, then if five of them get together and practiced, you would have five dead otters; if there were eight, you would have eight dead otters. Not only would they never be able to benefit others, but they would never be able to save themselves either. No matter how many years they spent sitting silently like this in weed-infested nooks and corners, they would always remain incapable of breaking out of the dark cavern of their old views" (A Record of Sendai's Comments on the Poems of Cold Mountain, ch. 1, 61-62).

2. "Not even Buddhas and patriarchs can cure misunderstanding as gross as this. Every day these people seek out places of peace and quiet, but they're dead otters today, they'll be dead otters tomorrow, they'll be dead otters even after endless kalpas have passed. Utterly useless to themselves or to anyone else. The Buddha compared people like this to mangy foxes. Angulimala despised them as people with the intelligence of earthworms. Vimalakirti placed them among the blasted buds and rotten seeds. They are the ones Ch'ang-sha said were unable to leap from the tip of a hundred-foot pole, the ones Lin-chi said lived at the bottom of a deep black pit" (Oradegama; Zen Master Hakuin,
115).

3. "These people will tell you that there is no Buddha to seek and there is no Way to practice other than dwelling in a state of no-self, no-thought, and no-mind and doing nothing, good or bad. They themselves doze their lives away doing zazen, their minds devoid of wisdom or understanding. This is a state that from long in the past has been described as a deep dark pit, or as the realm of dead otters" (HHZ, 6:254-56).

3. Dumb sheep Zen is said to refer to monks who are unable to tell good from bad and without sense enough to correct their mistakes. Hakuin generally applies the term to "do-nothing" Zennists, that is to say, those who do not actively seek kensh through koan study.

4. Box-shrub Zen. The growth of the box tree or shrub (tsuge no ki) is so slow that it was said to sometimes cease growing altogether, and to even shrink in size during intercalary years. Ta-hui uses the term to describe students who not only cease making headway in their practice, but by attaching to satori actually regress (Ta-hui's General Talks, ch. 2). Carry the day roughly paraphrases the expression "bare the left arm," referring to a gesture that is made to show one has been won over and will support another's cause. "Marquis Chou Po, before setting out to subjugate the Lu family, issued an order to his army, saying, 'Those who are for the Lu family bare their right arms, those for the Liu family bare their left arms!' They all bared their left arms, and he was able to launch an attack and gain the upper hand" (Records of the Grand Historian, 280).

5. A monk named Hsuan-tse was temple steward in the brotherhood of Zen Master Fa-yen Wen-i. The master said, "How long have you been here with me?" "It's been three years now," he replied. "As a member of the younger generation that is responsible for carrying on the transmission, why haven't you ever asked me about the Dharma?" "To tell the truth," Tse replied, "I already entered the Dharma realm of peace and comfort when I was studying with Zen Master Ch'ing-feng." "By what words did you attain that realm?" Fa-yen asked. Tse replied, "I once asked Ch'ing-feng, 'What is the self of a
Buddhist monk?' He answered, 'Ping-ting t'ung-tzu [the fire god] comes for fire.'" "Those are fine words," said Fa-yen. "But you probably didn't understand them." Tse said, "I understand them to
41

mean that since Ping-ting is a fire deity, looking for fire with fire would be like looking for the self with the self." "Just as I thought," said Fa-yen. "You didn't understand. If that were the extent of the
Buddha Dharma, the transmission could not have lasted down to the present day." Indignant, Hsuantse left the monastery, but on his way down the mountain he reflected, "The master is known throughout the land as a great teacher. He has over five hundred disciples. There must be some merit to his words." Returning penitently to the monastery, he performed his bows before Fa-yen, and asked, "What is the self of a Buddhist monk?" "Ping-ting t'ung-tzu comes for fire," the master replied.

At the words, Hsuan-tse attained great enlightenment (Records of the Lamp, ch. 17).

Chen Tien-hsiun is Ts'ui-yen K'o-chen (n.d.), a Dharma heir of Tz'u-ming (Shih-shuang Ch'u-yuan,
986-1039) who acquired the nickname "Breast-beater Chen" because on attaining enlightenment he elatedly began pummeling his chest. "As a student living on intimate terms with Tz'u-ming, Chen grew convinced of his superior talents. But while accompanying Chen on a summer practice retreat,
Tz'u-ming's senior disciple Attendant Shan (later Huang-lung Hui-nan [1002-69]), soon discerned that Chen's realization was incomplete. One day when they were walking in the mountain, Shan picked up a pebble, put it on top of a large boulder, and said, "If you can come up with a good turning word for this, I will believe that you truly understand Master Tz'u-ming." Chen, glancing left and right, seemed about to make a reply, when Shan gave a loud shout. "You still haven't even overcome mental discrimination! You're hesitant and unresolved! How can you ever hope to know Tz'u-ming's inner meaning?" Chen was thoroughly ashamed, realizing the truth of Shan's words. He immediately returned and resumed his practice with Tz'u-ming, and was finally able to achieve complete enlightenment (Compendium of the Five Lamps, ch. 12).


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