January 21, 2015
Yunmen Says Something in Response….
And Yunmen Says it Backwards
Koans for Sunday, January 25, 3 to 5 PM
Blue Cliff Record Cases 14 and 15; Joan Sutherland & John Tarrant transl. and notes
A student asked Yunmen, “What is the teaching that lasts a lifetime?”
Yunmen said, “Say something in response.”
Blue Cliff Record Commentary
Members of the Chan family, if you want to know the meaning of Buddha nature, you have to observe times and seasons, causes and conditions. This is called the special transmission outside the written teachings, the sole transmission of the mind seal, directly pointing to the human mind for the perception of the nature and realization of buddhahood.
For forty-nine years old Shakyamuni stayed in the world; at 360 assemblies he taught the sudden and the gradual, the provisional and the true. These are what is called the teachings of a whole lifetime. Why didn’t Yunmen explain these teachings in detil, but instead said, “Say one thing in response?”…The whole great treasure-house of the teachings just comes down to these words.
Yuanyu
Then the student asked Yunmen, “But when it’s not the things I can see, and it’s not what they’re doing, what is it?”[1]
“Say it backwards.”
From Xuedou’s Verse
Saying it backwards:
Dividing one token,[2]
Dying with you, living with you, to give you certainty.
(Some additional commentary will be provided on Sunday)
[1] This seems to refer to the Chan idea of two aspects of things: their materiality and their functioning, roughly corresponding to form and emptiness.
[2] Tokens were seals torn or broken in half and shared between 2 people until they could be reunited; for example, separated lovers and friends carried them, important documents came with half a token that should match the half held by the recipient, etc.