u/tiny_porch_light

Blue Cliff Record #32: Elder Ting Stands Motionless

Elder Ting asked Linji, "What is the great meaning of the Buddhist Teaching?" Linji came down off his meditation seat, grabbed and held Ting, gave him a slap, and then pushed him away. Ting stood there motionless.

A monk standing by said, "Elder Ting, why do you not bow?" Just as Ting bowed, he suddenly was greatly enlightened.

---

The Elder asks a question that has probably plagued a lot of different people for centuries. What's the great meaning?

Enter Linji, who's answer is a grab, slap, and push.

Ting stood motionless. I'm sure I would have, too. Me, analytically minded as I am, trying to wring out every bit of water from the sponge, would be grasping desperately for the underlying meaning.

But the shock of the responses contained no doctrine, no metaphysics. Just immediate function.

Ting, for a moment, had his question-machine stalled out. Not unconscious, not in some mystical trance, but, sudden interruption of the interpretive structure. Zen literature often circles around these moments... stunned silence, speechlessness, interruption. Mazu would call out people's names when they'd turned to walk away, and in some instances, say "just this."

The bystander monk asks, "Why do you not bow?"

Do you not recognize your mind when it's devoid of philosophizing about the experience? (Not that this is a state to be clung to or desired, Zen is suspicious of turning something into a consciousness-state.)

Shouting, kicking someone in the chest, knocking someone over, all of this isn't to induce a blank state -- and it's not that non-thinking itself is enlightenment -- more like the ordinary conceptual machinery stalls and something prior to the self-referential process becomes visible. The point is living freedom, not frozen consciousness. For a brief moment, the internal commentator is no longer taken as authoritative. How will you speak?

So the Zen Masters bring you back to reality as it is. Just bow. Wash your bowl. Not because mundane acts or washing the bowl is magically holy, but because reality was never elsewhere.

Guishan kicks over the water bottle. Longtan blows out Deshan's candle. Joshu says "wash your bowl."

The Masters don't shout, slap, or absurd answer as a doorway into another realm, they disrupt the belief that there is another realm to enter. They do not reveal another realm, they remove distance from this one. Nothing beyond this, nothing missing within it.

---

So one might ask, well, if nothing is missing within it, how do I myself become enlightened? The becoming is the problem. Enlightenment isn't leaving the ordinary world, but no longer mistaking ordinary experience for something that needs to be completed by interpretation. Zen keeps removing floorboards. When Joshu said "Wash your bowl" he didn't say it was ordinary, nothing more, nor did he say the bowl is sacred reality itself, he cut off both interpretations at once. A key move here is that the Masters refute both "completions" as "ordinary" and "sacred" -- both extremes rely on a structure, "I stand apart from experience and assign it meaning."

I am still occasionally treating Zen as a correct way to interpret experience, when what Zen is trying to present is, the collapse of the need to interpret experience into a final position at all.

Subtle traps abound. Forgive my little posts on the wall. One Zen student to another. Thank you.

Yunmen said, "Do you want to know the founding teacher?" Pointing with his staff, he said, "The founding teacher is hopping on your head. Do you want to know the founding teacher's eyes? The founding teacher's eyes are under your feet." He also said, "This is tea and rice feasting ghosts and spirits. Even so, ghosts and spirits are insatiable."

Dahui commented, "Haven't you heard it said that residual illusion gives luster to life?" At that time a monk standing by coughed. Dahui said, "What's wrong with my speaking this way?" As the monk tried to come up with something to say, Dahui hit him.

---

Respect to you. We're looking at Yunmen and Dahui and the monk all together.

---

"Why did Bodhidharma come from the West" is a common Zen meme/question, synonymous with "What's the essence of Zen?" The question itself becomes the West -- somewhere else, not here. The Masters drag it back under your own feet. Yunmen said, here's Bodhidharma, hopping on your head. Immediacy. Directly in view. Your life right now. (And already I've made it sound like something to recognize.)

Even this pointing from Yunmen, he says, is sustenance for ghosts and spirits. Driven by craving, spiritual ambition, conceptual hunger, explanations, mystical fireworks, we can be so insatiable. Even Zen teaching becomes snacks for grasping mind. (Including this sentence.)

Dahui comments, "Haven't you heard it said that residual illusion gives luster to life?"

This isn't to praise delusion but to point out that life, even after insight, still carries traces of differentiation, personality, texture. The world shimmers with appearances. Zen is not blank annihilation or some sterilized medical room. Life still shines through all of this confusion.

The moment you try to pin it down neatly -- whack.

---

I've been jaw jacking a lot lately. On a forum, that's really the core of it, eh? Getting it or not getting it. It can become a nest of assertions and platitudes and one-upmanship. Still, we're here to study together (or at least that's my intention), get messy, dare to be right, dare to be wrong. The shimmer endures.

In another instance, Yunmen enters the room for instruction and just yells at the students, "Get out of here! You're fooling each other without end!" Then he asks, "Is even this a mistake?" I think this kind of self-examination is a pivotal thing. But eventually there comes an end to the acquisitional and the jaw jacking and, we hope, that we become that clear-eyed, striding through the universe unchecked sort of person. Right?

From where I'm sitting, even this is a mistake. It subtly creates the "Zen" person. A future attainment. A spiritual completion. A perfected identity.

Even "I'm the one who sees through this" is an landing point. Zen just keeps pulling up the floorboards. Like it or not.

The one who's seeing this text right now may have imagined all sorts of personal lacking. (Or not. I'm already guessing.) We're not polishing a deficient self into a perfected spiritual artifact -- the self that imagines itself fundamentally lacking is part of the confusion being examined. One still practices and studies and fails and apologizes and learns. Luster! But the flavor changes. Practice stops being a project of manufacturing worthiness. The shimmer endures before the conclusion. Before attainment, before explanation.

Zen does not say you are fundamentally broken and must become spiritually repaired. Rather, confusion comes from entanglement with mistaken identification. To "save all sentient beings" is not framed as installing something missing onto deficient people, but more like, ceasing the endless manufacturing of ideas that it's outside of yourself.

---

Forgive me. Palms together.

To be truly empty handed is still a position.

I haven't settled the finality.

To settle the finality is a position.

There's nothing to do.

Escape routes keep getting cut off.

A person with nothing to do.

No!

Without Zen, some of these specific loops wouldn't have happened. I might never have wondered about great doubt, enlightenment, whether or not my words were authentically Zen. But the underlying coarse consciousness may have bubbled up and attached elsewhere.

With Zen certain things are carried. But I've likened it to a thorn that you use to remove another thorn from your foot before both are discarded. Not that it can ever be fully discarded. Every step is the path. (More Zen thinking. Bah.)

Enlightenment isn't to be strived for. Great doubt is not a personal project. Noticing mind's attempt to turn "awakening" into a psychological achievement or metaphysical object. Craving for a breakthrough experience.

Meanwhile the tea's on the table cooling and the trees are in full bloom.

I often ask:

What's the deeper meaning?

How would Zen address XYZ?

I find that I'm producing increasingly refined interpretations while missing out on the fact that the Zen Masters are trying to interrupt the engine itself. I'm carrying Zen as an existential pressure.

I'm drawn to authenticity. True insight, genuine expression, non-performative realization, that which remains before concepts. But "what's really real" is one more refinement of grasping.

The more I study Zen the more I see it in everyone and everything naturally. I was more natural before this.

But the tradition of Zen gradually feels less like a special overlay to life and more like the ordinary human condition that feels alive and honest.

I suppose this is all very ordinary in Zen study. The framework thins. Ordinary life thickens. Study feels less like climbing upward and more like becoming less divided from what's already happening.

But I still feel a lot like Zuigan. "Don't deceive yourself! I won't!"

The campfire's lit here if you want to share your own summation of where your study is. Me, I'm just a self-learned nobody from the hills. You don't have to impress me. I want to meet you as an equal, not as someone with something to teach me, not as someone who wants to learn something from me. My hands are mostly empty, at least, that's my summation.

Maybe one day my identity as "Zen learner" comes to an end too. But there's something just on the precipice... right?

Right?

Mistakes don't become existential evidence.

There's no self to maintain around always being correct.

There's no particular stake in the ground, no self that can be improved by altering it's contents.

Let it be a becoming without being a becoming. There is no one who must stay correct.

Karl doesn’t hide behind justification, performance, or rage.

Doyle is always talking... posturing, dominating rooms, inflating himself through noise. Karl arrives already emptied out. No speech. No theatrics. No moral courtroom. Just direct seeing and direct action.

“What are you doing with that lawnmower blade?”
“I aim to kill you with it.”

That line lands so hard because there’s no ego decoration around it. No villain monologue. No “you made me do this.” No attempt to appear righteous.

Zen stories often have that same shocking plainness.

a monk asks a question,
the master cuts the cat,
breaks the bowl,
slams the door,
or says one sentence that leaves nowhere to hide.

Karl is almost koan-like throughout the whole film:

he speaks only when needed,

sees hypocrisy immediately,

doesn’t intellectualize morality,

and acts from a primitive, uncomfortable clarity.

The scene works because Doyle cannot even perceive the seriousness of the moment. Ego thinks everything is still social theater. Karl has already stepped outside the theater.

Doyle is still trapped in self-image.
Karl, for one awful instant, becomes pure function.

No hesitation.
No self-explanation.

That’s why the scene feels less like revenge and more like fate arriving quietly at the door.

I aim to kill you with it.

Master Shoushan Zhi asked master Nian, "What is the meaning of Deshan's cane and Linji's shout?" Nian said, "You try to say." Zhi immediately shouted; Nian picked up a cane. Zhi pointed to the cane and said, "Don't act at random." Nian threw down the cane and said, "Someone with clear eyes is impossible to fool." Zhi said, "The brigand is busted."

A monk asked, "What was the purpose of the founding teacher's coming from the West?"

The master said, "A three-foot staff breaking an earthenware bowl."

"What is Buddha?"

"The bottom of a bucket falling out."

"What statement have the sages since time immemorial had?"

"'Thus have I heard.'"

"I don't understand."

"'Believing, accepting, putting into practice.'"

---

I like the initial conversation between Zhi and Nian. Demonstrated insight. I think "don't act at random" could've thrown a lot of Zen Masters if they were bein' honest.

The monk asked, what's the deal with Bodhidharma? The master said, it's like a three foot staff breaking an earthenware bowl. And how about Buddha? The bottom of a bucket falling out.

Capacity for holding is diminished. It isn't that "holding" is inherently wrong, it's moreso a consequence of Bodhidharma and Buddha according to the Zen lineage -- what's there to hold onto? Doctrinally, spiritually, religiously, philosophically, nothing survives the crack of the stick.

It isn't that people who are "full up" are any less endowed with the Buddha nature, just that they as a consequence may be more involved in their personal storylines and follow out their thoughts to conclude that they are the thinker. Huangbo put it like people walking around with a jewel on their foreheads, looking for the jewel. Nonetheless, Buddhas. That ordinariness is alive and ripe, these are people living, not caught up in nests like Zen and the Way. There they've got the leg up on dumbass me.

Treasury #522:

When the fifth patriarch was in Chang'an lecturing on the Flower Ornament scripture, a monk came and asked, "What is the meaning of the conditional arising of the nature of reality?" The patriarch was silent. Chan master Anguo Ting was standing by in attendance at the time; he said, "Great worthy, right when you produce a single thought this is conditional arising in the nature of reality." That monk was greatly enlightened at these words.

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Bucket/bowl busted.

---

And then we get to the next part.

"What statement have the sages since time immemorial had?"

"'Thus have I heard.'"

"I don't understand."

"'Believing, accepting, putting into practice.'"

Zhi and Nian were not sages since time immemorial. Believing, accepting, putting into practice, these are things to fill a bucket with. "Thus have I heard" is not the Way.

---

What sticks along near the bucket-hole is subtle. That's why it's good to converse with clear-eyed individuals. Go ahead, clean my clock.

Question: When one has reached the stage of a quiet mind, and has no immediate problem, what proceeds from that stillness?

Krishnamurti: This means really, to die to every experience, with never a moment of gathering, accumulating. After all, it is this accumulation that brings about conflict, the desire to have more. A mind that is accumulating, greedy, can never die to everything it has accumulated. It is only the mind that has died to everything it has accumulated, even to its highest experience, - only such a mind can know what that silence is. But that state cannot come about through discipline, because discipline implies the continuation of the experiencer, the strengthening of a particular intention towards a particular object, thereby giving the experiencer continuity.

If we see this thing very simply, very clearly, then we will find that silence of the mind of which we are talking. What happens after that is something that cannot be told, that cannot be described, because it has no "meaning."

Guishan asked Yangshan, “Of the forty scrolls of the Nirvana Scripture, how many are Buddha’s talk, and how many are the devil’s talk?”

Yangshan replied, “They’re all devil talk.”

Guishan said, “Hereafter no one will be able to do anything to you.”

Yangshan asked, “As a temporary event, where do I focus my action?”

Guishan said, “I just want your perception to be correct; I don’t tell you how to act.”

---

Guishan once asked also -- "What do they teach where you come from?"

---

Give a word on this?

27. Q: What is the Way and how must it be followed?

A: What sort of THING do you suppose the Way to be, that you should wish to FOLLOW it?

Q: What instructions have the Masters everywhere given for Dhyāna-practice and the study of the Dharma?

A: Words used to attract the dull of wit are not to be relied on.

Q: If those teachings were meant for the dull-witted, I have yet to hear what Dharma has been taught to those of really high capacity.

A: If they are really men of high capacity, where could they find people to follow? If they seek from within themselves, they will find nothing tangible; how much less can they find a Dharma worthy of their attention elsewhere! Do not look to what is called the Dharma by preachers, for what sort of Dharma could that be?

Q: If that is so, should we not seek for anything at all?

A: By conceding this, you would save yourself a lot of mental effort.

Q: But in this way everything would be eliminated. There cannot just be nothing.

A: Who called it nothing? Who was this fellow? But you wanted to SEEK for something.

Q: Since there is no need to seek, why do you also say that not everything is eliminated?

A: Not to seek is to rest tranquil. Who told you to eliminate anything? Look at the void in front of your eyes. How can you produce it or eliminate it?

Q: If I could reach this Dharma, would it be like the void?

A: Morning and night I have explained to you that the Void is both One and Manifold. I said this as a temporary expedient, but you are building up concepts from it.

Q: Do you mean that we should not form concepts as human beings normally do?

A: I have not prevented you; but concepts are related to the senses; and, when feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out.

Q: Then should we avoid any feeling in relation to the Dharma?

A: Where no feeling arises, who can say that you are right?

Q: Why do you speak as though I was mistaken in all the questions I have asked Your Reverence?

A: You are a man who doesn't understand what is said to him. What is all this about being mistaken?

* * *

28. Q: Up to now, you have refuted everything which has been said. You have done nothing to point out the true Dharma to us.

A: In the true Dharma there is no confusion, but you produce confusion by such questions. What sort of ‘true Dharma' can you go seeking for?

Q: Since the confusion arises from my questions, what will Your Reverence's answer be?

A: Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves.

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31. Q: From all you have just said, Mind is the Buddha; but it is not clear as to what sort of mind is meant by this ‘Mind which is the Buddha'.

A: How many minds have you got?

Q: But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the Enlightened mind?

A: Where on earth do you keep your ‘ordinary mind' and your ‘Enlightened mind'?

Q: In the teaching of the Three Vehicles it is stated that there are both. Why does Your Reverence deny it?

A: In the teaching of the Three Vehicles it is clearly explained that the ordinary and Enlightened minds are illusions. You don't understand. All this clinging to the idea of things existing is to mistake vacuity for the truth. How can such conceptions not be illusory? Being illusory, they hide Mind from you. If you would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and Enlightened, you would find that there is no other Buddha than the Buddha in your own Mind. When Bodhidharma came from the West, he just pointed out that the substance of which all men are composed is the Buddha. You people go on misunderstanding; you hold to concepts such as ‘ordinary' and ‘Enlightened', directing your thoughts outwards where they gallop about like horses! All this amounts to beclouding your own minds! So I tell you Mind is the Buddha. As soon as thought or sensation arises, you fall into dualism. Beginningless time and the present moment are the same. There is no this and no that. To understand this truth is called compete and unexcelled Enlightenment.

Q: Upon what Doctrine ( Dharma-principles ) does Your Reverence base these words?

A: Why seek a doctrine? As soon as you have a doctrine, you fall into dualistic thought.

Q: Just now you said that the beginningless past and the present are the same. What do you mean by that?

A: It is just because of your SEEKING that you make a difference between them. If you were to stop seeking, how could there be any difference between them?

Q: If they are not different, why did you employ separate terms for them?

A: If you hadn't mentioned ordinary and Enlightened, who would have bothered to say such things? Just as those categories have no real existence, so Mind is not really ‘mind'. And, as both Mind and those categories are really illusions, wherever can you hope to find anything?

* * *

32. Q: Illusion can hide from us our own mind, but up to now you have not taught us how to get rid of illusion.

A: The arising and the elimination of illusion are both illusory. Illusion is not something rooted in Reality; it exists because of your dualistic thinking. If you will only cease to indulge in opposed concepts such as ‘ordinary' and ‘Enlightened', illusion will cease of itself. And then if you still want to destroy it wherever it may be, you will find that there is not a hairsbreadth left of anything on which to lay hold. This is the meaning of: ‘I will let go with both hands, for then I shall certainly discover the Buddha in my Mind.'

Q: If there is nothing on which to lay hold, how is the Dharma to be transmitted?

A: It is a transmission of Mind with Mind.

Q: If Mind is used for transmission, why do you say that Mind too does not exist?

A: Obtaining no Dharma whatever is called Mind transmission. The understanding of this Mind implies no Mind and no Dharma.

Q: If there is no Mind and no Dharma, what is meant by transmission?

A: You hear people speak of Mind transmission and then you talk of something to be received. So Bodhidharma said:

The nature of the Mind when understood,

No human speech can compass or disclose.

Enlightenment is naught to be attained,

And he that gains it does not say he knows.

If I were to make this clear to you, I doubt if you could stand up to it.

Was externally processing today and realized one of my little nests I was making. Hard to sum up. I'll try.

The preconceptualized isn't more pure.

It's all pure.

Of course, that's messy too. Doesn't hit the mark. Maybe better to say "thought doesn't stain experience."

I had that as a hidden belief.

Master Zhenjing, opening a hall, said to the assembly,

Questions will be stopped for now; you only know to ask about Buddha, ask about the Teaching, but don't know where Buddha's teaching comes from. Tell me, where does it come from? (letting down one leg, he said) In past days Huanglong personally enforced this order; the Buddhas of the ten directions didn't dare violate it, the ancestral teachers through the generations and all sages and saints didn't dare transgress. Countless methods of teaching, all subtle meanings, the sayings of the teachers all over the world, one seal beginning to end, never dared differ. Leaving aside for the moment not differing, where is the seal? Do you see? If you see, you are not monks, not lay people; you have no partiality, no factionalism - everyone is entrusted. If you do not see, I withdraw myself (then drawing in his leg he shouted and said) The army rolls with the seal, the general goes with the talisman. The Buddha's hand, a donkey's leg, circumstances of birth - ultimately a painful beating is deserved. Now in the present assembly, isn't there anyone who doesn't accept? If there is, he's undeniably exceptional. If not, the new elder goes on fooling you people. So our great enlightened World Honored One in ancient times in the country Magadha on the eighth day of the twelfth month, when the morning star appeared, became enlightened, and all the living beings on earth became Buddha at the same time. Now there is a Buddhist monk, Kewen, in the eastern country of China, in the city of Chunyang; on the thirteenth day of the sixth month, when the blazing sun appeared, he also realized - what? (drawing one line with his whisk he said) I don't dare take you lightly - you will all become Buddhas.

Master Yunmen cited:

Master Chuyuan of Shishuang said, "You must know that there is a phrase of special transmission outside the written tradition."

A monk asked Shishuang, "What is this phrase of special transmission outside the written tradition?"

Master Shishuang replied, "A nonphrase."

Master Yunmen said, "A nonphrase is all the more a phrase!"

---

Even if you understand a nonphrase being all the more a phrase. Even if you've been all Joshu'd out. Even if you find yourself hanging by the teeth from a branch. Can you still give a word of Zen?

Shew. What an ugly sentence.

But why is it mistaken?

That's what we're finding out, right?

Or is it that in the finding out, we're losing something?

Zen: come for the gains, stay for the losses.

Even so, a novice Zen student would spit in my eyes.

Venerable Yanyang asked Zhaozhou, "When not a single thing is brought, then what?" Zhaozhou said, "Put it down." Yanyang said, "If I don't bring a single thing, what should I put down?" Zhaozhou said, "Then carry it out."

Having entered the Dharma Hall for a formal instruction, Master Yunmen said:

"Get out, get out of here! You're fooling each other without end!"

Then Master Yunmen asked the assembly: "Is even to say what I just said a mistake?"

The mistakenness is unavoidable. 1,000 years of mistakes. But if not for the mistakes, there would be no family customs.

When to open your mouth and when not to? Well. Welcome to Zen.

The high official Ba asked, "Master, do you practice?"

Joshu said, "It would be a disaster if I did."

Ba said, "If you yourself do not practice, to whom can you teach the practice?"

Joshu said, "You."

Ba said, "How can you call someone like me a practitioner?"

Joshu said, "If you did not practice, how could you have overcome hunger and cold, and attained the status of a king?"

With tears in his eyes the official bowed in gratitude.

People are often hindered by environmental phenomena from perceiving Mind, and by individual events from perceiving underlying principles; so they often try to escape from environmental phenomena in order to still their minds, or to obscure events in order to retain their grasp of principles. They do not realize that this is merely to obscure phenomena with Mind, events with principles. Just let your minds become void and environmental phenomena will void themselves; let principles cease to stir and events will cease stirring of themselves. Do not employ Mind in this perverted way.

Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they may plunge into the void. They do not know that their own Mind is the void. The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena.

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Comment: What is the sound of one hand clapping?