A monk asked Ummon: “What is Buddha?”
Ummon answered him: “Dried dung.”
Mumon’s comment: It seems to me Ummon is so poor he cannot distinguish the taste of one food from another, or else he is too busy to write readable letters. Well, he tried to hold his school with dried dung. And his teaching was just as useless.
Lightning flashes,
Sparks shower.
In one blink of your eyes
You have missed seeing.
Ananda asked Kashapa: “Buddha gave you the golden-woven robe of successorship. What else did he give you?”
Kashapa said: “Ananda.”
Ananda answered: “Yes, brother.”
Said Kashapa: “Now you can take down my preaching sign and put up your own.”
Mumon’s comment: If one understands this, he will see the old brotherhood still gathering, but if not, even though he has studied the truth from ages before the Buddhas, he will not attain enlightenment.
The point of the question is dull but the answer is intimate.
How many persons hearing it will open their eyes?
Elder brother calls and younger brother answers,
This spring does not belong to the ordinary season.
When he became emancipated the sixth patriarch received from the fifth patriarch the bowl and robe given from the Buddha to his successors, generation after generation.
A monk named E-myo out of envy pursued the patriarch to take this great treasure away from him. The sixth patriarch placed the bowl and robe on a stone in the road and told E-myo: “These objects just symbolize the faith. There is no use fighting over them. If you desire to take them, take them now.”
When E-myo went to move the bowl and robe they were as heavy as mountains. He could not budge them. Trembling for shame he said: “I came wanting the teaching, not the material treasures. Please teach me.”
The sixth patriarch said: “When you do not think good and when you do not think not-good, what is your true self?”
At these words E-myo was illumined. Perspiration broke out all over his body. He cried and bowed, saying: “You have given me the secret words and meanings. Is there yet a deeper part of the teaching?”
The sixth patriarch replied: “What I have told you is no secret at all. When you realize your own true self the secret belongs to you.”
E-myo said: “I was under the fifth patriarch many years but could not realize my true self until now. Through your teaching I find the source. A person drinks water and knows himself whether it is cold or warm. May I call you my teacher?”
The sixth patriarch replied: “We studied together under the fifth patriarch. Call him your teacher, but just treasure what you have attained.”
Mumon’s comment: The sixth patriarch certainly was kind in such an emergency. It was as if he removed the skin and seeds from the fruit and then, opening the pupil’s mouth, let him eat.
You cannot describe it, you cannot picture it,
You cannot admire it, you cannot sense it.
It is your true self, it has nowhere to hide.
When the world is destroyed, it will not be destroyed.
A monk asked Fuketsu: “Without speaking, without silence, how can you express the truth?”
Fuketsu observed: “I always remember springtime in southern China. The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers.”
Mumon’s comment: Fuketsu used to have lightning Zen. Whenever he had the opportunity, he flashed it. But this time he failed to do so and only borrowed from an old Chinese poem. Never mind Fuketsu’s Zen. If you want to express the truth, throw out your words, throw out your silence, and tell me about your own Zen.
Without revealing his own penetration,
He offered another’s words, not his to give.
Had he chattered on and on,
Even his listeners would have been embarrassed.
In a dream Kyozan went to Maitreya’s Pure Land. He recognized himself seated in the third seat in the abode of Maitreya. Someone announced: “Today the one who sits in the third seat will preach.”
Kyozan arose and, hitting the gavel, said: “The truth of Mahayana teaching is transcendent, above words and thought. Do you understand?”
Mumon’s comment: I want to ask you monks: Did he preach or did he not?
When he opens his mouth he is lost. When he seals his mouth he is lost. If he does not open it, if he does not seal it, he is 108,000 miles from truth.
In the light of day,
Yet in a dream he talks of a dream.
A monster among monsters,
He intended to deceive the whole crowd.