“Yesterday I came across one topic which I thought I might communicate to you, my pupils, to-day. But an old man such as I am is apt to forget, and the topic has gone off altogether from my mind. I cannot just recall it.” So saying, Goso remained quiet for some little time, but at last he exclaimed, “I forget, I forget, I cannot remember!” He resumed however, “I know there is a mantram in one of the Sutras known as The King of Good Memory. Those who are forgetful may recite it, and the thing forgotten will come again. Well, I must try.” He then recited the mantram, “Om o-lo-lok-kei svāha!” Clapping his hands and laughing heartily he said, “I remember, I remember; this it was: When you seek the Buddha, you cannot see him: when you look for the patriarch, you cannot see him. The muskmelon is sweet even to the stems, the bitter gourd is bitter even to the roots.”
He then came down from the pulpit without further remark.
VI
In one of his sermons, Eckhart referring to the mutual relationship between God and man, says: “It is as if one stood before a high mountain and cried, ‘Art thou there?’ The echo comes back, ‘Art thou there?’ If one cries, ‘Come out!’ the echo answers, ‘Come out!’” Something like this is to be observed in the Zen masters’ answers now classified under “Repetition.” It may be found hard for the uninitiated to penetrate into the inner meaning of those parrot-like repetitions which sometimes sound like mimicry on the part of the master. In this case indeed the words themselves are mere sounds, and the inner sense is to be read in the echoing itself if anywhere. The understanding however must come out of one’s own inner life and what the echoing does is to give this chance of self-awakening to the earnest seekers of truth. When the mind is so timed as to be all ready to break into a certain note, the master turns the key and it sings out its own melody, not learned from anybody else but discovered within itself. And this turning the key in the form of repetition in this case is what interests us in the following quotations.
Chōsui (Ch‘ang-shui Tzu-hsüan)[6.36] once asked Yekaku (Hui-chiao), of Mount Rōya (Lang-yeh), who lived in the first half of the eleventh century, “How is it that the Originally Pure has all of a sudden come to produce mountains and rivers and the great earth?” The question is taken from the Śūrangama-sūtra in which Purna asks of the Buddha how the Absolute came to evolve this phenomenal world. For this is a great philosophical problem that has perplexed the greatest minds of all ages. So far all the interpretations making up the history of thought have proved unsatisfactory in one way or another. Chōsui also being a student of philosophy in a way has now come to his teacher to be enlightened on the subject. But the teacher’s answer was no answer as we understand it, for he merely repeated the question, “How is it that the Originally Pure has all of a sudden come to produce mountains and rivers and the great earth?” Translated into English, this dialogue loses much of its zest. Let me write it down in Japanese-Chinese: Chōsui asked, “Shō-jō hon-nen un-ga kos-sho sen-ga dai-ji,” and the master echoed, “Shō-jō hon-nen un-ga kos-sho sen-ga dai-ji.”
This was not, however, enough. Later, in the thirteenth century another great Zen master, Kido (Hsü-t‘ang), commented on this in a still more mystifying manner.[6.37] His sermon one day ran in this wise: “When Chōsui asked Yekaku, ‘Shō-jō hon-nen un-ga kos-sho sen-ga dai-ji,’ the question was echoed back to the questioner himself, and it is said that the spiritual eye of the disciple was then opened. I now want to ask you how this could have happened. Were not the question and the answer exactly the same? What reason did Chōsui find in this? Let me comment on it.” Whereupon he struck his chair with the hossu, and said, “Shō-jō hon-nen un-ga kos-sho sen-ga dai-ji.” His comment complicates the matter instead of simplifying it.
This has ever been a great question of philosophy—this question of unity and multiplicity, of mind and matter, of thought and reality. Zen, being neither idealism nor realism, proposes its own way of solution as is illustrated in the case of the Originally Pure. The following one solves the problem also in its own way. A monk asked Chōsa Keishin,[6.38] “How do we, transforming (chuan) mountains and rivers and the earth, reduce them into the Self?” Replied the master, “How do we, transforming the Self, produce mountains and rivers and the earth?” The monk confessed ignorance, whereupon said the master:
“In this city south of the Lake, people are thriving well,—
Cheap rice and plentiful fuel and prospering neighbourhood.”
Tōsu Daido (T‘ou-tzu Tai-t‘ung),[6.39] of the T‘ang dynasty, who died in the year 914, answered “The Buddha,” when he was questioned, “What is the Buddha?” He said “Tao” when the question was, “What is Tao?” He answered “the Dharma” to the question, “What is the Dharma?”