[f14] Gutei was a disciple of Tenryu (T‘ien-lung), probably towards the end of the T‘ang dynasty. While he was first residing in a small temple, he had a visit from a travelling nun, who came right into the temple without removing her headgear. Carrying her staff with her, she went three times around the meditation chair in which Gutei was sitting. Then she said to him, “Say a word of Zen, and I shall take off my hat.” She repeated this three times, but Gutei did not know what to say. When the nun was about to depart, Gutei suggested, “It is growing late, and why not stay here over night?” Jissai (Shih-chi), which was the name of the nun, said, “If you say a word of Zen, I shall stay.” As he was still unable to say a word, she left.
This was a terrible blow on poor Gutei, who pitifully sighed: “While I have the form of a man, I seem not to have any manly stamina!” He then resolved to study and master Zen. When he was about to start on his Zen “wanderings” he had a vision of the mountain god who told him not to go away from his temple, for a Bodhisattva in flesh would be coming here before long and enlighten him in the truth of Zen. Surely enough a Zen master called Tenryu (T‘ien-lung) appeared the following day. Gutei told the master all about the humiliating experience of the previous day and his firm resolution to attain the secrets of Zen. Tenryu just lifted one of his fingers and said nothing. This however was enough to open Gutei’s mind at once to the ultimate meaning of Zen, and it is said that ever since Gutei did or said nothing but just holding up a finger to all the questions that might be asked of him concerning Zen.
There was a boy in his temple, who seeing the master’s trick imitated him when the boy himself was asked about what kind of preaching his master generally practised. When the boy told the master about it showing his lifted little finger, the master cut it right off with a knife. The boy ran away screaming in pain when Gutei called him back. The boy turned back, the master lifted his own finger, and the boy instantly realised the meaning of the “one finger Zen” of Tenryu as well as Gutei.
[f15] Compare this with the statement made by the sixth patriarch himself when he was asked how it was that he came to succeed the fifth patriarch “Because I do not understand Buddhism.” Let me also cite a passage from the Kena-Upanishad, in which the readers may find a singular coincidence between the Brahman seer and those Zen masters, not only in thought but in the way it is expressed:
“It is conceived of by him by whom it is not conceived of;
He by whom It is conceived of, knows It not.
It is not understood by those who understand It;
It is understood by those who understand It not.”
Lao-tzŭ, founder of Taoist mysticism, breathes the same spirit when he says: “He who knows it speaks not, he who speaks knows not.”
[f16] The conception of Dharmakāya apart from the physical body (rūpakāya) of the Buddha was logically inevitable, as we read in the Ekottara-Āgama, XLIV., “The Life of the Śākyamuni-Buddha is extremely long, the reason is that while his physical body enters into Nirvana, his Law-body exists.” But the Dharmakāya could not be made to function directly upon suffering souls, as it was too abstract and transcendental; they wanted something more concrete and tangible towards which they could feel personally intimate. Hence the conception of another Buddha-body, that is, Sambhogakāya-Buddha or Vipākaja-Buddha, completing the dogma of the Triple Body (Trikāya).