One day as he was waiting upon [Huai-hai], the latter asked him to poke the stove, to see whether there was any fire left in it. Kuei-shan poked but found no fire. [Huai-hai] rose to poke it himself, and succeeded in discovering a little spark. Showing it to his disciple, he asked, "Is this not fire?" Thereupon Kuei-shan became enlightened.2
Just why this seemingly trivial incident should trigger enlightenment is clearly a matter that must be approached intuitively.3
Kuei-shan received his name from Mt. Kuei, where he was sent to found a monastery by Po-chang Huai-hai. The circumstances of his selection reveal almost more than we would wish to know about the Ch'an monastic world at the beginning of the ninth century. It happened that Huai-hai was considering the idea of founding a new monastery on Mt. Kuei in Hunan province. However, he was uncertain whether the venture would flourish, and consequently he turned for advice to a wandering fortuneteller named Ssu-ma.4 This seer responded that Mt. Kuei was an ideal location and would support fifteen hundred monks. However, Huai-hai himself would not prosper there, since "You are a bony, ascetic man and it is a fleshy, sensuous mountain." The advice was to find somebody else.
Huai-hai consented and began calling in his candidates for Ssu-ma to examine. The first to be summoned was the head monk—whom Ssu-ma asked to produce a deep cough and then walk several steps. The wizened old mystic watched carefully and then whispered to Huai-hai that this was not the man. Next to be called in was Kuei-shan, currently administrator of the monastery. Ssu-ma took one look and nodded his approval to Huai-hai. That night Huai-hai summoned Kuei-shan and assigned his new mission: "Go to Mt. Kuei and found the monastery that will perpetuate my teachings."
When the head monk discovered he had been passed over he was outraged and at the next morning's convocation demanded that Huai-hai justify this slight. The master replied:
"If you can make an outstanding response in front of the assembly, you shall receive the appointment." [Huai-hai] then pointed to a pitcher and said to him, "Do not call this a pitcher. What, instead, should you call it?" [The head monk] answered, "It cannot be called a wooden wedge." Master [Huai-hai] did not accept this, and turned to [Kuei-shan], demanding his answer. [Kuei-shan] kicked the pitcher and knocked it over. Master [Huai-hai] laughed and said, "Our head monk has lost his bid for Mount Kuei."5
The head monk's reply had been intellectualizing wordplay, caught up in the world of names and categories. Kuei-shan's reply was spontaneous, wordless, and devoid of distinctions. His was a mind that could transcend rationality.
Kuei-shan did establish the monastery and from it a short-lived school. However, Kuei-shan's memory was perpetuated largely through a brilliant pupil later known as Yang-shan (807-883) owing to his founding a monastery on Mt. Yang in Kiangsi province. Together their teachings became known as the Kuei-yang school, the first of the "five houses."
The exchanges between Kuei-shan and Yang-shan reported in The Transmission of the Lamp are among the most electric in all Ch'an. In the following they joust over the distinction between function of wisdom (which is revealed through action) and substance or self-nature (which is revealed through nonaction).