2. The Good News of Chogye (曹溪)

If there is a person who is wholly cognizant of the way of Buddha prior to the age of Bhismagarijitasvararaja (威音王佛), this humble mountain monk will boil and offer him the flavorful tea of Mount Chiri; And if there is a person who is aware of the truthful way of Buddha since Rucika (樓至佛), I'll boil and offer him the ambrosial tea of Mount Chiri as well.

Do you understand? Only if a person understands the utterances presented above may he just as well be equipped with the eye of the truth of Dharma.

The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng, (慧能 in Chinese), preached the following sermon to the congregation in the hall:

There is a thing before every person's eyes. It is brighter than the sun and the moon, and darker than lacquer. It holds up the sky and is suspended from the earth. It has no past, present, or future. It is not male or female and has no physical aspect, nor can it be designated. It not only can come and go, but it can also utter words. We use it, while it remains silent, yet we can't confine it to a limited place. What is it, then?

Then Ho-tso Shen-hui (荷澤神會), the eminent monk who had been attending the Sixth Patriarch, stepped forward and said,

"It is the original nature of Buddhas and the nature of myself."

But the Great Master scolded him, saying,

"I said to you, 'it has no past,  present, or future.' How dare you say it is the nature of Buddhas and the nature of yourself? I dare say that even though you make good, you'll never go beyond the bounds of ordinary knowledge."

As predicted by the Sixth Patriarch, Shen-hui remained tied to the bounds of perception, and taught his followers with the tool of knowledge.

The truth of Buddha can only be obtained by overcoming chŏnghae chŏngsik (情解情識), which refers to emotion, understanding, feeling and knowledge. As long as a small portion of emotional knowledge remains in your mind, you will not be able to reach the truth. In brief, it is very important to transcend the existent realm of knowledge in order to have the chŏngan (正眼),  which refers to the state of Great Wisdom.

There is a story about Monk Shen-hui. He once called on Ch'ing-yuan Hsing-ssu(靑原行思) of T'ang China, who asked him many questions, such as,

"Where do you come from?"

"From Ts'ao-chi (*曹溪 K: Chogye), Master."( Ts'ao-chi is the name of a town in Kwantung, China, from which the originator of the Korean Buddhist Order Chogyejong took his pen name, and which became the name of the Chogye Order.)

"Did you bring the true message of T'sao-chi, then?"

asked Hsing-ssu. Tereupon, Shen-hui stood up from the seat he had taken and dusted off his body. Patriarch Hsing-ssu responded, saying,

"That's not the good news, but a broken piece of brick."

He further explained that his answer was not  pure gold.

Shen-hui retorted,

"Did they ever give people pure gold?"

Master Hsing-ssu responded,

"Granted that there are bars of pure gold, where will you take them?"

Monk Shen-hui was completely stuck and had to give up.

He became the originator of the Ho-tso Order, which puts knowledge and understanding before anything else; he has handed down this thought until now and has had many followers. However, viewed from the vantage point of chŏngpŏp chŏngan (正法正眼), or the rightful law and the right eyes, the order of knowledge and understanding is not existent. The right message of truth lies in the principle that if you want to know the truth right away, like a bolt from the blue, you have to make it your own through the intense realization of its essence. This is the principle of tono tonsu (頓悟頓修), meaning the achievement of enlightenment and practice suddenly and completely, at one stroke. Monk Shen-hui exercised a certain influence on the spread of tono tonsu. This kind of cursory approach, which is neither thorough nor intense, became a barrier to the road of the right law.

Hsing-ssu should have scolded Shen-hui even more severely when he became stuck over his question, "Granted that there are bars of pure gold, where will you take them?" If he had, the inferior practice of the lesser application of the method of achieving enlightenment would not have continued.

If I had been in the position of Zen Master Hsing-ssu, when Shen-hui became stuck over my question, I would not have stopped there; instead, I would  have given him thirty hard strikes with my jujangja and told him to leave the monastery. If somebody had done that kind of thing, he would have saved Zen practitioners from an example of erroneous practice and would have enabled them all  to walk with pride on the great road of life.

Furthermore, if I had been in the position of Monk Shen-hui, when asked "where will you take the pure gold?" I would have lowered my head and passed him with my two arms waving. Then even Patriarch Hsing-ssu's sharp stick would have lost its sting.

[In commemoration of the termination of the winter retreat, 1982]

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