Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (52 page)

When Muzhou was near death, he summoned the monks and said, “My karma is exhausted. I’m dying.”

He then sat in a cross-legged position and passed away. The monks cremated his body with sandalwood. His ashes fell like rain. They then stored his sacred relics and placed a statue of his likeness in the temple. The master was ninety-eight years old and had been a monk for seventy-six years.

DASUI FAZHEN, “SHENZHAO”

DASUI FAZHEN (878–963) was a disciple of Changqing Da’an. He came from ancient Zizhou (now the city of Santai in Sichuan Province). He is recorded to have experienced great enlightenment while still quite young. After becoming a monk at Huiyi Temple, he traveled extensively and studied with the teachers Daowu Yuanzhi, Yunyan Tansheng, and Dongshan Liangjie, among others. Some accounts describe him as a diligent student and heir of the Guiyang Zen lineage, although both the
Transmission of the Lamp
and the
Book of Serenity
describe him as a student of Changqing Da’an, making Guishan his Dharma uncle. Eventually returning to his native Sichuan, he first lived at Mt. Shankou’s Longhuai Temple. Later he dwelled for more than ten years in a large hollow tree at the site of an old temple behind Mt. Dasui.

Guishan asked Dasui Fazhen, “You’ve been practicing here with me for some time. Why haven’t you asked any questions?”

Dasui said, “What would you have me ask?”

Guishan said, “Why don’t you ask, ‘What is Buddha?’”

Dasui abruptly covered Guishan’s mouth with his hand.

Guishan exclaimed, “You’ve truly attained the marrow!”

Zen master Dasui entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, “Self-nature is originally pure and replete with virtue, but due to purity and pollution there is differentiation. Thus, the enlightenment of the saints has been realized entirely through purity, while the delusions of common people are engendered by pollution, and are always pulling them down into the cycle of birth and death.

“But the essence of purity and pollution is undifferentiated. Thus the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra says, ‘Not two, thus no separation.’”

A monk asked Zen master Dasui, “When the aeonic fire engulfs everything, is
this
annihilated or not?”

Dasui said, “Annihilated.”

The monk said, “Then it is annihilated along with everything else?”

Dasui said, “It is annihilated along with everything else.”

The monk refused to accept this answer. He later went to Touzi Datong and relayed to him his conversation with Dasui.

Touzi lit incense and bowed to the figure of the Buddha, saying, “The ancient buddha of West River has appeared.”
¹⁰⁷

Then Touzi said to the monk, “You should go back there quickly and atone for your mistake.”

The monk went back to see Dasui, but Dasui had already died. The monk then went back to see Touzi, but Touzi had also passed away.

A monk asked Dasui, “What is the sign of a great man?”

Dasui said, “He doesn’t have a placard on his stomach.”

Dasui asked a monk, “Where are you going?”

The monk said, “I’m going to live alone on West Mountain.”

Dasui asked, “If I call out to the top of East Mountain for you, will you come or not?”

The monk said, “Of course not.”

Dasui said, “You haven’t attained ‘living alone’ yet.”

A monk asked, “When the great matter of life and death arrives, then what?”

Dasui said, “If there’s tea, drink tea. If there’s food, eat food.”

The monk said, “Who receives this support?”

Dasui said, “Just pick up your bowl.”

Next to Dasui’s cottage there was a tortoise.

A monk asked, “Most beings grow bones inside their skin. Why does this being grow skin inside its bones?”

Dasui took off his grass sandal and put it on the tortoise’s back.

The monk didn’t know what to say.

A monk asked, “What is the essential Dharma of all the buddhas?”

Dasui held up his whisk and said, “Do you understand?”

The monk said, “No.”

Dasui said, “A whisk.”

Dasui held up his staff and said, “Where did it arise from?”

Someone said, “From causation.”

Dasui said, “How wretched! How bitter!”