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古靈神贊 Guling Shenzan (n.d.)

9.174 Chan Master Fuzhou Guling Shenzan Chan master 福州古靈神贊禪師
in: Records of the Transmission of the Lamp: Volume 2: The Early Masters. (Books 4-9),
Translated by Randolph S. Whitfield,
2015

Shenzan of Guling in Fuzhou (Fujian) received the precepts at the Dazhong Temple in his native place. Later he went on a pilgrimage and came across Baizhang, under whom he opened into awakening.

After that he returned to his home temple. The temple father who had given him the precepts asked Shenzan, ‘What have you obtained since being away from me?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ replied the master. Then he was sent to work. One day, as the temple father was taking a bath, he had the master scrub him. The master slapped his back and said, ‘A fine place for a Buddha Temple but the Buddha is not a sage.’ The temple father turned round and looked at him. The master added, ‘Although the Buddha is not a sage he can still emit light.’

Illustration by 李蕭錕 Li Xiaokun (1949-)

On another day the temple father was reading a sutra by the window when a wasp was trying to get out through the paper window. The master, looking at it, said, ‘The [mundane] world is so vast and still it doesn’t want to leave; it could bore the paper until the cows come home316 without wishing to escape.’ The temple father put down the sutra and asked, ‘Who did you come across on your pilgrimage that you come out with things so completely different from before?’

‘This fellow received [the certainty of] the resting place from the Venerable Baizhang. Now I wish to requite my gratitude to the temple father,’ said the master.

Then the temple father told the assembly to prepare a feast and asked the master to give a Dharma-talk. The master ascended the seat and, lauding the spirit of the Baizhang School, said,

The spiritual light shines forth in solitary splendour
Completely divorced from the dust of the senses
The essential dew is the ever real
It does not grasp at words
The Nature of the Heart is without taint
Of itself originally complete.
Divorcing from deluded attachments
Is the True Buddha

The temple father, under the impact of these words, experienced awakening, saying, ‘How could such an old man come to hear of the ultimate principle!’

Later the master went to Gulin where disciples gathered for several years. About to go into transformation, the master shaved and bathed. Having sounded the temple bell he told the assembly, ‘Do you all understand the voiceless Samādhi?’

‘No,’ replied the assembly.

‘You should listen properly, without thinking of anything else,’ said the master.

The assembly were inclining their hearing when the master majestically obeyed the call to quiescence.

The pagoda still exists on his home mountain.