by Eihei Dogen
Actualizing the fundamental point, you realize the great road maintained by all buddhas. “You are like this. I am like this. Keep it well,” is revealed.
Yunju, Great Master Hongjiao, was asked by an imperial minister who brought an offering, “The World-Honored One had an intimate language, and Mahakashyapa did not conceal it. What was the World- Honored One’s language?”
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translated by Red Pine
Mahamati once more asked the Buddha, “Bhagavan, according to the Bhagavan, the sutras are concerned with what neither arises nor ceases. The Bhagavan has also said ‘what neither arises nor ceases’ is another name for tathagatas. Bhagavan, is it because of their nonexistence that he says they neither arise nor cease? Or is it because it is another name for tathagatas?”
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by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Sensei
Xiangyan’s “Person Up a Tree”
True Dharma Eye, Case 243
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Main Case
Master Xiangyan said to the sangha, “What if you are hanging by your teeth from a tree on a thousand foot cliff, with no place for your hands to hold or your feet to step on? All of a sudden someone asks you, from below, the meaning of the Ancestor’s coming from India. If you respond, you will lose your life. If you don’t respond, you don’t do justice to the question. At just such a moment, what would you do?”
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