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Blue Cliff Record

Case 6: Every day is a good day

The Case

Yun Men said, "I don’t ask you about before the fifteenth of the month, try to say something about after the fifteenth." Yun Men himself answered for everybody: "Every day is a good day."

The Poem:

He throws away one and takes up seven.

Above, below and in the four directions there is no comparison.

Passively walking along he stops the sound of a flowing stream.

Freely he watches the track of flying birds.

The grasses grow thick; the mists overhang.

Around Sabuti’s cliff the flowers make a mess.

I snap my fingers. How lamentable is shunyata.

Don’t make a move. If you move - thirty blows!