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Mumonkan

Case 5: Hsiang-yen - Up a Tree

The Case:

The priest Hsiang-yen said, "It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can’t touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asked, ‘What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?’ If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?"

Wu-men's Comment:

Even if your eloquence flows like a river, it is all in vain. Even if you can expound cogently upon the whole body of Buddhist literature, that too is useless. If you can respond to this dilemma properly, you give life to those who have been dead and kill those who have been alive. If you can’t respond, you must wait and ask Maitreya about it.

Wu-men's verse.

Hsiang-yen is just blabbing nonsense;

his poisonous intentions are without limit.

He stops up everyone’s mouths,

making his whole body the eye of a demon.