A monk asked Master Heaven-Peak Mountain: “For holy Buddhas everywhere throughout all ten distances of time and space, there’s a single path entering the gate of nirvana. But I can’t find that Buddha-Way path anywhere.”
Picking up his staff, Peak traced a line on the floor and said: “It’s right here!”
Later on, the monk asked Cloud-Gate Mountain. Picking up his fan, Master Cloud-Gate said: “This fan leaps out into Thirty-Three-Peak Heaven, to lofty Sumeru Mountain at the very center of the Cosmos, where it slaps Lord Śakradevānām Indra’s nose. And if someone takes a stick and even so much as touches a carp in the eastern sea, rain pours down by the bucketful!”
NO-GATE’S COMMENT
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One of them goes deeper and deeper to wander across sea bottoms, stirring dirt up into scattering dust. The other ascends higher and higher to stand on mountain summits, whipping waves up, billowing white-caps into sky.
One holding fast, one breaking free—they each stretch out a hand to support and continue our Ch’an household’s teaching. But they’re exactly like two horsemen crashing into each other.
There’s no one here in this world who can see straight through to the very bottom of things. If you look closely with eyes of perfected clarity, you see even these two great elders don’t have a clue where that Buddha-Way path is.
GATHA
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In that moment before you take a first step, you’ve arrived.
In that moment before your tongue moves, you’ve spoken.
Things begin in loom-of-origins beginnings, all abundance,
and we know them there: Presence alive in this very mind.