The “Cantongqi” 參同契, attributed to Shitou Xiqian 石頭 希遷(700-790), is a short text of 220 characters that first appears in verifiably dated document in the biography of Shitou in the Zutangji 祖堂集 of 952. Shitou is considered the ur-patriarch of Caodong Chan (Jp: Soto Zen), traditionally regarded as a student of Huineng’s student Qingyuan Xingsi 青原行思 (660-740), and as the teacher of Yaoshan Weiyan 藥山惟儼(745-828), who was the teacher of Yunyan Tansheng 雲巖曇晟 (780-841) whose student was the Caodong Patriarch Dongshan Liangjie 洞山良 价 (807-869). This text, which is still recited as part of the daily liturgy in Japanese Soto Zen monasteries today, sharply contradicts popular stereotypes of Zen as a freewheeling form Buddhism that eschews textual intricacy, tradition and learning, for it is an extremely dense text that utilizes an extended metaphorical structure presupposing a deep familiarity with indigenous Chinese light-dark and yin-yang symbolism as derived from the Yijing 易 經 and its commentarial tradition, from which, indeed, the text borrows its name. For this reason, perhaps, the text has been little studied and even less understood. In spite of its exemplary status as a true amalgamation of Buddhism and Chinese thought, there have been almost no attempts in modern Chinese Buddhism to reclaim the legacy of this text. Master Shengyan’s commentary to the text in his Baojing wujing 寶鏡無境 (Fagu, 2008) is one of the very rare exceptions. But this text marks a distinctive systematic attempt to reconfigure the traditional understanding of Buddhism into a truly “this-worldly” form of practice, propounding a notion of practice and enlightenment that is thoroughly intermelded with the world of phenomena. For this reason, an understanding of this text can make a great contribution to the construction of modern Humanistic Buddhism of a distinctly and deeply sinitic kind. In this paper I will attempt to unravel the dense symbolism of the text in the hopes of clarifying its distinctive understanding of Buddhist practice enlightenment, and its modern relevance. Of special importance in understanding this text is its insistence on the ineluctable copresence of knowing and not-knowing even in the state of Enlightenment, which may be regarded as an integration of Daoist conceptions of sagehood into the Mahayana notion of the interfusion of samsara and nirvana. Enlightenment is not to be imagined as a state of perfect transparence and clarity, but as an enfoldment of the “light” in the “dark” and the “dark” in the “light.” This conception expresses one of the most profound and unique ideas of the Chinese cultural heritage: that the comprehensive inclusion and harmony of “both this and that” is superior to the pure and exclusive presence of only “this,” even when “this” is defined as something that is superior to “that.”
The “Cantongqi” 參同契 , attributed to Shitou Xiqian 石頭 希遷(700-790), is a short text of 220 characters that first appears in verifiably dated document in the biography of Shitou in the Zutangji 祖堂集 of 960. Shitou is considered the ur-patriarch of Caodong Chan (Jp: Sōtō Zen), traditionally regarded as a student of Huineng’s student Qingyuan Xingsi 青原行思(660-740), and as the teacher of Yaoshan Weiyan 藥山惟儼(745-828), who was the teacher of Yunyan Tansheng 雲巖曇晟(780-841) whose student was the Caodong Patriarch Dongshan Liangjie 洞山良 价(807-869). This text, which is still recited as part of the daily liturgy in Japanese Soto Zen monasteries today, sharply contradicts popular stereotypes of Zen as a freewheeling form of Buddhism that eschews textual intricacy, tradition and learning, for it is an extremely dense text that utilizes an extended metaphorical structure presupposing a deep familiarity with indigenous Chinese light-dark and yin-yang symbolism as derived from the Yijing 易 經 and its commentarial tradition, from which, indeed, the text borrows its name. For this reason, perhaps, the text has been little studied and even less understood. In spite of its exemplary status as a true amalgamation of Buddhism and Chinese thought, there have been almost no attempts in modern Chinese Buddhism to reclaim the legacy of this text. Shi Shengyan’s commentary to the text in his Baojing wujing 寶鏡無境 (Taipei: Fagu, 2008) is one of the very rare exceptions. But this text marks a distinctive systematic attempt to reconfigure the traditional understanding of Buddhism into a truly “this-worldly” form of practice, propounding a notion of practice and enlightenment that is thoroughly intermelded with the world of phenomena. For this reason, an understanding of this text can make a great contribution to the construction of modern Humanistic Buddhism of a distinctly and deeply sinitic kind. In this paper I will attempt to unravel the dense symbolism of the text in the hopes of clarifying its distinctive understanding of Buddhist practice enlightenment, and its modern relevance. Of special importance in understanding this text is its insistence on the ineluctable copresence of knowing and not-knowing even in the state of Enlightenment, which may be regarded as an integration of Daoist conceptions of sagehood into the Mahayana notion of the interfusion of samsara and nirvana. Enlightenment is not to be imagined as a state of perfect transparence and clarity, but as an enfoldment of the “light” in the “dark” and the “dark” in the “light.” This conception expresses one of the most profound and unique ideas of the Chinese cultural heritage: that the comprehensive inclusion and harmony of “both this and that” is superior to the pure and exclusive presence of only “this,” even when “this” is defined as something that is superior to “that.”
Here is the complete text of the Cantongqi, in the original Chinese and in my English translation:
竺土大僊心 東西密相付 人根有利鈍 道無南北祖 靈源明皎潔 枝派暗流注 執事元是迷 契理亦非悟 門門一切境 迴互不迴互 迴而更相涉 不爾依位住 色本殊質象 聲元異樂苦 暗合上中言 明明清濁句 四大性自復 如子得其母 火熱風動搖 水濕地堅固 眼色耳音聲 鼻香舌鹹醋 然於一一法 依根葉分布 本末須歸宗 尊卑用其語 當明中有暗 勿以暗相遇 當暗中有明 勿以明相睹 明暗各相對 比如前後步 萬物自有功 當言用及處 事存函蓋合 理應箭鋒拄 承言須會宗 勿自立規矩 觸目不會道 運足焉知路 進步非近遠 迷隔山河固 謹白參玄人 光陰莫虛度
The mind of the great sage of India
Is secretly transmitted both east and west.
Human capacities may differ in their acuity, But in the Way
there is no patriarch of Northern or Southern [School].
The numinous source is bright, pure and shining.
But in its separately branching streams, it flows on darkly. Clinging to phenomena is of course a delusion; But accord
with the true principle alone is also not enlightenment.
All objects perceived by all our sense organs
Turn back toward each other, and turn back not.
Since they turn back toward each other, they are all interfused. Since they do not, each abides in its own position.
Now form originally comes in different shapes and appearances.
Sound is always differentiated into the pleasant and the unpleasant.
So “darkness” is also appropriately used to describe what is upstream, near the source;While “brightness” discloses the idea of differentiation into clear and turbid.
Each of the four elements spontaneously returns to its true nature, Like a child finding its mother.
Fire is hot, wind is moving, water is wet, earth is firm; The
eyes see forms, the ear hears sounds, the nose smells scents, the tongue tastes flavors.
But each and every phenomenon puts forth these varied leaves while forever depending on its root.
Root and branch must together return to their source; Their designation as either exalted or base lies only in our use of language. When brightness has darkness within it, we must not treat it
[merely] as brightness.
When darkness has brightness within it, we must not look at
it [merely] as darkness.
For brightness and darkness are in all cases paired, like the front and rear foot when walking.
Each thing has its own meritorious power; we should speak of
them in whatever way will allow their function to fully develop. Phenomena are present [in the true principle], like a lid
fitting a pot.
The true principle responds [to phenomena], like the tip of
an arrow bearing the previous arrow up.
The words we transmit must accord with the basic meaning
of the teaching; Do not set up guidelines of one’s own.
If all that meets your eye cannot be brought into accordance
with the Way
How will your feet ever know the road to walk?
Just keep moving forward—it matters not how far is left to go. It is when they are separated off from you by your ignorance That the mountains and rivers stand firm in your way. Earnestly I [make bright and] beseech all who take part in
this [dark] mystery:Do not let the passing of the light and the darkness [i.e., time] go by in vain.
The light/darkness imagery of this text is front and center, and immediately leaps to the eye. It works on several levels at once, creating a highly complex and dense set of ideas about Buddhist practice and enlightenment that would be further elaborated and nuanced throughout the Caodong tradition, which went on to produce a number of texts in the same vein, notably the Baojing Sanmei ge attributed to Dongshan himself, where the Yin/Yang structures of the Yijing are explicitly invoked (causing much confusion among later scholars!), and the “Five Ranks” verses. All of these texts play on the same light/dark symbolism, which can thus be regarded as the unifying thread of the tradition, creating as well its own distinctive method of expression, as different from the reasoning of the sutras and sastras as it is from the shock tactics of the more well-known Linji and Yunmen branches of Chan.
What do “light” and “dark” mean here? The primary meaning is given in the fourth and fifth lines of the verse: “The numinous source is bright, pure and shining. But in its separately branching streams, it flows on darkly.” As Master Shengyan says, brightness in this context represents Emptiness, here described as the “numinous source,” while darkness represents all conditioned dharmas, “because all such dharmas have obstructions; all dharmas are in the realm of Being (you), but obstruction and attachment are a part of Being. Emptiness is bright, because it is free of all obstructions and attachments. Emptiness is also called Principle (li ), while conditional dharmas are called Events or phenomena.” It is true that “brightness” is in this line of our poem a word for the ultimate, for the absolute, for Emptiness. But it must also be remembered why this particular image becomes an important stand-in for Emptiness in this stage of Chan history. Indeed, “light” imagery is very prominent in early Chan texts, notably in the works attributed to Huangbo and Linji, representing the opposite tendency in Chan history. These texts often fall back on light as their most desubstantialized word for the true Buddha, the Buddha- nature, the True Mind and so on, all of which names come under harsh criticism. What is the true Buddha? Just mind, says Chan, is the Buddha. But a term like “mind” is already objectified, i.e., an object of mind. It is something of which we can have a thought or an awareness, rather than the awareness which can be aware of anything. What early Chan wants to point to is the fact of absolute subjectivity itself, for which any and every term, as standing for an object, is ultimately inappropriate. What is really meant is the very fact of awareness itself, the illumination of the sensorium as such, like the brightness of a mirror. Brightness has no color or shape of its own, but it illuminates, discloses, every other possible color and shape; it is what makes all presences present, without itself being any single particular presence. Hence we are often told that the real Buddha “is just this numinous brightness that is here before you.” It is the very pre-objectified act of perception which you are now undergoing. “Brightness” is a last frontier symbol for this, when all other symbols have been deconstructed.
Shitou’s poem presupposes this development as a starting point. But it then moves on to complexify and nuance this symbol, to turn it over. This begins already in the following couplet: “Clinging to phenomena is of course a delusion; But accord with the true principle alone is also not enlightenment.” “Phenomena,” as Shengyan points out, is so far equivalent to “darkness,” “brightness” to Principle or ultimate truth. So when we are told that clinging to principle is also not enlightenment, it means clinging to brightness, mind, awareness alone is also not enlightenment. Mind devoid of its dark, opaque, particularized objects is also not enlightenment. To clear away all the dark, of all the particular phenomena in the world, all the obstructions and opacities, is not the way to enlightenment.
This theme is also important already in much early Chan. It is a key point made in the Platform Sutra, for example, where Huineng pointedly rejects the idea of enlightenment as a “cutting off of thoughts.” This is a rejection of a certain quietist understanding of Chan teaching, associated polemically with the Northern School, which prizes the stillness of mind, awareness as such, without engaging any objects of awareness. The true mind, which is suchness, must flow freely; the thoughts, mental events, perceptions, are the function of suchness itself. Chan wants to reject pure transcendence, pure quiescence, pure “brightness.” There must be “darkness” against which, or as which, this brightness can function.
Shitou’s verse will go even further in this direction. The next couplet introduces a new concept and an additional nuance: “All objects perceived by all our sense organs/Turn back toward each other, and turn back not.” The key term here is “turning back to each other” (回互huihu), and we are told immediately, paradoxically, that all things both do this, and do not do it. What is it to “turn back toward each other”? The idea seems to imply the standard Buddhist idea of interdependence: these individual things all depend on one another, and hence they must be referred back to each other to find their origin, their source, their real nature. In this sense they are all interfused, undivided and undifferentiated. But at the same time, this does not detract from each one being exactly what it is, differentiated, expressing perfectly just this essence that it is. Though each is interfused with all the others, they cannot be confused with one another; each is here as just as it is. In this sense they are independent of one another, “each abiding in its own position.”
Here again we see the characteristic motif of bothness, which has already been introduced in the line about Principle and Phenomena. The dominant theme in this work is the copresence, the both/and structure, of both the differentiated and the undifferentiated. This is already signaled in the title of the work, “The Concordance of Sameness and Difference.” The interfusion of all phenomena is Principle. Their independence is Phenomena. Neither one alone is enlightenment. They must always both be accounted for.
But this term huihu has a more specific meaning in the Caodong tradition, which appears explicitly in the Baojingsanmeige attributed to Yunyan, the teacher of Dongshan, to whom it is also attributed by some sources. This text does not appear in the Zutangji; its first dateable appearance is in the Jingdechuandenglu of 1004. Since it is difficult for us to reconstruct the exact sequence and source of composition of these texts, it is impossible to know for sure if Shitou’s use of this phrase can be interpreted in terms of its usage in the—putatively later—Yunyan text. But I will venture the hypothesis here that we can gain some clarity on the issue by tentatively assuming that it can; we will see how much clarification of Shitou’s text can be derived from this procedure. For the Yunyan poem’s usage of the term huihu drives us deeply into the arcana of Yijing hexagram structure and interpretation. Here is the Yunyan (or Dongshan) text, the part, with my translation:
寶鏡三昧 如是之法 佛祖密付 汝今得知之 宜善保護 銀碗盛雪 明月藏鷺 類之弗齊 混則知處 意不在言 來機亦赴 動成窠臼 差落顧佇 背觸俱非 如大火聚 但形文彩 即屬染汙 夜半正明 天曉不露 為物作則 用拔諸苦 雖非有為 不是無語 如臨寶鏡 形影相睹 汝不是渠 渠正是汝 如世嬰兒 五相完具 不去不來 不起不住 婆婆和和 有句無句 終不得物 語未正故 重離六爻 偏正回互 疊而為三 變盡成五 如荎草味 如金剛杵 正中妙挾 敲唱雙舉 通宗通途 挾帶挾路 錯然則吉 不可犯忤 天真而妙 不屬迷悟 因緣時節 寂然昭著 細入無間 大絕方所 毫忽之差 不應律呂 今有頓漸 緣立宗趣 宗趣分矣 即是規矩 宗通趣極 真常流注 外寂中搖 繫駒伏鼠 先聖悲之 為法檀度 隨其顛倒 以緇為素 顛倒想滅 肯心自許 要合古轍 請觀前古 佛道垂成 十劫觀樹 如虎之缺 如馬之馵 以有下劣 寶幾珍禦 以有驚異 黧奴白牯 羿以巧力 射中百步 箭鋒相值 巧力何預 木人方歌 石女起舞 非情識到 甯容思慮 臣奉於君 子順于父 不順非孝 不奉非輔 潛行密用 如愚若魯 但能相續 名主中主
This teaching has been transmitted secretly from the Buddha and the Patriarchs.
Having obtained it, you should carefully cherish and protect it.
Like snow in a silver bowl, or a heron hidden against the bright moon: Categorized together, they are still not the same; though mixed together as one, they are still distinguishable.
The meaning does not reside in any words, but adapts to each opportunity to that arrives.
Move and you are in a trap; miss and you fall into regret.
Like a great mass of fire, turning away from it or coming into contact with it are equally mistaken.
To portray it in any literary form is already to defile it.
In the middle (zheng) of the night, its brightness shines; but in the light of day it's not revealed.
This is the standard of all things, which functions to remove their suffering.
Although it is not constructed, neither is it wordless.
It is like encountering a precious mirror, so that form and reflection gaze upon one another: You are not him, but he is precisely (zheng ) you.
Like an infant who has all five marks (of Buddhahood): not going, not coming, not rising, not staying, Goo goo ga ga, he speaks without speaking, Never quite saying anything, because his words are not yet right (zheng).
It is like the six lines of the Li hexagram, In which the “rightly positioned” (zheng) and “askew” (pian) turn back toward one another.
They stack up into threes, and all their permutations come to five, Like the five-flavors of the hyssop plant, like the five- pronged vajra, Wondrously sandwiching in the midst of rightly matched, rhythm and song arising at once.
It penetrates both the source and the outgoing roads, Sandwiching and nested threads, sandwiched and nested roads, [As the Li Hexagram texts says,], such "crisscrossing" brings good fortune, For it can in no way be contravened.
Uncontrived and subtle, it belongs to neither delusion nor enlightenment.
Within each cause and condition, at each time and season, It is both serene and illuminating.
So minute it enters everywhere without gap, so vast it transcends all location.
Yet with the slightest deviation, you fall out of tune.
Now there are sudden and gradual, various teaching and approaches arising in various conditions.
Though the teachings and approaches are each separate, each contains the standard.
When any teaching is mastered and any approach reaches its ultimate, the true eternity flows through them.
Those who are still within but shaken without are like tethered colts or cringing rats.
The ancient sages took mercy on them and offered them the Dharma.
Following their own perverse views, they take black for white, But when perverse views are extinguished, the right mind spontaneously accords.
To follow the ancient tracks, please observe the ancient sages.
The Buddha, showing his completion of the path, sat still for ten eons, Like a tiger leaving remnants of his prey, like a horse leaving its hind shoe.
For those of lesser abilities, a jeweled table and a brocaded robe; For those astonished and wondering, a house cat and a white ox.
The skill of Archer Yi could hit a target at a hundred paces, But that is no match for the skill of two arrows hitting in midair. As soon as the wooden man sings, the stone girl rises to dance; Since it cannot be known by thought or feeling, what
use is thinking about it?
The minister serves his lord, the son obeys his father; If not
they are unfilial and disloyal.
Practicing in secret, functioning unseen, stupid and rustic—
If only this is continued, it can be called the master within the master.
I will postpone a full exegesis of this very dense and cryptic poem for another time. For the present purposes, I want to focus on the lines: “It is like the six lines of the Li hexagram, In which the “rightly positioned” (zheng ) and “askew” (pian ) turn back toward one another. They stack up into threes, and all their permutations come to five….” (Li liuyao pian zheng huihu/die er wei san, bianjin cheng wu 重離六爻，偏正回互，疊而為三，變盡成五). This line has led to extensive and wildly disparate interpretations over the past thousand years, as commentators have struggled to devise a system of hexagram analysis that would add up correctly. The differences rest on what is meant by the “three” and the “five” here, and how they relate to the lines of the hexagram.
Shengyan, in his commentary to the Baojingsanmei, offers a creative adaptation of the interpretation first clearly presented by the Qing dynasty Pure Land master Jieliu Xingce 截流行策 (1628-1682) in his remarkable work, Baojingsanmei benyi (寶 鏡三昧本義). Master Shengyan offers a clear and illuminating exegesis of the complex system of correlations devised by Xingce to explain the “three” and the “five” in relation to the Li hexagram, what precisely is meant by zheng, pian, and huihu in this context, and to then link these five to five stages of Buddhist practice as understood by the Caodong School and evidenced in some of its other classical teaching materials, most notably Dongshan’s “Five Ranks,” to be discussed below. I will briefly summarize this interpretation of Xingce and Master Shengyan. Here is the Li Hexagram:
––––––– ––– ––– ––––––– ––––––– ––– ––– –––––––
The essence of the Xingce/Shengyan approach is to take pairs of lines as the basic unit under discussion. There are three different kinds of pair in this hexagram:
–––––––
––– –––
–––––––
–––––––
––– –––
–––––––That is what is meant by “They stack up into three.”
However, if we stairstep upward through the hexagram, taking one pair of lines at a step, and then interlocking the steps, using the top line of one pair as the bottom line of the next pair, we end up with five steps:
–––––––
––– ––– 5.
4. –––––––
––––––– 3.
2. ––– –––
––––––– 1.This is what is meant by “all the permutations add up to five.”
This understanding of the hexagram’s “three” and “five” is shared by Xingce and Shengyan. The circular figures used as illustrations of these five interlocked pairs of lines is also identical in their readings. However, Shengyan reverses Xingce’s interpretation of zheng and pian. For Xingce, zheng refers to enlightenment, while pian refers to delusion. Shengyan, though noting that ordinarily we would expect the zheng to correlate with enlightenment and pian with delusion, cites the Chan insistence that delusion is enlightenment, going against the commonsensical view of ordinary people, and thus reverses the associations: zheng refers to delusion, whie pian refers to enlightenment. Moreover, Shengyan uses “light” to represent enlightenment, and “dark” to represent delusion, while Xince uses “light” to represent phenomena or delusion and “dark” to represent Principle or enlightenment. But for both Shengyan and Xingce, enlightenment is represented by the unbroken Yang lines, and delusion is represented by the broken Yin lines. They simply reverse the names, so that Xingce calls the unbroken line symbolizing enlightenment zheng while the Shengyan calls it pian, and vice versa for the broken lines symbolizing delusion. Neither, however, gives a full explanation of why this term is chosen to symbolize enlightenment, and that one delusion.
Shengyan: Enlightenment = //pian// = light = unbroken line –––––––
Delusion = //zheng// = dark = broken line ––– –––
Xingce: Enlightenment = //zheng// = dark = unbroken line –––––––
Delusion = //pian// = light = broken line ––– –––This would not make any difference if we these terms did not appear in the Five Ranks of Dongshan. However, when we try to match the meaning of these five steps with the Five Ranks of Dongshan, many difficulties arise for either Xingce’s or Shengyan’s interpretation. The text of the Five Ranks is as follows, translating the titles according to Shengyan’s and Xingce’s interpretation:
(1) 正中偏 三更初夜月明前，莫怪相逢不相識，隱隱猶懷 舊日嫌。
(1) Enlightenment Within Delusion (Shengyan)
Delusion Within Enlightenment (Xingce)
At the beginning of the night, the third watch, before the light of the moon.
No wonder they meet without recognizing one another.
Hiddenly, they still embrace suspicions/beauties from former days.
(2) 偏中正 失曉老婆逢古鏡，分明覿面別無真，休更迷頭 猶認影。
(2) Delusion Within Enlightenment (Shengyan)
Enlightenment Within Delusion (Xingce)
The late-rising old woman encounters an ancient mirror.
Clearly she sees the face there, and indeed there is no other true likeness.
But don't go on to mistake the reflection for your head.
(3) 正中來 無中有路隔塵埃，但能不觸當今諱，也勝前朝 斷舌才。
(3) (Delusion) Arriving Within Enlightenment (Shengyan)
(Enlightenment) Arriving Within Delusion (Xingce)
In the nothingness there is a road which surpasses all the worldly dust.
Just avoid the present emperor's tabooed name
And you surpass all the eloquence of ancient times.
(4) 兼中至 兩刃交鋒不須避，好手猶如火裡蓮，宛然自有 沖天志。
(4) Both Sides Arriving
Two blades meet, no need to avoid each other.
The master swordsman is like a lotus in the flame
Naturally his heroic spirit penetrates to the heavens.
(5) 兼中到 不落有無誰敢和，人人盡欲出常流，折合還歸 炭裡坐。
(5) Both Sides Fully Realized
Falling into neither being nor nothingness—Who dares harmonize with such a tune?
All people want to distinguish themselves from the common flow.
Back and forth it goes, but always returning to sit in the coals.
Shengyan’s interpretation is to take each step here as correlated to one pair of lines in the hexagram, reading from the bottom up. The first stage is the position of a practitioner of the path who has seen the Buddha-nature: enlightenment has made an appearance within delusion. The second stage is the arduous practice that follows, focusing on the delusion which is still an obstacle to full realization: delusion is still present within this enlightenment, and requires the greatest attention. The third stage is when delusion is completely submerged within enlightenment, so that the delusion is completely latent and can for the present no longer manifest at all. The fourth stage is the disappearance of both delusion and enlightenment, going beyond both—for with the disappearance of delusion into enlightenment, the contrast that sustains them both disappears and both vanish. The fifth stage is the reappearance of both delusion and enlightenment in the enlightened function that makes use of delusion in its compassionate activity in the world, where there is apparently only the ordinary world of delusion, but this delusion is actually identical to the highest enlightenment.
Since Xingce reverses the denotation of zheng and pian, his interpretation of the stages is necessarily different. Due to limitations of space I will not go into Xingce’s reading of the stages in more detail here. Both versions have something interesting to say about understanding the attitude toward practice and the phases of relation between delusion and enlightenment in the progress of a Buddhist practitioner, and have their own validity (as upayas) in explicating those ideas through a creative use of the available symbols. But neither can, in my opinion, give a convincing account of how these stages are supposed to match up with the five verses offered by Dongshan in explanation of these five ranks, as given above. Neither gives a sufficient explanation of the meaning of zheng and pian in this context, and how they come to be correlated this way, and how they play out in these verses. To find another path into this understanding, I believe we need to reconsider the light and dark imagery and the traditions of Yijing commentaries that inform these metaphors, and revisit the implications of the “five” and “three” in Yunyan (or Dongshan’s) verse. Of utmost importance for this will be an investigation of the significance within traditional Yijing commentary and hexagram interpretation of zheng, pian and zhong (“Center”), the three key terms in the names of the Five Ranks, and the context of the original Precious Mirror poem, where the trope of the Li hexagram is offered specifically as an explanation of the seeing of one’s own face in a mirror. (“It is like encountering a precious mirror, so that form and reflection gaze upon one another: You are not him, but he is precisely (zheng ) you...”). For it is the image of the mirror , and its special significance in the Caodong Chan theory of subjectivity and of the relation of delusion and enlightenment, that is the key to understanding the use of “light” and “dark” and the Li hexagram in these texts.
For that reason, I would like to here offer a new explanation of what is being said here about the hexagram, which differs somewhat from the traditional explanation taken up by Shengyan in his commentary to this verse. A full discussion and justification of the various alternate schemas and my reasons for my own reading would require a long and detailed discussion which must be postponed for the present. It is hoped that some of the justification for this suggestion will be made clear in the details of the exegesis to follow. But for our present purposes we can at least make use of the specification this verse gives us for the interpretation of the key terms zheng and huihu. The Li hexagram, again, looks like this:
––––––– ––– ––– ––––––– ––––––– ––– ––– –––––––
Now the term “centered” (zheng 正) has a particular meaning in traditional Yijing hexagram interpretation, neglected in the Xingce exegesis. It means for a line to be in a position that bears the same yin-yang valence as itself. A yin line in a yin position is zheng . A yang line in a yang position is also zheng . The unbroken lines are yang. The broken lines are yin. The positions are counted from the bottom up, and in all hexagrams these positions are also given a valence, which alternates between yin and yang. The lowest position is yang. The second position is yin. The third position is yang. The fourth is yin, the fifth is yang, the sixth or top is yin. Although pian is not normally used as the technical term for the antonym of “centered” in traditional hexagram commentary, we can easily see that it is being borrowed here for the more technical phrase buzheng 不正, in a cleverly punning overlap of two symbol systems. Looking at the hexagram again, we can now see exactly what huihu means. For the Li hexagram is composed of two identical trigrams, also called Li, which are stacked on top of one another. The bottom Li trigram has three lines, yang-yin- yang, in three positions, which are also yang-yin-yang. In other words, every line of this trigram is zheng, centered, in its proper position. The top Li trigram is identical: yang-yin-yang. But the three positions it occupies have just the opposite valence: yin- yang-yin. That means the entire trigram is now off-center, not in its proper position, buzheng or pian . In other words, the two trigrams composing this hexagram are identical, but at the same time they are complete opposites: the zheng and the pian version of the same thing are presented as facing each other.
––––––– (不正=偏) ––– ––– (不正=偏) ––––––– (不正=偏) ––––––– (正) ––– ––– (正) ––––––– (正)
The implication of this for our present purposes will become apparent in a moment.
For it is at this point that the Shitou’s verse takes a profound and decisive turn: “Now form originally comes in different shapes and appearances./Sound is always differentiated into the pleasant and the unpleasant./So ‘darkness’ is also appropriately used to describe what is upstream, near the source;/While ‘brightness’ discloses the idea of differentiation into clear and turbid.” What we have here is a second-order reversal of the bright/dark metaphor. Given the fact that it is only the differentiated that can be known, seen, apprehended, the numinous source is actually “dark,” not bright: it is unknowable, beyond any illumination or brightness. The differentiated “branches,” on the other hand, are “bright”: they are what is seen, known, felt, disclosed.
What we have here is the characteristic Chan idea expressed simply in the phrase, “The eye cannot see itself.” The eye, the source of all vision, is what is unseen. Whatever is seen is not the eye. Hence the source, or the mind, or suchness, or the Buddha, is forever shrouded in darkness, by definition, and whatever is illuminated is not the source, is not the Buddha. As the Diamond Sutra says, whatever has form is not the real Buddha. That is, whatever can be known, whatever can be an object of consciousness at all, is not the Buddha. For the Buddha, the true mind, the real subject, is not in the light: the Buddha is the dark, the blind spot of our thinking, of our experience. The same idea is given a more elaborate and striking formulation in the Surangama Sutra, an apocryphal Chinese text that epitomizes many key Chan ideas. In that sutra, the Buddha tells the tale of a certain unfortunate man named Yajnadatta, who looked into the mirror one morning and went insane. For he saw that “other person” there in front of him, with feet just like him, legs just like him, trunk and arms and chest just like him, but above that—the other guy has something he does not: a head! He sees his head in the mirror, i.e., as an object, and then goes crazy because he thinks that he himself does not have any "head" comparable to that which he sees there in front of him—so stable, so visible, so real-looking. But of course it is just his own real (invisible to itself) head which allows him to see the illusory (real-looking) head which makes him think he has no head. The nature of the seeing head is to see other things but not to be an object itself; it sets up objects in its manner of function, but errs when it wants to have the reality of an object of the kind it, through its much greater power, posited in the first place due to its not being an object, i.e., being a "seeing" rather than a seen. This madness also is neither self-existent nor caused by anything; it is not anything real—this is what is meant by its "falseness." No account of it can be given (there is no "it" to give an account of). Original awareness just means "not anything, not excluding anything." Hence the thought of the object is not excluded, and when it arises, there was no self-nature of awareness to be lost or occluded thereby. We need not inquire why the awareness fell into delusion, for this would imply that the awareness was a something, which could fall or vanish. Like Yajnadatta's real head, it was there all along, expressing itself all the more in thinking it was absent. Any and every perception would express it.
Yajnadatta’s confrontation with his own reflection is a metaphor for our existential condition: we see ourselves, but only in an alienated, objectified form, and then we go insane—delusion —in seeking to provide our own living, unobjectifiable subjectivity with the kind of “reality” we have found in objective things, which are actually nothing but an emanation of our own subjectivity. We want a head, but we have a head, which is the absence of any head, the head we can never see, but which is present in all our seeing.
We can now understand the huihu just discussed with respect to Dongshan’s use of the Li hexagram. The two trigrams face each other as in a mirror.
––––––– (不正=偏) ––– ––– (不正=偏) ––––––– (不正=偏) ----------------(mirror) ––––––– (正) ––– ––– (正) ––––––– (正)
They are “the same” but simultaneously “exact opposites,” just like my real head and the head I see in the mirror. The top trigram is the “off-center,” objectified version of the lower trigram. It has all the exact same components, but by being in the wrong “position,” its valence is exactly reversed: it shows up as an object. At a later time we can discuss in detail all the images of “same but not same” that show up in the Caodong tradition of teaching verses: the snow in the silver bowl, the white heron in the moonlight, the “late-rising old lady seeing her reflection in an ancient mirror” of the second of Dongshan’s “Five Ranks,” representing (in my reading) precisely the top trigram: “A late-rising old woman encounters her face in an ancient mirror/clearly she sees her own face, and there is indeed no other likeness/but do not go on to get confused and take the reflection for your own real head.” (Shixiao laopuo feng gujing, fenming dumian bie wuzhen, xiu geng mitou yourenying 失曉老 婆逢古鏡，分明覿面別無真，休更迷頭猶認影。) We see this also clearly in the story of Dongshan’s “enlightenment verse,” which likewise involves an encounter with a reflection and a tricky double recognition. Dongshan's gatha (not found in Zutangji, published in 956, but found in Jingdechuandenglu, published in 1004): “(Dongshan) said to Yunyan before he departed, "If in a hundred years someone suddenly asks me to describe your true likeness, what should I say?" Yunyan said, "Simply say, Just this is it!"....Later, seeing his reflection in the water as he crossed it, he had a great insight into what he had been told, and composed the following gatha:
Above all I should not seek outside myself! For then he is far from me.
Now I go forth alone, and I meet him everywhere.
Now he is precisely (zheng 正) me, but I am not him.
Only understanding in this way is one in accord with Suchness.
切忌從它覓 迢迢與我疏 我今獨自往 處處得逢渠 渠今正是我 我卻不是渠 恁須這麼會 方得契如如
This is the incident referenced in the Baojingsanmei, from which that text gets its name: “It is like encountering a precious mirror, so that form and reflection gaze upon one another: You are not him, but he is precisely (zheng) you.” That text goes on to introduce the motif of huihu: the true and the false facing each other, as if in a mirror. But one of these is “bright” and the other is “dark.” What is “dark”? The true head which can never be seen. What is “bright”? The false reflection which is all that can be seen. It is this that leads to delusion, for there is only the bright to be recognized and identified with, which is the fundamental illusion. So here we have the reversal of the bright and dark: the true is dark, the false is bright. And yet, as Dongshan says, one must neither accord only with “principle”—the unseen head—nor only with phenomena—the reflection: that reflection, the world of phenomena, is both me and not me.
The term hu also has an extremely important technical usage in hexagram interpretation, neglected in the Xingce/Shengyan interpretation: the term huti 互體 is used to denote embedded trigrams stacked within a hexagram. It is to this that, in my interpretation, the “three” and “five” of Dongshan’s verse refer, which provide the structure for the progression of the “Five Ranks” of later Caodong tradition, further elaborating on the light/dark symbolism initiated in the Shitou verse. But this is a complex topic that will be taken up at a later time.
This motif stands in sharp contrast to the “brightness as source” motif alluded to earlier. Here in Shitou’s poem, the two motifs have been brought together, and their apparent contradiction, far from being ignored, is rather put front and center. The contradiction of the two is now seen as a deeper truth: the bothness we have mentioned in regard to Principle and Phenomena is now applied to these two alternate systems of interpretation: we must maintain both.
It is at this point in our analysis that we encounter the line of Shitou’s poem for which there are two textual variants, which produce wildly different interpretations of the entire meaning of the poem. The version used in modern texts, including both Shengyan’s commentary and the Soto liturgical tradition, reads as follows: 當明中有暗 勿以暗相遇 當暗中有明 勿以明 相睹 The meaning of this would be: “When the darkness is within the brightness, we must not treat it as darkness. When the brightness is in the darkness, we must not look on it as brightness.” But the oldest version of the text, found in the Zutangji, reads instead: 當明中有暗 勿以明相遇 當暗中有明 勿以暗相 睹 The meaning of this would be, rather: “When brightness has darkness within it, we must not treat it [merely] as brightness. When darkness has brightness within it, we must not look at it [merely] as darkness.” I propose that we interpret the poem in accordance with the latter meaning, following the earlier version of the text. The implications of this choice are very large, and alter decisively the implications of all the light/dark symbolism in this poem and in the later Caodong tradition, including the Dongshan verses. It is my contention that this reading lends support to my interpretation of the numerical derivations from the Li hexagram in Dongshan’s Baojingsanmeige. That is a question for later discussion. But here I would like to explore the implications of this interpretation for the understanding of “humanistic Buddhism,” and the relation between the phenomenal world and the experience of enlightenment.
The received text, “When the darkness is within the brightness, we must not treat it as darkness.” I reverse the order in the first phrase because the “it” of the second phrase must, in this version, be interpreted to refer to “darkness.” In the Zutangji version, on the contrary, the meaning is, “When brightness has darkness within it,” we must not treat it—brightness—merely as brightness. The following line in both versions says, basically, “and vice versa.” So in the received version, the meaning of the first line is that, since darkness is in brightness—since it is always “both”—we must not treat the darkness as darkness. In other words, because the dark is situated within a larger context of brightness, the dark is not the dark. Translating the symbols back into the symbolized ideas, this means: “Since the phenomenal world is within the True Mind of Emptiness, it must not be viewed as merely phenomenal.” The second line means, in the received version, that since the brightness is always within darkness, it must not be viewed as merely brightness.In other words: “Since the True Mind of Emptiness is always within the phenomenal world, it must not be viewed as merely True, Pure, Empty,” and so on. That is, in a formula, because X is always contained in non-X, X is not just X. This makes perfect sense within Mahayana Buddhist thought, and it is along these lines that the lines, and with them the entire poem and its light/dark symbolism, have been interpreted.
The first line in the Zutangji version, in contrast, means that, since the brightness always has darkness within it, the brightness is not just brightness. In other words, because X contains non-X, it is not just X. The same is true for the second line. Translating into the symbolized ideas, this means: “Because the True Mind of Emptiness always has phenomena within it, it is not to be viewed as only True, Pure, Empty, etc. And because the phenomenal world always has the True Mind of Emptiness within it, it is not to be seen only as phenomenal.”
Now it is quite true that these two versions do in a sense end up saying the same thing: that each of the two always involves the other, and can never be separated, so each alone is to be viewed as always both. We might feel that the difference is only a matter of emphasis. But the reason for the “bothness” in the two versions is actually presented as radically different. In the received version, when I look at the phenomenal world I am to remember the True Mind that surrounds it, that contains it, and thus to realize that this phenomenal world is always also the True Mind. In the Zutangji version, on the contrary, when I look at the phenomenal world I am to remember that the True Mind is within each phenomenon, and therefore to see this phenomenon as always also the True Mind. The same difference is found in the reverse case. The received version tells me, when I think of the True Mind, to recall also that it is always situated within the phenomenal world—i.e., in my body, in my situation, in a particular phenomenal experience—and therefore to see this True Mind as always also phenomenal. But in the Zutangji version, I am instead told to recall that the True Mind is also phenomenal not because it is within the phenomenal world, but because the phenomenal world is within it. The question is: does bothness derive from “being contained in” the non-apparent, or does it derive from “containing in itself” the non-apparent. The rest of this paper will explore the practical implications of these two different visions of the relation of delusion and enlightenment, and their diverse implications for humanistic Buddhism.
Now let us return to Dongshan’s Five Ranks. In accordance with the above discussion, I am inclined to follow Xingce’s reading of zheng and pian, which is also supported in Caoshan’s exegesis in the Caoshan yulu: zheng represents the dark, the inconceivable, the unspeakable, Principle, Emptiness—the true self, the Buddha- nature, what is never directly speakable, the eye that cannot see itself. pian represents the bright, the conceivable, the speakable, affairs, things—the visible, discernible, describable world, what the eye sees. zheng is darkness and pure enlightenment; pian is brightness and phenomenal delusion.
We are now in a position to offer another new explanation of the “three” and the “five” in the hexagram, which I think can be demonstrated to be correct by its high degree of coherence with the content of the Five Ranks and their implications of light and darkness, delusion and enlightenment. In my interpretation the “three” are the three different “huti” trigrams “stacked” within the Li Hexagram:
––––––– ––– ––– ––––––– *–––––––* *––– –––* *–––––––* ––––––– ––– ––– *–––––––* *–––––––* *––– –––* ––––––– ––––––– *––– –––* *–––––––* *–––––––* ––– ––– –––––––
The fourth, comprised of the top three lines, is of course a repeat of the first, so the total number of “stacked” trigrams in the Li Hexagram is indeed three. What then are the “five” that are its “total permutations”? They are all the complex relationships of yin and yang embedded in this hexagram, every permutation of yin-yang found there, all the ways in which it presents them, at once. I will give them below, as matched to the “Five Ranks” that explicate their significance for Caodong Chan:
(1) 正中偏 三更初夜月明前，莫怪相逢不相識，隱隱猶懷 舊日嫌。
(1) Phenomena Within Original Enlightenment (the seen within the unseen seer).
At the beginning of the night, the third watch, before the light of the moon
No wonder they meet without recognizing one another.
Hiddenly, they still embrace enmities from former days.
––––––– ––– ––– ––––––– *–––––––* *––– –––* *–––––––*
NEW EXEGESIS: We have three lines of verse, matching the three lines of the trigram in the zheng position. The entire trigram is thus unseen, the eye that does not see itself, original enlightenment. However, in the middle position (zhong) of this unseen enlightenment is the broken line, which is pian, the mismatched, the decentered, the seen, the head seen in the mirror: the phenomenal world of delusion. This represents the stage of the ordinary person: he is living within original enlightenment all the time, forever meeting it everywhere, but does not realize it: “they meet without recognizing one another.” This is the brightness concealed in the dark, like the moon in the midnight sky. The reason for this situation is the “hidden enmities from former days”: the ordinary person’s burden of karma. Note that each line includes a “bright” and a “dark” image. Line one is bright (moon) within dark (midnight sky). Line two is dark (not recognizing) within bright (meeting). Line three is again bright (“former days”—literally, “former suns”) within dark (“hiddenly”). This well accords with the complex flipflopping and levels of internesting of light and dark within one alluded to in both the Shitou poem and the Yunyan/Dongshan poem.
This interpretation is amply confirmed by the accompanying explanatory verse, also attributed to Dongshan. This verse is named xiang 向 “Facing” i.e., the unseen facing outward into the world, pervading it, though nowhere explicitly appearing in it.
聖主由來法帝堯 御人以禮曲龍腰 有時鬧市頭邊過 到處文明賀聖朝(向)
All sagely rulers have imitated Emperor Yao, treating others with ritual propriety, bowing from the dragon waist.
At times it wafts past your head in the busy market— everywhere the aroma of the holy culture singing the merits of the sagely dynasty.
(2) 偏中正 失曉老婆逢古鏡，分明覿面別無真，休更迷頭 猶認影。
(2) Original Enlightenment Within Phenomena (The unseen seer appearing within the seen)
The late-rising old woman encounters an ancient mirror.
Clearly she sees the face there, and indeed there is no other true likeness.
But don't go on to mistake the reflection for your head.
*–––––––* *––– –––* *–––––––* ––––––– ––– ––– –––––––
NEW EXEGESIS: The same trigram, but now in the pian or buzheng position: the face in the mirror, what the eye sees. This is the alienated, off-centered image of Yajnadatta’s head. It represents the conceptual understanding of the Buddha-nature: an image of the original enlightenment, but distorted because it is an object to be seen, a concept to be thought, a goal to be pursued. Within this image there is indeed a likeness of the true head, but not to be mistaken for that head. Again we have the internesting of light and dark images. Line one has darkness (“old woman”—extreme Yin) within light (the broad daylight of noon). Line two has light (“clearly”) within darkness (“no other likeness”). Line three has darkness (“mistaking your head”) within light (“recognizing in the reflection.”) So again we have dark within light and light within dark, with the reversed valence of all the lines of the same trigram as before, their “mirror image.”
This interpretation is again confirmed by Dongshan’s accompanying verse. This verse is named feng 奉 ,“Obeying,” i.e., the practitioner now deliberately pursuing the desired goal of enlightenment:
淨洗濃莊為阿誰 子規聲裡勸人歸 百花落盡啼無盡 更向亂峰深處啼(奉)
Washing and scrubbing, this heavy makeup—for whom? The cuckoo's song goads one toward home.
Even when all the flowers have fallen, its cries are unexhausted, crying even toward the depths of the unruly peaks.
(3) 正中來 無中有路隔塵埃，但能不觸當今諱，也勝前朝 斷舌才。
(3) (Phenomena) Emerging from Right in the Center of Original Enlightenment (Emerging from the Unseen Seer)
In the nothingness there is a road which surpasses all the worldly dust.
Just avoid the present emperor's tabooed name
And you surpass all the eloquence of ancient times.
––––––– ––– ––– *–––––––* *–––––––* *––– –––* –––––––
NEW EXEGESIS: This trigram has two lines in the zheng trigram and one in the pian trigram. It “starts” from the middle line (zhong) of the zheng trigram, as the title indicates. It progresses thus from the zheng into the pian , the seen emerging from the extreme depths of the unseen. The verse describes a first stage of Chan practice: the total negation of anything determinate, complete negation. However, from this extreme negation of everything and anything, something very powerful manifests, in accordance with the principle that “when something reaches its extreme, it must reverse” (物極必反 wuji bi fan) which informs the hexagram system and is embedded in the reversal of midnight into the rebirth of Yang and light. We have again light and dark imagery in lines of the poem. But because we are now dealing with a different trigram, which spans both zheng and pian, we have a different distribution. Line one has light (“there is a road”) within dark (“within nothingness”). Line two has pure darkness (“avoid the tabooed name”), matching the yang on yang of the middle line of this trigram in its current position. From that comes the pure brightness of the third line (“eloquence surpassing former ages”), matching the Yang on Yin of the next line. This refers to the typical type of Chan rhetoric which simply focuses on negations and non-sequitors: “Not mind, not Buddha, not things,” “This is not a fly-whisk,” etc., corresponding to the position of absolute emptiness and inconceivability: whatever particular claim is made is ipso facto not true. Simply by staying with this total negation, one nonetheless produces a new insight into the world: just avoiding the present tabooed name (whatever one was previously assuming was true), by saying nothing at all, one explicates more of the truth than even the most eloquent of ancient orators.
Once again we have confirmation in Dongshan’s accompanying verse. This verse is named gong 功, “Accomplishment”: that is, the first stage of actually reaching a form of insight:
枯木花開劫外春 倒騎玉象趁麒麟 而今高隱千峰外 月皎風清好日辰(功)
Flowers bloom on the dead tree, a spring blooms beyond the ages; backwards riding the jade elephant, chasing the unicorn.
Now is the perfect moment beyond the high and hidden peaks, where the moon shines and a clear wind blows.
(4) 偏 中至 兩刃交鋒不須避，好手猶如火裡蓮，宛然自 有沖天志。
(4) (Original Enlightenment) Reaching Right to the Center of Phenomena (The Unseen Seer Arriving Right in the Center of the Seen)
Two blades meet, no need to avoid each other.
The master swordsman is like a lotus in the flame
Naturally his heroic spirit penetrates to the heavens.
––––––– *––– –––* *–––––––* *–––––––* ––– ––– –––––––
NEW EXEGESIS: Here we have the opposite trigram. The previous trigram came from the “center” line (of the bottom zheng trigram). This trigram arrives at the center line (of the top pian trigram). The titles of the verses describes this situation exactly. It is thus a mirror image of the previous, but with the zheng and pian valences exactly reversed. This echoes the relation of the first two verses, representing the first two mirrored trigrams, and the reversal of direction gives us a vivid understanding of meaning of huihu. Line one is a Yang line in a Yang position: two brightnesses meet, two “Yangs,” neither is “yielding.” Hence: “Two swords meet, neither yields ...” Line two crosses into the pian trigram, which is the seen rather than the unseen, the phenomenal as opposed to the unseen seer of the original enlightenment. Hence here too we have Yang (brightness) in the very midst of pian (also a brightness): two brightnesses with no dark: the lotus and the flame, corresponding to wood and fire, the two Yang elements of the Five Phases. The third line reaches the top pair of lines in the hexagram, commonly associated with Heaven as opposed to Earth (the bottom two) and Man (the middle two). This is the ruling line of the entire hexagram, the fifth position. But it is an empty, Yin line. The verse puns on this emptiness with the word chong 沖, which means both a gush of something and also “emptiness.” It gushes, emptily, into Heaven: exactly the line in the hexagram. This also shows a reversal from extreme Yang to the Yin, from pian to zheng, from seen to unseen: his heroic spirit penetrates the Heaven, associated with xuan (darkness, blackness). This points to the kind of Chan rhetoric that suddenly focuses on a random particular object in the world, just as it is: “The oak tree in the garden.” “Three pounds of flax,” and so on. By simply illuminating one particular after another, with nothing at all mysterious or profound or hidden, letting everything be just as it appears, suddenly one emerges into the abstruse truth of emptiness, where everything is beyond any fixed appearance. The unseen seer arrives in the very center of the seen, of every phenomenal appearance.
Here is the confirmation from Dongshan’s accompanying verse, which is named gonggong 共功,“Collective Accomplishment”: now it is not only myself as the unreifable subject who is realized: the accomplishment is present in all concrete particulars working together, just as they are; the newness of the many flowers is the “unseen” present in the “seen,” “original enlightenment” appearing in the very particularity and separateness of various phenomena:
眾生諸佛不相侵 山自高兮水自深 萬別千差明底事 鷓鴣啼處百花新(共功)
Sentient beings and the Buddhas never impinge on one another—the mountain is high of itself, the water is deep of itself.
All the thousands of differences and disparities are a matter of the brightness; but where the partridge sings, all the flowers are renewed.
(5) 兼中到 不落有無誰敢和，人人盡欲出常流，折合還歸 炭裡坐。
(5) From Within Both to Within Both (Phenomena Arriving at Enlightenment As Enlightenment Arriving at Phenomena; The Unseeing Seer Manifested in the Seen as the Seen Manifested in the Unseen Seer).
Falling into neither being nor nothingness—Who dares harmonize with such a tune?
All people want to distinguish themselves from the common flow.
Back and forth it goes, but always returning to sit in the coals.
––––––– *––– –––* *–––––––* *–––––––* *––– –––* –––––––
NEW EXEGESIS: Note that the last figure, rank 5, is no longer even a trigram, but rather a four-lined figure. But it is still a sandwiching relation of yin and yang embedded in the hexagram—all the more significant for jumping out of the traditional trigram system in an unexpected way, encompassing both of the two inner trigrams at once—a suitable symbol for Caodong’s vision of enlightenment itself. It is in fact both of the previous two trigrams at once, interested to form a new hyper- trigram—just what we would expect from the sudden reference to “both” in the title of this verse, and the “back and forth” of the final line. The figure is read both up and down, interlocking as the two trigrams, but thereby forming a meta-version of the original trigram, exactly reversed: instead of yin sandwiched within yang (the Li trigram), we have (two) yang within yin— another huihu, a “crisscross” (cuo—which in Yijing exegesis means precisely this reversal of yin and yang) as alluded to in the Yunyan/Dongshan poem. The first line negates both light and dark, alluding to the two outer lines of the tetragram: one is the center of the pian trigram, which would be “being,” the seen, the face in the mirror. The other is the center of the zheng trigram, which would be “non-being,” the unseen, the eye that cannot see itself, Yajnadatta’s real unseen head. This tetragram has the “center” of both of these opposed trigrams, which are further “responding” to each other, in the language of the Yijing commentarial traditions: lines 2 and 5. They are the same but reversed; normally a yin line “responds” only to a yang line and vice versa, but here we have yin versus yin, so there should be no response. However, in the terms of the zheng/pian distinction, they are opposite in valence, and thus should respond. Since both are happening at once, the verse gives us a question: “Who dare respond?” This “who?” itself is a form of Chan rhetoric much favored by the Caodong school: not a negation, not an affirmation, but an unanswered question, which is simultaneously both negation and affirmation.
The next line refers to the two center lines of the tetragram. As we saw above, one is the seen emerging from the unseen, the other is the unseen emerging from the seen: we have light to dark and dark to light simultaneously. This is just what we find in line two: everyone wants to emerge from the common flow. To emerge is to go from unseen to seen, from unnoticed to noticed. But when everyone emerges, no one emerges: they all come forward together. Everyone wants to be different from everyone else, and so they are all the same. Light goes to dark by being too much light.
The final line explicates the Caodong ideal of continual practice, taking in the tetragram as a whole: an expanded version of the Kan trigram, which is light within dark. Back and forth refers to the huihu between light and dark seen in the previous verses, and now fully integrated into this one figure. “Coal” is light within dark. It is the energy of fire concealed within a black lump. This, I believe, is the image of meditation: a stillness and darkness which has within it the spring of reversal to the most vibrant action. We find a similar idea extended even in the Japanese Sōtō tradition which derives from Chinese Caodong, in Dogen’s idea that “practice itself is enlightenment.”
This entire figure, be it noted, is composed of “centers.” The two outside lines are the centers of the two Li trigrams, while the remaining two lines are together the center of this new hyper-trigram. The bottom Li trigram is the non-objectifiable original mind, the head that cannot see itself. The top Li trigram is the objectified reflection of that mind which is the phenomenal world, the head seen in the mirror. This final figure is a reverse Li trigram, but with an expanded center, a Kan trigram which is made of two overlapping facing reflections, now merged into one: it is two trigrams at once, is both the phenomenal and the seer, both the head that cannot see itself and the head in the mirror, huihu, facing each other, forever expressing each other, back and forth, fully integrated. This integration is not static but dynamic: it is head expressed as the continual process of seeking the head.
Again our interpretation is confirmed by Dongshan’s explanatory verse, which is named gonggong 功功, “Accomplishment’s Accomplishment”: since all are accomplishing together, the dichotomy of subject and object has fallen away and there is no longer a “doer” of the realization, there is only the “who?” Continual search is now itself seen as the realization of the search. Accomplishment accomplishes itself, and the accomplishment of one is the accomplishment of all. Practice is enlightenment.
頭角纔生已不堪 擬心求佛好羞慚 迢迢空劫無人識 肯向南詢五十三(功功)
As soon as the horns sprout, it is unbearable—what a disgrace to focus one's mind in pursuit of the Buddha!
Since the distant eon of emptiness none has known who this is who consents to go off to the south visiting the 53 wise teachers.
Taking a step back, we can now give an overview of the significance derived from the Book of Changes imagery in synthesizing the unique Caodong Chan view of the relation of subjectivity and objectivity, the Absolute and the phenomenal, the seen and the unseen, enlightenment and delusion, as follows:
What are we to take away from all this? What is the message for humanistic Buddhism contained in these arcane symbols? We have returned to the full meaning of Shitou’s verse: 當明中有暗， 勿以明相遇。當暗中有明，勿以暗相睹. Since the phenomenal world is always saturated with the nonobjectifiable mind, we should not view it as merely world. Since the original unobjectified mind is always saturated with phenomena, we must not imagine it is simply unobjectified mind. Since the eye has world in it, it is not merely eye; since the world has eye in it, it is not merely world. So when eye sees world, it is eye-world seeing eye-world. Can the eye see itself or not? Yes and no, no and yes, back and forth they face each other. “He is precisely you, but you are not he,” says Dongshan’s enlightenment gatha. If we said “This world is original enlightenment,” we would have no reason to change it, no reason to practice, no reason to make any effort: this is the caricature of “original enlightenment” thought that has recently come under attack in Critical Buddhism. That would be “he is precisely you.” If “this world is not enlightenment,” if enlightenment had to replaced by another world, or by a pure blank unobjectifiable “mind,” then too there would be no reason for us to try to do anything in this world: enlightenment would be utterly unlike any possible objective state or condition, the negation of them all equally. This would be “you are not him.” What we have here, instead, is both of these and neither. The world is enlightenment precisely as the continual, ceaseless attempt to seek enlightenment in it, the goal is the search itself: again and again we return to sit in the coal, the point of darkness from which the light emerges, the actually emergence of the phenomenal as enlightenment and enlightenment as the phenomenal. This is the Middle Way between acceptance of the world and rejection of the world. This is the future of Humanistic Buddhism suggested by Caodong Chan.
In closing, we may note also the way in which this use of the Book of Changes contributes to the creative Chinese reconfiguring of Buddhist themes, especially the treatment of language and of the sudden/gradual problem in Chan traditions. By combining all these complicated and abstract doctrinal matters into the single symbol of the Li hexagram, we find we have an alternative to the one-after-another expression typical of linguistic explication: all these meanings are whole and complete simply in the hexagram itself, once it has been touched off by the associations and linkages displayed in the verses. For we can grasp the entire hexagram as a single image, perhaps conceived almost like a mandala , but within it we also find each of these distinct configurations; the “same” trigram we have on the bottom is repeated on the top, but now it is different, recontextualized by the reversed yin-yang valences of the positions. And in the meeting of this same-different trigram with its same-different self, we have, as a by product, the embedded huti trigrams, which are just the very same lines viewed differently. Finally we have the last stage in a hyper-trigram or tetragram, the middle four lines, which is exactly the reverse of the original trigram in structure (yin outside, yang inside), but now structured so that all lines are literally the “center” line: the top and bottom lines of this four-line figure are the “center” of the original two trigrams, while the middle two lines together form the “center” of the new figure. We can view all five of these ranks “suddenly,” all at once, without having to progress through them one by one, one after another. And yet at the same time, the ranks remain distinct: each internal trigram is really there, and really different from the others, if we choose to focus on that subset within the hexagram. We have here an application of indigenous Chinese holism as embodied in the Book of Changes to the problem of the relation of sameness and difference of samsara and nirvana, their simultaneous radical difference and radical sameness, as presented doctrinally in Mahayana Buddhist sources. Here we have a way of overcoming on the one hand the absolute difference between and gradual progression through the stages, and on the other hand also the leveling down and loss of distinctness that would come from simply denying all difference. The hexagram instantiates a perfect interfusion of the sudden and gradual, of unity and differentiation, of Original Enlightenment and Buddhist practice—bringing us back to the title of Shitou Xiqian’s original verse: “The Concordance of the Same and Different.”