Excerpt from a dharma talk by Zen Master Wu Kwang, September 2011.
Zen Master Guishan had been a student of Baizhang. When Baizhang died, a monk named Xiangyan (in Korean, Hyang Om) said, “Our Master Baizhang has died. I will go and continue my studies and practice under Zen Master Guishan because he is Baizhang’s successor.”
Xiangyan had been very studious and scholastically inclined when he lived in Baizhang’s monastery so he knew a lot about the philosophy of Buddhism. However Guishan said to him, “I don’t ask you about anything you learned in Baizhang’s monastery; I only ask you, ‘What is your original face before your parents were even born?’”
Xiangyan didn’t know how to answer. So he went back to his room and started looking through all his books to find some answer to give to Guishan. He couldn’t find anything, so he was stuck on this question. He came back to Guishan and said, “Master, please tell me how to answer this question.”
Guishan said, “If I were to tell you, you would thank me now but curse me later,” and he refused to answer.
So Xiangyan became very despondent, depressed. Feeling “All my studies have been worthless,” he decided to leave the monastery and just wander around aimlessly. He felt no sense of purpose anymore. He was wandering across China, maybe begging a little rice here and there to sustain himself. Finally he settled down; he found an old dilapidated hermitage, where at one time in the past the national teacher had practiced. He figured “OK, I’ll stay here, it doesn’t make any difference anyway.”
He really despaired, like he’d lost everything. So in that state of mind one day he was sweeping the courtyard — he had to do something, so he swept the courtyard. And his broom dislodged a pebble that went flying — wap! — and hit a bamboo tree — bong! As soon as he heard that sound his despair mind, his I’ve-lost-everything-I-don’t-know-anything mind disappeared. Suddenly — because he wasn’t holding anything anymore — he woke up.
He had a very different feeling inside. He put on his ceremonial robe and lit incense and faced the direction of Guishan’s monastery, probably hundreds of miles away, and bowed. He exclaimed, “Thank you for not telling me then.”
So sometimes feeling frustrated, helpless, not knowing, is part of one’s practice, part of one’s hwadu, one’s great question. That kind of despairing mind can have a certain openness to it.
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Editor’s note: the names of these Zen Masters follow the current standard spelling of Chinese names. In older versions of the stories, the names are “Pai Chang” (Baizhang), “Kuei Shan” (Guishan), and “Hsiang Yen” (Xiangyan).
