Blue Cliff Record, Case 14

A monk asked Yun Men, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?”

Yun Men said, “An appropriate statement.”

Reflections
Yun Men appears in cases six and eight of the Blue Cliff Record. He was the successor of Hsueh Feng, and he’s the guy who, in Case eight, asked questions and answered them himself. This teaching form is known as tai-yu, or “substitute sayings,” in which you answer a question posed by yourself on behalf of your audience, or else you supply an answer to a question or saying of an earlier Master, substituting for a speechless monk in a story; Yun Men also originated pieh-yu, or “alternative saying,” a reply or remark given as an alternate to another in a story, or an alternate reply to one of his self-posed self-answered questions.

So let’s see what we have here.

The simplicity of this case beguiles me. The first part of the koan has the question,

What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?

The second part is Yun Men’s response,

An appropriate statement.

But is Yun Men answering the monk’s question or commenting on it? I think he is answering the question. Otherwise as a comment he would have said, “An appropriate question.”

Yun Men does not say, as he could have, that the teachings of a lifetime are the teachings that Shakyamuni gave during his forty-nine years of teaching. Instead, Yun Men gives the teachings themselves in his response, “An appropriate statement.”

Yun Men is thereby saying that the teaching Shakyamuni gave us during his forty-nine years of teaching are “an appropriate statement.” Or, “upaya.” “Skillful means.” The teaching of the Lotus Sutra. The teaching of the Mahayana. The teaching of the Bodhisattva. The teaching of one word. The teaching of One. One response. One thought. Which is no thought. An appropriate statement.

Generally speaking, in koan study, the question of the disciple is the relative and the response of the Master is the absolute. Notice, however, I use the qualifier “generally,” for it ain’t necessarily so. Sometimes students or disciples try to fox their teachers by asking a question in terms of the absolute even though the question may sound as though it were in the relative. These are some of the threads in this koan you need to explore. One way of doing this is to work with the koan from varied points of view. So consider the question of the monk from the point of view of the relative. Look at the question from the point of view of the absolute. You can also look at the question from the point of view of neither the relative or the absolute. What would this point of view be?

The same process applies to the answer. There are, therefore, many configurations possible. The question could be relative, the answer absolute. The question could be absolute, the answer absolute. The question could be absolute, the answer absolute. The question could be relative, the answer relative. The question could be both absolute/relative, and the answer could be both absolute/relative. The question could be neither absolute nor relative, and the answer could be neither absolute nor relative. What would this be? So you see you have many hours of dizzying zazen when you explore this koan.

“What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” As you noticed in the reading of the commentary by Yuan Wu, the phrase “teachings of a whole lifetime,” refers to Shakyamuni Buddha—refers to his teaching career of forty-nine years. Therefore, looked at from the point of view of the relative, the monk is asking what teachings did Shakyamuni Buddha present during his lifetime. So, the question could be rephrased as, “How would you sum-up the lifetime teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha?” The answer Yun Men gave is,

An appropriate statement.

Now, is Yun Men’s answer in the relative or the absolute? Back to the meditation pillow with this one. If it’s relative Yun Men could simply be giving the answer to the question, i.e. a summing-up of the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, in one word—that word being “appropriate,” or “upaya,” or “skillful means.” If Yun Men’s response is the absolute then what does it mean? Back to the pillow!

I wonder if Yun Men could mean that the monk’s question is inappropriate! A few more sessions on the pillow could then take us to Shakyamuni’s commentary on his own teaching career. He said he never taught anything! So, Yun Men turns the koan upside-down, with his appropriate statement, which now becomes most appropriate indeed.

These are two of the streams that can be followed in this koan. There are many others. You are challenged to kayak up and down each stream the koan may take you.

What is singularly missing from this koan is the usual epilogue, namely, that after the Master’s instruction or response, the disciple, or student receives a realization, a kensho experience—becomes enlightened. We must understand that the major objective of these mondos, or dialogues between disciple and Master in the koan collections is to jar the student into realization. Somehow get the student to realize, find, his or her true self. Or, enlightenment. Very often, as I mentioned, koans end with such a declaration of enlightenment. And sometimes, the koans end with the statement that the student didn’t get it. There is neither in this koan. It just ends, appropriately, inappropriately! We don’t know, if the monk got it or not. So, my question to you all is do you get it? What do you get? It must be clear that Yun Men was not speaking to posterity. He would have had no idea that this snippet of a dialogue between him and a monk would be investigated thousands of years later. No, Yun Men was talking to that monk. His response was appropriately designed to jar that monk to a realization,  Looking at the koan in this way what is Yun Men saying?

And why is there no commentary on whether or not he succeeded?

Can it be that Yun Men is speaking both in absolute and relative terms at the same time? Is he telling the student that his question is totally inappropriate? Because Shakyamuni Buddha never taught anything? Because there are no teachings? Is he also saying that the teachings are “upaya.” “Appropriateness.” “Skillful Means.” Are both true? Are both untrue?

So with all of this dust in your eyes, how do you present this case?

How would you make an appropriate statement?

What is your appropriate statement?

Is there such a thing as an appropriate statement?

What are the teachings of your lifetime?

Or do these so-called teachings shift and change and permute and alter and develop and grow and ebb and flow?

Finally, is there such a thing as teaching?

***

A monk asked Yun Men, “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?”

Yun Men said, “An appropriate statement.”