Shishuang Qingzhu
Shishuang Qingzhu (807-88) was a disciple of Yaoshan Weiyan. He came from the city of Xingan near ancient Luling. He was ordained by Zen master Xishan Shaolong on Mt. Tai at the age of twenty-three, and then proceeded to study the Vinaya. Finding this path to be too slow, he traveled to Mt. Gui, where he studied with Guishan Lingyou and worked preparing food in the kitchen.
In a famous exchange between Guishan and Shishuang, Guishan chided him for overlooking a grain of rice that had accidentally dropped on the floor.
Shishuang went to Mt. Gui, where he served as a rice cook. Once when he was preparing the rice, Guishan said to him, "Don't lose anything offered by our patrons."
Shishuang said, "I'm not losing anything."
Guishan reached down and picked up a single grain of rice which had fallen to the ground and said, "You said you haven't lost anything, but what's this?"
Shishuang didn't answer.
Guishan said, "Don't lightly regard this one grain, a hundred thousand grains are born from this one."
Shishuang said, "A hundred thousand grains are born from this one, but from what place is this one grain born?"
Guishan laughed, "Ha, ha," and went back to his room.
That evening Guishan entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, "Everyone! There's an insect in the rice. You should all go and see it!"
When Shishuang met Daowu, he said, "What is the transcendent wisdom that meets the eye?"
Daowu called to an attendant and he responded. Daowu said to him "A^d some clean water to the pitcher."
After a long pause, Daowu said to Shishuang, "What did you just come and ask me?"
Shishuang started to raise his previous question when Daowu got up and left the room. Shishuang then had a great realization.
When Daowu was about to die, he said, "There's something in my mind. An old trouble. Who can get rid of it for me?"
Shishuang said, "All things in your mind are unreal. Get rid of good and bad." Daowu said, "Worthy! Worthy!"
Later, Shishuang hid from the world. He lived in obscurity in Liuyang as a potter's assistant. In the morning he would go to work and in the evening he would return home. No one knew him [to be an adept], Dongshan Liangjie sent a monk to find him.
Shishuang asked him, "What does Dongshan say to provide instruction to his disciples?"
The monk said, "At the end of the summer practice period he said to the monks, 'The fall has begun and the summer has ended. If you brethren go traveling, you must go to the place where there isn't a blade of grass for ten thousand miles.'
"After a long pause, Dongshan said, 'How can one go to a place where a single blade of grass isn't found for ten thousand miles?'"
Shishuang said, "Did anyone respond or not?"
The monk said, "No."
Shishuang said, "Why didn't someone say, 'Going out the door, there's the grass'?"
The monk went back and relayed what Shishuang said to Dongshan.
Dongshan said, "This is the talk of wonderful knowledge appropriate for [an abbot of] fifteen hundred people."
Zen master Shishuang entered the hall and addressed the monks, saying, "All of you each has what is fundamental. There's no point searching for it. It's not to be found in right or wrong, nor in anything you can talk about. The entire source of the teaching of a lifetime, capable of setting people's lives to order, all comes down to this very moment, directly to the fact that the Dharma body has no body. This is the ultimate teaching of our school.
"We monks have no set path. If we have partiality then we've strayed. We just impartially sit in the mud. Delusive speech, sight, and hearing all come from the mind's intentions."
"Cease. Stop. Have one thought for ten thousand years. Be a cold, ashen, decayed tree. A strip of white silk without words upon it."
A monk asked, "What is the meaning of the First Ancestor's coming from the west?"
Shishuang said, "A single slab of stone in the empty void,"
The monk bowed.
Shishuang said, "Do you understand?"
The monk said, "No."
Shishuang said, "It's good you don't understand. If you understood I'd hit you on your head."
Shishuang was in his abbot's room and a monk just outside the room's window said, "Master, why is it that you're so near yet I can't see your face?"
Shishuang said, "The entire world is not concealed."
Later, a monk related this story to Zen master Xuefeng Yicun and asked, "'The entire world isn't concealed.' What does this mean?"
Xuefeng said, "There's no place that isn't Shishuang."
When Shishuang heard of this he said, "What kind of blasphemy is that old fellow blathering?"
When Xuefeng heard about Shishuang's reaction, he said, "My mistake." ([Later,] Zen master Dong Chanji commented, "Was it that Xuefeng understood Shishuang or not? If he understood, then why was he talking blasphemy? If he didn't understand, what was it that he didn't understand? Of course, the Dhar-ma doesn't differ. So why is their teaching different, and why is there a difference in their explanations?" Then Dong Chanji said, "First study the phrase, 'The entire world is not concealed,' and then you can begin to understand. Don't speak nonsense.")
The master was abbot at Mt. Shishuang for twenty years. There were some in the congregation who would constantly sit upright and never lie down, erea like tree stumps. Everywhere they were known as the "Dead Tree Congregation." Emperor Tang Xi Zong heard of Shishuang's reputation and praised him, offering him the honored purple robe. The master resolutely declined it. In the year 888, the master became ill and died. His ashes were interred at the northwest corner of the monastery. He received the posthumous name "Great Teacher Universal Understanding."
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