Appreciating Chan Poetry: Every Green Mountain Is a Dharma Hall

A Farewell Verse

By a Certain Tang Master

No green hill is not a place of the Way—
why raise a staff to worship the Cool Mountain?
Though a golden-maned form may rise in the clouds,
the true eye sees it as no blessing at all.

The old master Zhaozhou wandered to a small country temple and stayed for ten days or so. As he was about to leave, he went to bid farewell to the abbot. "Where are you headed?" the abbot asked. "To Mount Wutai," said Zhaozhou, "to pay my respects to Bodhisattva Manjushri." "I have a verse I'd like to give you," said the abbot. The verse above is what he offered.

This verse expresses the Chan insight that all forms are no-form, and that the Way is nothing other than the everyday. Once you have seen your original nature, you sense the Dharma body pervading every place—"no green hill is not a place of the Way." Each dharma is at ease, perfectly whole, with nothing standing in the way. When realization reaches this point, "why raise a staff to worship the Cool Mountain?" A bodhisattva's every step—walking, standing, sitting, lying down—accords with the Way, untouched by defilement. So why bother with such superfluous acts of reverence?

But here the student must be careful not to fall into a one-sided clinging to emptiness. If everything is already free, what harm is there in paying respects at the Cool Mountain? And the bodhisattva, who already knows the empty nature and true reality of all dharmas, keeps on practicing the bodhisattva path in order to fulfill vows and guide beings. As the old saying has it, "In the ground of ultimate reality, not a speck of dust can settle; in the gateway of countless practices, no dharma is left behind."

"The clouds may show a golden-maned form; the true eye sees it as no blessing." The last two lines aim at breaking through the attachments of sentient beings. The Diamond Sutra says, "If you look upon me through form, or seek me through sound, you walk a deluded path and cannot see the Tathagata." And again: "All forms are illusory. If you see all forms as no-form, you see the Tathagata." When the practitioner meets an auspicious sign, they should cling to nothing at all. Whether it appears or not, no attachment in either case.