Six Notebooks

Question 7 in going through the mystery’s one hundred questions:

Yuantong asked: “Change pushes all living beings. Still, what isn’t pushed to change?”

Wansong replied: “The motionless riverbank still confuses people.”

Linquan’s verse:

The motionless riverbank still confuses people

“True words” are likewise true

There are no accommodations for guests in the dragon tower

There are court ministers in the Imperial Palace

Get the mystery within the non-discursive teaching

Praise the earth beneath your feet

Wish for a thoroughly intimate place

Exhausted nine times, still meeting spring

• Going Through the Mystery’s 100 Questions, Dosho Port, p 52

The riverbank still confuses us. To be motionless but still change. Even doing nothing is not protection against change. Welcome. Don’t welcome. Either. Or. It still occurs. The river still flows.

Is the river motionless?

Is the riverbank motionless?

Is the river changing or the shore?

One drop flows by itself. One drop flows with all other drops.

Are two drops a puddle? Three? A dozen? Ten thousand?

Drop. Puddle. Pond. Lake. River. Sea. Ocean. Cloud.

Mist. Rain. Sleet. Snow. Fog.

Where is the escape?

What is the confusion?

We can divide forever. Yet the rain turns to river and to rain again. Not even the rock can resist the flow. What is permanence? What is change?

The rock practices rock. The puddle practices puddle. The fox practices fox.

If the fox practices rock or the puddle practices fox, all is lost.

What will I practice today?

Peace

Be Well