Notes on Shitou Xiqian's "The Agreement of Difference and Unity"
Can tong qi, the Chinese title of Shitou's poem, is also the title of a well-known Han-period treatise by the Taoist philosopher, Wei Bo Yang. According to Ci Hai (Sea of Words), a kind of Chinese encyclopedic dictionary published 1948 in Shanghai, Can tong qi in Wei Bo Yang's title means "Three (Things) Combined Agree(s) with [the Great Tao]." The Three Things indicated are the I Jing (Book of Changes); Taoism (the philosophical teachings of Laozi and Chuangzi); and Taoist alchemy. Shitou Xiqian would likely have been familiar with this celebrated classical work by Wei Bo Yang, but because there is no triadic conceptual structure articulated in Shitou's poem, the title must have meant something different for him, which we can now only infer from the text. For example, one traditional (but highly inferential) interpretation is "The Different [Schools, or Teachings of Buddhism] Combined into One." This takes Shitou's statement that in the Buddhist path, there are no Southern or Northern ancestors—in other words, the Southern and Northern chan schools derive from the same source—as the central idea of the whole poem.
Another possibility is to read the Chinese characters as follows: "The Different Things (Can) are Combined with (qi) Unity (tong)." This does not mean that many different things unite to form one thing, but rather that different things are identical with unity itself: the one and the many are the same. Thus Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, in his Sandokai lectures, translates Can tong qi as: "The Oneness of One and Many."
We might also read "different things" and "unity" as the relative and absolute, or, in the context of Huayan mysticism, as phenomena and principle, li and shi, clearly a major theme of the poem. From this point of view, one might translate Can tong qi as "The Identity of Principle and Phenomena."
Since the references in Shitou's poem to Huineng's Platform Sutra are very numerous, we will list them here verse by verse, with some other notes:
The mind of India's great sageIn Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, p. 153: "But from the past, the Dharma has been handed down in silence." The biography of Huineng in Jingde chuan deng lu also says: "The mysterious principle of all the Buddhas has nothing to do with words," (op cit., p.79).
Was quietly confided from west to east.
People's abilities may be dull or sharp,Platform Sutra, p.137: Good friends, in the Dharma, there is no sudden and gradual, but among people some are keen and others are dull." Also p.127: "Although people from the south and people from the north differ, there is no north and south in Buddha-nature."
But in the path, there are no southern
Or northern ancestors.
To grasp at things is basically false,Platform Sutra, p.172: "If you cling to emptiness then you will only be increasing your ignorance." See also p.146: "Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness."
But to concentrate only on principle
Isn't enlightenment either.
The senses and sense-objects in all their aspectsThe Chinese characters in the second line are hui hu bu hui hu. "Can tong qi... was clearly built upon the I Ching and made explicit use of the hui-hu paradigms." Whalen W. Lai, in his essay "Sinitic mandalas: The Wu-wei-t'u of Ts'ao-shan," in Lancaster and Lai: Early Ch'an in China and Tibet, p.230.
May respond to each other or not.
If so, they affect each other mutually;
If not, they just remain separate.
But according to the true law,Platform Sutra, p.85: "When leaves fall they return to the root." Cf. also, appearing in the Dunhuang manuscripts, Bodhidharma's Treatise on Contemplating Mind: "Mind is the root of the myriad phenomena. All phenomena are born from mind. It is like a great tree: all the branches and flowers and fruits grow based on the root." Trans. J.C. Cleary, Zen Dawn, p.81.
As leaves spread outwards away from the trunk,
Whatever spreads out must come to the source.
Thus "honorable" and "lowborn" are nothing moreCf. Dongshan Liangjie's "Gatha of the Essentials," translated by W.F. Powell in The Record of T'ung-shan, p.66:
Than words.
ON NOT FALLING INTO DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN "SAGELY" AND "COMMON"
Principle and phenomena have no relation to each other;
reflected light cuts through dark mystery.
Ignoring the wind, with neither skill nor incompetence,
The lightning bolt is impossible to escape.
In light there is darkness,But in Zu tang ji: "In the midst of darkness there is light, but don't see it as darkness."
But don't meet it as darkness.
In darkness there is light,
But don't see it as light.
Light and dark are opposites,Platform Sutra, p.82: "The nature of light and darkness is not two. The non-dual nature is thus the real nature." Cf. further p.173: "Darkness is not darkness by itself; because there is light there is darkness. That darkness is not darkness by itself is because light changes, becoming darkness, and with darkness light is revealed. They originate from each other."
Like forward and backward steps.
Phenomena fit together like box and cover,Principle (emptiness) merges so perfectly with phenomena that you can't really separate them, just as there is no distance left between a target and the arrow which struck it.
While principle impacts like an arrow meetings its target.