THE ENTIRE BODY IS THE EYE                           Hsing Yun's Chan Talk

  

Ch'an Master Tao-wu asked Yun-yen, "Kuan-yin has one thousand hands and one thousand eyes.  Please tell me, which eye is the real eye?"

   

Yun-yen then asked, "When you are sleeping at night and your pillow falls to the floor, you pick it up without opening your eyes and go back to sleep. Tell me, which eye did you use when you picked up the pillow?"

   

After listening to this, Tao-wu exclaimed, "Oh! Master, I understand now !"

"What do you understand?"

"The eye is the entire body."

Yun-yen smiled and said, "You only know eighty percent of it."

Tao-wu asked doubtfully, "What should I have said then?"

"The entire body is the eye!"

  

Saying "the eye is the entire body" is to understand through differentiation. Saying "the entire body is the eye" reveals truth through the wisdom of our minds, which make no distinctions?  Our true minds are our perfect eyes; why then do we not use them to see through heaven and Earth?