Help with Kanji Translation of Obaku Zen Master Tetsugyu Calligraphy

[Iaido dude]

 

This is a wonderful "One Character Barrier" calligraphy scroll by the Obaku Zen Master Tetsugyu, which starts with a pictorial representation of the character 通 followed by an inscription that I am having a bit of trouble translating. 通 can mean "all" or "through" or "to pass through (penetrate)." in koan Case 89 of The Blue-Cliff Record, it appears as “通身是眼” (My body is through-and-through hands and eyes). I think I can make out the phrase 人同心 (people of the same mind) and also 無 (no, none, nothing, not one thing) and 山 (mountain).

[Iaido dude]

I have the full translation now. It appears as a poem attributed to Deshao (891–972) in Case #445 of Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching, which is a collection of classic Ch'an (Zen) stories, discourses, and poems used for teaching by the famous Ch'an Master Dahui (1089-1163):

 

通玄峰頂 (Tōng xuán fēng dǐng)

不是人間 (Bùshì rénjiān)

心外無法 (Xīn wài wúfǎ)

滿目青山 (Mǎnmù qīngshān)

 

A monk asked Fayan, "What is one drop of water from the wellspring of Chan?" Fayan said, "It is one drop of water from the wellspring of Chan." When National Teacher Yuan heard this, he had insight at these words. Later, when he dwelt on Lotus Peak, he composed a verse saying,

 

The peak of penetrating mystery
Is not in the human world;
Outside mind there are no things.
Filling the eyes, green mountains.

 

When Fayan heard this verse, he said, "It just takes this one verse to naturally continue our school."
 

[Commentary): Dahui said, "The extinction of Fayan's school was just caused by this one verse."

 

 

This poem refers to the central Ch'an teaching that we are created with the Buddha-nature or "true mind/original nature" within us. We are by nature enlightened. It is the delusion that the external world only exists as a projection of the mind that has us seeking enlightenment outside of ourselves through rational striving. 無 (Absence) is the original generative source of 有 (Presence) or the 10,000 things (called the myriad of things that comprises all of creation). 無 is "The peak of penetrating mystery"--The Tao itself. 有 are the things "in the human world." The awakened mind is not oblivious to the world. Rather, the ability to occupy that silent emptiness of 無 as home-ground through meditation practice allows us to experience the world more intensely and directly as it is ("Filling the eyes, green mountains"), without the distortions of deluded views. Indeed, we are one among the myriad of things. 無 unfurls its generative potential to create 有, which dies back into 無 in an endless cycle of creation. Rather than a separate sect of Buddhism, Zen is in fact a nativist expression of Taoist mysticism (already in existence for centuries) occasioned by the introduction of Buddhist thought from India, according to the Chan scholar and translator/poet David Hinton.

 

Translation by Thomas Cleary, "Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching: Classic Stories, Discourses, and Poems of the Chan Tradition," (2022) Shambala Publications, Inc., pg. 287

 

Edited December 25, 2025 by Iaido dude