This saying comes from the Discourse Record of Reverend Xutang虛堂和尚語録
, compiled by the followers of the Chinese Zen master Xutang Zhiyu虛堂智愚
(1185-1269):
At a convocation in the dharma hall, Master Xutang raised the following case:
A monk once asked Great Master Mazu, “Master, can you please, without using any affirmation or negation, point directly to the meaning of [Bodhidharma] coming from the west?” The Great Master said, “I am exhausted today and cannot explain it for you. Go ask [my disciple] Zhizang.” The monk asked Zhizang, who replied, “I have a headache today and cannot explain it for you. Go ask my fellow disciple Baizhang.” The monk asked Baizhang, who replied, “I have arrived here, but I don’t know. Go ask our teacher.” The monk [again] asked the Great Master, who said, “Zhizang’s head is clear, and Baizhang’s head is dark.”
Master Xutang commented on this case, saying: “What can certainly be said is that the monk had his nostrils pierced by Great Master Mazu and his disciples, but I don’t know whether or not the nostrils of Great Master Mazu and his disciples were pierced by the monk. I understand that ‘Zhizang’s head is clear, and Baizhang’s head is dark,’ but it has yet to be decided which is superior and which is inferior. It is easy to distinguish frost within white flour, but difficult to discern plum blossoms in the snow.”
上堂舉。馬大師因。僧問。離四句絶百非。請師直指西來意。大師云。我今日勞倦。不能為汝説得。問取智藏。僧問藏。藏云。我今日頭疼。不能為汝説得。問取海兄。僧問海。海云。我到者裏。却不會。問取和尚。僧問大師。大師云。藏頭白。海頭黑。師拈云。盡謂者僧。被馬大師父子穿却鼻孔。殊不知。馬大師父子鼻孔。被者僧穿却。會得。藏頭白海頭黑。優劣已分。不然。易分霜裏粉。難辨雪中梅。
The “meaning of [Bodhidharma] coming from the west,” in the Zen tradition, is code for the insight possessed by a person who is awakened — a buddha. That insight is understood as something that cannot be conveyed in words from a teacher but must be grasped on one’s own. The monk who asked Mazu Daoyi馬祖道一
(709-788) to “point directly” to awakening “without using any affirmation or negation” was, in effect, asking for an explanation that did not make use of language or any other symbolic gesture, which is utterly impossible. He could, therefore, have already understood the matter and merely been testing the insight of Mazu and his disciples, or perhaps he was entirely in the dark and just parroting the words “direct pointing.” The words spoken by Zhizang and Baizhang, likewise, can be read either as profound expressions of their insight or as lame confessions of their ignorance.
In Chinese and Japanese Zen literature, a well-established trope associates awakening with the blossoming of the plum tree, which occurs very early in spring when a snowfall is still possible. The snow that obscures the earth during a long cold winter symbolizes the state of delusion in which the human mind is ordinarily frozen, and the plum blossoms that appear as spring approaches represent the first glimmerings of understanding. Xutang’s closing remark about the difficulty in distinguishing tiny white plum blossoms from the snowflakes that may cover them on occasion is a metaphor used to describe the difficulty in discerning a person’s state of mind — i.e. whether they are awakened or deluded — on the basis of their words.
