Plum Mountain

Plum Mountain (Mount Daibai) is in the city of Kyōgen-fu. Goshō-ji Temple was established on the mountain, and its founder was Zen Master Hōjō (752-839). The Zen master was a man of the Jōyō district. (in present-day Hupei province in east China).

Once, when visiting Baso’s order, Master Hōjō asked, “What is buddha?” and Baso replied, “Mind itself is buddha.” Due to the influence of these words, Hōjō attained the great state of realization and consequently climbed to the summit of Plum Mountain, away from human society. He lived in solitude in a thatched hut and ate pine nuts. There was a small pond on the mountain in which grew many lotuses, and made his clothing from the lotus leaves. He sat in zazen and pursued the truth for more than thirty years. He saw and heard absolutely nothing of human affairs and he lost track of the passing years, only seeing the mountains all around go from green to yellow. One pities to imagine what the winds and frosts were like.

While sitting in zazen, he would place an eight-inch iron tower on his head, as if he were wearing a crown. By endeavoring to keep this tower from dropping to the ground, he did not fall asleep. This is how he pursued the truth until his death, never tiring of the effort.

He had been living like this for years and months when a monk from another monastery happened to come onto the mountain looking for a staff. The monk had lost his way on the mountain and unexpectedly came upon the site of the master’s hut. When, to the monk’s surprise, he saw Master Hōjō, he asked, “Master, how long have you been living on this mountain?”

The master said, “I only see the trees and grasses become green and yellow in spring and autumn, never counting the months and years.”

The monk asked further, “What is the way down from the mountain?”

The master said, “Follow the stream down.”

The monk was struck. When he returned and told his teacher what had happened, the teacher, who had trained alongside Baso in the past, said, “Once I saw such a monk at Baso's place, but I do not know what happened to him after that. This couldn’t be that same monk, could it?”

Eventually, the teacher sent the monk to extend an invitation to Master Hōjō, but the master would not leave Plum Mountain. He replied with a verse:

A withered tree, broken and abandoned, in a cold forest,

However many times it meets spring, it does not change its mind.

Passing woodsmen do not even look back.

Why should popular entertainers be keen to search it out?

“Popular entertainers” referred to Buddhist teachers who attracted popularity. In the end, Master Hōjō decided not go, and made the following verse:

I shall never outwear the lotus leaves in the pond.

The flowers of a few pines are more than a meal.

Now my abode has been discovered by people in the world.

I shall move my shack deeper into seclusion.

Finally, he moved his hut further into the mountains.

Once Baso sent a monk especially to ask Master Hōjō of Plum Mountain, “Master, when you visited Baso in former days, what truth did you attain and then come to live on this mountain?”

The master said, “Baso told me, ‘The mind here and now is buddha.’ Then I came to live on this mountain.”

The monk said, “These days his teaching is different.”

The master asked, “How is it different?”

The monk said, “Baso says, ‘It is neither the mind nor buddha.’”

The master said, “This old man confuses people endlessly. I have no sympathy for him. Never mind about ‘neither the mind nor buddha.’ For me, it is just that the mind here and now is buddha.”

The monk reported these words to Baso, and Baso said, “The Plum has ripened.”