明眼衲僧

A working glossary up front, because the term is dense:

- 明眼 (míng yǎn): "bright/clear eye" — used here in the technical sense of the *zhèng fǎ yǎn zàng* (正法眼藏, "treasury of the true dharma eye"), the unimpaired seeing that Chan tradition attributes to a verified awakening. Not "smart eyes," not "experienced eyes" — *unconfused* eyes. - 衲僧 (nà sēng): literally "patchwork-robed monk" — a humble, generic term for a Chan practitioner. "衲" originally meant the patched rag-robe of an itinerant monk; over time it simply became a respectful way to say "a monk who actually practices." The word almost always carries a quiet, no-frills connotation: not a ceremonial title, not a credential, just a person sitting with the question of awakening. - 明眼衲僧, then: a practitioner who has *actual* seeing — who can, in real time, recognize what's happening in a Chan encounter without first running it through a stack of theories.

这个概念在说什么 (What this concept is about)

1. The four-line alarm bell that frames it

The single most quoted formula is from Dahui Zonggao (大慧宗杲, 1089–1163), the Song-dynasty master who almost single-handedly shaped what we now think of as "classical Chan practice":

鏌鎁在握。天魔膽落。明眼衲僧。休更卜度。 *The great sword [Moyè] is in hand. The heavenly demons lose their nerve. Clear-eyed patch-robed monk — no more divining, no more guessing.*

Three images, three thresholds:

- 鏌鎁 (Moyè): the legendary sword used by the sage-king *Yù* (虞) — a Chinese-culture symbol of an instrument sharp enough to cut cleanly through anything false. Here it stands for *right view*, the view that cuts delusion cleanly. - 天魔膽落 (demons' gall break): external, internal, and "dharma-devils" (法魔, the subtlest devils — the ones that come *as* teachings, *as* subtleties) all lose their power when this view is held. The threat is not only outside. - 休更卜度 (no more divining): the real punchline. "卜度" — *bǔ duó* — is to guess, to divine by signs, to infer by interpretation, to spin theories before encountering. The bright eye is precisely the eye that *no longer needs to*.

So the definition works by its negative: 明眼 isn't a special mystical power. It is the *ending* of the compulsion to second-guess reality through pre-existing categories.

2. What the "eye" actually refers to

Dahui doesn't define 明眼 directly — he *points* at it through the parallel phrase 正法眼藏 (zhèng fǎ yǎn zàng), "the treasury of the true dharma eye." This phrase goes back to the Śākyamuni-flower-assembly legend: at the culmination of the *Lotus Sūtra* tradition (and the *Avataṃsaka* tradition's reading of it), the Buddha is said to have transmitted "the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvāṇa" (正法眼藏，涅槃妙心) to Mahākāśyapa — who simply smiled. That smile is the origin story of Chan.

So when Dahui says 明眼, "eye" is not metaphor. It is *that* eye: the eye that sees the dharma-eye's dharma-eye — what Chan tradition calls *jiàn xìng* (見性, "seeing the nature") or, in older language, *chuán fó xīn yìn* (傳佛心印, "receiving the seal of the Buddha-mind"). You don't get to call yourself 明眼 by reading about it. You get to call yourself 明眼 by *having* it.

To test this, Dahui quotes the famous exchange attributed to Zhong Guoshi (忠國師, Nanyang Huizhong 南陽慧忠, ?–775):

A monk asks: "Verdant bamboo everywhere is the dharma-body; the flowering yellow chrysanthemums are nothing but prajñā." 僧問：「青青翠竹盡是法身，鬱鬱黃華無非般若。」 Zhong Guoshi replies: "This is the *realm of Samantabhadra and Mañjuśrī*, not something ordinary small beings can believe in." 國師答：「此蓋普賢文殊境界，非諸凡小而能信受。」

Dahui then grounds the answer in scripture — and note the *order* matters: 翠竹黃華 aren't "really" dharmakāya because we philosophically decide so. The *Avataṃsaka Sūtra* (《華嚴經》) already says it: "The Buddha's body fills the dharma-realm / appears before all beings without exception" (佛身充滿於法界，普現一切群生前). The *Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras* (《般若經》) say: "Form being boundless, prajñā too is boundless" (色無邊故般若亦無邊). The bright eye doesn't produce this seeing — it *recognizes* a seeing that was always already true, once the obscurations thin. To see bamboo as dharmakāya is not to perform a poetic gesture; it's the natural state of an eye no longer filtering.

3. The famous metaphor that tests whether you have the eye: 金剛圈栗棘蓬

金剛圈 (vajra circle) — 栗棘蓬 (chestnut-thorn ball) is Dahui's compressed image for a Chan teaching that's deliberately ungraspable. Imagine a ball covered in sharp chestnut spines, ringed with diamond — there's no soft place to enter. This is what a true *jī* (機, "mechanism" / "live encounter") feels like from the inside: nothing to think with, nowhere to get traction.

Dahui says: if you can *swallow* this and *pass through* it — not figure it out, *get through* it — then you can serve as a teacher (得人師家). The person who has "passed through" doesn't cling to *this* shore (岸), doesn't chase *that* shore, doesn't camp on the *middle* current (中流). Free of all three positions, they can teach because they themselves are no longer stuck.

Here the concept branches. Dahui is honest that *which* mechanism works for a given person is *karmically conditioned* (根機, "root-faculty"). Two people who have both had awakenings can still see differently:

- Someone who entered through 心性解路 (xīn xìng jiě lù, "the path of interpreting mind-and-nature") — that is, through philosophical/contemplative investigation — will tend to dislike (定不愛) the abrupt, flint-and-lightning (擊石火閃電光) style. They want spaciousness, language, room. - Someone who entered through 一機一境一棒一喝 (yī jī yī jìng yī bàng yī hè, "one encounter, one circumstance, one stick, one shout") — that is, through sudden bodily shock — will tend to dislike slow, gentler, more discursive teaching.

Dahui's verdict: 「真所謂所見不同，互有得失」— "as they say, what each one sees differs; each has something gained and something lost." He then deploys the water-perception parable (also preserved in the *Śūraṅgama Sūtra* 楞嚴經 and earlier Pali material):

| Being | How water appears | |---|---| | Bodhisattvas | Nectar / ambrosia (甘露) | | Devas (heavenly beings) | Lapis lazuli (瑠璃) | | Humans | Just water (水) | | Hungry ghosts (餓鬼) | Pus and blood (膿血) |

The teaching is sober: *the same phenomenon, the same seeing-capacity, different results.* Bright eye here means *seeing through your own filter while knowing it's a filter*. The eye that "knows what perception water is given to whom, and why" — that's the bright eye.

4. Where the eye has to finally land: 明心地 (illuminating the mind-ground)

The closing move of Dahui's section comes via Yunmen (雲門, 864–949): 「衲子參禪要明心地」 — "A patch-robed monk practicing Chan must illuminate the mind-ground."

The comparison is concrete and unforgiving:

Reading ten cartloads of books and *not passing the examination* — you're a scholar (秀才) your whole life, nothing more. 讀書五車而不及第，終身只是箇秀才。 Practicing Chan and *the mind-ground not being illuminated* — you're a broken worldling (破凡夫) your whole life, you can't settle the great matter of birth and death. 參禪衲子心地不明，則不能了生死大事，終身只是箇破凡夫。

This is the strike zone of 明眼: not credentials, not fame, not how many koans you've discussed at a weekend retreat. *Did the ground open?*

Dahui then closes with a verse given by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng (六祖惠能, 638–713) to his disciple Zhichang (智常) — preserved in the *Platform Sūtra* (《六祖壇經》), the foundational text of Chan. Zhichang had settled into "no seeing" — the somewhat stale position that "since all dharmas are empty, just stay unseeing." Huineng corrects him:

不見一法存無見，大似浮雲遮日面。 *To hold to "no-seeing" while there's not a single dharma to be seen — it's like floating clouds covering the face of the sun.* 不知一法守空知，還如太虛生閃電。 *To cling to empty-knowing while not knowing a single dharma — it's like lightning striking in empty space.* 此之知見瞥然興，錯認何曾解方便。 *When such a knowing-and-seeing suddenly arises, you've mistaken from the start — when did this ever understand expedient means?* 汝當一念自知非，自己靈光常顯現。 *In a single thought know-for-yourself that this is wrong; your own luminous light is constantly manifest.*

Zhichang heard this and his doubt dissolved (當下疑情頓釋大悟). The bright eye doesn't *get* something new — it un-confuses about something old. The "luminous light" (靈光) was never absent; the filter was.

Dahui is sharp about a common inversion he saw in his own time: 「以有所得心，參向無所得處」 — "approaching the no-gaining place with a gaining-mind." This is the diagnosis of every kind of "spiritual materialism" (a phrase Chögyam Trungpa later named in English): the very mind that wants to acquire awakening is the mind that can't find it, because it's busy shopping.

5. The other classical source: Wansong on Tiancong's verse

The second major source is Wansong Xingxiu (萬松行秀, 1166–1246) commenting on a verse by Tiancong Congjue (天童宏覺, 1091–1157), in the *Congrong Lu* (《從容錄》, "Record of从容"). The closing line of Tiancong's verse is:

別是非、明得喪，應之心指諸掌……明眼衲僧無鹵莽。 *Discerning right and wrong, clarifying gain and loss — responding in the heart, like pointing to the palm of one's hand…… clear-eyed patch-robed monk, no recklessness.*

Three things to take from this source:

(a) Functional definition: 明眼 is here defined *positively* — by what it *does*. It discerns right from wrong (別是非). It sees through gain and loss (明得喪). It responds so cleanly that "it's like pointing at the palm of one's own hand" — no hesitation, no second-guessing, no flipping through mental files. And therefore: 無鹵莽 (wú lǔ mǎng) — *no recklessness*. The bright eye isn't the eye that rushes. It's the eye that *doesn't need to rush*.

(b) Negative foil — the 瞎漢 ("blind fellow"): Wansong sets the bright-eyed monk against a degenerate type he calls 「沒見識瞎漢」 — "blind fellows with no real seeing-and-knowing." These are people who, having heard one or two dharma-talks about emptiness and formlessness, latch onto 「無形段、無名姓底」 — "something formless, nameless, with no distinguishing marks" — and mistake this vague placelessness for the ultimate. Wansong's diagnosis is direct: they have 「辜負法眼、違背永明」 — they betray the dharma-eye and go against Yongming Yanshou (永明延壽, 904–975), the great synthesis-master. The bright eye is not the eye that rests in *mush*. It is the eye that *sees through* mush.

(c) True seeing is not opposed to form and name: Here Wansong quotes Xuedou Chongxian (雪竇重顯, 980–1052) lifting his staff and saying:

形名雙舉，形即無形，名即無名。 *Form and name raised together: form is already formless, name is already nameless.*

This is a precise formulation. The bright-eyed monk doesn't see *beyond* forms and names; doesn't *reject* them; doesn't *freeze* in the formless either. Form, seen truly, *is* formlessness. Name, used truly, *is* namelessness. This connects directly to the Heze lineage (荷澤) record known as the *Xiǎn Zōng Jì* (《顯宗記》, "Record of Manifesting the Ancestral Teaching"), attributed to Shenhui (神會, 684–758), which says the twenty-eight Indian patriarchs transmitted 「無住之心」 ("the non-abiding mind") as their common 「本分事」 ("essential matter"). *Non-abiding* is not a place to land — it's a *capacity* to keep moving through every form and name without being caught by any.

(d) Beyond words, but not against teaching: Wansong notes 「古人到這裏，只可自知，與人說不得」 — "the ancients, when they got here, could only know it themselves; they couldn't say it to others." This is consistent with the Chan tradition's consistent caveat: 明眼 is a *realization*, not an *information*. You can be shown the door; you can't be *carried* through it.

Wansong makes a fine distinction: 「天童深得經意，頌出真見；雪竇出教眼，單頌見佛」 — "Tiancong penetrated the sūtra's meaning deeply and versified the *true seeing*; Xuedou issued from the *teaching-eye* and versified only the *seeing the Buddha*." Both are needed. The bright-eyed monk is *not* anti-teaching (不離教眼之明照, "doesn't leave behind the bright illumination of the teaching-eye") but is *beyond being trapped by* teaching (超脫名相之滯礙, "transcends the obstacles of name-and-mark"). The eye sees *through* the teaching, not *away* from it.

6. A summary picture

Pulling the two sources together:

| Angle | Source | What it tells us about 明眼衲僧 | |---|---|---| | What it cuts | Dahui | Demons — outer, inner, and dharma-devils — can't stand against it | | What it doesn't do | Dahui | 「休更卜度」 — no more divining, no more speculating before encountering | | What it sees | Dahui, Zhong Guoshi | The dharmakāya in the bamboo, the prajñā in the flower | | What it can pass through | Dahui | The vajra circle, the chestnut-thorn ball | | What it discerns | Tiancong | Right from wrong, gain from loss, instantly, palm-pointingly | | What it isn't | Wansong | The "blind fellow" who mistakes formless mush for the ultimate | | How it relates to teaching | Wansong | Uses the teaching-eye but isn't bound by name-and-form | | Where it lands | Dahui, Huineng | "Luminous light constantly manifest" — not a new acquisition, an un-confusion |

生活里的走查 (Walking this through contemporary life)

Let's use contemporary scenes. I'll try to be specific so the mapping is checkable, not vague.

Scene A: Reading the dharma in airport bookstores

A contemporary meditator is at a retreat, has read two popular books, sits down, and a teacher asks, "What is your real question?" They offer a beautifully articulated paragraph on emptiness, dependent origination, perhaps a quotation from *Dōgen*. The teacher just looks at them.

By Dahui's framing, what happened? This person has read 五車 (five cartloads) of books. But they haven't 及第 (passed the exam). They have 「有所得心」 approaching 「無所得處」 — a gaining-mind approaching the place of no-gaining. The bright eye is not the *knowledge of* these things; it is the *un-confusion about* these things. The two states can look identical from the outside — same words, same posture — but one is conceptual fluency, the other is the eye opening.

The common mapping mistake here is to think 明眼 = knowledgeable about dharma. It doesn't. It is the *end of the need to argue for or against dharma*.

Scene B: The "everything is empty" practitioner at the family dinner

Someone has been meditating for a few years. At the holiday table, an uncle says something politically incorrect. The practitioner smiles serenely and thinks, *"All views are empty; I'm not attached."* They're not in conflict. They're also not in relationship.

This is the 「沒見識瞎漢」 exactly. They have a vague sense of 「無形段、無名姓底」 — *formless, nameless, no distinguishing marks* — and have mistaken the comfortable non-reactivity for ultimate realization. They have 「辜負法眼」 — betrayed the dharma-eye.

The bright-eyed monk at that same dinner would *still* feel something — displeasure, perhaps, or compassion, or confusion — and *not be run by* it. Not aloof, not cool, not serenely detached. Just: present, not caught. The contrast with the "blind fellow" is hard to see from inside, which is exactly why the figure of the blind fellow is in the canon as a warning.

The common mapping mistake: confusing *withdrawing from form* (a kind of subtle aversion dressed as freedom) with *seeing through form*. The bright eye doesn't withdraw; it sees *into* the form so completely that it isn't snagged.

Scene C: The executive who's read every leadership book but freezes when a real person cries

A manager has frameworks. They can recite feedback models, conflict-resolution moves, emotional-intelligence taxonomies. Then a direct report actually cries in a 1:1. The frameworks don't help. The manager's eye goes blank. They reach for another framework.

By Tiancong's 「應之心指諸掌」 test — responding like pointing at one's own palm — this manager doesn't have the bright eye *for this domain*. They have it neither *for nor against*: not against (they don't see wrongly, exactly), but not *for* either (they can't respond unmediated). When a domain is real, you can't run the response through a deck of cards. Palm-of-the-hand knowing doesn't consult a deck.

The common mapping mistake: confusing the bright eye with *competence* or *expertise*. 明眼 isn't about how good you are at things; it's about whether you're *seen-through* in the using of them.

Scene D: The dating-app dharma

Someone swipes. Doesn't match. Feels rejected. Mind says, "this is dukkha, this is impermanence, attachment is the source." Now they're *philosophically correct* and emotionally exactly the same as before.

This is the diagnostic scene for 「卜度」 — divination, guessing, interpreting *before* the encounter. The mind runs the dharma *over* the experience, like a translator reading a translation of a translation. The experience — the actual sting of being unseen — never gets fully felt. The bright eye wouldn't deny the sting. It also wouldn't decorate the sting with a teaching. It would let the sting be a sting. (This is what Yunmen's 「明心地」 actually demands: *illuminate the ground*, not paper over it with a sutra.)

The common mapping mistake: mistaking *spiritual commentary on experience* for *seeing experience*. Commentary can be very fluent and still a complete block to 明眼.

Scene E: The two retreats, two teachers

Practitioner A goes to a silent, spacious, slow teacher. They open. They have a transformative experience. They return home, talk about it; everything is fine until they encounter a teacher who *shouts at them unexpectedly*. They freeze. They feel betrayed. They conclude "that teacher is not real Chan."

Practitioner B goes to a sharp, abrupt teacher who shouts. They get opened through the shout. They return home, talk about it; everything is fine until they encounter a teacher who sits with them for forty minutes in silence. They get restless. They conclude "that teacher is bland."

Both A and B have had real openings. Both A and B are still operating within Dahui's 「定不愛」 — what the root-faculty *doesn't love*. Neither has yet *seen through* their own conditioning about how awakening is supposed to feel. Neither is yet 明眼 in the sense of 「別是非、明得喪」 — they can tell right from wrong in *their* style, but not beyond it. The bright eye would be the eye that, after being opened by the shout, can also be opened by the silence — because it's the *seeing* that's opened, not a preference that's been installed.

The common mapping mistake: identifying the bright eye with the *kind* of opening that happened to you.

Scene F: The genuine moment

Now the positive scene, briefly. You're walking home at dusk. The light does something ordinary. For one or two seconds, nothing is *commentary*. There's no past, no interpretation, no future, no category. Just light. Then you turn the corner and the mind starts again.

That *uninterrupted seeing*, even for two seconds, is what the tradition is talking about. 明眼 is not a permanent state you install — it's a *capacity* you recognize. The practice is not to *make* it stay; the practice is to *not cover it up again*.

(For what it's worth, certain contemporary contemplative-research traditions — particularly in first-person phenomenological and neuroscientific work — describe something functionally similar: brief, content-free states of "pure awareness" that practitioners report across traditions. The similarities are striking. The differences are also striking, and not resolved: neuroscience can correlate but cannot confirm what such states *are* in the practitioner's own terms. It would be a mistake to claim neuroscience "proves" 明眼, and equally a mistake to dismiss the convergence as trivial.)

当代人为什么需要它 (Why contemporary people need this)

A few notes, because the question is real, not rhetorical.

1. We live inside an information economy that simulates 明眼 perfectly and produces it never.

We have search engines that *recognize* (in the technical sense) patterns no human could. We have AI that, given enough parameters, can produce output indistinguishable from a clear-eyed response. The point is not that these tools are bad — many are genuinely useful. The point is that they are *perfect simulacra* of 明眼 for everything except the one thing that matters: whether the one *behind* the eye is un-confused about what they see. A large language model can describe 明眼 in fluent Chan-style Chinese without ever having had a single doubt. The contemporary predicament is that we have outsourced recognition to tools that *recognize* but don't *see*. Practicing toward 明眼 — even just as an orientation — keeps the question alive: *Am I the one seeing, or have I deputized it?*

2. We are saturated with commentary.

Compared to a 12th-century Chinese monk, the average contemporary dharma-interested person has access to more translations, more teachers' talks, more commentaries, more podcasts, than any prior generation. By Tiancong's and Dahui's criterion, this should make 明眼 *easier*. By their further criterion — that commentary not only doesn't guarantee it but can actively obstruct it — this should make us more, not less, vigilant. The 「有所得心參向無所得處」 problem is structurally amplified in our environment.

3. The "performative wellness" problem.

A clear-eyed person, classically, doesn't *display* clarity. Wansong's 「無鹵莽」 (no recklessness) is a quiet characteristic — not being flashy, not being the most "awakened" person in the room. Contemporary life, especially online, rewards the *display* of insight, which is structurally a kind of 「卜度」 — divining how an enlightened person would respond, and performing it. The bright-eyed monk is, classically, almost impossible to spot *from outside*. That's part of the point.

4. The genuine existential pressure hasn't gone anywhere.

Birth, sickness, aging, death, the loss of those we love, the question of what (if anything) the whole of things is *for* — these haven't been solved by any of our technological progress. If anything, they have been *deferred* into longer, more medicalized, more lonely forms. The bright-eyed person, classically, is the one who has actually *faced* these — not thought about them, performed them, commented on them, but *faced* them — and found (or been found by) something that doesn't collapse under the weight of them. This is what 「了生死大事」 actually means. It's not a metaphor for "dealing with stress." It is the literal question of what happens to the one who sees when the one who sees stops. Anyone living a serious life eventually has to face this question. The figure of the 明眼衲僧 is, among other things, the report from those who claim to have faced it without flinching and without deceiving themselves about having faced it.

常见误读与澄清 (Common misreadings and clarifications)

Misreading 1: "明眼 means being intellectually brilliant or having read a lot."

Clarification: The opposite is closer. By Dahui's own example, 讀書五車而不及第, 終身只是箇秀才 — five cartloads of books but not having passed the exam makes you a scholar for life, not a graduate. The bright eye is not the well-read eye; it's the eye that *no longer needs to read in order to see*. The 「休更卜度」 criterion is operational, not cultural.

Misreading 2: "明眼 means seeing everything as empty / formless / non-dual."

Clarification: This is exactly the 「瞎漢」 mistake that Wansong warns against — confusing the *resting place of mush* with *the ultimate*. Xuedou's 「形名雙舉，形即無形，名即無名」 is the actual Chan articulation: form is formless (not: form is *replaced by* formless). The contemporary version of this error is the well-meaning practitioner who treats every concrete question — "should I take this job?" "should I end this relationship?" — as a sign of "still being in dualism." This is not 明眼. It's 「不見一法存無見」 — holding to "no-seeing" without having actually *seen*, the very mistake Huineng corrected in Zhichang.

Misreading 3: "明眼 means having had a peak experience / kensho / satori."

Clarification: A peak experience can be part of the *origin* of 明眼, but it isn't the same as 明眼. Tiancong's 「應之心指諸掌」 test is functional and ongoing: when the moment comes — and the moment will come, in some form — does the response arise from *seeing*, or does it arise from *memory of the peak experience plus learned copy*? The bright eye is not the memory of a moment; it's the present capacity of an un-confused seeing. Someone who had a transformative retreat experience ten years ago and now mostly lives on the story of it has the memory of an awakening, not necessarily the un-confused seeing.

Misreading 4: "明眼 means having transcended emotions / being above it all."

Clarification: Wansong's 「無鹵莽」 (no recklessness) is *not* 「無感情」 (no feeling). 「別是非、明得喪」 — discerning right from wrong, gain from loss — actually *requires* feeling. The "blind fellow" is the one who has retreated from feeling under the cover of having transcended it. The bright-eyed monk is fully present to form and name, to other people, to the actual texture of situations — they simply don't get *hooked*. This is closer to what some contemporary trauma-informed contemplative teachers call "responsive rather than reactive" — with the understanding that this formulation is partial, and doesn't capture the deeper *non-abiding* (無住) aspect that Heze tradition points to.

Misreading 5: "明眼 means you no longer need a teacher."

Clarification: Wansong distinguishes 教眼 (teaching-eye, "seeing through the teachings") from the deeper *real seeing* (真見). Tiancong and Xuedou together model *both*. The bright-eyed monk is *not* someone who has outgrown the teachings; they are someone for whom the teachings function *transparently*, not as a screen. Having a teacher is part of how the teachings continue to function. The Chan tradition is unembarrassed about this: after awakening, one still sits, still asks, still practices. The figure of Zhichang — who had a real opening from the Sixth Patriarch — is also a figure who *received that verse*. Awakening doesn't end the practice of being taught; it changes the practice of being taught.

Misreading 6: "明眼 is a permanent state, an attainment, a credential."

Clarification: The terminology of the tradition is consistently *capacity* (眼, "eye"), not *possession* (有, "having"). 「自己靈光常顯現」 — "your own luminous light constantly manifest" — is a description of how things are *when not covered*, not a permanent seal. The Chan record is full of awakened people who got confused again, fell ill, got sick of practice, had dark nights. The tradition has no embarrassment about this. The bright eye is *available*, not *secured*.

A closing image

Both classical sources end on the same kind of line:

- Dahui: 「明眼衲僧，休更卜度。」 - Tiancong/Wansong: 「明眼衲僧無鹵莽。」

These are not chants. They are diagnostic reminders. *Are you still divining? Are you still performing? Have you stopped?*

The brightest thing the canonical 明眼衲僧 does is, classically, the quietest: they don't need to perform 明眼. They just see. And when asked how they see, the answer is the smile that Mahākāśyapa smiled, that Zhichang realized when the verse landed, that lives underneath the formality of every "instructor" who has actually, slowly, with help, un-confused enough to know that they haven't finished un-confusing.

That is what the tradition is pointing at, and why it insists the pointing is necessary even though it cannot, by its own admission, get you there.