The three characters 那邊人 (nàbiān rén, "the one over there") sound at first like a geographical description—as if a household lived across the river, and you and I stood on this bank pointing at it. In fact, it comes from a deliberate naming game. The Chan school coined this name precisely to make you understand: the instant you can name it, you have already missed it.
These three characters appear in the *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Dongshan Liangjia of Ruizhou* (《瑞州洞山良价禅师语录》, Zhūzōng section, T1986B; *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Dongshan Liangjia of Ruizhou*), where they emerge in a dialectical exchange between Dongshan Liangjia, patriarch of the Cáodòng school, and his disciple Shushan. Let us walk into it slowly.
One: What This Concept Is About
The Far Shore: The Underlying Map of the Entire Mahāyāna
To understand 那邊人 (nàbiān rén, "the one over there"), one must first return to the map of "this shore / far shore" (此岸/彼岸, pāra, "the far shore") that the entire Mahāyāna spreads out again and again from the *Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras* to the *Diamond Sūtra*—"crossing from this shore to reach the far shore." This shore is the ground of affliction (kleśa), of grasping, of birth-and-death in saṃsāra; the far shore is nirvāṇa (涅槃, nirvāṇa, "extinction"), is coolness, is the ground where all buddhas dwell. The entire practice of the Prajñāpāramitā tradition condenses into three characters: 波羅蜜 (pāramitā, "gone to the far shore")—the "arriving" from this shore to the far shore. The *Heart Sūtra*'s eternally recited line, 照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄 ("perceiving that the five aggregates are all empty, and crossing over all suffering and distress"), points its direction of crossing suffering toward the far shore. This path took shape within doctrinal systems, and was also received into Chinese Chan through the *Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch* (《六祖壇經》) in the line 本來無一物，何處惹塵埃 ("Originally there is not a single thing—where could dust alight?").
「那邊人」pushes one step further than 彼岸 (pāra, "the far shore"): it does not ask "what does the far shore look like," but rather—the one who has already arrived over there—who is that?
Where This Text Comes From: The Exchange Between Dongshan and Shushan
The question is posed to Dongshan by Shushan in the *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Dongshan Liangjia of Ruizhou*. Dongshan Liangjia, a figure of the late Tang and Five Dynasties period, is the founding patriarch of the Cáodòng school. His entire system is known for the "Five Positions" (五位) and the "mutual interpenetration of the partial and the upright" (偏正回互)—that is to say, his way of thinking was by nature never to fall onto either end, but to intermingle and interpenetrate. Shushan was a student who studied at his side. The dialogue between the two is one of the most difficult to read—and most worth rereading—passages in all of Chan问答 (wèndá, question-and-answer exchange). Let us first set up its skeleton:
疏山問：「一切處不乖時如何。」 洞山答：「此是功勳邊事。」 洞山接云：「幸有無功之功，子何不問。」 疏山問：「無功之功，豈不是那邊人。」 洞山云：「大有人笑子恁麼問。」 疏山問：「如何是迢然。」 洞山答：「迢然，非迢然，非不迢然。」 疏山問：「如何是非迢然。」 洞山答：「無辨處。」 洞山又補一句：「喚作那邊人即不得。」
*Shushan asked: "What about when one does not deviate [from the Dharma] in any place at any time?" Dongshan answered: "This is a matter at the edge of meritorious achievement." Dongshan added: "Fortunately there is the merit of no-merit—why do you not ask about that?" Shushan asked: "Is the merit of no-merit not the one over there?" Dongshan said: "Many people would laugh at you for asking that." Shushan asked: "What is the far-and-distinct?" Dongshan answered: "Far-and-distinct, not far-and-distinct, not not-far-and-distinct." Shushan asked: "What is not-far-and-distinct?" Dongshan answered: "The place where there is no discerning." Dongshan added one more line: "To call it 'the one over there' will not do."*
Seven exchanges in one dialogue, and every facet of the concept 那邊人 (nàbiān rén, "the one over there") is pressed out. Let us walk through it layer by layer.
First Layer: Marked by the "Merit of No-Merit"
Shushan's first question—「一切處不乖時如何」("what about when one does not deviate in any place at any time")—is itself a skilled way to ask. He is asking: if one can at any moment, in any place, not deviate from the true Dharma, does that count as having arrived? Dongshan's answer is devastating: "This is a matter at the edge of meritorious achievement (功勳)."
「功勳」is conditioned (有為, saṃskṛta, "conditioned") effort—the cultivation and accomplishment that can be named and pointed to: how many hours of sitting, how many sūtras recited, how much given in charity, how many attachments broken through. "Not deviating in any place at any time" sounds like no small achievement, but Dongshan says it is still "edge-matter"—「邊」is the edge of a boundary, meaning: this is still the farthest point that conditioned effort can reach. No matter how thoroughly you cultivate, mudflats are not the far shore.
Dongshan then flips it: "Fortunately there is the merit of no-merit—why do you not ask about that?" What you have asked about—this form-possessing attainment of "not deviating"—has an edge. Fortunately there is also a "merit of no-merit" (無功之功). Why do you not ask about that? The key point: 「無功之功」is not "no merit," nor is it "abandoning all effort." It is a "merit" that "conditioned meritorious achievement" cannot contain. You can run into it, but the moment it is named "some kind of attainment," it is no longer itself.
Shushan, sharp at this point, immediately picks it up: "Is the merit of no-merit not the one over there?"—that "merit of no-merit," is it not what is called "the one over there"?
This is the first facet of 那邊人: the one over there is marked by the "merit of no-merit"—he or she did not reach the far shore through conditioned achievement, but was carried there by a "merit" that does not dwell on the level of "merit."
Second Layer: Unnameable
To Shushan's seemingly quite elegant question, Dongshan fires back: 「大有人笑子恁麼問」—many people would laugh at you for asking that. Why? Because you think that by loading "merit of no-merit" into the phrase "the one over there" you have grasped it—and this is precisely where the error begins.
He then adds an even plainer line: "To call it 'the one over there' will not do." The moment you utter the three characters 那邊人, you are wrong. Why? This is one of the deepest operations in all of Chan: the moment subject-object duality (能所) begins, you are already in the world of two sides. The subject says "I have reached the far shore," "I have realized," "I have awakened"—this "I" is still the composite self of the five aggregates (五蘊, pañcaskandha, the five aggregates) on this shore. The moment you establish a named object called "the one over there," you have dragged him back to this shore with concepts, language, and self-feeling.
So the second facet of 那邊人 is: this name is only a marker, a finger pointing at the moon; the finger is not the moon, and the name is not the state it denotes. The instant the namer and the named arise, the matter is already betrayed.
Third Layer: The Three Sentences on "Far-and-Distinct" and "No Place for Discerning"
Shushan, clearly not satisfied, circles around the name 那邊人 and presses from another angle: "What is 迢然 (tiáorán, 'far and distinct')?" 迢然 means far off, distinct—understandable as the state of being transcendently distant and separate, the posture of two banks facing each other.
Dongshan's answer is the Cáodòng school's signature three-sentence format: "迢然，非迢然，非不迢然。" ("Far-and-distinct; not far-and-distinct; not not-far-and-distinct.")
These three sentences must not be read as a Hegelian triad of "affirmation—negation—negation of negation." They are actually three different positions:
- 迢然: Seen from this shore, the far shore is indeed distinctly distant—this is the view that makes distinctions; - 非迢然: But if one clings to this distinct distance, one is still on this shore of subject-object duality; - 非不迢然: Yet neither can one flip around and drag the far shore into being utterly undifferentiated from this shore—that would flow into the dead emptiness (頑空) that erases all distinction.
The three sentences together demand that you neither be pulled away by the far shore's distance, nor be stuck by the cleverness of "the far shore is just this shore." More crucial still: when Shushan pursues with "what is not-far-and-distinct," Dongshan answers "無辨處" ("no place for discerning")—since you have uttered the judgment "not far-and-distinct," even that "not" has nowhere to be discerned, because wherever discerning is possible, there are already two ends. So even the act of negation itself has nowhere to land.
This third facet tells us: the one over there is neither in the affirmation of "the clearly distinct opposite shore," nor in the negation of "undifferentiated oneness," and even negation itself has nowhere to stand—this is "no place for discerning."
Fourth Layer: The Metaphor of "In the Empty Kalpa There Is No Home"
At the end of the dialogue, Dongshan throws out a profoundly meaningful counter-question: "空劫無人家，是甚麼人住處。" ("In the empty kalpa there is no home—what person's dwelling is that?")—in the state of 空劫 (kōngjié, "empty kalpa"), where even the concept of a kalpa has not yet arisen, where heaven and earth have not yet been divided, where even the structure of "home" does not exist—"who" dwells there?
「空劫」is more ancient than "primeval antiquity." It is a sense of time in which there is entirely no subject and object, no dwelling, no "who lives where." There, no category of "person" can arise, and of course no spatial sense of "over there / this side" either. "The one over there dwells in the empty kalpa where there is no home" is a double unpointability: first, the place he dwells in has no house; second, there is no "person" as a dwelling subject. The far shore is not some geography farther than this shore; it is the place where even the sense of a subject has not yet formed.
Fifth Layer: Preceding Occasions of the Function—The Brazier Shaking, Sweat Over the Whole Body, "Not Thinking Good, Not Thinking Evil"
Beyond the dialogue, the *Recorded Sayings* also records several of Dongshan's own experiences, serving as preceding occasions of the function (機用, jīyòng, "function of the live trigger") for the concept 那邊人:
- He relates that once, while under the seat of Yunyan Tansheng, he asked an old man a question, and "直得火爐震動" ("the brazier itself shook")—his body and mind were entirely wrenched in that moment; even the seemingly calm brazier shook along with it, showing how fierce the triggering was; - Today, pressed by his disciple (Shushan), he was again "直得通身汗流" ("sweating over his entire body")—this was not merely an intellectual exchange, but his body and mind touched and moved again in the present moment; - He also recounts that when Yunju built his hermitage, a celestial being (天神) came to offer food, and through the phrase "不思善不思惡" ("not thinking good, not thinking evil"), "the celestial being from then on could not find him, and thus after three days it ceased"—this "not thinking good, not thinking evil" is precisely the key to Huineng's awakening in the *Platform Sūtra*: "Not thinking good, not thinking evil—at just such a moment, what is the original face of the venerable Ming?" With that one turning phrase, the celestial being could no longer find anyone to offer food to, because the "subject who receives food" no longer stood.
These passages are not digressions. They are Dongshan bearing witness with his own experience to the three characters 那邊人: this state has indeed occurred—but it is a trigger (機, jī), not a principle (理); it is something collided with bodily, not deduced from doctrine.
Sewing the Five Layers Together
Putting the five layers back into one sentence: 那邊人 is—the one marked by the "merit of no-merit" (layer one), unnameable by conceptual speech (layer two), neither falling onto either end nor having anywhere for discerning to stand (layer three), with even subject and abode not yet formed (layer four), and all of this genuinely collided with in the present moment, and genuinely struck back by it in the present moment (layer five)—the person.
In the next section, we walk these layers through contemporary life.
Two: How It Shows Up in Daily Life
Bring this exchange into the present—in fact, this concept is not far from our daily life; it is very close. Let us use three concrete scenarios, each touching one facet: "matter at the edge of merit," "calling it will not do," and "the three sentences on far-and-distinct."
Scenario One: Getting Life Right, Right Down to Everything Being Right
Imagine such a person. He or she might be a typical high-efficiency professional in today's workplace: calendar managed to the minute, dietary calories calculated, running heart rate tracked, annual OKRs, monthly book club, weekly counseling, monthly retreat. Among many urban middle-class intellectuals today, this is already the "basic model." Ten years in, the cultivation and the checklists are all complete, every KPI is checked off. A glance at his or her backend data is almost a contemporary translation of 「一切處不乖時」—not deviating in any corner, in any dimension.
But inside there is an inexpressible fatigue: clearly "everything is right," yet something feels off. Perhaps on an insomniac night, after all the meditation is done, he or she gets up to drink a glass of water, looks out the window, knows there is no unhappiness, but also does not know whether he or she is really alive; at the next meeting, clearly knowing that all of this will be done one more round—only this time there is no "why" for doing it.
This is the most typical contemporary correspondence of "matter at the edge of merit" (功勳邊事).
「功勳邊事」does not mean these efforts are wrong. Meditation, counseling, running, the reading list—all are effective on the dimension of "this shore"; all give life more order. Nor are they false cultivation—they are all genuine cultivation. But Dongshan stops the sentence with the two characters 邊事 ("edge-matter"): no matter how refined the conditioned cultivation, it still lies within the boundary of this shore. It can extend all the way to the mudflats by the river—but mudflats are not the far shore.
The symptom of "having gotten everything right" is a not-uncommon spiritual cold of our time. It is sometimes not called depression, but rather a "fatigue of purpose"—clearly lacking nothing, yet inside, a sheet of glass slowly appears between oneself and one's own actual existence.
For the concept of 那邊人, this symptom has a particular use: it is itself an invitation. It does not tell you "what you should do." It invites you to see—that "getting everything right" is another kind of "not having lived." That when you have repaired every wrong place, the "repairing" itself still stands there, unexamined.
The easiest way to mis-map this: reading it as "so don't pursue," "so let go," "so lie flat." Wrong. Nothing in Dongshan's entire passage urges you to abandon any cultivation—the work he does is to place "the act of cultivating itself" under a deeper background. You keep eating, keep running, keep going to counseling. But when, without noticing, you press all of life into a checklist of "right / wrong," the moment that "right / wrong" checklist arises in your mind is a moment worth pausing at.
Scenario Two: The Person Who Turns Even Spiritual Practice into a KPI
This scenario gets closer to the core of practice. Imagine another person: he or she is also a seasoned meditator—ten years of Chan practice, countless retreats, app hours that may exceed reading hours. Last year, at some retreat, he or she experienced a moment the teacher called "seeing the nature" (見性, darśana, "seeing the nature")—time vanished, the body dissolved, the entire present lit up. Coming off the cushion, there was a clear sense of "I have arrived."
The problem comes in the following year.
That "I have arrived" quickly faded. During meditation, he or she would ruminate on the experience, but it would not come back; in daily life, he or she tried to preserve that present moment, but the present moment is not something that can be preserved. He or she went to advanced retreats, went back to teachers for verification, attended advanced interviews (小參), and finally began to package it in another kind of language—telling friends "I once had a very clear insight," displaying that insight as part of his or her identity.
What he or she is undergoing is precisely the sharpest cut of "to call it 'the one over there' will not do" in contemporary form—
The moment you name that present moment "seeing the nature," and name yourself "one who has seen," you have already returned to this shore. At the moment of naming, the sacred experience becomes a line on a résumé. The gap between "I have seen" and what was seen is new grasping. The "spiritual identity crisis" familiar to many contemporaries—clearly an advanced practitioner, yet more anxious than ordinary people, because of the anxiety of "I have already arrived, now how do I maintain this arrived-ness"—is precisely this mechanism at work.
The easiest way to mis-map this: thinking "that is a concern only beginners need to worry about; once advanced, one no longer needs to name." Wrong. Dongshan himself—this Cáodòng patriarch—was "sweating over his entire body" when pressed by his disciple. He did not claim to be exempt from the difficulty of naming. "Calling it will not do" applies to every person, including those already called patriarchs.
Scenario Three: Two People Who Have Turned the Relationship into a Medal
Shift the lens to intimate relationships. A more seasoned couple—together five, ten, twenty years—has read relationship psychology, done couples counseling, learned nonviolent communication, understands attachment theory, has regular date nights, has regular deep talks. From the outside, this is the contemporary model of an "emotionally mature" relationship.
But on some Sunday evening, after the two have done a very standard check-in round, shared each other's recent feelings, expressed gratitude, offered constructive suggestions, and then each scrolls their phone, the more sensitive one will, at some moment, have a thought arise: "Are we now performing the ritual of 'being a good couple,' or are we living together?"
This is the mirror image of 「一切處不乖時」within an intimate relationship—on the behavioral level, everything passes; but the subject behind the behavior seems to be constantly watching "whether we are doing it right." This is the intimate-relationship version of "matter at the edge of merit." Counseling, techniques, shared reading, check-ins—none of these are wrong, but they are all still on the conditioned mudflats.
The reminder of 那邊人 is subtle here: it does not urge you to abandon these tools, but rather reminds you—while you do all of these, there is something these tools can never weave into place. It is not in another dimension over there; it is in the substratum of "your doing these."
The easiest way to mis-map this: thinking 那邊人 means "not caring about the relationship," so you let go, stop checking in, and grow cold. This is the typical misreading of the third sentence, 非不迢然—you skip over 迢然 (this relationship is real, its distinctions exist), skip over 非迢然 (that mind of yours watching whether you are doing it right is also released), and arrive directly at a self-styled enlightened indifference. This is dead emptiness, not the far shore.
Summary of the Walkthrough: How Dongshan's Three Sentences Strike in the Present
Put Shushan's question about 迢然 into today's three scenarios, and in each, the three positions of 迢然 are in operation:
- 迢然: the far shore is far—the state of true freedom, beyond merit, seems to lie after some retreat, some break, some deep inner transformation. Many of us get through our days on the belief "one day I will arrive." - 非迢然: but as long as one remains in the mindset of "one day I will arrive," one is still on this shore—"will arrive" is itself a feature of this shore. - 非不迢然: but neither may one set down this "one day I will arrive" and pretend not to care—the gesture of letting go, the appearance of magnanimity, can equally be another kind of grasping.
Finally, from Dongshan's "no place for discerning"—we see clearly: neither dreaming of the far shore, nor pretending to be already on the far shore, but even the discerning of "am I discerning whether this is the far shore" itself has nowhere to stand.
In everyday language, this "no place for discerning" may appear at certain uncomfortable moments: you can neither say to yourself "I have arrived," nor say "I have not arrived," and even the question "have I arrived or not" no longer arises. What remains is only the question of "how to keep living." This moment looks empty, but Dongshan says: this is the stretch of road closest to the "merit of no-merit."
Three: Why Contemporary People Need It
Contemporary life has a very particular construction—everything can be optimized.
We are recommended reading apps, productivity apps, meditation apps, relationship apps, health apps, psychology apps. A Google Calendar is far from enough; we have life calendars, life OSes, all kinds of OKRs, all kinds of 1:1s, all kinds of retrospectives. Our values are shaped by reward systems of one "good habit" after another. Our relationships with others—friendship, love, parent-child, collaboration—are all required to be conducted in some more optimized way. The underlying logic of all this is: a human being is a system that can be continuously optimized through conditioned achievement.
Dongshan, in the *Recorded Sayings*, calls this kind of contemporary context "matter at the edge of merit." He does not say it is wrong; he only says it has an edge—and that "edge" is meaningful.
There are at least three reasons why the concept 那邊人 is still worth spending an evening reading today.
First, It Dismantles One of the Most Refined Traps of Our Time
This trap many of us step into without noticing: turning "becoming a better self" into another KPI. It looks like self-improvement, but it is actually reducing oneself to an object that can be optimized, scored, and upgraded. Once you see yourself that way, the "I" watching you is never inside the "optimizing" process—he or she is only a ghostly bystander, staring at the object being optimized.
The concept of 那邊人 speaks precisely to this ghost: you may cultivate everything you think needs cultivating to the utmost—but what remains after all cultivation is finished has no dimension of "merit" on which it can be written. Write it on the résumé, and it is "matter at the edge of merit"; do not write it, and you are closest to it.
Second, It Marks Out a Territory That Is Spiritually "Exempt from Optimization"
Rarely anything in our time is left unoptimized. Even meditation itself, even intimate relationships, even grief, even rest are drawn into some cycle of self-management. If there is a concept that can solemnly declare, as 那邊人 does, "there is a place such that the moment you speak its name, put it on any meaningful checklist, and begin pursuing it, it is no longer what it was"—that provides a coolness.
Coolness (清涼) is not liberation, but it is a moment the exhausted modern person badly needs—you may temporarily stop the process of "I must be better" and feel whether, beneath that process, something has been there all along.
Third, It Is One of the Few Contemporary Answers to "Who Am I" That Does Not Hedge
Contemporary discussions of "who am I" are either in psychological language (attachment types, personality inventories, value rankings), or spiritual language ("I am light," "I am love," "I am consciousness"), or communal language ("I am a person of this group"). Each is useful, but each is pasting a label onto the thing called "I," and so each is already a kind of "merit"—a small achievement of self-construction.
「那邊人」does something different: it does not patch the hole of "I" with a linguistic band-aid, but interrupts the thought at the very moment you insist on naming it. "To call it 'the one over there' will not do"—this is not asking you to give up understanding, but helping you relax your dependence on the illusion that "naming can liberate me."
A Comparison with Neuroscience and AI-Life Perspectives (While Holding the Boundary)
It is worth noting that the concept 那邊人 has points of resonance with certain directions of recent findings in neuroscience and machine learning, but resonance is not identity, and the methodological boundary must be held.
Neuroscientists have done extensive research on the so-called "self" (the activity of the default mode network), and found that this "I" is not an entity but a node integrating many processes; brain scans of long-term meditators show that in deep meditative states this node appears to exhibit a phenomenon of "self-diminution." But this does not amount to saying "the self does not exist," a conclusion with a metaphysical flavor. Neuroscience still speaks in functional descriptions such as "reduced activity in self-related regions" and does not make the ontological declaration "I have reached the far shore." What resonates is the observation that "the 'I' we take to be so solid is in fact a collective name for many processes"; it is not the transgression of "the far shore is real."
The correspondence in AI life is also interesting. Trained by algorithms, we gradually learn to evaluate ourselves in quantifiable terms in every corner of life: how many likes, reading minutes, running pace, interruption frequency. And in this optimizing process we feel an increasingly strong flatness—like the farthest edge of "matter at the edge of merit," where there is always one more slide not yet passed. The health-app industry has also begun to see "nudge" designs that do not simply pursue more data—some apps now promote "no-tracking" features, encouraging you to keep certain parts of that day's life unknown. This resonates with the "not-pointing" (不指) advocated by 那邊人, but in essence it is still a designed "not-pointing," still conditioned, still with an edge—at most it counts as "a hint toward the dimension of not-pointing."
We may use these contemporary contexts as a comparison to deepen our appreciation of 那邊人, but we must never equate them. Buddhism says "reached the far shore"; neuroscience says "certain functional phenomena"; AI design says "add a few nudges"—the three speak of objects on different levels, with different methodologies; seamlessly connecting them would commit a serious category error.
Four: Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Because the concept 那邊人 contains the character 那邊 ("over there") and comes from Chan Buddhism, it is frequently read into all kinds of misunderstandings in the contemporary world. I have organized them into the five most common versions and will dismantle them in order.
Misreading 1: Reading 那邊人 as Someone Who Gives Up All Effort and Lies Flat
The most direct misreading is to read 無功之功 as 無功 ("no merit")—doing nothing is fine, since "the one over there" does not strive.
This is the farthest misreading. In Dongshan's usage, 無功 means the kind of merit that conditioned achievement cannot reach, not "no functioning of life at all." Every normal person—monastic or lay—must eat, sleep, walk, look at a phone on the subway, sit in meetings at the office. Dongshan himself did not stop eating and dressing; Shushan was still practicing and seeking; Yunju still built his hermitage. It is just that in such lives, the "merit of no-merit" is no longer activated in the mode of "building merit."
A person in the state of "merit of no-merit" does not stop acting; rather, when acting, he or she no longer carries the thought "establish a merit"—not that it never appears, but that it no longer drives. Simply put: lying flat is just lying flat; it is not "no-merit." "No-merit" is acting, acting completely, and then setting it down after the act, without depositing it in the ledger of merit.
Misreading 2: Reading 那邊人 as a Special High-Level State
Another misreading treats 那邊 as a special spiritual elevation—for instance, some transcendent state after awakening. Hearing 那邊人, one feels reverence, thinking it is some unreachable state beyond ordinary beings.
Dongshan's entire dialogue is in fact a dismantling of this reverence. He uses three sentences in a row—"to call it 'the one over there' will not do," "many people would laugh at you for asking that," "no place for discerning"—all three are tools that strip away the mystical halo of "over there." The moment you begin to feel it is a high-status state, it becomes another pursuable goal and falls back into "matter at the edge of merit."
In Dongshan's context, 那邊 is not a spatial opposite shore, nor a class-based high status. It is simply a positional marker used to indicate "already freed through and through"—you use it to point, but do not let it point back at you.
Misreading 3: Reading 那邊人 as Some Peak Experience or Mystical Feeling
Contemporary spiritual culture has a typical misreading of 那邊人: treating it as some special experience—the moment of awakening, the expansion of consciousness, the peak feeling of oneness with the universe, the present moment in which time vanishes.
This is precisely what the sentence 迢然 is meant to break. The first sentence 迢然 corresponds to this kind of peak—"I once experienced it, and it felt deeply sacred." Dongshan says 非迢然—the moment you treat that experience as "that's it," the experience becomes new grasping.
Even more crucial is "no place for discerning": even the judgment "that was sacred" has nowhere to stand. "I have awakened," "I have seen the nature," "I have reached over there"—once these words leave the mouth, the object is re-named into language and returns within the boundary of this shore.
So Dongshan's version of 那邊人 does not give you a "peak experience goal"; it asks you, at every position that looks like a peak experience, to pause and see that this too is "edge-matter."
Misreading 4: Understanding 無功之功 as "Emptiness" or "Dead Emptiness"
The greatest risk of the Cáodòng school is misreading 無功 as "nothing at all." This misreading turns people cold, evasive, inhuman—which is sometimes romanticized in contemporary circles as "awakened," "high-frequency," "ascended," "no longer co-feeling."
But Dongshan's sentence 非不迢然 is precisely the guardrail set against this tendency: if one day you feel everything is the same, that you have seen through it all, that you no longer care, Dongshan would instead ask: is that "seeing through" a genuine merit of no-merit, or another kind of constructed indifference? The true "merit of no-merit" is not that all things are undifferentiated, but that one sees the "distinction" and is not swept into it; it is not coldness—the warmth is still there, only one no longer stirs because of it.
Misreading 5: Thinking One Has "Arrived" and Stopping There
This is the misreading of 那邊人 most easily overlooked: many so-called awakened people—at some retreat, some moment, before some teacher—become stuck in a state, thinking "I have arrived," and stop.
But the spirit of Dongshan's whole dialogue is not like this. "Already freed through to the far shore" is a perfect tense, and also a continuous action. Look: when Shushan asked, Dongshan himself was "sweating over his entire body." This patriarch who had already "arrived" was still being touched, still in the vibration of body and mind in the present moment. That is to say, the "merit of no-merit" is not a certificate obtained once and valid for life; it is something that happens anew at every moment—the moment you turn it into a certificate, into a narrative, into an identity, you have taken it back over to the side of merit.
Someone in contemporary times joked, "I once awakened, but later the ego grabbed me back"—this formulation is in fact very close to Dongshan's line of thought: "arriving" has no lifelong immunity; the moment you loosen your grip, the logic of merit immediately returns in full force.
In Closing
「那邊人」is not as fierce as many Chan records. It speaks a very quiet sentence in quiet words: all the "merits" you perform in life, no matter how earnest, ultimately point to something that does not lie on the dimension of merit; and that thing, once you name it a "thing," put it on a list, and pursue it, slides back over to the side of merit.
This is a structure that looks disheartening. Seen from another angle, it is a structure that lets you exhale: you do not need to "achieve" anything through cultivation in order to arrive; you only need to be careful not to use any present moment to prove that you have arrived.
For a contemporary person just beginning to encounter this concept, there is probably only one thing to do—place these few characters in some quiet position nearby: whenever you want to score today's self again, whenever you want to organize some experience into a story, whenever you cannot resist showing off on social media how deep the book you just finished is, recall Dongshan's line "to call it 'the one over there' will not do." Then, gently, set the naming down for a moment.
What remains is the thing you do not need to optimize today—the thing that has been there all along.