What this concept is really saying
If you walk into a Chan/Zen monastery of the Tang–Song era and overhear a monk ask a master, "How is it when one goes further up?" — "如何是向上事" — the question sounds almost casual. But it is the most dangerous question in the hall, because every possible answer, including the answer that says "there is no answer," has already been thought of, packaged, and stuck on a shelf. The phrase 向上事 (literally, "the matter that lies upward / further up / above") is the Chan masters' technical name for what happens when a practitioner has already exhausted the entire map of stages, words, and opposites — and yet *something is still pressing*. That pressing is what 向上事 names. It is not a higher stage. It is not a deeper teaching. It is what is revealed precisely when the whole apparatus of "stages, words, and opposites" lets go.
The sources across the three classical collections — 《景德傳燈錄》 (*Jingde Chuandenglu*, *Records of the Transmission of the Lamp*), 《古尊宿語錄》 (*Guzunsu Yulu*, *Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies*), and 《圓悟佛果禪師語錄》 (*Yuanwu Foguo Chanshi Yulu*, *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Yuanwu Foguo*, the teacher of 圓悟克勤 / Yuanwu Keqin, compiler of the famous *Biyan lu* 碧巖錄) — converge on a remarkably consistent description. They tell us that 向上事 has at least four essential edges, and a master must work at the seam of all four at once.
**1. It is *above* the stages (超越階級).** In one of the most cited cases, when a monk at 徑山洪諲 (Jingshan Hongyin) asked, "If one penetrates the Dragon Gate without wind or thunder — what then?" the master answered, "That is still a first or second grade." When the monk pointed out, "That is a graded stage," and pushed further — "What about the upward matter?" — the master replied, "I do not know your Dragon Gate." Yuanwu Keqin sums it up bluntly: 向上事 is "逈出三乘，高超十地" — "utterly beyond the Three Vehicles, towering above the Ten Grounds." In other words: the bodhisattva who has climbed through all ten stages, the arhat who has finished what can be finished, the Chan adept who has cut through the patriarchs' cases — all of these are *still inside the map*. The upward matter is what the map cannot contain. The classic formulation is "向上一路，千聖不傳" — "The upward road: not transmitted by a thousand sages." (Yuanwu Foguo Chanshi Yulu; this line is also the basis of the celebrated opening exchange preserved in Chan literature.)
**2. It is *above* speech (超越言詮).** When a monk asked 翠巖永明 (Cuiyan Yongming), "Every word and phrase is a stain — what is the upward matter?" the master answered with the monk's very own question: "Every word and phrase is a stain." 雪峰義存 (Xuefeng Yicun) once told a monk, "Why don't you say out the upward matter?" — and before the monk's mouth could open, Xuefeng hit him. 龍峻山 (Longjunshan) said, "Not knowing good and evil, what 'upward matter' are you talking about?" The point is not that 向上事 is "ineffable" in the romantic sense — that is itself another concept, and a comfortable one. The point is sharper: as soon as the mouth moves, you have already stepped *downward*. The very attempt to formulate it has fallen below it.
**3. It is *above* the two sides of any opposition (超越二途對待).** When the monk at 台州六通院志球 (Liutong Yuan Zhiqiu) asked, "Setting aside the two paths, is there still an upward matter?" the master answered, "A thousand disciples, ten thousand disciples, of clouds and water." Yuanwu Keqin gives the formula: "語是誑，默是謗；語默向上有事在" — "Speech is deception, silence is slander; beyond speech and silence, there is a matter." This is one of the most quoted lines in the entire *Yulu* tradition, and it does something quite specific: it refuses to let you escape into either pole. You cannot find it in mystical silence any more than in profound speech. You cannot find it in affirmation any more than in negation. The upward matter is what is *not yet* any of these — and yet is not "no thing" either.
**4. It is *cut off* in the live exchange (截斷思惟).** This is the operational edge. 向上事 is not a doctrine one contemplates; it is a move that happens *in the middle of the question*. The masters do not teach it; they enact it. Xuefeng's blow, 睡龍山道溥 (Shuilongshan Daopu)'s knock on the door-frame, the simple word 「眨」 ("blink"), 布袋和尚 (Budai / the Cloth Bag Monk) heaving the questioner onto his back and walking off — these are not rhetorical flourishes. They are the matter itself, in action. A master might also say something perfectly ordinary ("Listen clearly" / 分明聽取), and that ordinariness, timed just so, *is* the upward matter. As 《古尊宿語錄》 puts it: "知有向上事，始有語話分" — "Only when one knows there is an upward matter can there be talk of words and phrases." Even this, however, is verified not by a definition but by a test: in the same source, Xuefeng, after saying this, lifts a monk's hand and asks, "What is it like?" The monk has no words. *That* is the test.
The classical sources also push us to see that 向上事 is not the opposite of ordinary life. Yuanwu Keqin says: "All day eating, never having bitten a single grain of rice. All day dressing, never having hung a single thread. All day speaking, never having moved the tongue." The wording sounds paradoxical, but its direction is clear: 向上事 is what is already happening when you stop counting. The moment of unmuddled action, the moment before the self-editing begins, the moment after the story has stopped — that is the upward matter showing itself. It is not a hidden thing; it is what is hidden by everything else.
Finally, the sources draw a careful line of precedence. 向上事 is placed *above* 祖師西來意 (the First Patriarch's meaning in coming from the West); it is placed *above* 毗盧法身 (Vairocana, the Dharmakaya) — the 《古尊宿語錄》 even has a special form, 「毗盧向上事」, where a master says, "The old monk is under your feet," upending the usual hierarchy to show that you cannot reach it by going up the ladder of buddhas. It is also *not* the same as 宗旨 (the school-specific "point" or "purpose"): a monk asks "How far is the Zen way?" and then "What is the upward matter?" and is told "seven blows against thirteen" — a deliberately disorienting answer that refuses to let the question even settle into a comparison. The line is consistent throughout: at the moment a position is taken — even the most refined spiritual position — that is exactly the moment one has stepped away from 向上事.
So when we put the four edges together, what 向上事 names is: what is fully present at the moment all stages, all words, and all opposites have been allowed to fall away — and yet is not "nothing," not "silence," not "ineffability" either. It is the most rigorous negative space in the entire Chan vocabulary, and the masters are extremely insistent that it is not a destination, not a transmission, not a stage of any kind.
Life walk-through: where do you actually feel this?
It is tempting to leave 向上事 in the monastery, because every attempt to bring it down to the everyday seems to sully it — which is exactly the point the masters are making. But the masters are not telling us to abandon life. They are telling us to notice the seam in life. Let's walk through a few scenes that you have probably already lived.
Scene 1: The career ladder that has nowhere left to climb. You have done the work. You have the title, the salary, the recognition. From the outside, you have arrived. And yet some nights, standing in the kitchen with a glass of water, you feel a strange flatness — not depression exactly, not discontent, but a kind of *pressing* that has no name. You cannot name what is missing, because by every metric nothing is missing. This is the moment the masters are pointing at. The first-grade-and-second-grade stage has been climbed. The Dragon Gate has been penetrated. And yet the question is still there: *What about the upward matter?* 径山洪諲's answer is the right one: "I do not know your Dragon Gate." The upward matter is not the next rung. It is what shows up *precisely when there is no next rung to look at*. The pressing itself, fully met, is the matter.
Scene 2: The spiritual achievement that has been achieved. Suppose you have meditated for years, sat many retreats, had experiences of light, stillness, spaciousness, even no-self. You can describe them competently. You have read the *Heart Sutra*'s "照見五蕴皆空，度一切苦厄" — "clearly seeing that the five aggregates are empty, crossing over all suffering" (《般若波羅蜜多心經》 *Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya Sūtra*) — and you feel you have a taste of it. And then a teacher — or life itself — asks: are you still carrying a subtle *someone* who has seen this? Even "no-self" can become a position. Even "spacious" can become a place. Even "I am awareness" is, in the old Chan phrasing, a fabrication of consciousness. This is the seam the masters are calling the upward matter. The liberation you have *attained* is itself a stage to be released — not devalued, not denied, but *gone through*. Yuanwu Keqin says it bluntly: even 光境俱忘 (light and object both forgotten), even 契心平等 (the heart matching equality) — these are still not the final point. "Discussion cannot bring it out."
Scene 3: The argument that suddenly drops. You are in a long argument with a partner, a sibling, a colleague. Both sides are marshaled. The points are landing. And then, for no reason, something in the room shifts. You both stop. You look at each other. Neither of you says, "I won." Neither says, "I lost." The argument is not *resolved*; it has simply *fallen away*. There is a beat of silence in which you can see the other person as a person again, not as a position. This beat is very close to what the masters mean by 向上事. It cannot be willed. It cannot be argued into. It cannot be *talked* about without being lost. And yet, when it happens, both parties know it has happened. The classical line 语是诳，默是谤 / 语默向上有事在 is right here: you cannot plan it as a "speech," and you cannot plan it as a "silence." It is the third thing that is not yet named.
Scene 4: The toddler's "why?" regress. A four-year-old asks, "Why is the sky blue?" You answer. "Why?" You answer. "Why?" You answer. "But why?" Eventually you either laugh, or pick the child up, or simply point out the window together. At that moment, you are no longer *explaining*; you are *being with*. The regress of reasons has been cut off — not by a better reason, but by a shift in register. This is the small, household version of 截断思惟 — "cutting off the thought-train." The masters do this not with babies but with trained meditators who are still inside the thought-train.
Scene 5: The relationship that suddenly works again. You have been trying, for years, to "get the relationship right" — the right communication style, the right boundaries, the right vulnerability. And then one ordinary evening, you stop trying. You are simply there. The room is the room. The other person is the other person. Whatever happens next happens. It is often the most intimate moment in years. This is the seam the masters keep pointing at: 終日喫飯不曾咬著一粒米 ("All day eating, never having bitten a single grain of rice") — the unmuddled, uncounted, unstoried version of the same activity you have been doing all along.
A word of caution, because the masters would want it said: noticing these moments is not the same as *being* in them. As soon as you start collecting them, naming them, putting them in a "spiritual experiences" folder — they have already become stages. The masters' teaching is not "have more of these moments." Their teaching is that the moments were never missing. The pressing itself is the matter.
Why contemporary people, specifically, need this concept
Our era has a peculiar relationship with the ladder. We have, in many ways, more rungs than any previous culture: educational stages, professional stages, wellness stages, spiritual stages. There is a tier for almost every level of human development, and an industry attached to each rung. The market is happy to sell you the next step, and the next. The very structure of contemporary self-understanding is *gradualist* — we are, almost without noticing, inside what the Chan sources call 階級 / 品位 (stages and grades). The risk of this is not that we climb badly. The risk is that we mistake *climbing* for the whole of reality. The 向上事 teaching is the antidote precisely because it does not propose another rung. It says: there is a matter that is not on any rung, and you already know about it; you just keep mistaking it for the next rung.
This is a real problem in contemporary spiritual culture. There are teachers who teach "the highest state." There are traditions that promise "final liberation in this lifetime." There is a whole ecosystem of progress-markers — kundalini awakenings, non-dual glimpses, "dharma" levels, "stage X" of the path. Some of these are useful. None of them are 向上事, and 向上事 is not "the next one above them." It is the matter that is *already* at the bottom of the ladder, the floor on which every rung is built. 圆悟克勤's image is precise: "萬丈懸崖須撒手" — "At a cliff of ten thousand fathoms, one must let go." The letting-go is not a new technique. It is what has been missing the whole time you were looking for a technique.
There is also a specifically modern shadow: the information shadow. We have more words, more teachings, more translations of the *Heart Sutra*, more commentary on Yuanwu Keqin, more podcasts on the *Upaya*, more takes on "what the masters really meant" than any previous century. And yet, 翠巖永明's answer is still right: "凡有言句盡是點污" — "Every word and phrase is a stain." The internet has not produced the upward matter; it has produced more downward descriptions of it. The teaching of 向上事 is not anti-information, but it is a strong quiet reminder: more information is not the answer to what is pressing in you. The pressing is not a knowledge-gap. It is not a vocabulary-gap. It is the very thing that opens when you stop accumulating.
There is a third, quieter, perhaps more important reason. The contemporary self is exhausted by comparison. Even people who have rejected external comparison often build internal ones: am I more mindful than I was? Is my awakening deeper than my friend's? The 向上事 teaching cuts this off at the root, not by saying "don't compare" (which is itself another comparison), but by saying: at the level of the upward matter, comparison does not apply. "吾不知有汝龍門" — "I do not know your Dragon Gate." Even a master's penetrating insight, framed as a stage, is *not known from the side of 向上事*. The relief this offers is real. It is the relief of being told that the very project of self-improvement, at its innermost layer, was never the whole story.
Finally, the teaching of 向上事 is one of the few in the Buddhist tradition that does not ask the practitioner to add anything. It does not ask for more practice, more vows, more study, more renunciation. It asks for the precise thing contemporary people are most afraid of: to be *without* the next thing to do. To stand, with a glass of water, in the kitchen, in the pressing that has no name, and *not* reach for the next rung. This is not laziness. The masters are among the most strenuous practitioners in religious history. But the very strenuousness is, in the end, *for the sake of this* — for the moment when striving, even spiritual striving, can stop being the central activity.
Common misreadings, and the clarifying edges
Misreading 1: "It must be the very highest state, the ultimate attainment." This is the most common, and the one the classical sources most directly attack. 径山洪諲's case is unambiguous: even the dragon-gate breakthrough is *still a stage*. Yuanwu Keqin is even more direct: "逈出三乘，高超十地" — it is *not* a stage, even the highest. If you can name it as a state you have reached, you have stepped *downward* from it. The whole force of 向上事 is that it is *not* a rung.
Misreading 2: "It is ineffability — we just cannot put it into words." This sounds humble, but it is actually a very comfortable doctrine. It says: the matter is real, mysterious, located somewhere just beyond language, and the appropriate posture is reverent silence. The Chan sources refuse this comfort. "語是誑，默是謗" — *speech* is deception, *but so is silence*. 向上事 is not on the side of silence either. The famous Budai move — heaving the questioner onto his back and walking off — is *not* silence. The blow Xuefeng gives is *not* silence. The single word "眨" is *not* silence. The upward matter cuts through *both* the temptation to speak and the temptation to be silent. The mistake is to think you have arrived at it because you have stopped talking.
Misreading 3: "It is a special experience one has during intensive practice — a flash, a kenshō, a satori." A kenshō or an opening experience may *coincide* with a moment when 向上事 is showing itself, but the two are not the same. The moment any experience is taken as "I had it," it has become a stage, with a self who had it, and a memory of having had it. Yuanwu Keqin's warning applies: even 立地成佛 ("instantly becoming a buddha while standing") is "建法幢，立宗旨之趣向" — a tendency toward erecting dharma-banners and establishing a school-line. 向上事 cannot be erected, cannot be school-lined. If your "special experience" can be described in three sentences at a dinner party, it is, by definition, not 向上事.
Misreading 4: "It is something the master transmits and the student receives." The classic line is exactly the opposite: "向上一路，千聖不傳" — "The upward road: not transmitted by a thousand sages." No lineage, no matter how honored, no matter how directly traced to Bodhidharma, can transmit this. The master's blows and shouts and strange answers are not transmission; they are *provocations* — ways of cutting off the thought-train so that, just possibly, the matter can show itself. The 「明向上事」 usages in 《古尊宿語錄》 (where a master points to a particular response as having "illumined the upward matter") are recognition, not transmission. You can recognize a moment when 向上事 was showing, but the showing itself is not a packet that gets handed over.
Misreading 5: "It is a rejection of the path, of practice, of discipline." This is the mirror-image misreading, and it is equally wrong. Yuanwu Keqin is explicit: at the level of 向上事, "理、事、行、照、用、權、實俱絕" — principle, phenomena, practice, illumination, function, provisional, real are *all cut off* — but this is not nihilism. The same source immediately says: "All day eating, never having bitten a single grain of rice. All day dressing, never having hung a single thread. All day speaking, never having moved the tongue." The cutting-off is in the *counting*, not in the *activity*. Practicing, studying, sitting — these continue, and are not invalidated. What is invalidated is the project of *accumulating them into a self who has arrived*.
Misreading 6: "Once you've understood this, you're done." This is the most subtle misreading, and the masters' answer to it is implicit throughout. Yuanwu Keqin says that even 石頭、馬祖、百丈、黃檗、臨濟、雲門 — the great ancestral teachers of the Tang dynasty — are 向上宗師 ("ancestral teachers of the upward matter"). They did not understand it once and retire. They enacted it, in every encounter, for a lifetime. The 向上事 is not a possession. It is more like the *air in the room*: it is here before you arrive, it is here after you leave, and you cannot store it. The question is not whether you have it. The question is whether you can stop, even for a moment, the project of *having*.
A closing image
If the language of stages and attainments is a ladder leaning against a wall, then 向上事 is not the top of the ladder, nor the bottom, nor the wall the ladder leans on. It is the person climbing — *as climbing* — that the masters are pointing at. Not the height reached, not the rung beneath the foot, but the very activity of climbing, when it stops being a project and starts being a movement. The masters' blows, their strange answers, their walking off, their laughter — these are not different paths to the top. They are ways of shaking the ladder so gently that, for a moment, you forget you are on it. In that forgetting, the climbing was never a climb. The kitchen, the glass of water, the pressing that has no name, are all that there is. The masters called this matter 向上事, and added, in the same breath, that the name itself is already a stain on it.