非風非幡 hifū hihan Not the Wind, Not the Flag

非 is not, 風 the wind, and 幡 a banner or flag. A Japanese translation of 1921 explains the flag of the case as the one a temple raises when the Dharma is preached. The case itself writes the longer 不是風動, it is not the wind moving; the title drops the verb. Two readings are printed: hifū hihan, in the ruby of books printed from 1915 to 1929, among them the Japanese translation of the Mumonkan of 1921, and hifū hiban, in a Buddhist dictionary of 1936.

Mochizuki Shinkō's Buddhist dictionary, in its printing of 1936, enters the phrase as the name of a kōan … in which the Sixth Patriarch Enō, by way of the wind and the banner, shows the principle that all things are without self-nature.

In the 無門關 Mumonkan, The Gateless Gate, the forty-eight cases the Chan master Mumon Ekai compiled in 1228, case 29 is headed 非風非幡: the wind lifted the temple flag. Two monks were arguing, one saying the flag moved, one saying the wind moved; back and forth, they never reached the principle. The Patriarch said: it is not the wind moving, it is not the flag moving; your mind is moving. The two monks were struck with awe. Mumon's comment goes one step further: it is not the wind moving, not the flag moving, not the mind moving. Where do you see the Patriarch?

The story is older than the book. A biography of Enō that counts its years to 781 has four men argue over a banner through the night; in a telling of 952, two of a lecturer's audience argue it; and the telling of 1004 is the first of these three that says two monks. The words given the Patriarch change from text to text: the person's mind moves of itself (781), your own mind moves (952), what moves is one's own mind (1004).

The four characters stand in a sermon of 普崇 of 阿育王山, printed in a lamp record compiled before 1208. The master 巴陵 had asked of the Patriarch's two denials, if it is neither wind nor banner, where do you set it down?, and 普崇 answered: not the wind, not the flag: nowhere to set it down.

The third denial was a teaching line before Mumon. Two Song masters put it to their students: 佛眼清遠, who died in 1120, and 大慧宗杲, who says in his recorded sayings, I always ask students: not the wind, not the banner, not the mind; then what?

The 日本大百科全書 Nihon daihyakka zensho sets the dialogue at the temple 法性寺; the telling of 781 sets it at 制旨寺 in Guangzhou. 法性寺 is today 光孝寺 in Guangzhou, where a Banner Hall commemorates the story.

A haikai commentary, which its editors of 1915 date to 1775 while warning that the copies differ and later hands have probably added and cut much, reads Ransetsu's hokku the autumn wind's heart has stirred: a rope blind through the story: it is not the blind moving, not the wind moving: it is the heart of autumn moving.

The first English telling found is Okakura Kakuzō's, in The Book of Tea of 1906: the real movement was neither of the wind nor the flag, but of something within their own minds. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps's The Gateless Gate, first published in 1934 and read in its reprint of 1957, gives the case the title Not the Wind, Not the Flag, but renders Mumon's not the mind moving as the Patriarch's mind is moving, so its comment carries no third denial.

As our history of the phrase reads it, the four characters are not the answer is the mind: they are the first two denials of a sweep whose third denial is the mind, which Mumon's comment says outright.

The title of case 29 of the 無門關 (Mumonkan), compiled by 無門慧開 in 1228, on the Sixth Patriarch's answer to two monks arguing over a temple flag; the story is told from 781, and the four characters are first found as a phrase, in the witnesses read, in a verse in a lamp record compiled before 1208.