I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen sunrise sit on Friday, August 25, 2023. I’ve posted a recording of it below.
This is a poem by Ryōkan, a Zen hermit who lived in the 19th century:
Relying upon a finger, we see the moon
Relying upon the moon, we understand the finger.
Moon and finger
Are neither the same nor different.
This expedient analogy is for guiding beginners.
Having seen reality as it is,
There is neither moon nor finger.
The famous parable about not mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself comes from the early Buddhist sutras (the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra and the Śuraṅgama Sūtra). The Buddha is explaining to Ananda that his teachings are pointers to mind, or absolute reality, and are not to be mistaken with that to which they’re pointing. He’s saying, “I use words and concepts as a skillful means to an end that’s beyond words and concepts. Don’t get lost in the weeds.”
The Buddha wants to help people realize and center themselves in the reality of nonseparation as their lived experience, not merely as an idea. He uses this metaphor to raise awareness of our tendency to over-intellectualize in the context of spiritual practice—to get tangled up in concepts—much as we do in other contexts.
The finger and moon metaphor is one of those teachings that later helps spawn the idea that Zen involves a special transmission beyond words and scriptures. And that idea is a close cousin of the Mahayana Buddhist notion that there are two truths; that there’s a relative reality and an Absolute reality, as we express that idea in the Zen tradition.
As we know, of course, Zen also insists that these two truths are one truth. The relative and the Absolute are one and the same reality. We begin our journeys thinking there must be something more than relative reality, but we discover that something more as the palm of our hand. We discover that something more through a shift in our perspective about ordinary experience, and now we know the seeming two truths as one truth.
Like the Buddha, Dōgen, the 13th century founder of our Soto Zen stream, also was concerned about how his contemporaries seemed to get lost in words and ideas. He was so troubled by this that, after years studying with the leading Buddhist teachers in Japan in that era, he traveled to China in search of an authentic teacher.
Dōgen spent years in China interacting with different teachers but was similarly disappointed with most of them. He nearly gave up and returned home, but finally met Rujing who, for Dōgen, embodied the teachings, rather than merely trafficking in ideas. Dōgen had a powerful awakening during his time with Rujing.
Paradoxically, Dōgen’s awakening was a portal for him into a new relationship with words and letters. He returned to Japan and wrote prolifically, both prose and poetry. His use of language is so creative, it’s sometimes hard to tell which is which. More than any Buddhist teacher before him—at least among those who left an extensive record—Dōgen understood and uttered words simultaneously as skillful means and as the thing itself.
Anyone who encounters his words begins to experience the finger as the moon. For example, Dōgen famously writes that:
“Studying the Buddha way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is to shed the body-mind of oneself, and those of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.”
The last line of Ryōkan’s poem, [t]here is neither moon nor finger,” can be mistaken as a negation of both moon and finger. It’s really an affirmation of both—and of their complete unity. They’re not separate things. They’re inseparable features of this seamless, boundless realm. Don’t slander them by denying their existence, but don’t slander them by saying they’re solid, fixed, separate things either.
So let’s take our words seriously. The words we chant are it. The words in the emails we’ll write later today are it. The words we speak to a loved one when we’re frustrated are it. The Absolute, manifest. The ultimately real is just this. Our experience is ultimately real, so let’s “mach’s gut”—make it good, as the Germans say.
No hands but these hands. No voice but our voices. No words but our words.
Our words are deeds on which we stand. We are the beneficiaries of our words.
Turning Words 