I gave this talk on September 7, 2023.

This is Case 1 in The Gateless Gate: 

A monk asked Chao-chou, “Has the dog Buddha nature or not?” 

Chao-chou said, “Mu.” 

I gave a talk in June about seeking and finding meaning.  I ended it with a quote attributed to Bodhidharma, “[T]hat which is real includes nothing worth begrudging.”  And then I said,

Nothing is excluded from the Buddha realm; nothing exists that is not Buddha.

That perspective can create some confusion with respect to questions about ethics, justice, and social action.  I’ll try to dispel that confusion in a future talk.  For now, I’ll just say that I think our capacity to respond and engage in the most skillful way possible depends greatly upon a non-conceptual awareness and experience that all is Buddha.

Tonight is that “future talk” in which I want to attempt, however inadequately, to dispel the confusion to which I referred.

So why did I begin tonight’s talk with the Mu koan?

We tend to think of the word Mu itself as the key word in this koan.  In an important sense it is, but another key word in the koan is “has,” or “have,” the verb in the monk’s question, “Does the dog have Buddha nature?”  This word is the reason Chao-chou reacts as he does.  It’s the reason he exclaimed Mu, and so the reason generations of Zen practitioners like us have been working with the Mu koan.

Erich Fromm, an important 20^th century psychologist, philosopher, and social theorist and activist, distinguished between two modes of existence, having mode and being mode.

In having mode, one is consciously or unconsciously relating to other beings and things as objects and subtly or not so subtly treating them as instruments in relation to oneself and one’s objectives.  Notice that word objectives.

Ironically, this can happen even when one’s objectives seem noble, righteous, and just.  We can figure our own causes and purposes as “higher objects” to an unhealthy extent; we can idolize them.  We can elevate noble ends, whether enlightenment or saving the planet, as objects to such an extent that most other beings and things and causes are beneath our cause-objects.  We tend to think of money and drugs and fame and such as the sorts of things we are most likely to objectify in unwholesome ways, but we can do this even with things and causes we tend to regard positively. 

The monk who visits Chao-chou objectifies the dog, himself, and Buddha nature with his question about whether the dog has Buddha nature.  The question misses the oneness dimension of the interpenetrating, oneness-amidst-distinctions nature of reality.  The monk’s question implies hard ontological and existential separation.  It implies that the dog might somehow be cut off from Buddha nature.  The monk fails to see that the dog is Buddha nature and that Buddha nature, however it manifests, is not an object.  The monk is asking the question from having mode, even using the verb “to have” in his question.  This is why Chao-chou exclaims, “Mu!” 

In “being mode,” one relates to others and oneself as distinct but not separate.  Others have different attributes, capabilities, and perspectives, and different injuries and blind spots, but they’re not objects that can become instruments for pursuing one’s objectives.

Dōgen calls being mode coming at life from the Buddha side.

Our existence within having mode can be quite subtly persistent.  Having mode can continue to have us for a very long time after one begins to develop insight and even has a profound kenshō experience.  To be very clear, Zen teachers aren’t immune from this. 

One of the most subtle and confusing realms in which having mode can continue to have us is the realm of our justice projects, as I suggested a moment ago.  We can pursue good causes too righteously and with an obvious or poorly concealed hostility that objectifies and instrumentalizes others, our adversaries, and sometimes even our allies.

I think it was 1996 when I first heard the beautiful, wrenching, challenging poem Please Call Me by My True Names, which Paul, our Ino, read earlier tonight.  I believe that’s the year it was first published.  I was a student at Harvard Divinity School.  One of my professors, Diana Eck, a famous comparative religion scholar, had assigned it in a class I took.

The poet seems to be identifying equally—not seems, he clearly is identifying equally—with the starving child and the warmonger, the girl who has been raped and the rapist, the political prisoner and the corrupt politician.  As you can imagine, this poem sparked a lot of intense debate in our class.

From one perspective this poem seems to promote, or at least justify, quietism.  Contemplative religious traditions—and I do think Zen qualifies as one in a particular sense—sometimes are criticized as encouraging navel-gazing passivity in the face of injustice.

But, of course, the poet here is none other than the Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, whose name is synonymous with Engaged Buddhism; with Buddhism’s turn toward social action.  During the Vietnam War, Thay, as he was called—Thay just means teacher, like our Soto Zen word Sensei—was one of those monks who ventured beyond the monastery to help and protect those outside it, and to protest the war.  Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work and peace activism.

So what is going on here?  Thich Nhat Hanh clearly was not not neutral about things going on around him.  He was not living in a some relativistic, value-free zone.  He was no passive bystander to injustice.

How does someone both write this poem and speak truth to power, as he clearly did?

Perhaps the question one really should ask is how else can one speak truth to anyone with any hope of being heard and achieving lasting, positive change?  With any hope of dampening flames, or even extinguishing the fire, as opposed to fighting with flames of one’s own that incinerate what they touch? 

Through his writing, activism, and other activities, Thich Nhat Hanh provided us with one remarkably positive example of how to approach injustice “from the Buddha side,” as Dōgen put it.  From the perspective of oneness, of wholeness, of integration, of nonseparation.  He was channeling the Buddha’s words and example, as expressed in *An Unending Truth, which Paul also read earlier.  Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, read in the light of his life work, is a profound expression of Buddha nature in its most mature and compassionate presentation.

Martin Luther King himself struggled mightily with questions about means and ends as he advocated for racial justice.  Even as his civil rights activism became increasingly more assertive toward the end of his tragically-shortened life, love for others—not least of all those he sought to influence—remained his guiding principle.**  King didn’t regard or treat those he sought to influence, including those who fought to maintain the status quo or who embraced his vision but wanted him to be less assertive, as objects.  His flame illuminated, first and foremost, and, yes, at times, it also generated some heat.  But it did not scorch, let alone incinerate, what it touched.  

King understood that means and ends are not separate.  He understood the means are ends.  He strived to avoid undue harm as he worked to address specific harms.  He engaged in activism from being mode, not having mode.

Even in the later, more assertive stages of his work as an activist, King continued to seek consensual outcomes.  That remained his prime and ultimate goal.  Even though his activism clearly exposed how many white people still regarded and treated black people as objects, he knew that treating those white people as objects would neither change hearts and minds nor promote any form of lasting, positive change.  He knew two wrongs truly never make a right.

So the first koan most of us take up, which seems to point to something we’ve been missing about the nature of reality, is also very much about grounding our actions in the ground of being.  That is where our actions have their most secure moral foundation.

I hope what I’ve said tonight helps clarify why I said earlier that our capacity to respond and engage in the most skillful way possible depends greatly upon a non-conceptual awareness and experience that all is Buddha.  It depends upon a shift from having mode to being mode.  Buddha nature is something we are, not something we have, and the depth of our embodied recognition of this greatly influences not just the moral quality of the ends we pursue, but also the moral quality of the manner in which we pursue them.

* An Unending Truth (by Shakyamuni Buddha, from the Dhammapada; tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu; adapted, abridged) 

Phenomena are preceded by the heart, ruled by the heart, made of the heart. If you speak or act with a darkened heart, then suffering follows you—as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox that pulls it. 

Phenomena are preceded by the heart, ruled by the heart, made of the heart. If you speak or act with a calm, bright heart, then happiness follows you, like a shadow that never leaves. 

“That person insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me”—for those who brood on this, hostility isn’t stilled.

“That person insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me” for those who don’t brood on this, hostility is stilled. 

Hostilities aren’t stilled through hostility, regardless. Hostilities are stilled through non-hostility: this is an unending truth.

Unlike those who don’t realize we’re here on the verge of perishing, those who do: their quarrels are stilled. 

** See Livingston, Alexander. 2020. Power for the Powerless: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Late Theory of Civil Disobedience. The Journal of Politics 82(2): 700-713.