Category: Koans
The Emperor has clothes, after all
This is an approximation of a Dharma talk I gave on March 6, 2014 at the Boundless Way Temple in Worcester, Massachusetts, during the Boundless Way Zen meta-sangha’s three-week Ango retreat. Audio recordings of this talk and others given by BoWZ teachers are posted here.
Emperor Wu of Liang invited Mahasattva Fu to lecture on the Diamond Sutra. On the rostrum, Mhasattva Fu struck the lectern once with his stick and immediately climbed down. The emperor was astounded.
Master Zhi asked, “Your Majesty, do you understand?”
“No, I do not.”
“Mahasattva Fu has finished the lecture.”
(Blue Cliff Record, Case 67)
I began looking for a koan to use as the launchpad for this talk about a week ago.
I poked around the koan territory I’ve been wandering in recently. Not finding much inspiration there, I went back to the earliest koans in the miscellaneous collection and worked my way forward to where I’ve been wandering lately. Still nothing, so I even peeked ahead of the koan I’ll next bring to dokusan.
No single koan lept out during this exercise, declaring, “Pick me.” Hmm.
What did leap out, however, were two themes that seem to me to run through our whole koan curriculum, so I thought I’d make them the subject of my talk tonight. I mainly want to talk about the second of these themes, but I need to touch on the first to set up the second. I’ll come back to Mahasattva Fu’s lecture on the Diamond Sutra when I get there.
The first theme . . .
Surveying the koan curriculum brought home to me more than ever how it — and the Zen project writ large, I suppose — is, in part, about exploring our relationship with real and perceived constraints.
Many of our early koans seem to challenge one’s current perceptions of what’s possible, and so challenge us to take a closer look at what we experience as constraints.
Stop the sound of that distant temple bell.
Count the number of stars in the heavens.
Say something without moving your lips or tongue.
Some koans even use metaphors of physical entrapment.
You are at the bottom of a 200-foot dry well. What do you do?
Many of us, perhaps most of us, come to Zen feeling trapped somehow.
Some part of me cut off from another part of myself.
A mind or spirit trapped in a body.
A solitary being cut off from the world I inhabit.
One being among many inhabiting a realm that can’t be all there is.
Some type of dualism. Some version of heaven and earth, or heaven and hell.
We’re sure there is someplace else we must get, something more to know. There must be a secret passageway to a place beyond, and we sense that Zen might offer us a map to find it and the key to open the door once we get there.
The early part of the koan curriculum seems to meet us where we’re at in this regard, even as it begins to challenge us to see that the “something more” we’re looking for is just this. The “someplace else” we’re seeking is right here, right now.
The heat is turned up progressively, of course, as we’re challenged in increasingly direct ways. Like this zinger (from the Blue Cliff Record), for example:
A monk said to Dasui, “When the thousands of universes are altogether and utterly destroyed in the kalpa fire — I wonder whether this perishes or not.
“This perishes,” said Dasui.
“If so,” persisted the monk, “does it follow the other.”
“It follows the other,” said Dasui.
Tsssssss!
And so it goes, until we come to the end of the curriculum, where, among other things, we encounter the precepts as koans. Perhaps by then koan practice, and sitting practice, and everyday life practice have helped us let go of some perceived constraints and helped us see constraints we must accept in a new light.
The open secret, of course, is that the freedom we seek is found in the realm of constraints, not someplace else.
There is a “through the looking glass” quality to grasping this open secret, to be sure. As we desperately strain to peer through the glass, what’s on the other side appears faint and blurry. Passing through, I find myself.
Same old me.
Relatively speaking, there seems to be something to get. Absolutely, not so much.
And this brings me to the second theme that seems to run through the koans. . .
Perhaps it’s more of a conceit, or a device, than a theme.
Like the koan I ultimately chose for this talk, the set up for many koans is an exchange between a wise teacher and a seemingly less wise student.
Often there also is a supporting character who is in the know, like Master Zhi in today’s koan. Or Mahakasyapa, the student — and the only person, we’re told — who broke into a smile in the sermon where the Buddha simply twirled a flower.
We might more or less consciously identify with Master Zhi or Mahakasyapa as we pass through one of these koans. We, too, get it.
But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the seeming stooges. The characters who are portrayed as hapless. The characters who just don’t seem to get it.
Sometimes that student is a prominent person, like Emperor Wu of Liang, who also appears in a handful of other koans. These prominent folk tend to fare especially poorly, at least on first blush.
As I surveyed our koan curriculum looking for inspiration for this talk, I found myself really appreciating these characters, the supposed stooges. Even inspired by them.
Here I was, wandering around, looking for inspiration and insight . . . and I find it in other people wandering around, looking for inspiration and insight.
This is where much of the action is in these koans — much of the insight, the invitation and potential for us — I think.
“Not knowing is most intimate,” we like to say. “Only don’t know.”
But is there still a hint of special knowledge in our not knowing?
As long as we’re identifying mainly with Mahasattva Fu or Master Zhi, perhaps there is.
As long as we think we get something Emperor Wu doesn’t, perhaps there is.
We can settle into our not knowing, and this, importantly, may make us a bit less anxious in our approach to life; perhaps relatively free of certain questions with which Emperor Wu is wrestling. Perhaps we’ve come to feel just a bit more at home with ourselves; a bit more at home in this vast universe.
Mahasattva Fu, Master Zhi and, yes, Emperor Wu — each of them, and all of them together, are presenting themselves with integrity. And each is an aspect of who we ultimately are.
I really appreciate how Emperor Wu, or that seemingly clueless student in so many other koans, helps us see how easy it is slip into a frame of mind in which there’s something more to get, something special, and, by god, perhaps we’ve got it.
That frame of mind from which we may overlook our own haplessness and ignorance, and the opportunities presented by those features of life we experience as constraints, as barriers.
If, on the other hand, you happen to be someone who identifies with poor, picked upon Emperor Wu all too easily — well, good for you.
“Emperor Wu was astounded.” What a wonderful response to this.
Not knowing is most intimate.
A koan about religious tolerance (or is it?)
About a year ago, we changed the way we work with koans in BoWZ. Rather than skipping over koans that appear again in later collections, a student now must work with them multiple times.
I’m currently working with Case 65 in the Blue Cliff Record. In John Tarrant’s and Joan Sutherland’s as-yet unpublished translation of the BCR, which James Ford shared with me, the koan is titled “A Philosopher Questions the Buddha.” This koan appears earlier in our progression as case 32 in The Gateless Gate.
Here it is:
An outsider asked the World-Honored One, “I do not ask for the spoken; I do not ask for the unspoken.” The World-Honored One just sat still. The outsider praised him, saying, “The World-Honored One with his great compassion and mercy has opened the clouds of my delusion and enabled me to enter the Way.” He then made bows and took his leave.
Ananda asked, “What did that outsider realize to make him praise you?”
The World-Honored One said, “He is like the fine horse who runs even at the shadow of a whip.”
This koan is very interesting to me at the moment for two reasons.
First, having passed through it quickly before, I stumbled on it this time. I read it the morning I expected to present it to Josh in dokusan, then again that evening, just before we began to sit. In other words, I hadn’t really stepped into it – entered it, and allowed it to enter me – and so my presentation of it in dokuan was off-the-mark, and I didn’t pass through it.
This is a really good reminder that we do not realize something unless we realize it in the moment, even if we’ve realized it before.
This is one way in which we can see the wisdom of working with a koan multiple times.
Second, this is a powerful, early example of religious tolerance in Buddhism. I’m not sure this feature of the koan really hit me the first time around – and so we see another way in which there’s wisdom in working with a koan multiple times.
The World-Honored One is the historical Buddha, of course. Ananda was one of the Buddha’s most senior and respected followers. The Zen tradition regards him as the second Indian patriarch, just one step removed from the Buddha in the (at some points likely mythological) line of transmission that includes all living and departed Zen teachers.
The outsider in this koan was not a follower of the Buddha, not part of the clan. In another translation, the koan is titled “A Hindu Questions the Buddha.” Perhaps this “outsider” stood within the major religious stream within India then, as now.
This outsider clearly gets it, and Ananda, one of the Buddha’s most senior disciples, clearly doesn’t. (Ananda apparently came to his realization very late in life, but he was revered for his big heart and incredible memory. He is credited with preservation of many of the Buddha’s key teachings.) The fact that an “outsider” gets it is clearly fine from the Buddha’s perspective. In yet another translation, the Buddha is said to have been “respectful for a long time” after this man’s opening remark.
(What does the outsider realize? We all need to realize that for ourselves, of course.)
This case seems to me to be making a point about religion and religious boundaries, in addition to other points it’s making. This is the purpose of identifying the Buddha’s interlocutor as an outsider (or a Hindu). Otherwise, why not just start the koan “A man asked the World-Honored One . . .”?
Note that there’s a fourth character in this koan, the narrator (and a fifth, you or me).
The narrator ushers us into “insider vs. outsider” mode almost imperceptibly. It’s so seemingly natural to label people according to their traits, views, and social groups.
But is this really a koan about religious tolerance?
The Buddha doesn’t seem to see this guy through a “my religion, your religion” lens, as the narrator of the koan apparently does (or else playfully entices us to do).
Jesus was not the first Christian, as they say, and here we seem to be seeing that the Buddha was not the first Buddhist.
For the Buddha, this apparently was just an encounter with another human being who saw what he saw.
No religion here, and so no religious tolerance either, one could say.
Just a genuine encounter. Presence.
Appreciation without labels.
Appreciation whatever the labels.
Patience, donkey, patience
I think one goal of koan practice — part of the logic — is to exhaust that seeking part of us that brings one to koan practice in the first place.
This certainly seems true of much of the long mid-section in the Harada-Yasutani curriculum we embrace, which includes the Blue Cliff Record.
I mean, there are just so many koans. It’s bound to take many years to pass through them all, even if one proceeds relatively “quickly.”
One does sort of get the hang of it after a while.
And, fundamentally, all of these many koans teach the same thing – point to that same, always different thing.
This.
Just this.
This overflowing.
There’s this old joke my dad told me when I was a kid. I recently told it to my seven-year old son when he was getting antsy about something.
A sage is riding his donkey from one village to the next.
The donkey, growing weary, asks, “When will we be there?”
The man replies, “Patience, donkey, patience.”
(Actually, my dad, who is – shall we say – a bit rough around the edges, used “jackass” instead of “donkey.” I rather prefer it that way, but my seven-year old wouldn’t have heard anything else if I’d said jackass.)
This goes on and on.
“How much longer,” asks the donkey.
“Patience, donkey, patience.”
On and on.
Eventually my son interrupts. Smiling, because he sort of gets the point by now, he asks, “When is this joke going to end?”
I reply, of course, “Patience, donkey, patience.”
With each koan we encounter, it’s as if the universe is saying, “Same answer. Right here. Why do you keep looking for something else? Something more.”
Just this, donkey.
Just this.
And if and as one progressively opens to this, well, yes, openings . . .
Every koan . . .
Every moment . . .
What’s your hurry?
Why not settle in – settle into this practice, to this life – and stay a while?
There’s no place to go after all.
Zen metaphysics
This koan (case 29 in The Blue Cliff Record) comes about as close to expressing a Zen metaphysics as anything I’ve seen or heard:
A monk said to Dasui, “When the thousands of universes are altogether and utterly destroyed in the kalpa fire—I wonder whether this perishes or not.”
“This perishes,” said Dasui.
“If so,” persisted the monk, “does it follow the other?”
“It follows the other,” said Dasui.
Enough said.
Our playful universe
It’s most wonderful that Yunmen’s Manifestation (Case 27 in The Blue Cliff Record) is the first koan I encountered, and passed through, following my 50th birthday, which was last week:
A monk asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s happening?”
Yunmen replied, “The golden wind is revealing itself.”
Excellent. Excellent.
Life is like that.
After an afterthought
Soon after I walked out of dokusan last night, I realized the right response to the koan I’d just gotten “80% right” (as Josh put it as he suggested I sit with the koan a bit longer).
This often happens: I present a koan that isn’t yet ripe – or, rather, I’m not ripe with the koan – and then it ripens and falls from the tree moments after I’ve left the dokusan room.
I woke up for a moment last night thinking about this. Half-awake, half-asleep, I thought: I wish I could go back to that koan and that meeting.
Then, immediately, another thought: Always a koan. Always a meeting.
Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice
This post is based upon a Dharma Talk I gave on February 4, 2012. During the Boundless Way Zen Winter Ango, each of the Guiding Teachers, Senior Dharma Teachers, and Dharma Teachers is giving a talk on Bodhidharma‘s Outline of Practice. Recordings of our talks can be found online.
Bodhidharma’s Outline of Practice
Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice. To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion. Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason. Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by reason.
To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma.
First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the Path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I’ve turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I’m punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice. The sutras say, ” When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.” With such understanding you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.
Second, adapting to conditions. As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions. If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past. When conditions change, it ends. Why delight in its existence? But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.
Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something — always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with Prosperity. To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.
Fourth, practicing the Dharma. The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “The Dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being, and the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand these truths are bound to practice according to the Dharma. And since that which is real includes nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life, and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift, or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And to eliminate impurity they teach others, but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice they’re able to help others and glorify the Way of Enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all. This is what’s meant by practicing the Dharma. (Translated by Red Pine)
I’ve read Bodhidharma’s little practice manual several times since it was selected as our Ango text a month or so ago. It’s almost impossibly rich. There are so many directions in which one could go in a talk on this text. For a while, I really wasn’t sure where to go myself.
When I first read the piece, however, I had immediate, stream-of-consciousness reactions to each of the five paragraphs describing the two paths Bodhidharma identifies. I jotted down these reactions – each of them a little phrase – in the margin of the text. I ultimately decided just run with them. To use each these little reactions as a launchpad for reflection on the paths Bodhidharma charts for us.
Each paragraph of this text is action packed, so I’ll just tug on a thread here and there.
The Path of Reason
When I read the first paragraph of our text, which is on reason, I thought, “The dog stops chasing its tail.”
Reason as we think of it in the west has this quality of parsing. Of dividing the world into pieces.
This is endlessly useful in a relative sense.
Yet, this slicing and dicing can make us crazy. It does make us crazy, individually and collectively, when we lose the perspective that embraces the whole, unifying the parts.
We can become like dogs chasing our tails when we’re stuck in this parsing mode.
The irony is that the dog thinks it’s chasing something other than itself, when in fact it’s chasing a feature of itself it doesn’t recognize as such. It sees this and that. The dog sees itself as this, and pursues that. Jeff pursues cessation of pain. Pursues happiness. Pursues wisdom. Pursues enlightenment. Pursues his tail. The answer is out there.
To my thinking, Bodhidharma is telling us, with more than a touch of humor and irony, that the tails is us, and we can’t lose it.
I chased my tail for decades in spiritual and other matters, and sometimes still do. I turned down an offer of partnership in a good law firm nearly 20 years ago to do graduate work at Harvard Divinity School, in part, as a strategy for getting answers to life’s questions. I thought I’d get a Ph.D. and become a scholar of comparative religion.
It turned out to be a brilliant move, but not at all for the reasons I expected. I eventually exhausted my search for tidy, rationally satisfying answers –not ended it the way a mathematician ends her work by logically equating one function to another, but literally by exhausting myself from the search.
And that’s when things really started to happen.
For me, Bodhidharma’s wonderful guidance has this quality. Reason isn’t always about making one’s way syllogistically toward an answer.
The “right” answer to a koan often has this non-linear quality. Just like life.
A personal case in point: My dad is rather conservative. When my youngest brother – the other center-left member of our family — or I visit, our father often tries to draw us into debates about politics. Often he succeeds, and this can lead to fireworks – and not the glorious kind we enjoy seeing and hearing on the 4th of July.
I was telling Josh Bartok about this dynamic and, specifically, about an encounter with my dad during a visit this past Thanksgiving. I knew I’d handled the moment poorly, and I was still unsettled about what had happened.
Shortly after we arrived at my parents’ home in Colorado, my dad said, “We’re not going to talk politics this time, Jeff, but you have to answer one question for me: Do you still like Obama?” I smiled, then thought for a minute before venturing a nuanced answer I hoped would create an opening for some genuine, open dialogue:
“It’s a complicated question,” I said. “He’s acted differently in some respects than I expected.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Do you still like him?”
“I’m trying. My answer is nuanced. As with most human beings, he’s done some things I like, and some things I don’t like.”
“You won’t answer the question.”
Sigh. “Yes, on balance, I still like him.”
“He’s a jerk,” my dad said.
I walked away muttering similar expletives.
When Josh heard this story, he asked how I could have approached my dad’s question as a koan. I was stumped – stumped the way I’m often stumped when I’m too close to something, when it’s in my blind spot.
Josh gently slapped me on the back, smiled, and said, “It’s great to see you, Dad.”
Yes. The answer is orthogonal to the question, yet meets it perfectly. So simple.
I don’t intend to denigrate this tail chasing, and I don’t think Bodhidharma does either. It can be very productive; it can lead to something. For many of us, as in my case, that something is a sort of exhaustion, which can create an opening in which we realize what we’re after is not an object of thought – not something we can conceive of. It’s in subject position. The subject encompasses us, and yet isn’t limited to us.
The dog discovers itself.
The Path of Practice
Bodihdharma’s little practice manual breaks the second path – the Path of Practice — down into four practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma
Suffering Injustice
When I read Bodhidharma’s paragraph on the practice of suffering injustice, I thought, “You’re bound to step on a stone from time to time. Just don’t curse the gods when you do.”
I imagine the path of practice as having stones here and there. Some of them are jagged. Every now and then one jabs us through the sole of our shoes, and it hurts.
I don’t see these stones as the natural, personal conditions of existence – old age, illness and death. For me, that’s the subject of Bodhidharma’s next practice, adapting to conditions.
I hear Boddhidharma talking more about the social landscape – the conditions we create for ourselves. This includes our own past transgressions and their karmic effects in the present.
But I also hear Bodhidharma talking about something more diffuse and subtle. Much of our misguided behavior can be traced back to our various human default modes, chief among them the illusion of separateness at the root of our greed, anger and ignorance.
I think Bodhidharma is holding this up for us to see, in ourselves and in others, and he’s inviting us to use it as grist for our mills.
He says, “When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes sense.” Makes sense, how? With so many of us striving to make life conform to our selfish ideals, we’re bound to spend much of our time scheming and railing against the world and one another.
And, he says, “With such understanding you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice you enter the Path.”
When we see through the illusion of separateness, without losing sight of our own and others’ genuine distinctiveness, we’re no longer compelled to try reflexively to make the world conform to our selfish ideals. We see how that impulse is one source of injustice.
But, what does it mean to suffer it? I don’t think Bodhidharma necessarily means we suffer it passively. I suspect he means one now has freedom of choice – choice not to respond tit-for-tat, or else to internalize our feelings of hurt and let them fester and progressively break us down. One has the choice to respond skillfully, in ways that tend to reduce suffering. And because everything is connected in this Indra’s net of a universe, all beings are saved in the process.
Adapting to Conditions
Why delight in good fortune, Bodhidharma asks? “Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the Path.”
When I finished reading this last line of Bodhidharma’s commentary on the practice of adapting to conditions, I thought, “Yes, but don’t resist the urge to smile as that wind passes through you.”
Zen sometimes is seen as overly stoic and serious. It probably is in some quarters, but our teachers make it rather hard to maintain that perspective here.
Reading this paragraph, however, one could be forgiven for concluding that Zen is a super intense and dour religion.
I’m inclined to think Bodhidharma is having a little fun here. He’s just told us to smile at the injustices we suffer. Now he seems to be telling us not to enjoy our good fortune.
It seems pretty clear to me that he’s simply reminding us that things change, and that getting too attached to anything we like is a recipe for suffering.
I had an awful affliction for a long time – an illness of the heart. I suffered with it for decades (as did some of those around me). My life was filled with mostly wonderful stuff, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I eventually came to understand that I had walled off my sorrow – or at least I thought I was walling it off. In truth, I was attached to it.
It seems to be a law of emotional physics that we can’t know happiness unless we can grieve, and vice versa.
So, I hear Bodhidharma telling us: Things change. Be happy and grieve as they do. But, don’t get attached to the happiness or grief. Let them pass. Know that you are the ground over which they pass; the space through which they pass. Find your ultimate joy and consolation there.
Seeking nothing
As I read the sentence “When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path,” I thought, “The path is boundless. Don’t get lost!”
I think “seeking nothing” can manifest in several ways:
When we seek to understand/know this nothing – when Mu is burning in our gullets like a hot iron ball – we’re on the path.
And when, having been seared by that iron ball, we’re truly seeking nothing, not even nothing, we’re on the path.
And, being unaware of the Buddha Dharma and wandering through this life, unaware of this nothing, and therefore not seeking it, we’re on the path.
We can’t be off the path – and, still, it’s easy to feel lost. And, feeling lost, it’s easy to transgress (see above).
Practicing the Dharma
Bodhidharma gives us his definition of Dharma right up front: It’s “the truth that all natures are pure.”
Having previously talked about delusion and attachment as if they’re real – and he of course knows they are, relatively speaking — he tells us “Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist.”
And he tells us “Those wise enough to believe and understand” all this “are bound to practice according to the Dharma.”
One could be forgiven for thinking this sounds rather circular, like that dog chasing its tail:
All natures are pure.
That act of kindness that seems so good, it’s pure. Just like that act of violence.
If we realize this, we’ll practice according to it.
Sounds like it doesn’t much matter what we do.
But, Boddhidharma encourages us to practice charity and the virtues, everywhere, always, precisely because everything is worthy of our attention and loving regard. “[T]hat which is real includes nothing worth begrudging,” he tells us.
Nothing worth begrudging. I love that phrase.
That person who committed that violent act – not worth begrudging.
The act of violence itself: What does it have to teach us about the world we live in, the world we and innumerable past and present conditions – physical and social — have helped create?
I heard a scientist who studies serial killers interviewed on the radio some time ago. He’s identified a genetic condition he believes all of them share. He contends this genetic condition predispose them to do what they do. It prevents them from feeling empathic the way other people do. They know what they’re doing is wrong, but they can’t regulate their conduct; they can’t relate to the pain they’re causing.
I don’t have the skills to assess the strength of this scientist’s claims. If they’re true, then, for me, this provides another very compelling argument against the death penalty. Who knows? Perhaps his research ultimately will lead to a gene-based therapy eradicating the suffering this type of conduct causes so many people.
I’m holding this up here simply because I’m so impressed by the open-minded, open-hearted way this scholar approached his work. He certainly didn’t approve of this conduct, but he approached it with great curiosity. He didn’t just begrudge it, or the killers. And this disposition may eventually help save many beings, in a very literal sense.
It wasn’t until I’d read the next to last sentence of this final paragraph of Bodhidharma’s text that I had my little stream of consciousness reaction: “But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all.”
I hear Bodhidharma saying, “Ultimately no merit, but let’s all try to keep up the good work anyway.” It does make a difference here and now.
I’ll stop here, except to say, maybe this is why Bodhidharma came from the west: to give us this wonderful little text for our Ango.
Koans that kick butt (and those that don’t)
Hakuin Ekaku, the 18th century Zen master who brought the Rinzai school back to life, grouped all koans into five categories. He dubbed eight “nanto,” which means something along the lines of “difficult to pass through” (a/k/a really frickin’ hard). As James Ford and Melissa Blacker note in The Book of Mu, these seem to be the koans Hakuin personally experienced as difficult.
Those particular koans may or may not seem difficult to you or me, but most students experience some koans as more difficult to pass through than others, and some of these as especially difficult.
Here’s one that kicked my butt, for example, Muzhou and the Thieving Phony (Case 10 from the Blue Cliff Record):
Muzhou asked a monk, “Where have you come from?”
Instantly, the monk shouted.
“That’s a shout on me,” said Muzhou.
The monk shouted again.
“Three shouts, four shouts, what next?” asked Muzhou. The monk did not answer.
Muzhou gave him a blow with his stick and cried, “Oh, you thieving phony!
Muzhou’s opening question is an old Zen teacher’s trope. In Case 15 of the Gateless Gate, for instance, Yunmen asks his student Tung-shan, “Where were you most recently?” (The Gateless Gate is a collection that precedes the Blue Cliff Record in the Harada-Yasutani tradition in which BoWZ participates). Tung-shan replies, to his teacher’s disapproval, that he has just returned from the village (or some such).
Yunmen was looking for a different answer, which I knew by the time I met Muzhou and his shouting student. When Muzhou asks the question, however, his student’s response seems to come from left field. And Muzhou doesn’t exactly disapprove of it – at least not initially. Muzhou’s early reactions are more descriptive and curious.
What’s going on?
(I’m not going to say, of course. A joke explained is not funny, as Shakespeare observed. A koan exposed by others is not your koan – and it is your koan, after all.)
Anyway, I tend to learn a lot about myself – often about my own less reflective, default orientations to the world – when a koan kicks my butt, as this one did.
Koans aren’t riddles. I think of them as little slices of life: sightlines, from varying angles, on this experience of living and dying.
When a koan exposes a sightline that is new to me, however, it sometimes can feel much like a riddle, and I may experience it as challenging (even to the point of being maddening) in all the ways a good riddle can feel challenging.
In time, difficult koans that have this riddle-ness feeling invariably help me see that the riddle is my life, and that there is a way beyond the riddle-ness, a way to meet the challenge. They shock or prod me out of some unexamined or habitual way of knowing and being.
Then there are koans that one doesn’t experience as particularly challenging.
It’s too easy – at least it was too easy for me for a time – to appreciate them, to even be inspired by them in one way or another, perhaps even to be amused by them, but to think they don’t have much to teach, and even to feel a bit self-satisfied about passing through them.
As I reflect back on these koans, however, I see how much I’ve learned by encountering them (individually and collectively).
For starters – and this is just about me and my particular programming and neuroses – they’ve helped shine a light on the downsides of some of my Type A-ness; on a certain greediness, manifesting, in this instance, as a desire to achieve; and perhaps on my (very human) desire for recognition and approval. Certainly they’ve shined a light on my grasping for an anchor and shown me that being rooted in the rootless rock-solidness of the here-and-now ultimately offers more security than any other anchor I might imagine to exist.
One soon learns that the practice of presenting koans to a teacher is not about recognition and approval – at least not in the sense of seeking and receiving pats on the head. In my experience, it’s more about recognition in the sense of offering two people – indeed, teachers and students throughout time and space, and, more broadly, all of us – the opportunity to encounter one another genuinely. The koan provides the pretext and context for an honest and open look at, and mutual recognition of, some important feature of human experience.
Besides, there are so many koans in the Zen tradition. We use something like 500 of them in our little branch of the family. If one does the math, it quickly becomes clear that it will take many years to pass through them all, even if one is living in a monastery and has multiple opportunities to meet with a teacher each week. (I’m not, and I don’t.) So, why not focus on enjoying the ride instead of the brass ring one imagines to be dangling at the end of the line?
There’s no brass ring anyway, and, as Melissa once said to me with a wry smile, there always are more koans.
Whether one experiences them as easy or hard, koans offer us something more precious than a brass ring: a gold mine of insight and potential for transformation.
Turning Words 