34
to begin to understand what Taoism is about, we must at least be prepared to admit the possibility of some view of the world other than the conventional, some knowledge other than the contents of our surface consciousness, which can apprehend reality only in the form of one abstraction (or thought, the Chinese nien d) at a time. There is no real difficulty in this, for we will already admit that we “know” how to move our hands, how to make a decision, or how to breathe, even though we can hardly begin to explain how we do it in words. We know how to do it because we just do it! Taoism is an extension of this kind of knowledge, an extension which gives us a very different view of ourselves from that to which we are conventionally accustomed, and a view which liberates the human mind from its constricting identification with the abstract ego.
35
an expert in the I Ching need not necessarily use tortoise shells or yarrow stalks. He can “see” a hexagram in anything–in the chance arrangement of a bowl of flowers, in objects scattered upon a table, in the natural markings on a pebble. A modern psychologist will recognize in this something not unlike a Rorschach test, in which the psychological condition of a patient is diagnosed from the spontaneous images which he “sees” in a complex ink-blot. Could the patient interpret his own projections upon the ink-blot, he would have some useful information about himself for the guidance of his future conduct. In view of this, we cannot dismiss the divinatory art of the I Ching as mere superstition.
36
Indeed, an exponent of the I Ching might give us quite a tough argument about the relative merits of our ways for making important decisions. We feel that we decide rationally because we base our decisions on collecting relevant data about the matter in hand. We do not depend upon such irrelevant trifles as the chance tossing of a coin, or the patterns of tea leaves or cracks in a shell. Yet he might ask whether we really know what information is relevant, since our plans are constantly upset by utterly unforeseen incidents. He might ask how we know when we have collected enough information upon which to decide. If we were rigorously “scientific” in collecting information for our decisions, it would take us so long to collect the data that the time for action would have passed long before the work had been completed. So how do we know when we have enough? Does the information itself tell us that it is enough? On the contrary, we go through the motions of gathering the necessary information in a rational way, and then, just because of a hunch, or because we are tired of thinking, or because the time has come to decide, we act. He would ask whether this is not depending just as much upon “irrelevant trifles” as if we had been casting the yarrow stalks.
36
In other words, the “rigorously scientific” method of predicting the future can be applied only in special cases–where prompt action is not urgent, where the factors involved are largely mechanical, or in circumstances so restricted as to be trivial. By far the greater part of our important decisions depend upon “hunch”–in other words, upon the “peripheral vision” of the mind. Thus the reliability of our decisions rests ultimately upon our ability to “feel” the situation, upon the degree to which this “peripheral vision” has been developed.
37
Every exponent of the I Ching knows this. He knows that the book itself does not contain an exact science, but rather a useful tool which will work for him if he has a good “intuition,” or if, as he would say, he is “in the Tao.” Thus one does not consult the oracle without proper preparation, without going quietly and meticulously through the prescribed rituals in order to bring the mind into that calm state where the “intuition” is felt to act more effectively.
37
It would seem, then, that if the origins of Taoism are to be found in the I Ching, they are not so much in the text of the book itself as in the way in which it was used and in the assumptions underlying it. For experience in making decisions by intuition might well show that this “peripheral” aspect of the mind works best when we do not try to interfere with it, when we trust it to work by itself–tzu-jan, spontaneously, “self-so.”
37
Thus the basic principles of Taoism begin to unfold themselves. There is, first of all, the Tao–the indefinable, concrete “process” of the world, the Way of life. The Chinese word means originally a way or road, and sometimes “to speak,” so that the first line of the Tao Te Ching contains a pun on the two meanings:
The Tao which can be spoken is not eternal Tao.3
51
3 Duyvendak (1) suggests that tao did not have the meaning of “to speak” at this date, and so translates the passage, “The Way that may truly be regarded as the Way is other than a permanent way.” It really comes to the same thing, for what Duyvendak means by a “permanent way” is a fixed concept of the Tao–i.e., a definition. Almost every other translator, and most of the Chinese commentators, take the second tao to mean “spoken.”
37
But in trying at least to suggest what he means, Lao-tzu says:
There was something vague before heaven and earth arose. How calm! How void! It stands alone, unchanging; it acts everywhere, untiring. It may be considered the mother of everything under heaven. I do not know its name, but call it by the word Tao. (25)
37
And again:
The Tao is something blurred and indistinct.
How indistinct! How blurred!
Yet within it are images.
How blurred! How indistinct!
Yet within it are things.
How dim! How confused!
Yet within it is mental power.
Because this power is most true,
Within it there is confidence. (21)
38
“Mental! power” is ching, g a word which combines the ideas of essential, subtle, psychic or spiritual, and skillful. For the point seems to be that as one’s own head looks like nothing to the eyes yet is the source of intelligence, so the vague, void-seeming, and indefinable Tao is the intelligence which shapes the world with a skill beyond our understanding.
38
The important difference between the Tao and the usual idea of God is that whereas God produces the world by making (wei), the Tao produces it by “not-making” (wu-wei)–which is approximately what we mean by “growing.” For things made are separate parts put together, like machines, or things fashioned from without inwards, like sculptures. Whereas things grown divide themselves into parts, from within outwards. Because the natural universe works mainly according to the principles of growth, it would seem quite odd to the Chinese mind to ask how it was made. If the universe were made, there would of course be someone who knows how it is made–who could explain how it was put together bit by bit as a technician can explain in one-at-a-time words how to assemble a machine. But a universe which grows utterly excludes the possibility of knowing how it grows in the clumsy terms of thought and language, so that no Taoist would dream of asking whether the Tao knows how it produces the universe. For it operates according to spontaneity, not according to plan. Lao-tzu says:
The Tao’s principle is spontaneity. (25)
39
But spontaneity is not by any means a blind, disorderly urge, a mere power of caprice. A philosophy restricted to the alternatives of conventional language has no way of conceiving an intelligence which does not work according to plan, according to a (one-at-a-time) order of thought. Yet the concrete evidence of such an intelligence is right to hand in our own thoughtlessly organized bodies.3a For the Tao does not “know” how it produces the universe just as we do not “know” how we construct our brains. In the words of Lao-tzu’s great successor, Chuang-tzu:
Things are produced around us, but no one knows the whence. They issue forth, but no one sees the portal. Men one and all value that part of knowledge which is known. They do not know how to avail themselves of the Unknown in order to reach knowledge. Is not this misguided?4
51
4 H. A. Giles (1), p. 345.
39
The conventional relationship of the knower to the known is often that of the controller to the controlled, and thus of lord to servant. Thus whereas God is the master of the universe, since “he knows about it all! He knows! He knows!,” the relationship of the Tao to what it produces is quite otherwise.
The great Tao flows everywhere,
to the left and to the right.
All things depend upon it to exist,
and it does not abandon them.
To its accomplishments it lays no claim.
It loves and nourishes all things,
but does not lord it over them. (34)
39
In the usual Western conception God is also self-knowing–transparent through and through to his own understanding, the image of what man would like to be: the conscious ruler and controller, the absolute dictator of his own mind and body. But in contrast with this, the Tao is through and through mysterious and dark (hsüan k). As a Zen Buddhist said of it in later times:
There is one thing: above, it supports Heaven; below, it upholds Earth. It is black like lacquer, always actively functioning.5 l
Hsüan is, of course, a metaphorical darkness–not the darkness of night, of black as opposed to white, but the sheer inconceivability which confronts the mind when it tries to remember the time before birth, or to penetrate its own depths.
51
5 T’ung-shan Liang-chieh. Dumoulin and Sasaki (1), p. 74.
40
it is really impossible to appreciate what is meant by the Tao without becoming, in a rather special sense, stupid. So long as the conscious intellect is frantically trying to clutch the world in its net of abstractions, and to insist that life be bound and fitted to its rigid categories, the mood of Taoism will remain incomprehensible; and the intellect will wear itself out. The Tao is accessible only to the mind which can practice the simple and subtle art of wu-wei, which, after the Tao, is the second important principle of Taoism.
41
We saw that the I Ching had given the Chinese mind some experience in arriving at decisions spontaneously, decisions which are effective to the degree that one knows how to let one’s mind alone, trusting it to work by itself. This is wu-wei, since wu means “not” or “non-” and wei means “action,” “making,” “doing,” “striving,” “straining,” or “busyness.” To return to the illustration of eyesight, the peripheral vision works most effectively–as in the dark–when we see out of the corners of the eyes, and do not look at things directly. Similarly, when we need to see the details of a distant object, such as a clock, the eyes must be relaxed, not staring, not trying to see. So, too, no amount of working with the muscles of the mouth and tongue will enable us to taste our food more acutely. The eyes and the tongue must be trusted to do the work by themselves.
41
But when we have learned to put excessive reliance upon central vision, upon the sharp spotlight of the eyes and mind, we cannot regain the powers of peripheral vision unless the sharp and staring kind of sight is first relaxed. The mental or psychological equivalent of this is the special kind of stupidity to which Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu so often refer. It is not simply calmness of mind, but “non-graspingness” of mind. In Chuangtzu’s words, “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.” One might almost say that it “fuzzes” itself a little to compensate for too harsh a clarity. Thus Lao-tzu says of himself:
Cut out cleverness and there are no anxieties! …
People in general are so happy, as if enjoying a feast,
Or as going up a tower in spring.
I alone am tranquil, and have made no signs,
Like a baby who is yet unable to smile;
Forlorn as if I had no home to go to.
Others all have more than enough,
And I alone seem to be in want.
Possibly mine is the mind of a fool,
Which is so ignorant!
The vulgar are bright,
And I alone seem to be dull.
The vulgar are discriminative,
And I alone seem to be blunt.
I am negligent as if being obscure;
Drifting, as if being attached to nothing.
The people in general all have something to do,
And I alone seem to be impractical and awkward.
I alone am different from others,
But I value seeking sustenance from the Mother (Tao). (20)6
51
6 Save for the first line, I have followed Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 30.
42
In most Taoist writings there is a slight degree of exaggeration or overstatement of the point which is actually a kind of humor, a self-caricature. Thus Chuang-tzu writes on the same theme:
The man of character (te) lives at home without exercising his mind and performs actions without worry. The notions of right and wrong and the praise and blame of others do not disturb him. When within the four seas all people can enjoy themselves, that is happiness for him.… Sorrowful in countenance, he looks like a baby who has lost his mother; appearing stupid, he goes about like one who has lost his way. He has plenty of money to spend, but does not know where it comes from. He drinks and eats just enough and does not know where the food comes from. (3:13)7
51
7 Lin Yutang (1), p. 129.
42
Lao-tzu is still more forceful in his apparent condemnation of conventional cleverness:
Cut out sagacity; discard knowingness,
and the people will benefit an hundredfold.
Cut out “humanity”; discard righteousness,
and the people will regain love of their fellows.
Cut out cleverness; discard the utilitarian,
and there will be no thieves and robbers.…
Become unaffected;8
Cherish sincerity;
Belittle the personal;
Reduce desires. (19)
51
8 “Unaffected” is an attempt to render su,m a character which refers originally to unbleached silk, or to the unpainted silk background of a picture. “Humanity” refers to the central Confucian principle of jen,n which would ordinarily mean “human-heartedness,” though it is obvious that Lao-tzu refers to its self-conscious and affected form.
43
The idea is not to reduce the human mind to a moronic vacuity, but to bring into play its innate and spontaneous intelligence by using it without forcing it. It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature–whether theological or technological–is a kind of schizophrenia.
43
It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions. However religiously “emancipated,” the technological mind shows that it has inherited the same division against itself when it tries to subject the whole human order to the control of conscious reason. It forgets that reason cannot be trusted if the brain cannot be trusted, since the power of reason depends upon organs that were grown by “unconscious intelligence.”
43
The art of letting the mind alone is vividly described by another Taoist writer, Lieh-tzu (c. 398 B.C.), celebrated for his mysterious power of being able to ride upon the wind. This, no doubt, refers to the peculiar sensation of “walking on air” which arises when the mind is first liberated. It is said that when Professor D. T. Suzuki was once asked how it feels to have attained satori,o the Zen experience of “awakening,” he answered, “Just like ordinary everyday experience, except about two inches off the ground!” Thus when asked to explain the art of riding on the wind, Lieh-tzu gave the following account of his training under his master Lao Shang:
After I had served him … for the space of three years, my mind did not venture to reflect on right and wrong, my lips did not venture to speak of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my master bestowed one glance upon me- and that was all.
At the end of five years a change had taken place; my mind was reflecting on right and wrong, and my lips were speaking of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my master relaxed his countenance and smiled.
At the end of seven years, there was another change. I let my mind reflect on what it would, but it no longer occupied itself with right and wrong. I let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they no longer spoke of profit and loss. Then, at last, my master led me in to sit on the mat beside him.
At the end of nine years, my mind gave free rein to its reflections,p my mouth free passage to its speech. Of right and wrong, profit and loss, I had no knowledge, either as touching myself or others.… Internal and external were blended into unity. After that, there was no distinction between eye and ear, ear and nose, nose and mouth: all were the same. My mind was frozen, my body in dissolution, my flesh and bones all melted together. I was wholly unconscious of what my body was resting on, or what was under my feet. I was borne this way and that on the wind, like dry chaff or leaves falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not whether the wind was riding on me or I on the wind.9
51
9 L. Giles (1), pp. 40–42. From Lieh-tzu, ii.
44
The state of consciousness described sounds not unlike being pleasantly drunk–though without the “morning after” effects of alcohol! Chuang-tzu noticed the similarity, for he wrote:
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets the accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from Spontaneity. (19)10
51
10H. A. Giles (1), p. 232.
45
Since Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, and Lieh-tzu were all conscious enough to write very intelligible books, it may be assumed that some of this language is, again, exaggerated or metaphorical. Their “unconsciousness” is not coma, but what the exponents of Zen later signified by wu-hsin,q literally “no-mind,” which is to say un-self-consciousness. It is a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club. If the ordinary man is one who has to walk by lifting his legs with his hands, the Taoist is one who has learned to let the legs walk by themselves.
45
Various passages in the Taoist writings suggest that “no-mindedness” is employing the whole mind as we use the eyes when we rest them upon various objects but make no special effort to take anything in. According to Chuang-tzu:
The baby looks at things all day without winking; that is because his eyes are not focussed on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene. (23)11
45
And again:
If you regulate your body and unify your attention, the harmony of heaven will come upon you. If you integrate your awareness, and unify your thoughts, spirit will make its abode with you. Te (virtue) will clothe you, and the Tao will shelter you. Your eyes will be like those of a new-born calf, which seeks not the wherefore. (22)
45
Each of the other senses might similarly be used to illustrate the “non-active” functioning of the mind–listening without straining to hear, smelling without strong inhalation, tasting without screwing up the tongue, and touching without pressing the object. Each is a special instance of the mental function which works through all, and which Chinese designates with the peculiar word hsin.r
46
We usually translate it as “mind” or “heart,” but neither of these words is satisfactory. The original form of the ideograph8 seems to be a picture of the heart, or perhaps of the lungs or the liver, and when a Chinese speaks of the hsin he will often point to the center of his chest, slightly lower than the heart.
46
The difficulty with our translations is that “mind” is too intellectual, too cortical, and that “heart” in its current English usage is too emotional–even sentimental. Furthermore, hsin is not always used with quite the same sense. Sometimes it is used for an obstruction to be removed, as in wu-hsin, “no-mind.” But sometimes it is used in a way that is almost synonymous with the Tao. This is especially found in Zen literature, which abounds with such phrases as “original mind” (pen hsin t), “Buddha mind” (fu hsin u), or “faith in mind” (hsin hsin v). This apparent contradiction is resolved in the principle that “the true mind is no mind,” which is to say that the hsin is true, is working properly, when it works as if it were not present. In the same way, the eyes are seeing properly when they do not see themselves, in terms of spots or blotches in the air.
46
All in all, it would seem that hsin means the totality of our psychic functioning, and, more specifically, the center of that functioning, which is associated with the central point of the upper body. The Japanese form of the word, kokoro, is used with even more subtleties of meaning, but for the present it is enough to realize that in translating it “mind” (a sufficiently vague word) we do not mean exclusively the intellectual or thinking mind, nor even the surface consciousness. The important point is that, according to both Taoism and Zen, the center of the mind’s activity is not in the conscious thinking process, not in the ego.
47
When a man has learned to let his mind alone so that it functions in the integrated and spontaneous way that is natural to it, he begins to show the special kind of “virtue” or “power” called te. This is not virtue in the current sense of moral rectitude but in the older sense of effectiveness, as when one speaks of the healing virtues of a plant. Te is, furthermore, unaffected or spontaneous virtue which cannot be cultivated or imitated by any deliberate method. Lao-tzu says:
Superior te is not te,
and thus has te.
Inferior te does not let go of te,
and thus is not te.
Superior te is non-active [wu-wei] and aimless.
Inferior te is active and has an aim. (38)
The literal translation has a strength and depth which is lost in such paraphrases as “Superior virtue is not conscious of itself as virtue, and thus really is virtue. Inferior virtue cannot dispense with virtuosity, and thus is not virtue.”
47
When the Confucians prescribed a virtue which depended upon the artificial observance of rules and precepts, the Taoists pointed out that such virtue was conventional and not genuine. Chuang-tzu made up the following imaginary dialogue between Confucius and Lao-tzu:
“Tell me,” said Lao-tzu, “in what consist charity and duty to one’s neighbour?”
“They consist,” answered Confucius, “in a capacity for rejoicing in all things; in universal love, without the element of self. These are the characteristics of charity and duty to one’s neighbour.”
“What stuff!” cried Lao-tzu. “Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self? Sir, if you would cause the empire not to lose its source of nourishment,–there is the universe, its regularity is unceasing; there are the sun and moon, their brightness is unceasing; there are the stars, their groupings never change; there are the birds and beasts, they flock together without varying; there are trees and shrubs, they grow upwards without exception. Be like these: follow Tao, and you will be perfect. Why then these vain struggles after charity and duty to one’s neighbour, as though beating a drum in search of a fugitive. Alas! Sir, you have brought much confusion into the mind of man.” (13)13
51
13 H. A. Giles (1), p. 167.
48
The Taoist critique of conventional virtue applied not only in the moral sphere but also in the arts, crafts, and trades. According to Chuang-tzu:
Ch’ui the artisan could draw circles with his hand better than with compasses. His fingers seemed to accommodate themselves so naturally to the thing he was working at, that it was unnecessary to fix his attention. His mental faculties thus remained One (i.e., integrated), and suffered no hindrance. To be unconscious of one’s feet implies that the shoes are easy. To be unconscious of a waist implies that the girdle is easy. The intelligence being unconscious of positive and negative implies that the heart (hsin) is at ease.… And he who, beginning with ease, is never not at ease, is unconscious of the ease of ease. (19)14
51
14 H. A. Giles (1), p. 242.
48
Just as the artisan who had mastered te could do without the artificiality of the compass, so the painter, the musician, and the cook would have no need for the conventional classifications of their respective arts. Thus Lao-tzu said:
The five colours will blind a man’s sight.
The five sounds will deaden a mans hearing.
The five tastes will spoil a man’s palate.
Chasing and hunting will drive a man wild.
Things hard to get will do harm to a man’s conduct.
Therefore the sage makes provision for the stomach and not for the eye. (12)15
51
15 Ch’u Ta-kao (1), p. 22.
49
This must by no means be taken as an ascetic’s hatred of sense experience, for the point is precisely that the eye’s sensitivity to color is impaired by the fixed idea that there are just five true colors. There is an infinite continuity of shading, and breaking it down into divisions with names distracts the attention from its subtlety. This is why “the sage makes provision for the stomach and not for the eye,” which is to say that he judges by the concrete content of the experience, and not by its conformity with purely theoretical standards.
49
In sum, then, te is the unthinkable ingenuity and creative power of man’s spontaneous and natural functioning–a power which is blocked when one tries to master it in terms of formal methods and techniques. It is like the centipede’s skill in using a hundred legs at once.
The centipede was happy, quite,
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”
This worked his mind to such a pitch,
He lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.
49
A profound regard for te underlies the entire higher culture of the Far East, so much so that it has been made the basic principle of every kind of art and craft. While it is true that these arts employ what are, to us, highly difficult technical disciplines, it is always recognized that they are instrumental and secondary, and that superior work has the quality of an accident. This is not merely a masterful mimicry of the accidental, an assumed spontaneity in which the careful planning does not show. It lies at a much deeper and more genuine level, for what the culture of Taoism and Zen proposes is that one might become the kind of person who, without intending it, is a source of marvelous accidents.
50
Taoism is, then, the original Chinese way of liberation which combined with Indian Mahayana Buddhism to produce Zen. It is a liberation from convention and of the creative power of te. Every attempt to describe and formulate it in words and one-at-a-time thought symbols must, of necessity, distort it. The foregoing chapter has perforce made it seem one of the “vitalist” or “naturalistic” philosophical alternatives. For Western philosophers are constantly bedeviled by the discovery that they cannot think outside certain well-worn ruts–that, however hard they may try, their “new” philosophies turn out to be restatements of ancient positions, monist or pluralist, realist or nominalist, vitalist or mechanist. This is because these are the only alternatives which the conventions of thought can present, and they cannot discuss anything else without presenting it in their own terms. When we try to represent a third dimension upon a two-dimensional surface, it will of necessity seem to belong more or less to the two alternatives of length and breadth. In the words of Chuang-tzu:
Were language adequate, it would take but a day fully to set forth Tao. Not being adequate, it takes that time to explain material existences. Tao is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. (25)16
52
16 H. A. Giles (1), p. 351.
110
2 The alleged “obscenity” of maithuna, as this practice is called, is entirely in the minds of Christian missionaries. In fact, the relationship with the shakti was anything but promiscuous, and involved the mature and all-too-infrequent notion of a man and a woman undertaking their spiritual development in common. This included a sanctification of the sexual relationship which should logically have been part of the Catholic view of marriage as a sacrament. For a full treatment see S. B. Dasgupta, An Introduction to Tantric Buddhism (Calcutta, 1952), and Sir John Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta (Madras and London, 1929).
112
Four
THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ZEN
128
The true mind is “no-mind” (wu-hsin), which is to say that it is not to be regarded as an object of thought or action, as if it were a thing to be grasped and controlled. The attempt to work on one’s own mind is a vicious circle. To try to purify it is to be contaminated with purity. Obviously this is the Taoist philosophy of naturalness, according to which a person is not genuinely free, detached, or pure when his state is the result of an artificial discipline. He is just imitating purity, just “faking” clear awareness. Hence the unpleasant self-righteousness of those who are deliberately and methodically religious.
129
instead of trying to purify or empty the mind, one must simply let go of the mind–because the mind is nothing to be grasped. Letting go of the mind is also equivalent to letting go of the series of thoughts and impressions (nien) which come and go “in” the mind, neither repressing them, holding them, nor interfering with them.
Thoughts come and go of themselves, for through the use of wisdom there is no blockage. This is the samadhi of prajna, and natural liberation. Such is the practice of “no-thought” [wu-nien]. But if you do not think of anything at all, and immediately command thoughts to cease, this is to be tied in a knot by a method, and is called an obtuse view. (2) n
129
Of the usual view of meditation practice he said:
To concentrate on the mind and to contemplate it until it is still is a disease and not dhyana. To restrain the body by sitting up for a long time–of what benefit is this towards the Dharma? (8) 0
And again:
If you start concentrating the mind on stillness, you will merely produce an unreal stillness.… What does the word “meditation” [ts’o-ch’an] mean? In this school it means no barriers, no obstacles; it is beyond all objective situations whether good or bad. The word “sitting” [ts’o] means not to stir up thoughts in the mind. (5) p
130
In counteracting the false dhyana of mere empty-mindedness, Hui-neng compares the Great Void to space, and calls it great, not just because it is empty, but because it contains the sun, moon, and stars. True dhyana is to realize that one’s own nature is like space, and that thoughts and sensations come and go in this “original mind” like birds through the sky, leaving no trace. Awakening, in his school, is “sudden” because it is for quickwitted rather than slow-witted people. The latter must of necessity understand gradually, or more exactly, after a long time, since the Sixth Patriarch’s doctrine does not admit of stages or growth. To be awakened at all is to be awakened completely, for, having no parts or divisions, the Buddha nature is not realized bit by bit.
130
His final instructions to his disciples contain an interesting clue to the later development of the mondo or “question-answer” method of teaching:
If, in questioning you, someone asks about being, answer with non-being. If he asks about non-being, answer with being. If he asks about the ordinary man, answer in terms of the sage. If he asks about the sage, answer in terms of the ordinary man. By this method of opposites mutually related there arises an understanding of the Middle Way. For every question that you are asked, respond in terms of its opposite. (10) q
130
Hui-neng died in 713, and with his death the institution of the Patriarchate ceased, for the genealogical tree of Zen put forth branches. Hui-neng’s tradition passed to five disciples: Huai-jang (d. 775), Ch’ing-yüan (d. 740), Shen-hui (668–770), Hsüan-chüeh (665–713), and Hui-chung (677–744).23 The spiritual descendants of Huai-jang and Hsing-ssu live on today as the two principal schools of Zen in Japan, the Rinzai and the Soto. In the two centuries following the death of Hui-neng the proliferation of lines of descent and schools of Zen is quite complex, and we need do no more than consider some of the more influential individuals.24
131
The writings and records of Hui-neng’s successors continue to be concerned with naturalness. On the principle that “the true mind is no-mind,” and that “our true nature is no (special) nature,” it is likewise stressed that the true practice of Zen is no practice, that is, the seeming paradox of being a Buddha without intending to be a Buddha. According to Shen-hui:
If one has this knowledge, it is contemplation [samadhi] without contemplating, wisdom [prajna] without wisdom, practice without practicing. (4. 193)
All cultivation of concentration is wrong-minded from the start. For how, by cultivating concentration, could one obtain concentration? (1. 117)
If we speak of working with the mind, does this working consist in activity or inactivity of the mind? If it is inactivity, we should be no different from vulgar fools. But if you say that it is activity, it is then in the realm of grasping, and we are bound up by the passions [klesa]. What way, then, should we have of gaining deliverance? The sravakas cultivate emptiness, dwell in emptiness, and are bound by it. They cultivate concentration, dwell in concentration, and are bound by it. They cultivate tranquillity, dwell in tranquillity, and are bound by it.… If working with the mind is to discipline one’s mind, how could this be called deliverance? (1. 118)25
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In the same vein HsĂĽan-chĂĽeh begins his celebrated poem, the Song of Realizing the Tao (Cheng-tao Ke):
See you not that easygoing Man of Tao, who has abandoned learning and does not strive [wu-wei]?
He neither avoids false thoughts nor seeks the true,
For ignorance is in reality the Buddha nature,
And this illusory, changeful, empty body is the Dharma body.26
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The following story is told of Huai-jang, initiating into Zen his great successor Ma-tsu (d. 788), who was at the time practicing sitting meditation at the monastery of Ch’uan-fa.
“Your reverence,” asked Huai-jang, “what is the objective of sitting in meditation?”
“The objective,” answered Ma-tsu, “is to become a Buddha.”
Thereupon Huai-jang picked up a floor-tile and began to polish it on a rock.
“What are you doing, master?” asked Ma-tsu.
“I am polishing it for a mirror,” said Huai-jang.
“How could polishing a tile make a mirror?”
“How could sitting in meditation make a Buddha?”27 s
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Ma-tsu was the first Zen master celebrated for “strange words and extraordinary behavior,” and is described as one who walked like a bull and glared like a tiger. When a monk asked him, “How do you get into harmony with the Tao?” Ma-tsu replied, “I am already out of harmony with the Tao!” He was the first to answer questions about Buddhism by hitting the questioner, or by giving a loud shout–“Ho!”28 t Sometimes, however, he was more discursive, and one of his lectures takes up the problem of discipline thus:
The Tao has nothing to do with discipline. If you say that it is attained by discipline, when the discipline is perfected it can again be lost (or, finishing the discipline turns out to be losing the Tao).… If you say that there is no discipline, this is to be the same as ordinary people.29 u
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Hsing-ssu’s disciple Shih-t’ou (700–790), in the line of Soto Zen, was even more forthright:
My teaching which has come down from the ancient Buddhas is not dependent on meditation (dhyana) or on diligent application of any kind. When you attain the insight as attained by the Buddha, you realize that mind is Buddha and Buddha is mind, that mind, Buddha, sentient beings, bodhi and klesa are of one and the same substance while they vary in names.30
His interesting name “Stone-head” is attributed to the fact that he lived on top of a large rock near the monastery of Heng-chou.
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With Ma-tsu’s disciple Nan-ch’üan (748–834) and his successor Chao-chou (778–897), the teaching of Zen became peculiarly lively and disturbing. The Wu-men kuan (14) tells how Nan-ch’üan interrupted a dispute among his monks as to the ownership of a cat by threatening to cleave the animal with his spade if none of the monks could say a “good word”–that is, give an immediate expression of his Zen. There was dead silence, so the master cut the cat in two. Later in the day Nan-ch’üan recounted the incident to Chao-chou, who at once put his shoes on his head and left the room. “If you had been here,” said Nan-ch’üan, “the cat would have been saved!”
Chao-chou is said to have had his awakening after the following incident with Nan-ch’üan:
Chao-chou asked, “What is the Tao?”
The master replied, “Your ordinary [i.e., natural] mind is the Tao.”
“How can one return into accord with it?”
“By intending to accord you immediately deviate.” v
“But without intention, how can one know the Tao?”
“The Tao,” said the master, “belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?”31
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When Chao-chou was asked whether a dog has Buddha nature–which is certainly the usual Mahayana doctrine–he gave the one word “No!” (Wu,w Japanese, Mu).32 When a monk asked him for instruction he merely inquired whether he had eaten his gruel, and then added, “Go wash your bowl!”33 When asked about the spirit which remains when the body has decomposed, he remarked, “This morning it’s windy again.”34
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Ma-tsu had another notable disciple in Po-chang (720–814), who is said to have organized the first purely Zen community of monks and to have laid down its regulations on the principle that “a day of no working is a day of no eating.” Since his time a strong emphasis on manual work and some degree of self-support has been characteristic of Zen communities. It might be remarked here that these are not exactly monasteries in the Western sense. They are rather training schools, from which one is free to depart at any time without censure. Some members remain monks for their whole lives; others become secular priests in charge of small temples; still others may return into lay life.35 To Po-chang is attributed the famous definition of Zen, “When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep.” He is said to have had his satori when Ma-tsu shouted at him and left him deaf for three days, and to have been in the habit of pointing out the Zen life to his disciples with the saying, “Don’t cling; don’t seek.” For when asked about seeking for the Buddha nature he answered, “It’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox.”
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Po-chang’s student Huang-po (d. 850) is also of considerable importance in this period. Not only was he the teacher of the great Lin-chi, but he was also the author of the Ch’uan Hsin Fa Yao, or “Treatise on the Essentials of the Doctrine of Mind.” The content of this work is essentially the same body of doctrine as is found in Hui-neng, Shen-hui, and Ma-tsu, but it contains some passages of remarkable clarity as well as some frank and careful answers to questions at the end.
By their very seeking for it [the Buddha nature] they produce the contrary effect of losing it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha, and using mind to grasp mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full kalpa, they will not be able to attain to it. (1)
If those who study the Tao do not awake to this mind substance, they will create a mind over and above mind, seek the Buddha outside themselves and remain attached to forms, practices and performances–all of which is harmful and not the way to supreme knowledge. (3)36
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Much of it is devoted to a clarification of what is meant by the Void, and by the terms “no-mind” (wu-hsin) and “no-thought” (wu-nien), all of which are carefully distinguished from literal blankness or nothingness. The use of Taoist language and ideas is found throughout the text:
Fearing that none of you would understand, they [the Buddhas] gave it the name Tao, but you must not base any concept upon that name. So it is said that “when the fish is caught the trap is forgotten.” (From Chuang-tzu.) When body and mind achieve spontaneity, the Tao is reached and universal mind can be understood. (29) … In former times, men’s minds were sharp. Upon hearing a single sentence, they abandoned study and so came to be called “the sages who, abandoning learning, rest in spontaneity.” In these days, people only seek to stuff themselves with knowledge and deductions, placing great reliance on written explanations and calling all this the practice. (30)37
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It appears, however, that Huang-po’s personal instruction of his disciples was not always so explanatory. Lin-chi (Japanese, Rinzai, d. 867) could never get a word out of him. Every time he attempted to ask a question Huang-po struck him, until in desperation he left the monastery and sought the advice of another master, Ta-yü, who scolded him for being so ungrateful for Huang-po’s “grandmotherly kindness.” This awakened Lin-chi, who again presented himself before Huang-po. This time, however, it was Lin-chi who did the striking, saying, “There is not much in Huang-po’s Buddhism after all!”38
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38 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 12.
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The record of Lin-chi’s teaching, the Lin-chi Lu (Japanese, Rinzai Roku), shows a character of immense vitality and originality, lecturing his students in informal and often somewhat “racy” language. It is as if Lin-chi were using the whole strength of his personality to force the student into immediate awakening. Again and again he berates them for not having enough faith in themselves, for letting their minds “gallop around” in search of something which they have never lost, and which is “right before you at this very moment.” Awakening for Lin-chi seems primarily a matter of “nerve”–the courage to “let go” without further delay in the unwavering faith that one’s natural, spontaneous functioning is the Buddha mind. His approach to conceptual Buddhism, to the students’ obsession with stages to be reached and goals to be attained, is ruthlessly iconoclastic.
Why do I talk here? Only because you followers of the Tao go galloping around in search of the mind, and are unable to stop it. On the other hand, the ancients acted in a leisurely way, appropriate to circumstances (as they arose). O you followers of the Tao–when you get my point of view you will sit in judgment on top of the … Buddhas’ heads. Those who have completed the ten stages will seem like underlings, and those who have arrived at Supreme Awakening will seem as if they had cangues around their necks. The Arhans and Pratyeka-buddhas are like a dirty privy. Bodhi and nirvana are like hitching-posts for a donkey.39
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On the importance of the “natural” or “unaffected” (wu-shih z) life he is especially emphatic:
There is no place in Buddhism for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Relieve your bowels, pass water, put on your clothes, and eat your food. When you’re tired, go and lie down. Ignorant people may laugh at me, but the wise will understand.… As you go from place to place, if you regard each one as your own home, they will all be genuine, for when circumstances come you must not try to change them. Thus your usual habits of feeling, which make karma for the Five Hells, will of themselves become the Great Ocean of Liberation.40
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And on creating karma through seeking liberation–
Outside the mind there is no Dharma, and inside also there is nothing to be grasped. What is it that you seek? You say on all sides that the Tao is to be practiced and put to the proof. Don’t be mistaken! If there is anyone who can practice it, this is entirely karma making for birth-and-death. You talk about being perfectly disciplined in your six senses and in the ten thousand ways of conduct, but as I see it all this is creating karma. To seek the Buddha and to seek the Dharma is precisely making karma for the hells.41 aa
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In Ma-tsu, Nan-ch’üan, Chao-chou, Huang-po, and Lin-chi we can see the “flavor” of Zen at its best. Taoist and Buddhist as it is in its original inspiration, it is also something more. It is so earthy, so matter-of-fact, and so direct.
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the genuine Zen flavor is when a man is almost miraculously natural without intending to be so. His Zen life is not to make himself but to grow that way.
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Thus it should be obvious that the “naturalness” of these T’ang masters is not to be taken just literally, as if Zen were merely to glory in being a completely ordinary, vulgar fellow who scatters ideals to the wind and behaves as he pleases–for this would in itself be an affectation. The “naturalness” of Zen flourishes only when one has lost affectedness and self-consciousness of every description. But a spirit of this kind comes and goes like the wind, and is the most impossible thing to institutionalize and preserve.
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the koan advocates used this technique as a means for encouraging that overwhelming “feeling of doubt” (i ching ff) which they felt to be essential as a prerequisite for satori,
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1 Seng-ts’an, Hsin-hsin Ming.
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Two
“SITTING QUIETLY, DOING NOTHING”
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In both life and art the cultures of the Far East appreciate nothing more highly than spontaneity or naturalness (tzu-jan). This is the unmistakable tone of sincerity marking the action which is not studied and contrived. For a man rings like a cracked bell when he thinks and acts with a split mind-one part standing aside to interfere with the other, to control, to condemn, or to admire. But the mind, or the true nature, of man cannot actually be split. According to a Zenrin poem, it is
Like a sword that cuts, but cannot cut itself;
Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.a
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The illusion of the split comes from the mind’s attempt to be both itself and its idea of itself, from a fatal confusion of fact with symbol. To make an end of the illusion, the mind must stop trying to act upon itself, upon its stream of experiences, from the standpoint of the idea of itself which we call the ego. This is expressed in another Zenrin poem as
Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.b
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This “by itself” is the mind’s and the world’s natural way of action, as when the eyes see by themselves, and the ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself without having to be forced apart by the fingers. As the Zenrin says again:
The blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains;
The white clouds are of themselves white clouds. 0
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In its stress upon naturalness, Zen is obviously the inheritor of Taoism, and its view of spontaneous action as “marvelous activity” (miao-yung d) is precisely what the Taoists meant by the word te–“virtue” with an overtone of magical power. But neither in Taoism nor in Zen does it have anything to do with magic in the merely sensational sense of performing superhuman “miracles.” The “magical” or “marvelous” quality of spontaneous action is, on the contrary, that it is perfectly human, and yet shows no sign of being contrived.
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Such a quality is peculiarly subtle (another meaning of miao), and extremely hard to put into words. The story is told of a Zen monk who wept upon hearing of the death of a close relative. When one of his fellow students objected that it was most unseemly for a monk to show such personal attachment he replied, “Don’t be stupid! I’m weeping because I want to weep.” The great Hakuin was deeply disturbed in his early study of Zen when he came across the story of the master Yen-t’ou, who was said to have screamed at the top of his voice when murdered by a robber.1 Yet this doubt was dissolved at the moment of his satori, and in Zen circles his own death is felt to have been especially admirable for its display of human emotion. On the other hand, the abbot Kwaisen and his monks allowed themselves to be burned alive by the soldiers of Oda Nobunaga, sitting calmly in the posture of meditation. Such contradictory “naturalness” seems most mysterious, but perhaps the clue lies in the saying of Yün-men: “In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” For the essential quality of naturalness is the sincerity of the undivided mind which does not dither between alternatives. So when Yen-t’ou screamed, it was such a scream that it was heard for miles around.
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But it would be quite wrong to suppose that this natural sincerity comes about by observing such a platitude as “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” When Yen-t’ou screamed, he was not screaming in order to be natural, nor did he first make up his mind to scream and then implement the decision with the full energy of his will. There is a total contradiction in planned naturalness and intentional sincerity. This is to overlay, not to discover, the “original mind.” Thus to try to be natural is an affectation. To try not to try to be natural is also an affectation. As a Zenrin poem says:
You cannot get it by taking thought;
You cannot seek it by not taking thought.e
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But this absurdly complex and frustrating predicament arises from a simple and elementary mistake in the use of the mind. When this is understood, there is no paradox and no difficulty. Obviously, the mistake arises in the attempt to split the mind against itself, but to understand this clearly we have to enter more deeply into the “cybernetics” of the mind, the basic pattern of its self-correcting action.
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It is, of course, part of the very genius of the human mind that it can, as it were, stand aside from life and reflect upon it, that it can be aware of its own existence, and that it can criticize its own processes. For the mind has something resembling a “feed-back” system. This is a term used in communications engineering for one of the basic principles of “automation,” of enabling machines to control themselves.
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The proper adjustment of a feed-back system is always a complex mechanical problem. For the original machine, say, the furnace, is adjusted by the feed-back system, but this system in turn needs adjustment. Therefore to make a mechanical system more and more automatic will require the use of a series of feed-back systems–a second to correct the first, a third to correct the second, and so on. But there are obvious limits to such a series, for beyond a certain point the mechanism will be “frustrated” by its own complexity. For example, it might take so long for the information to pass through the series of control systems that it would arrive at the original machine too late to be useful. Similarly, when human beings think too carefully and minutely about an action to be taken, they cannot make up their minds in time to act. In other words, one cannot correct one’s means of self-correction indefinitely. There must soon be a source of information at the end of the line which is the final authority. Failure to trust its authority will make it impossible to act, and the system will be paralyzed.
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The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of “lag” or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate–that is, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees–the whole system will break down. For to the extent that the upper and lower limits coincide, the signals for switching off and switching on will coincide! If 70 degrees is both the lower and upper limit the “go” sign will also be the “stop” sign; “yes” will imply “no” and “no” will imply “yes.” Whereupon the mechanism will start “trembling,” going on and off, on and off, until it shakes itself to pieces. The system is too sensitive and shows symptoms which are startlingly like human anxiety. For when a human being is so self-conscious, so self-controlled that he cannot let go of himself, he dithers or wobbles between opposites. This is precisely what is meant in Zen by going round and round on “the wheel of birth-and-death,” for the Buddhist samsara is the prototype of all vicious circles.3
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3 See the fascinating discussion of analogies between mechanical and logical contradictions and the psychoneuroses by Gregory Bateson in Reusch and Bateson, Communication: the Social Matrix of Psychiatry, esp. Chap. 8. (Norton; New York, 1950.)
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Now human life consists primarily and originally in action–in living in the concrete world of “suchness.” But we have the power to control action by reflection, that is, by thinking, by comparing the actual world with memories or “reflections.” Memories are organized in terms of more or less abstract images–words, signs, simplified shapes, and other symbols which can be reviewed very rapidly one after another. From such memories, reflections, and symbols the mind constructs its idea of itself. This corresponds to the thermostat–the source of information about its own past action by which the system corrects itself. The mind-body must, of course, trust that information in order to act, for paralysis will soon result from trying to remember whether we have remembered everything accurately.
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But to keep up the supply of information in the memory, the mind-body must continue to act “on its own.” It must not cling too closely to its own record. There must be a “lag” or distance between the source of information and the source of action. This does not mean that the source of action must hesitate before it accepts the information. It means that it must not identify itself with the source of information. We saw that when the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat, it cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go ahead. This is just what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire for certainty and security prompts identification between the mind and its own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself. It feels that it should not do what it is doing, and that it should do what it is not doing. It feels that it should not be what it is, and be what it isn’t. Furthermore, the effort to remain always “good” or “happy” is like trying to hold the thermostat to a constant 70 degrees by making the lower limit the same as the upper.
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The identification of the mind with its own image is, therefore, paralyzing because the image is fixed–it is past and finished. But it is a fixed image of oneself in motion! To cling to it is thus to be in constant contradiction and conflict. Hence Yün-men’s saying, “In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” In other words, the mind cannot act without giving up the impossible attempt to control itself beyond a certain point. It must let go of itself both in the sense of trusting its own memory and reflection, and in the sense of acting spontaneously, on its own into the unknown.
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This is why Zen often seems to take the side of action as against reflection, and why it describes itself as “no-mind” (wu-hsin) or “no-thought” (wu-nien), and why the masters demonstrate Zen by giving instantaneous and unpremeditated answers to questions. When Yün-men was asked for the ultimate secret of Buddhism, he replied, “Dumpling!” In the words of the Japanese master Takuan:
When a monk asks, “What is the Buddha?” the master may raise his fist; when he is asked, “What is the ultimate idea of Buddhism?” he may exclaim even before the questioner finishes his sentence, “A blossoming branch of the plum,” or “The cypress-tree in the court-yard.” The point is that the answering mind does not “stop” anywhere, but responds straightway without giving any thought to the felicity of an answer.4
This is allowing the mind to act on its own.
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But reflection is also action, and Yün-men might also have said, “In acting, just act. In thinking, just think. Above all, don’t wobble.” In other words, if one is going to reflect, just reflect–but do not reflect about reflecting. Yet Zen would agree that reflection about reflection is also action–provided that in doing it we do just that, and do not tend to drift off into the infinite regression of trying always to stand above or outside the level upon which we are acting. Thus Zen is also a liberation from the dualism of thought and action, for it thinks as it acts–with the same quality of abandon, commitment, or faith. The attitude of wu-hsin is by no means an anti-intellectualist exclusion of thinking. Wu-hsin is action on any level whatsoever, physical or psychic, without trying at the same moment to observe and check the action from outside. This attempt to act and think about the action simultaneously is precisely the identification of the mind with its idea of itself. It involves the same contradiction as the statement which states something about itself–“This statement is false.”
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The same is true of the relationship between feeling and action. For feeling blocks action, and blocks itself as a form of action, when it gets caught in this same tendency to observe or feel itself indefinitely–as when, in the midst of enjoying myself, I examine myself to see if I am getting the utmost out of the occasion. Not content with tasting the food, I am also trying to taste my tongue. Not content with feeling happy, I want to feel myself feeling happy–so as to be sure not to miss anything.
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Whether trusting our memories or trusting the mind to act on its own, it comes to the same thing: ultimately we must act and think, live and die, from a source beyond all “our” knowledge and control. But this source is ourselves, and when we see that, it no longer stands over against us as a threatening object. No amount of care and hesitancy, no amount of introspection and searching of our motives, can make any ultimate difference to the fact that the mind is
Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.
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In the end, the only alternative to a shuddering paralysis is to leap into action regardless of the consequences. Action in this spirit may be right or wrong with respect to conventional standards. But our decisions upon the conventional level must be supported by the conviction that whatever we do, and whatever “happens” to us, is ultimately “right.” In other words, we must enter into it without “second thought,” without the arrière-pensée of regret, hesitancy, doubt, or self-recrimination. Thus when Yün-men was asked, “What is the Tao?” he answered simply, “Walk on! (ch’ü f).”
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But to act “without second thought,” without double-mindedness, is by no means a mere precept for our imitation. For we cannot realize this kind of action until it is clear beyond any shadow of doubt that it is actually impossible to do anything else. In the words of Huang-po:
Men are afraid to forget their own minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing on to which they can cling. They do not know that the void is not really the void but the real realm of the Dharma.… It cannot be looked for or sought, comprehended by wisdom or knowledge, explained in words, contacted materially (i.e., objectively) or reached by meritorious achievement. (14)5
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5 In Chu Ch’an (l), p. 29.
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Now this impossibility of “grasping the mind with the mind” is, when realized, the non-action (wu-wei), the “sitting quietly, doing nothing” whereby “spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” There is no necessity for the mind to try to let go of itself, or to try not to try. This introduces further artificialities. Yet, as a matter of psychological strategy, there is no need for trying to avoid artificialities. In the doctrine of the Japanese master Bankei (1622–1693) the mind which cannot grasp itself is called the “Unborn” (fusho g), the mind which does not arise or appear in the realm of symbolic knowledge.
A layman asked, “I appreciate very much your instruction about the Unborn, but by force of habit second thoughts [nien] keep tending to arise, and being confused by them it is difficult to be in perfect accord with the Unborn. How am I to trust in it entirely?”
Bankei said, “If you make an attempt to stop the second thoughts which arise, then the mind which does the stopping and the mind which is stopped become divided, and there is no occasion for peace of mind. So it is best for you simply to believe that originally there is no (possibility of control by) second thoughts. Yet because of karmic affinity, through what you see and what you hear these thoughts arise and vanish temporarily, but are without substance.” (2)
“Brushing off thoughts which arise is just like washing off blood with blood. We remain impure because of being washed with blood, even when the blood that was first there has gone–and if we continue in this way the impurity never departs. This is from ignorance of the mind’s unborn, unvanishing, and unconfused nature. If we take second thought for an effective reality, we keep going on and on around the wheel of birth-and-death. You should realize that such thought is just a temporary mental construction, and not try to hold or to reject it. Let it alone just as it occurs and just as it ceases. It is like an image reflected in a mirror. The mirror is clear and reflects anything which comes before it, and yet no image sticks in the mirror. The Buddha mind (i.e., the real, unborn mind) is ten thousand times more clear than a mirror, and more inexpressibly marvelous. In its light all such thoughts vanish without trace. If you put your faith in this way of understanding, however strongly such thoughts may arise, they do no harm.” (4)6
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6 Bankei’s Daiho Shogen Kokushi Hogo. Japanese text edited by Furata and Suzuki. (Tokyo, 1943.) Translation read to the author by Professor Hasegawa.
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This is also the doctrine of Huang-po, who says again:
If it is held that there is something to be realized or attained apart from mind, and, thereupon, mind is used to seek it, (that implies) failure to understand that mind and the object of its search are one. Mind cannot be used to seek something from mind for, even after the passage of millions of kalpas, the day of success would never come. (10)7
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7 In Chu Ch’an (1), p. 24.
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One must not forget the social context of Zen. It is primarily a way of liberation for those who have mastered the disciplines of social convention, of the conditioning of the individual by the group. Zen is a medicine for the ill effects of this conditioning, for the mental paralysis and anxiety which come from excessive self-consciousness. It must be seen against the background of societies regulated by the principles of Confucianism, with their heavy stress on propriety and punctilious ritual. In Japan, too, it must be seen in relation to the rigid schooling required in the training of the samurai caste, and the emotional strain to which the samurai were exposed in times of constant warfare. As a medicine for these conditions, it does not seek to overthrow the conventions themselves, but, on the contrary, takes them for granted–as is easily seen in such manifestations of Zen as the cha-no-yu or “tea ceremony” of Japan. Therefore Zen might be a very dangerous medicine in a social context where convention is weak, or, at the other extreme, where there is a spirit of open revolt against convention ready to exploit Zen for destructive purposes.
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With this in mind, we can observe the freedom and naturalness of Zen without loss of perspective. Social conditioning fosters the identification of the mind with a fixed idea of itself as the means of self-control, and as a result man thinks of himself as “I”–the ego. Thereupon the mental center of gravity shifts from the spontaneous or original mind to the ego image. Once this has happened, the very center of our psychic life is identified with the self-controlling mechanism. It then becomes almost impossible to see how “I” can let go of “myself,” for I am precisely my habitual effort to hold on to myself. I find myself totally incapable of any mental action which is not intentional, affected, and insincere. Therefore anything I do to give myself up, to let go, will be a disguised form of the habitual effort to hold on. I cannot be intentionally unintentional or purposely spontaneous. As soon as it becomes important for me to be spontaneous, the intention to be so is strengthened; I cannot get rid of it, and yet it is the one thing that stands in the way of its own fulfillment. It is as if someone had given me some medicine with the warning that it will not work if I think of a monkey while taking it.
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While I am remembering to forget the monkey, I am in a “double-bind” situation where “to do” is “not to do,” and vice versa. “Yes” implies “no,” and “go” implies “stop.” At this point Zen comes to me and asks, “If you cannot help remembering the monkey, are you doing it on purpose?” In other words, do I have an intention for being intentional, a purpose for being purposive? Suddenly I realize that my very intending is spontaneous, or that my controlling self–the ego–arises from my uncontrolled or natural self. At this moment all the machinations of the ego come to nought; it is annihilated in its own trap. I see that it is actually impossible not to be spontaneous. For what I cannot help doing I am doing spontaneously, but if I am at the same time trying to control it, I interpret it as a compulsion. As a Zen master said, “Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.”
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In this moment the whole quality of consciousness is changed, and I feel myself in a new world in which, however, it is obvious that I have always been living. As soon as I recognize that my voluntary and purposeful action happens spontaneously “by itself,” just like breathing, hearing, and feeling, I am no longer caught in the contradiction of trying to be spontaneous. There is no real contradiction, since “trying” is “spontaneity.” Seeing this, the compulsive, blocked, and “tied-up” feeling vanishes. It is just as if I had been absorbed in a tug-of-war between my two hands, and had forgotten that both were mine. No block to spontaneity remains when the trying is seen to be needless. As we saw, the discovery that both the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the mind are alike spontaneous makes an immediate end of the fixed dualism between the mind and the world, the knower and the known. The new world in which I find myself has an extraordinary transparency or freedom from barriers, making it seem that I have somehow become the empty space in which everything is happening.
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Here, then, is the point of the oft-repeated assertion that “all beings are in nirvana from the very beginning,” that “all dualism is falsely imagined,” that “the ordinary mind is the Tao” and that there is therefore no meaning in trying to get into accord with it. In the words of the Cheng-tao Ke:
Like the empty sky it has no boundaries,
Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear.
When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it,
But you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks;
When you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms,
And no crowd is blocking the way. (34) h
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It was through seeing this that, in the moment of his satori, Hakuin cried out, “How wondrous! How wondrous! There is no birth-and-death from which one has to escape, nor is there any supreme knowledge after which one has to strive!”8 Or in the words of Hsiang-yen:
At one stroke I forgot all my knowledge!
There’s no use for artificial discipline,
For, move as I will, I manifest the ancient Way.9 i
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8 Orategama, in Suzuki (1), vol. 1, p. 239.
198
9 Wu-teng Hui-yĂĽan, 9.
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Paradoxically, nothing is more artificial than the notion of artificiality. Try as one may, it is as impossible to go against the spontaneous Tao as to live in some other time than now, or some other place than here. When a monk asked Bankei what he thought of disciplining oneself to attain satori, the master said, “Satori stands in contrast to confusion. Since each person is the substance of Buddha, (in reality) there is not one point of confusion. What, then, is one going to achieve by satori?”10
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10 Bankei Kokushi Seppo. Read to the author by Professor Hasegawa.
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Seeing, then, that there is no possibility of departing from the Tao, one is like Hsüan-chüeh’s “easygoing” man who
Neither avoids false thoughts nor seeks the true,
For ignorance is in reality the Buddha nature,
And this illusory, changeful, empty body is the Dharmakaya.11
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11 Cheng-tao Ke, 1.
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One stops trying to be spontaneous by seeing that it is unnecessary to try, and then and there it can happen. The Zen masters often bring out this state by the device of evading a question and then, as the questioner turns to go, calling him suddenly by name. As he naturally replies, “Yes?” the master exclaims, “There it is!”
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To the logician it will of course seem that the point at which we have arrived is pure nonsense–as, in a way, it is. From the Buddhist point of view, reality itself has no meaning since it is not a sign, pointing to something beyond itself. To arrive at reality–at “suchness”–is to go beyond karma, beyond consequential action, and to enter a life which is completely aimless. Yet to Zen and Taoism alike this is the very life of the universe, which is complete at every moment and does not need to justify itself by aiming at something beyond. In the words of a Zenrin poem:
If you don’t believe, just look at September, look at October!
The yellow leaves falling, falling, to fill both mountain and river.j
To see this is to be like the two friends of whom another Zenrin
poem says:
Meeting, they laugh and laugh–
The forest grove, the many fallen leaves! k
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To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.
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Furthermore, the Zen experience is more of a conclusion than a premise. It is never to be used as the first step in a line of ethical or metaphysical reasoning, since conclusions draw to it rather than from it. Like the Beatific Vision of Christianity, it is a “which than which there is no whicher”–the true end of man–not a thing to be used for some other end. Philosophers do not easily recognize that there is a point where thinking-like boiling an egg-must come to a stop. To try to formulate the Zen experience as a proposition–“everything is the Tao”–and then to analyze it and draw conclusions from it is to miss it completely. Like the Crucifixion, it is “to the Jews [the moralists] a stum-blingblock and to the Greeks [the logicians] foolishness.” To say that “everything is the Tao” almost gets the point, but just at the moment of getting it, the words crumble into nonsense. For we are here at a limit at which words break down because they always imply a meaning beyond themselves–and here there is no meaning beyond.
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Zen does not make the mistake of using the experience “all things are of one Suchness” as the premise for an ethic of universal brotherhood. On the contrary, Yüan-wu says:
If you are a real man, you may by all means drive off with the farmer’s ox, or grab the food from a starving man.12 l
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12 Comment on Pi-yen Lu, 3.
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This is only to say that Zen lies beyond the ethical standpoint, whose sanctions must be found, not in reality itself, but in the mutual agreement of human beings. When we attempt to universalize or absolutize it, the ethical standpoint makes it impossible to exist, for we cannot live for a day without destroying the life of some other creature.
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If Zen is regarded as having the same function as a religion in the West, we shall naturally want to find some logical connection between its central experience and the improvement of human relations. But this is actually putting the cart before the horse. The point is rather that some such experience or way of life as this is the object of improved human relations. In the culture of the Far East the problems of human relations are the sphere of Confucianism rather than Zen, but since the Sung dynasty (959–1278) Zen has consistently fostered Confucianism and was the main source of the introduction of its principles into Japan. It saw their importance for creating the type of cultural matrix in which Zen could flourish without coming into conflict with social order, because the Confucian ethic is admittedly human and relative, not divine and absolute.
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Although profoundly “inconsequential,” the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work. The characteristic notes of the spontaneous life are mo chih ch’u m or “going ahead without hesitation,” wu-wei, which may here be understood as purposelessness, and wu-shih, lack of affectation or simplicity.
192
While the Zen experience does not imply any specific course of action, since it has no purpose, no motivation, it turns unhesitatingly to anything that presents itself to be done. Mo chih ch’u is the mind functioning without blocks, without “wobbling” between alternatives, and much of Zen training consists in confronting the student with dilemmas which he is expected to handle without stopping to deliberate and “choose.” The response to the situation must follow with the immediacy of sound issuing from the hands when they are clapped, or sparks from a flint when struck. The student unaccustomed to this type of response will at first be confused, but as he gains faith in his “original” or spontaneous mind he will not only respond with ease, but the responses themselves will acquire a startling appropriateness. This is something like the professional comedian’s gift of unprepared wit which is equal to any situation.
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The master may begin a conversation with the student by asking a series of very ordinary questions about trivial matters, to which the student responds with perfect spontaneity. But suddenly he will say, “When the bath-water flows down the drain, does it turn clockwise or counter-clockwise?” As the student stops at the unexpectedness of the question, and perhaps tries to remember which way it goes, the master shouts, “Don’t think! Act! This way–” and whirls his hand in the air. Or, perhaps less helpfully, he may say, “So far you’ve answered my questions quite naturally and easily, but where’s your difficulty now?”
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Suzuki has translated a long letter from the Zen master Takuan on the relationship of Zen to the art of fencing, and this is certainly the best literary source of what Zen means by mo chih ch’u, by “going straight ahead without stopping.”13 Both Takuan and Bankei stressed the fact that the “original” or “unborn” mind is constantly working miracles even in the most ordinary person. Even though a tree has innumerable leaves, the mind takes them in all at once without being “stopped” by any one of them. Explaining this to a visiting monk, Bankei said, “To prove that your mind is the Buddha mind, notice how all that I say here goes into you without missing a single thing, even though I don’t try to push it into you.”14 When heckled by an aggressive Nichiren monk who kept insisting that he couldn’t understand a word, Bankei asked him to come closer. The monk stepped forward, “Closer still,” said Bankei. The monk came forward again. “How well,” said Bankei, “you understand me!”15 In other words, our natural organism performs the most marvelously complex activities without the least hesitation or deliberation. Conscious thought is itself founded upon its whole system of spontaneous functioning, for which reason there is really no alternative to trusting oneself completely to its working. Oneself is its working.
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14 Bankei Kokushi Seppo. Read to the author by Professor Hasegawa.
15 In Suzuki (10), p. 123.
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Zen is not merely a cult of impulsive action. The point of mo chih ch’u is not to eliminate reflective thought but to eliminate “blocking” in both action and thought, so that the response of the mind is always like a ball in a mountain stream-“one thought after another without hesitation.” There is something similar to this in the psychoanalytic practice of free association, employed as a technique to get rid of obstacles to the free flow of thought from the “unconscious.” For there is a tendency to confuse “blocking”–a purely obstructive mechanism–with thinking out an answer, but the difference between the two is easily noticed in such a purely “thinking out” process as adding a column of figures. Many people find that at certain combinations of numbers, such as 8 and 5 or 7 and 6, a feeling of resistance comes up which halts the process. Because it is always annoying and disconcerting, one tends also to block at blocking, so that the state turns into the kind of wobbling dither characteristic of the snarled feed-back system. The simplest cure is to feel free to block, so that one does not block at blocking. When one feels free to block, the blocking automatically eliminates itself. It is like riding a bicycle. When one starts falling to the left, one does not resist the fall (i.e., the block) by turning to the right. One turns the wheel to the left–and the balance is restored. The principle here is, of course, the same as getting out of the contradiction of “trying to be spontaneous” through accepting the “trying” as “spontaneous,” through not resisting the block.
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“Blocking” is perhaps the best translation of the Zen term nien n as it occurs in the phrase wu-nien, “no-thought” or, better, “no second thought.” Takuan points out that this is the real meaning of “attachment” in Buddhism, as when it is said that a Buddha is free from worldly attachments. It does not mean that he is a “stone Buddha” with no feelings, no emotions, and no sensations of hunger or pain. It means that he does not block at anything. Thus it is typical of Zen that its style of action has the strongest feeling of commitment, of “follow-through.” It enters into everything wholeheartedly and freely without having to keep an eye on itself. It does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. In the words of Lin-chi:
When it’s time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. Don’t have a single thought in your mind about seeking for Buddhahood.… You talk about being perfectly disciplined in your six senses and in all your actions, but in my view all this is making karma. To seek the Buddha (nature) and to seek the Dharma is at once to make karma which leads to the hells. To seek (to be) Bodhisattvas is also making karma, and likewise studying the sutras and commentaries. Buddhas and Patriarchs are people without such artificialities.… It is said everywhere that there is a Tao which must be cultivated and a Dharma which must be realized. What Dharma do you say must be realized, and what Tao cultivated? What do you lack in the way you are functioning right now? What will you add to where you are?16 o
As another Zenrin poem says:
There’s nothing equal to wearing clothes and eating food.
Outside this there are neither Buddhas nor PatrĂarchs.p
199
16 Lin-chi Lu in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 1. 4. 6, 11–12, 12.
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This is the quality of wu-shih, of naturalness without any contrivances or means for being natural, such as thoughts of Zen, of the Tao, or of the Buddha. One does not exclude such thoughts; they simply fall away when seen to be unnecessary. “He does not linger where the Buddha is, and where there is no Buddha he passes right on.”17 For as the Zenrin says again:
To be conscious of the original mind, the original nature–
Just this is the great disease of Zen! q
199
17 Shih Niu T’u, 8.
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As “the fish swims in the water but is unmindful of the water, the bird flies in the wind but knows not of the wind,” so the true life of Zen has no need to “raise waves when no wind is blowing,” to drag in religion or spirituality as something over and above life itself. This is why the sage Fa-yung received no more offerings of flowers from the birds after he had had his interview with the Fourth Patriarch, for his holiness no longer “stood out like a sore thumb.” Of such a man the Zenrin says:
Entering the forest he moves not the grass;
Entering the water he makes not a ripple.r
No one notices him because he does not notice himself.
197
It is often said that to be clinging to oneself is like having a thorn in the skin, and that Buddhism is a second thorn to extract the first. When it is out, both thorns are thrown away. But in the moment when Buddhism, when philosophy or religion, becomes another way of clinging to oneself through seeking a spiritual security, the two thorns become one–and how is it to be taken out? This, as Bankei said, is “wiping off blood with blood.” Therefore in Zen there is neither self nor Buddha to which one can cling, no good to gain and no evil to be avoided, no thoughts to be eradicated and no mind to be purified, no body to perish and no soul to be saved. At one blow this entire framework of abstractions is shattered to fragments. As the Zenrin says:
To save life it must be destroyed.
When utterly destroyed, one dwells for the first time in peace.8
One word settles heaven and earth;
One sword levels the whole world.t
198
Of this “one sword” Lin-chi said:
If a man cultivates the Tao, the Tao will not work–on all sides evil conditions will head up competitively. But when the sword of wisdom [prajna] comes out there’s not one thing left.18 u
199
18 In Ku-tsun-hsĂĽ YĂĽ-lu, 1. 4. 13.
198
The “sword of prajna” which cuts away abstraction is that “direct pointing” whereby Zen avoids the entanglements of religiosity and goes straight to the heart. Thus when the Governor of Lang asked Yao-shan, “What is the Tao?” the master pointed upwards to the sky and downwards to a water jug beside him. Asked for an explanation, he replied: “A cloud in the sky and water in the jug.”
200
Three
ZA-ZEN AND THE KOAN
200
it might be supposed that the practice of Zen is a means to the end of awakening, this is not so. For the practice of Zen is not the true practice so long as it has an end in view, and when it has no end in view it is awakening–the aimless, self-sufficient life of the “eternal now.” To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity. To put it in another way: one does not practice Zen to become a Buddha; one practices it because one is a Buddha from the beginning–and this “original realization” is the starting point of the Zen life. Original realization is the “body” (t’i b) and the marvelous practice the “use” (yung c), and the two correspond respectively to prajna, wisdom, and karuna, the compassionate activity of the awakened Bodhisattva in the world of birth-and-death.
Note: idk about this sudden awakening thing because of the simple fact that you forget! It takes time and disipline to consolidate these insights
203
Much importance is attached to the physical posture of za-zen. The monks sit on firmly padded cushions with legs crossed and feet soles-upward upon the thighs. The hands rest upon the lap, the left over the right, with palms upward and thumbs touching one another. The body is held erect, though not stiffly, and the eyes are left open so that their gaze falls upon the floor a few feet ahead. The breathing is regulated so as to be slow without strain, with the stress upon the out-breath, and its impulse from the belly rather than the chest. This has the effect of shifting the body’s center of gravity to the abdomen so that the whole posture has a sense of firmness, of being part of the ground upon which one is sitting. The slow, easy breathing from the belly works upon the consciousness like bellows, and gives it a still, bright clarity. The beginner is advised to accustom himself to the stillness by doing nothing more than counting his breaths from one to ten, over and over again, until the sensation of sitting without comment becomes effortless and natural.
206
koan problems. Many of the Rinzai masters are most emphatic about the necessity of arousing a most intense spirit of seeking–a compelling sense of “doubt” whereby it becomes almost impossible to forget the koan one is trying to solve.
206
The Rinzai School has always forbidden the publication of formally acceptable answers to the various koan because the whole point of the discipline is to discover them for oneself, by intuition.
208
Nor should it be assumed that satori is a single, sudden leap from the common consciousness to “complete, unexcelled awakening” (anuttara samyak sambodhi). Satori really designates the sudden and intuitive way of seeing into anything, whether it be remembering a forgotten name or seeing into the deepest principles of Buddhism. One seeks and seeks, but cannot find. One then gives up, and the answer comes by itself.
211
Zen student does not really know Zen unless he finds it out for himself. The Chinese proverb “What comes in through the gate is not family treasure” is understood in Zen to mean that what someone else tells you is not your own knowledge. Satori, as Wu-men explained, comes only after one has exhausted one’s thinking, only when one is convinced that the mind cannot grasp itself. In the words of another of Ikkyu’s doka:
A mind to search elsewhere
For the Buddha,
Is foolishness
In the very centre of foolishness.
For
My self of long ago,
In nature non-existent;
Nowhere to go when dead,
Nothing at all.9
222
9 R. H. BIyth, ibid., vol. 3, no. 9, p. 14, and vol. 2, no. 2, p. 7.
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Everyone knows that the Buddha nature is “within” oneself and is not to be sought outside, so that no student would be fooled by being told to seek it by going to India or by reading a certain sutra. On the contrary, he is told to look for it in himself!
212
Worse still, he is encouraged to seek it with the whole energy of his being, never giving up his quest by day or night, whether actually in za-zen or whether working or eating. He is encouraged, in fact, to make a total fool of himself, to whirl round and round like a dog trying to catch up with its own tail.
212
he therefore tries and tries to imagine what he was before he was born,
213
the roshi has no patience whatever with philosophical or other wordy answers. For the roshi wants to be “shown.” He wants something concrete, some solid proof. The student therefore begins to produce such “specimens of reality” as lumps of rock, leaves and branches, shouts, gestures of the hands–anything and everything he can imagine. But all is resolutely rejected until the student, unable to imagine anything more, is brought to his wits’ end–at which point he is of course beginning to get on the right track. He “knows that he doesn’t know.”
213
When the beginning koan is Chao-chou’s “Wu,” the student is asked to find out why Chao-chou answered “Wu” or “None” to the question, “Does a dog have the Buddha nature?” The roshi asks to be shown this “nothing.” A Chinese proverb says that “A single hand does not make a clap,” e and therefore Hakuin asked, “What is the sound of one hand?” Can you hear what is not making a noise? Can you get any sound out of this one object which has nothing to hit? Can you get any “knowledge” of your own real nature? What an idiotic question!
213
By such means the student is at last brought to a point of feeling completely stupid–as if he were encased in a huge block of ice, unable to move or think. He just knows nothing; the whole world, including himself, is an enormous mass of pure doubt. Everything he hears, touches, or sees is as incomprehensible as “nothing” or “the sound of one hand.” At sanzen he is perfectly dumb. He walks or sits all day in a “vivid daze,” conscious of everything going on around him, responding mechanically to circumstances, but totally baffled by everything.
214
After some time in this state there comes a moment when the block of ice suddenly collapses, when this vast lump of unintelligibility comes instantly alive. The problem of who or what it is becomes transparently absurd–a question which, from the beginning, meant nothing whatever. There is no one left to ask himself the question or to answer it. Yet at the same time this transparent meaninglessness can laugh and talk, eat and drink, run up and down, look at the earth and sky, and all this without any sense of there being a problem, a sort of psychological knot, in the midst of it. There is no knot because the “mind seeking to know the mind” or the “self seeking to control the self” has been defeated out of existence and exposed for the abstraction which it always was. And when that tense knot vanishes there is no more sensation of a hard core of selfhood standing over against the rest of the world. In this state, the roshi needs only a single look at the student to know that he is now ready to begin his Zen training in earnest.
214
It is not quite the paradox which it seems to say that Zen training can begin only when it has been finished.
216
Suffice it to say that the first four correspond to the four Dharmadhatu of the Hua-yen School, though the relationship is somewhat complex, and the fifth to “naturalness,” In other words, one may regard the universe, the Dharmadhatu, from a number of equally valid points of view–as many, as one, as both one and many, and as neither one nor many. But the final position of Zen is that it does not take any special viewpoint, and yet is free to take every viewpoint according to the circumstances. In the words of Lin-chi:
Sometimes I take away the man (i.e., the subject) but do not take away the circumstances (i.e., the object). Sometimes I take away the circumstances but do not take away the man. Sometimes I take away both the man and the circumstances. Sometimes I take away neither the man nor the circumstances.11 f
And sometimes, he might have added, I just do nothing special (wu-shih).12
222
11 In Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 1. 4, pp. 3–4.
12 A detailed but extremely confusing account of the Five Ranks will be found in Dumoulin and Sasaki (1), pp. 25–29.
217
the moral act is significantly moral only when it is free, without the compulsion of a reason or necessity. This is also the deepest meaning of the Christian doctrine of free will, for to act “in union with God” is to act, not from the constraint of fear or pride, nor from hope of reward, but with the baseless love of the “unmoved mover.”
220
One method of muscular relaxation is to begin by increasing tension in the muscles so as to have a clear feeling of what not to do.15 In this sense there is some point in using the initial koan as a means of intensifying the mind’s absurd effort to grasp itself. But to identify satori with the consequent feeling of relief, with the sense of relaxation, is quite misleading, for the satori is the letting go and not the feeling of it. The conscious aspect of the Zen life is not, therefore, satori–not the “original mind”-but everything one is left free to do and to see and feel when the cramp in the mind has been released.
220
From this standpoint Bankei’s simple trust in the “Unborn mind” and even Shinran’s view of Nembutsu are also entrances to satori. To “let go” it is not always necessary to wear out the attempt to grasp until it becomes intolerable. As against this violent way there is also a judo–a. “gentle way,” the way of seeing that the mind, the basic reality, remains spontaneous and ungrasped whether one tries to grasp it or not. One’s own doing or not doing drop away by sheer irrelevance. To think that one must grasp or not grasp, let go or not let go, is only to foster the illusion that the ego is real, and that its machinations are an effective obstacle to the Tao.
220
In the words of the Shin-shu mystic Kichi-bei:
When all the idea of self-power based upon moral values and disciplinary measures is purged, there is nothing left in you that will declare itself to be the hearer, and just because of this you do not miss anything you hear.16
222
16 In Suzuki (10), p. 130.
221
So long as one thinks about listening, one cannot hear clearly, and so long as one thinks about trying or not trying to let go of oneself, one cannot let go. Yet whether one thinks about listening or not, the ears are hearing just the same, and nothing can stop the sound from reaching them.
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One
“EMPTY AND MARVELOUS”
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The opening words of the oldest Zen poem say that
The perfect Way [Tao] is without difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and choosing.
Only when you stop liking and disliking
Will all be clearly understood.
A split hair’s difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart!
If you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.1 a
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The point is not to make an effort to silence the feelings and cultivate bland indifference. It is to see through the universal illusion that what is pleasant or good may be wrested from what is painful or evil. It was a first principle in Taoism that
When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness;
When everyone recognizes goodness as good, there is already evil.
“To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited; …
Before and after are in mutual sequence.2
To see this is to see that good without evil is like up without down, and that to make an ideal of pursuing the good is like trying to get rid of the left by turning constantly to the right. One is therefore compelled to go round in circles.3
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The good and the evil, the pleasant and the painful are so inseparable, so identical in their difference-like the two sides of a coin-that
Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
or, in the words of a poem in the Zenrin Kushu:4
To receive trouble is to receive good fortune;
To receive agreement is to receive opposition.b
Another puts it more vividly:
At dusk the cock announces dawn;
At midnight, the bright sun.c
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4 The Zenrin Kushu is an anthology of some five thousand two-line poems, compiled by Toyo Eicho (1429–1504). Its purpose was to provide Zen students with a source-book of verses from which to select couplets expressing the theme of a newly solved koan. Many masters require such a verse as soon as the proper answer to the koan has been given. The couplets have been drawn from a vast variety of Chinese sources-Buddhist, Taoist, classical literature, popular songs, etc.
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Zen does not, for this reason, take the attitude that it is so futile to eat when hungry that one may as well starve, nor is it so inhuman as to say that when we itch we should not scratch. Disillusionment with the pursuit of the good does not involve the evil of stagnation as its necessary alternative, for the human situation is like that of “fleas on a hot griddle.” None of the alternatives offer a solution, for the flea who falls must jump, and the flea who jumps must fall. Choosing is absurd because there is no choice.
158
To the dualistic mode of thought it will therefore seem that the standpoint of Zen is that of fatalism as opposed to free choice. When Mu-chou was asked, “We dress and eat every day, and how do we escape from having to put on clothes and eat food?” he answered, “We dress; we eat.” “I don’t understand,” said the monk. “If you don’t understand, put on your clothes and eat your food.” 5 d On being asked how to escape from the “heat,” another master directed the questioner to the place where it is neither hot nor cold. When asked to explain himself he replied, “In summer we sweat; in winter we shiver.” Or, as a poem puts it:
When cold, we gather round the hearth before the blazing fire;
When hot, we sit on the bank of the mountain stream in the bamboo grove.6 e
And from this point of view one can
See the sun in the midst of the rain;
Scoop clear water from the heart of the fire.f
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5 Mu-chou Lu, in Ku-tsun-hsĂĽ YĂĽ-lu, 2. 6.
6 Zenrin Ruishu, 2.
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But the viewpoint is not fatalistic. It is not simply submission to the inevitability of sweating when it is hot, shivering when it is cold, eating when hungry, and sleeping when tired. Submission to fate implies someone who submits, someone who is the helpless puppet of circumstances, and for Zen there is no such person. The duality of subject and object, of the knower and the known, is seen to be just as relative, as mutual, as inseparable as every other. We do not sweat because it is hot; the sweating is the heat. It is just as true to say that the sun is light because of the eyes as to say that the eyes see light because of the sun. The viewpoint is unfamiliar because it is our settled convention to think that heat comes first and then, by causality, the body sweats. To put it the other way round is startling, like saying “cheese and bread” instead of “bread and cheese.” Thus the Zenrin Kushu says:
Fire does not wait for the sun to be hot
Nor the wind for the moon, to be cool.
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This shocking and seemingly illogical reversal of common sense may perhaps be clarified by the favorite Zen image of “the moon in the water.” The phenomenon moon-in-the-water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. Another poem in the Zenrin Kushu says:
Trees show the bodily form of the wind;
Waves give vital energy to the moon.g
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When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, the entire relationship between subject and object, knower and known, undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change. It becomes a real relationship, a mutuality in which the subject creates the object just as much as the object creates the subject.
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it becomes vividly clear that in concrete fact I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware. This is the Hua-yen (Kegon) doctrine of the net of jewels, of shih shih wu ai (Japanese, ji ji mu ge), in which every jewel contains the reflection of all the others.
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The sense of subjective isolation is also based on a failure to see the relativity of voluntary and involuntary events. This relativity is easily felt by watching one’s breath, for by a slight change of viewpoint it is as easy to feel that “I breathe” as that “It breathes me.” We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision, and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if decision itself were voluntary, every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide–an infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide because decision “happens.” We just decide without having the faintest understanding of how we do it. In fact, it is neither voluntary nor involuntary. To “get the feel” of this relativity is to find another extraordinary transformation of our experience as a whole, which may be described in either of two ways. I feel that I am deciding everything that happens, or, I feel that everything, including my decisions, is just happening spontaneously. For a decision–the freest of my actions-just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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It would seem, then, that to get rid of the subjective distinction between “me” and “my experience”–through seeing that my idea of myself is not myself–is to discover the actual relationship between myself and the “outside” world. The individual, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, are simply the abstract limits or terms of a concrete reality which is “between” them, as the concrete coin is “between” the abstract, Euclidean surfaces of its two sides. Similarly, the reality of all “inseparable opposites”–life and death, good and evil, pleasure and pain, gain and loss–is that “between” for which we have no words.
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Man’s identification with his idea of himself gives him a specious and precarious sense of permanence. For this idea is relatively fixed, being based upon carefully selected memories of his past, memories which have a preserved and fixed character. Social convention encourages the fixity of the idea because the very usefulness of symbols depends upon their stability. Convention therefore encourages him to associate his idea of himself with equally abstract and symbolic roles and stereotypes, since these will help him to form an idea of himself which will be definite and intelligible. But to the degree that he identifies himself with the fixed idea, he becomes aware of “life” as something which flows past him–faster and faster as he grows older, as his idea becomes more rigid, more bolstered with memories. The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a process in motion.
On one occasion Ma-tsu and Po-chang were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.
“What are they?” asked Ma-tsu.
“They’re wild geese,” said Po-chang.
“Where are they going?” demanded Ma-tsu.
Po-chang replied, “They’ve already flown away.”
Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed Po-chang by the nose and twisted it so that he cried out in pain.
“How,” shouted Ma-tsu, “could they ever have flown away?”
This was the moment of Po-chang’s awakening.8
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8 Pi-yen Chi.
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The relativity of time and motion is one of the principal themes of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, where he writes:
If we watch the shore while we are sailing in a boat, we feel that the shore is moving. But if we look nearer to the boat itself, we know then that it is the boat which moves. When we regard the universe in confusion of body and mind, we often get the mistaken belief that our mind is constant. But if we actually practice (Zen) and come back to ourselves, we see that this was wrong.
When firewood becomes ashes, it never returns to being firewood. But we should not take the view that what is latterly ashes was formerly firewood. What we should understand is that, according to the doctrine of Buddhism, firewood stays at the position of firewood.… There are former and later stages, but these stages are clearly cut.
It is the same with life and death. Thus we say in Buddhism that the Un-born is also the Un-dying. Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time. They are like winter and spring, and in Buddhism we do not consider that winter becomes spring, or that spring becomes summer.9
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9 Shobogenzo, fasc. 1. For this translation I am indebted to my colleague Professor Sabro Hasegawa.
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Dogen is here trying to express the strange sense of timeless moments which arises when one is no longer trying to resist the flow of events, the peculiar stillness and self-sufficiency of the succeeding instants when the mind is, as it were, going along with them and not trying to arrest them. A similar view is expressed thus by Ma-tsu:
A sutra says, “It is only a group of elements which come together to make this body.” When it arises, only these elements arise. When it ceases, only these elements cease. But when these elements arise, do not say, “I am arising,” and when they cease, do not say, “I am ceasing.” So, too, with our former thoughts, later thoughts, and intervening thoughts (or, experiences): the thoughts follow one another without being linked together. Each one is absolutely tranquil.10 h
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10 Ku-tsun-hsĂĽ YĂĽ-lu, 1. 2. 4.
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Buddhism has frequently compared the course of time to the apparent motion of a wave, wherein the actual water only moves up and down, creating the illusion of a “piece” of water moving over the surface. It is a similar illusion that there is a constant “self” moving through successive experiences, constituting a link between them in such a way that the youth becomes the man who becomes the graybeard who becomes the corpse.
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The difficulty of Zen is, of course, to shift one’s attention from the abstract to the concrete, from the symbolic self to one’s true nature. So long as we merely talk about it, so long as we turn over ideas in our minds about “symbol” and “reality,” or keep repeating, “I am not my idea of myself,” this is still mere abstractĂon. Zen created the method (upaya) of “direct pointing” in order to escape from this vicious circle, in order to thrust the real immediately to our notice. When reading a difficult book it is of no help to think, “I should concentrate,” for one thinks about concentration instead of what the book has to say. Likewise, in studying or practicing Zen it is of no help to think about Zen. To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to “stink of Zen.”
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For this reason the masters talk about Zen as little as possible, and throw its concrete reality straight at us. This reality is the “suchness” (tathata) of our natural, nonverbal world. If we see this just as it is, there is nothing good, nothing bad, nothing inherently long or short, nothing subjective and nothing objective. There is no symbolic self to be forgotten, and no need for any idea of a concrete reality to be remembered.
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A monk asked Chao-chou, “For what reason did the First Patriarch come from the West?” (This is a formal question, asking for the central point of Bodhidharma’s teaching, i.e., of Zen itself.)
Chao-chou answered: “The cypress tree in the yard.”
“Aren’t you trying,” said the monk, “to demonstrate it by means of an objective reality?”
“I am not!” retorted the master.
“For what reason, then, did the First Patriarch come from the West?”
“The cypress tree in the yard!”14
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14 Chao-chou Lu in Ku-tsun-hsĂĽ YĂĽ-lu, 3. 13.
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Notice how Chao-chou whips the monk out of his conceptualization about the answer. When T’ung-shan was asked, “What is the Buddha?” he answered, “Three pounds of flax!” Upon this Yüan-wu comments:
Various answers have been given by different masters to the question, “What is the Buddha?” … None, however, can excel T’ung-shan’s “three pounds (chin) of flax” as regards its irrationality which cuts off all passage of speculation. Some comment that T’ung-shan was weighing flax at the moment, hence the answer.… Still others think that as the questioner was not conscious of the fact that he himself was the Buddha, T’ung-shan answered him in this indirect way. Such are all like corpses, for they are utterly unable to comprehend the living truth. There are still others who take the “three pounds of flax” as the Buddha. What wild and fantastic remarks they make!15
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15 Pi-yen Chi, 12, in Suzuki (1), vol. 2, pp. 71–72.
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The masters are resolute in cutting short all theorizing and speculation about these answers. “Direct pointing” entirely fails in its intention if it requires or stimulates any conceptual comment.
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Po-chang had so many students that he had to open a second monastery. To find a suitable person as its master, he called his monks together and set a pitcher before them, saying:
“Without calling it a pitcher, tell me what it is.”
The head monk said, “You couldn’t call it a piece of wood.”
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At this the monastery cook kicked the pitcher over and walked away. The cook was put in charge of the new monastery.18 One of Nan-ch’üan’s lectures is worth quoting here:
During the period (kalpa) before the world was manifested there were no names. The moment the Buddha arrives in the world there are names, and so we clutch hold of forms. In the great Tao there is absolutely nothing secular or sacred. If there are names, everything is classified in limits and bounds. Therefore the old man West of the River (i.e., Ma-tsu) said: “It is not mind; it is not Buddha; it is not a thing.”19 l
This, of course, reflects the doctrine of the Tao Te Ching that
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth;
Naming is the mother of the ten thousand things (1).
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18 Wu-men kuan, 40. However, as Wu-men comments, he fell right into Po-chang’s trap, because he exchanged an easy job for a difficult one!
19 Nan-ch’üan Yü-lu in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 3. 12.
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But Lao-tzu’s “nameless” and Nan-ch’üan’s “kalpa of the void” before the manifestation of the world are not prior to the conventional world of things in time. They are the “suchness” of the world just as it is now, and to which the Zen masters are directly pointing. Po-chang’s cook was living wide awake in that world, and answered the master’s problem in its concrete and nameless terms.
A monk asked Ts’ui-wei, “For what reason did the First Patriarch come from the West?”
Ts’ui-wei answered, “Pass me that chin-rest.”
As soon as the monk passed it, Ts’ui-wei hit him with it.20
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20 Pi-yen Lu, 20. The chin-rest is the ch’an-pan, a board for supporting the chin during long meditation.
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Another master was having tea with two of his students when he suddenly tossed his fan to one of them, saying, “What’s this?” The student opened it and fanned himself. “Not bad,” was his comment. “Now you,” he went on, passing it to the other student, who at once closed the fan and scratched his neck with it. This done, he opened it again, placed a piece of cake on it, and offered it to the master. This was considered even better, for when there are no names the world is no longer “classified in limits and bounds.”
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There is, no doubt, some parallel between these demonstrations and the viewpoint of Korzybskian semantics. There is the same stress on the importance of avoiding confusion between words and signs, on the one hand, and the infinitely variable “unspeakable” world, on the other. Class demonstrations of semantic principles often resemble types of mondo. Professor Irving Lee, of Northwestern University, used to hold up a matchbox before his class, asking “What’s this?” The students would usually drop squarely into the trap and say, “A matchbox!” At this Professor Lee would say, “No, no! It’s this–” throwing the matchbox at the class, and adding, “Matchbox is a noise. Is this a noise?”
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However, it would seem that Korzybski still thought of the “unspeakable” world as a multiplicity of infinitely differentiated events. For Zen, the world of “suchness” is neither one nor many, neither uniform nor differentiated. A Zen master might hold up his hand–to someone insisting that there are real differences in the world–and say, “Without saying a word, point to the difference between my fingers.” At once it is clear that “sameness” and “difference” are abstractions. The same would have to be said of all categorizations of the concrete world–even “concrete” itself–for such terms as “physical,” “material,” “objective,” “real,” and “existential” are extremely abstract symbols. Indeed, the more one tries to define them, the more meaningless they turn out to be.
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The world of “suchness” is void and empty because it teases the mind out of thought, dumfounding the chatter of definition so that there is nothing left to be said. Yet it is obvious that we are not confronted with literal nothingness. It is true that, when pressed, every attempt to catch hold of our world leaves us empty-handed. Furthermore, when we try to be sure at least of ourselves, the knowing, catching subjects, we disappear. We cannot find any self apart from the mind, and we cannot find any mind apart from those very experiences which the mind–now vanished–was trying to grasp. In R. H. Blyth’s arresting metaphor, when we were just about to swat the fly, the fly flew up and sat on the swatter. In terms of immediate perception, when we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things. For a moment we are paralyzed, because it seems that we have no basis for action, no ground under foot from which to take a jump. But this is the way it always was, and in the next moment we find ourselves as free to act, speak, and think as ever, yet in a strange and miraculous new world from which “self” and “other,” “mind” and “things” have vanished. In the words of Te-shan:
Only when you have no thing in your mind and no mind in things are you vacant and spiritual, empty and marvelous.21 m
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21 Lien-teng Hui-yao, 22. This is Ruth Sasaki’s elegant translation in Dumoulin and Sasaki (1), p. 48, where she points out that in this context “spiritual” connotes a state beyond expression in words.
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The marvel can only be described as the peculiar sensation of freedom in action which arises when the world is no longer felt to be some sort of obstacle standing over against one. This is not freedom in the crude sense of “kicking over the traces” and behaving in wild caprice. It is the discovery of freedom in the most ordinary tasks, for when the sense of subjective isolation vanishes, the world is no longer felt as an intractable object.
Yün-men once said, “Our school lets you go any way you like. It kills and it brings to life–either way.”
A monk then asked, “How does it kill?”
The master replied, “Winter goes and spring comes.”
“How,” asked the monk, “is it when winter goes and spring comes?”
The master said, “Shouldering a staff you wander this way and that, East or West, South or North, knocking at the wild stumps as you please.”22
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22 YĂĽn-men Kuang-lu, in Ku-tsun-hsĂĽ YĂĽ-lu, 4. 16.
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The passing of the seasons is not passively suffered, but “happens” as freely as one wanders in the fields, knocking at old stumps with a stick. In the context of Christianity this might be interpreted as feeling that one has become omnipotent, that one is God, directing everything that happens. However, it must be remembered that in Taoist and Buddhist thought there is no conception of a God who deliberately and consciously governs the universe. Lao-tzu said of the Tao:
To its accomplishments it lays no claim.
It loves and nourishes all things,
but does not lord it over them. (34)
The Tao, without doing anything (wu-wei),
leaves nothing undone. (37)
To use the imagery of a Tibetan poem, every action, every event comes of itself from the Void “as from the surface of a clear lake there leaps suddenly a fish.” When this is seen to be as true of the deliberate and the routine as of the surprising and the unforeseen, one can agree with the Zen poet P’ang-yun:
Miraculous power and marvelous activity–
Drawing water and hewing wood!23 o
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23 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 8.