There is a saying in Zen that “original realization is marvelous practice” (Japanese, honsho myoshu a). The meaning is that no distinction is to be made between the realization of awakening (satori) and the cultivation of Zen in meditation and action. Whereas 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.
In the two preceding chapters we discussed the original realization. In this and the one that follows we turn to the practice or activity which flows from it–firstly, to the life of meditation and, secondly, to the life of everyday work and recreation.
We have seen that–whatever may have been the practice of the Tang masters–the modern Zen communities, both Soto and Rinzai, attach the highest importance to meditation or “sitting Zen” (zazen). It may seem both strange and unreasonable that strong and intelligent men should simply sit still for hours on end. The Western mentality feels that such things are not only unnatural but Western mentality feels that such things are not only unnatural but a great waste of valuable time, however useful as a discipline for inculcating patience and fortitude. Although the West has its own contemplative tradition in the Catholic Church, the life of “sitting and looking” has lost its appeal, for no religion is valued which does not “improve the world,” and it is hard to see how the world can be improved by keeping still. Yet it should be obvious that action without wisdom, without clear awareness of the world as it really is, can never improve anything. Furthermore, as muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
There is, indeed, nothing unnatural in long periods of quiet sitting. Cats do it; even dogs and other more nervous animals do it. So-called primitive peoples do it–American Indians, and peasants of almost all nations. The art is most difficult for those who have developed the sensitive intellect to such a point that they cannot help making predictions about the future, and so must be kept in a constant whirl of activity to forestall them. But it would seem that to be incapable of sitting and watching with the mind completely at rest is to be incapable of experiencing the world in which we live to the full. For one does not know the world simply in thinking about it and doing about it. One must first experience it more directly, and prolong the experience without jumping to conclusions.
The relevance of za-zen to Zen is obvious when it is remembered that Zen is seeing reality directly, in its “suchness.” To see the world as it is concretely, undivided by categories and abstractions, one must certainly look at it with a mind which is not thinking–which is to say, forming symbols–about it. Za-zen is not, therefore, sitting with a blank mind which excludes all the impressions of the inner and outer senses. It is not “concentration” in the usual sense of restricting the attention to a single sense object, such as a point of light or the tip of one’s nose. It is simply a quiet awareness, without comment, of whatever happens to be here and now. This awareness is attended by the most vivid sensation of “nondifference” between oneself and the external world, between the mind and its contents– oneself and the external world, between the mind and its contents– the various sounds, sights, and other impressions of the surrounding environment. Naturally, this sensation does not arise by trying to acquire it; it just comes by itself when one is sitting and watching without any purpose in mind–even the purpose of getting rid of purpose.
In the sodo or zendo, monks’ hall or meditation hall, of a Zen community there is, of course, nothing particularly distracting in the external surroundings. There is a long room with wide platforms down either side where the monks both sleep and meditate. The platforms are covered with tatami, thick floor-mats of straw, and the monks sit in two rows facing one another across the room. The silence which prevails is deepened rather than broken by occasional sounds that float up from a near-by village, by the intermittent ringing of soft-toned bells from other parts of the monastery, and by the chatter of birds in the trees. Other than this there is only the feel of the cold, clear mountain air and the “woody” smell of a special kind of incense.
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.
While the monks are thus seated, two attendants walk slowly back and forth along the floor between the platforms, each carrying back and forth along the floor between the platforms, each carrying a keisaku or “warning” stick, round at one end and flattened at the other–a symbol of the Bodhisattva Manjusri’s sword of prajna. As soon as they see a monk going to sleep, or sitting in an incorrect posture, they stop before him, bow ceremoniously, and beat him on the shoulders. It is said that this is not “punishment” but an “invigorating massage” to take the stiffness out of the shoulder muscles and bring the mind back to a state of alertness. However, monks with whom I have discussed this practice seem to have the same wryly humorous attitude about it which one associates with the usual corporal disciplines of boys’ boarding schools. Furthermore, the sodo regulations say, “At the time of morning service, the dozing ones are to be severely dealt with the keisaku.”1
At intervals, the sitting posture is interrupted, and the monks fall into ranks for a swift march around the floor between the platforms to keep themselves from sluggishness. The periods of za-zen are also interrupted for work in the monastery grounds, cleaning the premises, services in the main shrine or “Buddha hall,” and other duties–as well as for meals and short hours of sleep. At certain times of year za-zen is kept up almost continuously from 3:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., and these long periods are called sesshin, or “collecting the mind.” Every aspect of the monks’ lives is conducted according to a precise, though not ostentatious, ritual which gives the atmosphere of the sodo a slightly military air. The rituals are signaled and accompanied by about a dozen different kinds of bells, clappers, and wooden gongs, struck in various rhythms to announce the times for za-zen, meals, services, lectures, or sanzen interviews with the master.
The ritualistic or ceremonious style is so characteristic of Zen that it may need some explanation in a culture which has come to associate it with affectation or superstition. In Buddhism the four principal activities of man-walking, standing, sitting, and lying–are called the four “dignities,” since they are the postures assumed by the Buddha nature in its human (nirmanakaya) body. The ritualistic style of conducting one’s everyday activities is therefore a celebration of the fact that “the ordinary man is a Buddha,” and is, furthermore, a style that comes almost naturally to a person who is furthermore, a style that comes almost naturally to a person who is doing everything with total presence of mind. Thus if in something so simple and trivial as lighting a cigarette one is fully aware, seeing the flame, the curling smoke, and the regulation of the breath as the most important things in the universe, it will seem to an observer that the action has a ritualistic style.
This attitude of “acting as a Buddha” is particularly stressed in the Soto School, where both za-zen and the round of daily activities are not at all seen as means to an end but as the actual realization of Buddhahood. As Dogen says in the Shobogenzo:
Without looking forward to tomorrow every moment, you must think only of this day and this hour. Because tomorrow is difficult and unfixed and difficult to know, you must think of following the Buddhist way while you live today.… You must concentrate on Zen practice without wasting time, thinking that there is only this day and this hour. After that it becomes truly easy. You must forget about the good and bad of your nature, the strength or weakness of your power.2
In za-zen there must be no thought either of aiming at satori or of avoiding birth-and-death, no striving for anything in future time.
If life comes, this is life. If death comes, this is death. There is no reason for your being under their control. Don’t put any hope in them. This life and death are the life of the Buddha. If you try to throw them away in denial, you lose the life of the Buddha.3
The “three worlds” of past, present, and future are not, as is commonly supposed, stretched out to inaccessible distances.
The so-called past is the top of the heart; the present is the top of the fist; and the future is the back of the brain.4
All time is here in this body, which is the body of Buddha. The past exists in its memory and the future in its anticipation, and both of these are now, for when the world is inspected directly and clearly these are now, for when the world is inspected directly and clearly past and future times are nowhere to be found.
This is also the teaching of Bankei:
You are primarily Buddhas; you are not going to be Buddhas for the first time. There is not an iota of a thing to be called error in your inborn mind.… If you have the least desire to be better than you actually are, if you hurry up to the slightest degree in search of something, you are already going against the Unborn.5
Such a view of Zen practice is therefore somewhat difficult to reconcile with the discipline which now prevails in the Rinzai School, and which consists in “passing” a graduated series of approximately fifty 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. Naturally, this leads to a good deal of comparison between the degrees of attainment of various individuals, and a very definite and formal recognition is attached to final “graduation” from the process.
Since the formal details of the koan discipline are one of the few actual secrets remaining in the Buddhist world, it is difficult to appraise it fairly if one has not undergone the training. On the other hand, if one has undergone it one is obliged not to talk about it–save in vague generalities. 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. To know the answers without having so discovered them would be like studying the map without taking the journey. Lacking the actual shock of recognition, the bare answers seem flat and disappointing, and obviously no competent master would be deceived by anyone who gave them without genuine feeling.
There is no reason, however, why the process should actually involve all the silliness about “grades of attainment,” about who has “passed” and who has not, or about who is or is not a “genuine” “passed” and who has not, or about who is or is not a “genuine” Buddha by these formal standards. All well-established religious institutions are beset by this kind of nonsense, and they generally boil down to a kind of aestheticism, an excessive passion for the cultivation of a special “style” whose refinements distinguish the sheep from the goats. By such standards the liturgical aesthete can distinguish Roman from Anglican Catholic priests, confusing the mannerisms of traditional atmosphere with the supernatural marks of true or false participation in the apostolic succession. Sometimes, however, the cultivation of a traditional style may be rather admirable, as when a school of craftsmen or artists hands down from generation to generation certain trade secrets or technical refinements whereby objects of peculiar beauty are manufactured. Even so, this very easily becomes a rather affected and self-conscious discipline, and at that moment all its “Zen” is lost.
The koan system as it exists today is largely the work of Hakuin (1685–1768), a formidable and immensely versatile master, who gave it a systematic organization so that the complete course of Zen study in the Rinzai School is divided into six stages. There are, first, five groups of koan d:
1. Hosshin, or Dharmakaya koan, whereby one “enters into the frontier gate of Zen.”
2. Kikan, or “cunning barrier” koan, having to do with the active expression of the state realized in the first group.
3. Gonsen, or “investigation of words” koan, presumably having to do with the expression of Zen understanding in speech.
4. Nanto, or “hard to penetrate” koan.
5. Goi, or “Five Ranks” koan, based on the five relationships of “lord” and “servant” or of “principle” (li) and “thing-event” (shih), wherein Zen is related to the Hua-yen or Avatamsaka philosophy.
The sixth stage is a study of the Buddhist precepts and the regulations of the monk’s life (vinaya) in the light of Zen understanding.6
Normally, this course of training takes about thirty years. By no means all Zen monks complete the whole training. This is required only of those who are to receive their master’s inka or “seal of approval” so that they themselves may become masters (roshi), approval” so that they themselves may become masters (roshi), thoroughly versed in all the “skillful means” (upaya) for teaching Zen to others. Like so many other things of this kind, the system is as good as one makes it, and its graduates are both tall Buddhas and short Buddhas. It should not be assumed that a person who has passed a koan, or even many koan, is necessarily a “transformed” human being whose character and way of life are radically different from what they were before. 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. Thus there may be many occasions of satori in the course of training, great satori and little satori, and the solution of many of the koan depends upon nothing more sensational than a kind of “knack” for understanding the Zen style of handling Buddhist principles.
Western ideas of Buddhist attainments are all too often distorted by the “mysterious East” approach, and by the sensational fantasies so widely circulated in theosophical writings during the decades just before and after the turn of the century. Such fantasies were based not upon a first-hand study of Buddhism but on literal readings of mythological passages in the sutras, where the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are embellished with innumerable miraculous and superhuman attributes. Thus there must be no confusion between Zen masters and theosophical “mahatmas”–the glamorous “Masters of Wisdom” who live in the mountain fastnesses of Tibet and practice the arts of occultism. Zen masters are quite human. They get sick and die; they know joy and sorrow; they have bad tempers or other little “weaknesses” of character just like anyone else, and they are not above falling in love and entering into a fully human relationship with the opposite sex. The perfection of Zen is to be perfectly and simply human. The difference of the adept in Zen from the ordinary run of men is that the latter are, in one way or another, at odds with their own humanity, and are attempting to be angels or demons.7 A doka poem by Ikkyu says:
We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up;
This is our world.
All we have to do after that–
Is to die.8
Koan training involves typically Asian concepts of the relation between master and pupil which are quite unlike ours. For in Asian cultures this is a peculiarly sacred relationship in which the master is held to become responsible for the karma of the pupil. The pupil, in turn, is expected to accord absolute obedience and authority to the master, and to hold him in almost higher respect than his own father–and in Asian countries this is saying a great deal. To a young Zen monk the roshi therefore stands as a symbol of the utmost patriarchal authority, and he usually plays the role to perfection–being normally a man advanced in years, fierce and “tigerish” in aspect, and, when formally robed and seated for the sanzen interview, a person of supreme presence and dignity. In this role he constitutes a living symbol of everything that makes one afraid of being spontaneous, everything that prompts the most painful and awkward self-consciousness. He assumes this role as an upaya, a skillful device, for challenging the student to find enough “nerve” to be perfectly natural in the presence of this formidable archetype. If he can do this, he is a free man whom no one on earth can embarrass. It must be borne in mind, too, that in Japanese culture the adolescent and the youth are peculiarly susceptible to ridicule, which is freely used as a means of conforming the young to social convention.
To the normal Asian concept of the master-pupil relationship, Zen adds something of its own in the sense that it leaves the formation of the relationship entirely to the initiative of the pupil. The basic position of Zen is that it has nothing to say, nothing to teach. The truth of Buddhism is so self-evident, so obvious that it is, if anything, concealed by explaining it. Therefore the master does not “help” the student in any way, since helping would actually be hindering. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to put obstacles hindering. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to put obstacles and barriers in the student’s path. Thus Wu-men’s comments on the various koan in the Wu-men kuan are intentionally misleading, the koan as a whole are called “wisteria vines” or “entanglements,” and particular groups “cunning barriers” (kikan) and “hard to penetrate” (nanto). This is like encouraging the growth of a hedge by pruning, for obviously the basic intention is to help, but the 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
The preliminary hosshin type of koan begins, therefore, to obstruct the student by sending him off in the direction exactly opposite to that in which he should look. Only it does it rather cleverly, so as to conceal the stratagem. 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! 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 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.
Thus normal first koan are Hui-neng’s “Original Face,” Chaochou’s “Wu,” or Hakuin’s “One Hand.” At the first sanzen interview, the roshi instructs the reluctantly accepted student to discover his “original face” or “aspect,” that is, his basic nature, as it was before his father and mother conceived him. He is told to return when he has discovered it, and to give some proof of discovery. In the meantime he is under no circumstance to discuss the problem with others or to seek their help. Joining the other monks in the sodo, the jikijitsu or “head monk” will probably instruct him in the rudiments of za-zen, showing him how to sit, and perhaps encouraging him to return to the roshi for sanzen as soon as possible, and to lose no opportunity for getting the proper view of his koan. Pondering the problem of his “original face,” he therefore tries and tries to imagine what he was before he was born, or, for that matter, what he now is at the very center of his being, what is the basic reality of his existence apart from his extension in time and space.
He soon discovers that 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.”
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!
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.
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.
It is not quite the paradox which it seems to say that Zen training can begin only when it has been finished. For this is simply the basic Mahayana principle that prajna leads to karuna, that awakening is not truly attained unless it also implies the life of the Bodhisattva, the manifestation of the “marvelous use” of the Void for the benefit of all sentient beings.
At this point the roshi begins to present the student with koan which ask for impossible feats of action or judgment, such as:
“Take the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve.”
“Stop that ship on the distant ocean.”
“Stop that ship on the distant ocean.”
“Stop the booming of the distant bell.”
“A girl is crossing the street. Is she the younger or the older sister?”
Such koan are rather more obviously “tricky” than the basic introductory problems, and show the student that what are dilemmas for thought present no barriers to action. A paper handkerchief easily becomes the four divisions of Tokyo, and the student solves the problem of the younger or older sister by mincing across the room like a girl. For in her absolute “suchness” the girl is just that; she is only relatively “sister,” “older,” or “younger.” One can perhaps understand why a man who had practiced za-zen for eight years told R. H. Blyth that “Zen is just a trick of words,” for on the principle of extracting a thorn with a thorn Zen is extricating people from the tangle in which they find themselves from confusing words and ideas with reality.
The continued practice of za-zen now provides the student with a clear, unobstructed mind into which he can toss the koan like a pebble into a pool and simply watch to see what his mind does with it. As he concludes each koan, the roshi usually requires that he present a verse from the Zenrin Kushu which expresses the point of the koan just solved. Other books are also used, and the late Sokei-an Sasaki, working in the United States, found that an admirable manual for this purpose was Alice in Wonderland!. As the work goes on, crucial koan alternate with subsidiary koan which explore the implications of the former, and give the student a thorough working acquaintance with every theme in the Buddhist view of the universe, presenting the whole body of understanding in such a way that he knows it in his bones and nerves. By such means he learns to respond with it instantly and unwaveringly in the situations of everyday life.
The final group of koan are concerned with the “Five Ranks” (goi)– a schematic view of the relations between relative knowledge and absolute knowledge, thing-events (shih) and underlying principle (li). The originator of the scheme was T’ung-shan (807– 869), but it arises from the contacts of Zen with the Hua-yen (Japanese, Kegon) School, and the doctrine of the Five Ranks is (Japanese, Kegon) School, and the doctrine of the Five Ranks is closely related to that of the fourfold Dharmadhatu.10 The Ranks are often represented in terms of the relative positions of lord and servant or host and guest, standing respectively for the underlying principle and the thing-events. Thus we have:
1. The lord looks down at the servant.
2. The servant looks up at the lord.
3. The lord.
4. The servant.
5. The lord and the servant converse together.
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 (wushih). 12
Koan training comes to its conclusion in the stage of perfect naturalness of freedom in both the absolute and the relative worlds, but because this freedom is not opposed to the conventional order, but is rather a freedom which “upholds the world” (lokasamgraha), the final phase of study is the relationship of Zen to the rules of social and monastic life. As Yun-men once asked, “In such a wide world, why answer the bell and put on ceremonial robes?”13 Another master’s answer in quite a different context applies well here–“If there is any reason for it you may cut off my head!” For the here–“If there is any reason for it you may cut off my head!” For 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.”
To say that the koan system has certain dangers or drawbacks is only to say that anything can be misused. It is a highly sophisticated and even institutionalized technique, and therefore lends itself to affectation and artificiality. But so does any technique, even when so untechnical as Bankei’s method of no method. This, too, can become a fetish. Yet it is important to be mindful of the points at which the drawbacks are most likely to arise, and it would seem that in koan training there are two.
The first is to insist that the koan is the “only way” to a genuine realization of Zen. Of course, one may beg the question by saying that Zen, over and above the experience of awakening, is precisely the style of handling Buddhism which the koan embody. But in this case the Soto School is not Zen, and no Zen is to be found anywhere in the world outside the particular tradition of the Rinzai branch. So defined, Zen has no universality and becomes as exotic and culturally conditioned as No drama or the practice of Chinese calligraphy. From the standpoint of the West, such Zen will appeal only to fanciers of “Nipponery,” to romanticists who like to play at being Japanese. Not that there is anything inherently “bad” in such romanticism, for there are no such things as “pure” cultures, and the borrowing of other people’s styles always adds to the variety and spice of life. But Zen is so much more than a cultural refinement.
The second, and more serious, drawback can arise from the opposition of satori to the intense “feeling of doubt” which some koan exponents so deliberately encourage. For this is to foster a dualistic satori. To say that the depth of the satori is proportional to the intensity of seeking and striving which precede it is to confuse satori with its purely emotional adjuncts. In other words, if one wants to feel exhilaratingly light-footed, it is always possible to go around for some time with lead in one’s shoes–and then take them around for some time with lead in one’s shoes–and then take them off. The sense of relief will certainly be proportional to the length of time such shoes have been worn, and to the weight of the lead. This is equivalent to the old trick of religious revivalists who give their followers a tremendous emotional uplift by first implanting an acute sense of sin, and then relieving it through faith in Jesus. But such “uplifts” do not last, and it was of such a satori that Yün-feng said, “That monk who has any satori goes right into hell like a flying arrow.”14
Awakening almost necessarily involves a sense of relief because it brings to an end the habitual psychological cramp of trying to grasp the mind with the mind, which in turn generates the ego with all its conflicts and defenses. In time, the sense of relief wears off–but not the awakening, unless one has confused it with the sense of relief and has attempted to exploit it by indulging in ecstasy. Awakening is thus only incidentally pleasant or ecstatic, only at first an experience of intense emotional release. But in itself it is just the ending of an artificial and absurd use of the mind. Above and beyond that it is wu-shih–nothing special–since the ultimate content of awakening is never a particular object of knowledge or experience. The Buddhist doctrine of the “Four Invisibles” is that the Void (sunya) is to a Buddha as water to a fish, air to a man, and the nature of things to the deluded–beyond conception.
It should be obvious that what we are, most substantially and fundamentally, will never be a distinct object of knowledge. Whatever we can know–life and death, light and darkness, solid and empty–will be the relative aspects of something as inconceivable as the color of space. Awakening is not to know what this reality is. As a Zenrin poem says:
As butterflies come to the newly planted flowers,
Bodhidharma says, “I know not.” g
Awakening is to know what reality is not. It is to cease identifying oneself with any object of knowledge whatsoever. Just as every assertion about the basic substance or energy of reality must be meaningless, any assertion as to what “I am” at the very roots of my meaningless, any assertion as to what “I am” at the very roots of my being must also be the height of folly. Delusion is the false metaphysical premise at the root of common sense; it is the average man’s unconscious ontology and epistemology, his tacit assumption that he is a “something.” The assumption that “I am nothing” would, of course, be equally wrong since something and nothing, being and non-being, are related concepts, and belong equally to the “known.”
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.
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. Beside the spontaneous functioning of the “Unborn mind” these efforts or none efforts are strictly null. In the more imagistic language of Shinran, one has only to hear of the “saving vow” of Amitabha and to say his Name, the Nembutsu, even just once without concern as to whether one has faith or not, or as to whether one is desireless or not. All such concern is the pride of the ego. In the words of the Shin-shu mystic Kichi-bei:
When all the idea of self-power based upon moral values and 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
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.
The advantage of the koan method is perhaps that, for general purposes, the other way is too subtle, and too easily subject to misinterpretation–especially by monks who might all too readily use it as an excuse for loafing around the monastery while living off the donations of the devout laity. This is almost certainly why the emphasis of the T’ang masters on “not-seeking” gave way to the more energetic use of the koan as a means of exhausting the strength of the egoistic will. Bankei’s Zen without method or means offers no basis for a school or institution, since the monks may just as well go their way and take up farming or fishing. As a result no external sign of Zen is left; there is no longer any finger pointing at the moon of Truth–and this is necessary for the Bodhisattva’s task of delivering all beings, even though it runs the risk of mistaking the finger for the moon.
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Notes:
1 In Suzuki (5), p. 99. The regulations also say, “When submitting to the keisaku, courteously fold your hands and bow; do not permit any egoistic thoughts to assert themselves and cherish anger.” The point seems to be that the keisaku has two uses–one for shoulder massage and another, however politely worded, for punishment. It is of interest that Bankei abolished this practice in his own community, on the ground that a man is no less a Buddha when asleep than when awake.
2 Zuimonki chapter. In Masunaga (1), p. 42.
3 Shop chapter. Ibid., p. 44.
4 Kenbutsu chapter. Ibid., p. 45.
5 In Suzuki (10), pp. 177–78.
6 This outline is based on information given in a conference at the American Academy of Asian Studies by Ruth Sasaki.
7 One can hardly exaggerate the importance of the great Buddhist symbol of the bhavachakra, the Wheel Becoming. The angels and demons occupy the highest and lowest positions, the positions of perfect happiness and perfect frustration. These positions lie on the opposite sides of a circle because they lead to each other. They represent not so much literal beings as our own ideals and terrors, since the Wheel is actually a map of the human mind. The human position lies in the middle, i.e., at the left of the Wheel, and it is only from this position that one may become a Buddha. Human birth is therefore regarded as unusually fortunate, but this is not to be confused with the physical event, for one is not actually “born into the human world” until one has fully accepted one’s humanity.
8 Translated by R. H. Blyth in “Ikkyu’s Doka,” The Young East, vol. 2, no. 7. (Tokyo, 1953.)
9 R. H. BIyth, ibid., vol. 3, no. 9, p. 14, and vol. 2, no. 2, p. 7.
10 For details, see above, pp. 160f.
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.
13 Wu-men kuan, 16.
14 Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 41.
15 See Edmund Jacobson, Progressive Relaxation. (Chicago, 1938.)
16 In Suzuki (10), p. 130.