Essays in Zen Buddhism · 63 of 66
The Meditation Hall and Monastic Life, Part 10
As I stated before, Zen followers do not approve of Christians, even Christian mystics being too conscious of God who is the creator and supporter of all life and all being. Their attitude towards the Buddha and Zen is that of Lieh-tzŭ riding on the wind; a complete identification of the self with the object of thought is what is aimed at by the disciples of Jōshu, Ummon, and other leaders of Zen. This is the reason why they are all loath to hear the word Buddha or Zen mentioned in their discourse, not because indeed they are anti-Buddhist, but because they have so thoroughly assimilated Buddhism in their being. Listen to the gentle remonstrance given by Hōyen, of Gosozan, to his disciple Yengo:
Goso said, “You are all right, but you have a trivial fault.” Yengo asked two or three times what that fault was. Said the master at last, “You have altogether too much of Zen.” “Why,” protested the disciple, “if one is studying Zen at all, don’t you think it the most natural thing for one to be talking of it? Why do you dislike it?” Replied Goso, “When it is like an ordinary everyday conversation, it is somewhat better.” A monk happened to be there with them, who asked, “Why do you specially hate talking about Zen?” “Because it turns one’s stomach,” was the master’s verdict.
Rinzai’s way of expressing himself in regard to this point is quite violent and revolutionary. And if we were not acquainted with the methods of Zen teachings, such passages as are quoted below would surely make our teeth chatter and our hair stand on end. The reader may think the author simply horrible, but we all know well how earnestly he feels about the falsehoods of the world and how unflinchingly he pushes himself forward through its confusion worse confounded. His hands may be compared to Jehovah’s in trying to destroy the idols and causing the images to cease. Read the following, for instance, in which Rinzai endeavours to strip one’s spirit off its last raiment of falsehood.
“O you, followers of Truth, if you wish to obtain an orthodox understanding [of Zen], do not be deceived by others. Inwardly or outwardly, if you encounter any obstacles, lay them low right away. If you encounter the Buddha slay him; if you encounter the Patriarch, slay him; if you encounter the Arhat or the parent or the relative, slay them all without hesitation: for this is the only way to deliverance. Do not get yourselves entangled with any object, but stand above, pass on, and be free. As I see those so-called followers of Truth all over the country, there are none who come to me free and independent of objects. In dealing with them, I strike them down any way they come. If they rely on the strength of their arms, I cut them right off; if they rely on their eloquence, I make them shut themselves up; if they rely on the sharpness of their eyes, I will hit them blind. There are indeed so far none who have presented themselves before me all alone, all free, all unique. They are invariably found caught by the idle tricks of the old masters. I have really nothing to give to you, all that I can do is to cure you of the diseases and deliver you from bondage.
“O you, followers of Truth, show yourselves here independent of all objects, I want to weigh the matter with you. For the last five or ten years I have waited in vain for such, and there are no such yet. They are all ghostly existences, ignominious gnomes haunting the woods or bamboo-groves, they are elfish spirits of the wilderness. They are madly biting into all heaps of filth. O you, mole-eyed, why are you wasting all the pious donations of the devout! Do you think you deserve the name of a monk, when you are still entertaining such a mistaken idea [of Zen]? I tell you, no Buddhas, no holy teachings, no discipling, no testifying! What do you seek in a neighbour’s house? O you, mole-eyed! You are putting another head over your own! What do you lack in yourselves? O you, followers of Truth, what you are making use of at this very moment, is none other than what makes a Patriarch or a Buddha. But you do not believe me, and seek it outwardly. Do not commit yourselves to an error. There are no realities outside, nor is there anything inside you may lay your hands on. You stick to the literal meaning of what I speak to you, but how far better it is to have all your hankerings stopped and be doing nothing whatever!” etc., etc.
This was the way Rinzai wanted to wipe out all trace of God-consciousness in the mind of a truth-seeker. How he wields Thor-like his thunder-bolt of harangue!
XI
The state of mind in which all traces of conceptual consciousness are wiped out is called by the Christian mystics poverty, and Tauler’s definition is: “Absolute poverty is thine when thou canst not remember whether anybody has ever owed thee or been indebted to thee for anything; just as all things will be forgotten by thee in the last journey of death.”
The Zen masters are more poetic and positive in their expression of the feeling of poverty, they do not make a direct reference to things worldly. Sings Mumon (Wu-mên):
“Hundreds of spring flowers; the autumnal moon; A refreshing summer breeze; winter snow: Free thy mind of all idle thoughts, And for thee how enjoyable every season is!”
Or according to Shuan (Shou-an):
“At Nantai I sit quietly with an incense burning, One day of rapture, all things are forgotten, Not that mind is stopped and thoughts are put away, But that there is really nothing to disturb my serenity.”
This is not to convey the idea that he is idly sitting and doing nothing particularly; or that he has nothing else to do but to enjoy the cherry-blossoms fragrant in the morning sun, or the lonely moon white and silvery: he may be in the midst of work, teaching pupils, reading the Sutras, sweeping and farming as all the masters have done, and yet his own mind is filled with transcendental happiness and quietude. He is living in God as Christians may say. All hankerings of the heart have departed, there are no idle thoughts clogging the flow of life-activity, and thus he is empty and poverty-stricken. As he is poverty-stricken, he knows how to enjoy the “spring flowers’’ and the “autumnal moon.” When worldly riches are amassed in his heart, there is no room left there for such celestial enjoyments. The Zen masters are wont of speaking positively about their contentment and unworldly riches. Instead of saying that they are empty-handed, they talk of the natural sufficiency of things about them. Yogi (Yang-ch‘i), however, refers to his deserted habitation where he found himself to be residing as keeper. One day he ascended the lecturing chair in the Hall and began to recite his own verse:
“My dwelling is now here at Yogi; the walls and roof, how weather-beaten! The whole floor is covered white with snow crystal, Shivering down the neck, I am filled with thoughts.”
After a pause he added the fourth line:
“How I recall the ancient masters whose habitat was no better than the shade of a tree!”
Kyōgen (Hsiang-yen) is more direct apparently in his allusion to poverty:
“My last year’s poverty was not poverty enough, My poverty this year is poverty indeed; In my poverty last year there was room for a gimlet’s point, But this year even the gimlet is gone.”
Later, a master called Koboku Gen (K‘u-mu Yüan) commented on this song of poverty by Kyōgen in the following verse:
“‘Neither a gimlet’s point nor the room for it,’ some sing; but this is not yet real poverty: As long as one is conscious of having nothing, there still remains the guardian of poverty. I am lately poverty-stricken in all conscience, For from the very beginning I do not see even the one that is poor.”
Ummon was not poverty-stricken, but lean and emaciated; for when a monk asked him what were the special features of his school, the master answered, “My skin is dry and my bones are sticking out.” Corpulence and opulence have never been associated with spirituality, at least in the East. As a matter of fact, they are not inconsistent ideas; but the amassing of wealth under our economic conditions has always resulted in producing characters that do not go very well with our ideals of saintliness. Perhaps our too emphatic protest against materialism has done this. Thus not to have anything, even wisdom and virtue, has been made the object of Buddhist life, though this does not mean that it despises them. In despising there is in a large measure something impure, not thoroughly purgated; as true Bodhisattvas are even above purity and virtuousness, how much more so they would be above such petty weaknesses of human being! When the Buddhists are thus cleansed of all these, they will truly be poverty-stricken and thin and transparent.
The aim of Zen discipline is to attain to the state of “non-attainment” (cittaṁ nopalabhyate) as is technically expressed. All knowledge is an acquisition and accumulation, whereas Zen proposes to deprive one of all one’s possessions. The spirit is to make one poor and humble—thoroughly cleansed of inner impurities. Learning, on the contrary, makes one rich and arrogant. Because learning is earning, the more learned, the richer, and therefore “in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” It is after all “vanity and a striving after wind.” Zen will heartily endorse this too. Says Laotzŭ, “Scholars gain everyday while the Taoists lose everyday.” The consummation of this kind of loss is “non-attainment,” which is poverty. Poverty in another word is emptiness, śūnyatā. When the spirit is all purged of its filth accumulated from time immemorial, it stands naked, with no raiments, with no trappings. It is now empty, free, genuine assuming its native authority. And there is a joy in this, not that kind of joy which is liable to be upset by its counterpart, grief, but an absolute joy which is “the gift of God,” which makes a man “enjoy good in all his labour,” and from which nothing can be taken, to which nothing can be put, but which shall stay for ever. Non-attainment, therefore, in Zen is positive conception, and not merely privative. The Buddhist modes of thinking are sometimes different from those of the West, and Christian readers are often taken aback at the idea of emptiness and at the too unconditioned assertion of idealism. Singularly, however, all the mystics, Buddhist or no, agree in their idea of poverty being the end of their spiritual development.
In Christianity, we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that in Him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have even this last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why Zen followers advise us not to linger even where the Buddha is and to pass quickly away where he is not. All the training of the monk in the Zendo, in theory as well as in practice, is based in the notion of “meritless deed.” Poetically, this idea is expressed as follows:
“The bamboo shadows are sweeping the stairs, But no dust is stirred: The moonlight penetrates deep in the bottom of the pool, But no trace is left in the water.”
When this is expressed in the more Indian and technical terms of the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra, it is as follows:
“Habit-energy is not separated from mind, nor is it together with mind; though enveloped in habit-energy, mind has no marks of difference.
“Habit-energy which is like a soiled garment produced by manovijñāna, keeps mind from shining forth, though mind itself is a robe of the utmost purity.
“I state that the ālaya is like empty space, which is neither existent nor non-existent; for the ālaya has nothing to do with being or no-being.
“Through the transformation of manovijñāna, mind is cleansed of foulness, it is enlightened as it now thoroughly understands all things:—this I preach.”
XII
The monastery life is not all working and sitting quiet meditating on the “kō-an.” There is something of intellectual life, in the form of lecturing as has already been referred to. Anciently, however, there was no regular “sesshin,” and all the lecturing or giving sermons to the congregation was carried on the feast days, memorial days, or on other auspicious occasions such as receiving visitors, honourably discharging the officials, or completing given pieces of work. Every available opportunity was thus used intellectually to enlighten earnest seekers of the truth. These discourses, sermons, exhortations, and short pithy remarks so characteristic of Zen are recorded in its literature, the bulk of which indeed consists of nothing but these. While claiming to be above letters, Zen is filled with them, almost overfilled. Before giving some of such sermons, let me digress and say a few words about the Chinese language as the vehicle of Zen philosophy.
To my mind, the Chinese language is pre-eminently adapted for Zen, it is probably the best medium of expression for Zen as long as its literary side alone is thought of. Being monosyllabic the language is terse and vigorous, and a single word is made to convey so much meaning in it. While vagueness of sense is perhaps an unavoidable shortcoming accompanying those advantages, Zen knows how to avail itself of it, and the very vagueness of the language becomes a most powerful weapon in the hand of the master. He is far from wanting to be obscure and misleading, but a well-chosen monosyllable grows when it falls from his lips into a most pregnant word loaded with the whole system of Zen. Ummon is regarded as the foremost adept in this direction. To show the extreme laconism of his sayings, the following are quoted:
When he was asked what was the sword of Ummon, he replied, “Hung!”
“What is the one straight passage to Ummon?” “Most intimate!”
“Which one of the Trikāya [Three Bodies of Buddha] is it that will sermonise?” “To the point!”
“I understand this is said by all the old masters, that when you know [the truth], all the karma-hindrances are empty from the beginning; but if you do not, you have to pay all the debts back. I wonder if the second patriarch knew this or not.” Replied the master, “Most certainly!”
“What is the eye of the true Dharma?” “Everywhere!”
“When one commits patricide, or matricide, one goes to the Buddha to confess the sin; when however one murders a Buddha or Patriarch, where should one go for confession?” “Exposed!”
“What is the Tao [path, way, or truth]?” “Walk on!”
“How is it that without the parent’s consent one cannot be ordained?” “How shallow!” “I cannot understand.” “How deep!”
“What kind of phrase is it that does not cast any shadow?” “Revealed!”
“How do you have an eye in a question?” “Blind.”
Just one monosyllable, and the difficulties are disposed of. The Zen master has generally nothing to do with circumlocution; if any one is a direct and plain speaker, he is the directest in hitting the point and the plainest in expressing his thoughts without any encumbering appendages. To these purposes, the Chinese language is eminently suited. Brevity and forcefulness are its specific qualities, for each single syllable is a word and sometimes even makes a complete sentence. A string of a few nouns with no verbs or with no connectives is often sufficient to express a complex thought. Chinese literature is naturally full of trenchant epigrams and pregnant aphorisms. The words are unwieldy and disconnected: when they are put together, they are like so many pieces of rock with nothing cementing them to one another. They do not present themselves as organic. Each link in the chain has a separate independent existence. But as each syllable is pronounced, the whole effect is irresistible. Chinese is a mystic language par excellence.