Essays in Zen Buddhism · 52 of 66

Practical Methods of Zen Instruction, Part 9

We now come to the most characteristic feature of Zen Buddhism, by which it is distinguished not only from all the other Buddhist schools, but from all forms of mysticism that are ever known to us. So far the truth of Zen has been expressed through words, articulate or otherwise, however enigmatic they may superficially appear; but now the masters appeal to a more direct method instead of verbal medium. In fact, the truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect. Is it not the most natural thing for Zen, therefore, that its development should be towards acting or rather living its truth instead of demonstrating or illustrating it in words, that is to say, with ideas? In the actual living of life there is no logic, for life is superior to logic. We imagine logic influences life, but in reality man is not a rational creature so much as we make him out, of course he reasons, but he does not act according to the result of his reasoning pure and simple. There is something stronger than ratiocination. We may call it impulse, or instinct, or, more comprehensively, will. Where this will acts there is Zen, but if I am asked whether Zen is a philosophy of will I rather hesitate to give an affirmative answer. Zen is to be explained, if at all explained it should be, rather dynamically than statically. When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen. But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there. Nor is there any Zen when I assume the existence of somewhat that may be named will or anything else. Not that the assertion or assumption is wrong, but that the thing known as Zen is three thousand miles away as they say. An assertion is Zen only when it is in itself an act and does not refer to anything that is asserted in it. In the finger pointed at the moon there is no Zen, but when the pointing finger itself is considered, altogether independent of any external references, there is Zen.

Life delineates itself on the canvas called time; and time never repeats, once gone, forever gone; and so is an act, once done, it is never undone. Life is a sumiye-painting, which must be executed once and for all time and without hesitation, without intellection, and no corrections are permissible or possible. Life is not like an oil-painting which can be rubbed out and done over time and again until the artist is satisfied. With a sumiye-painting, any brush stroke painted over a second time results in a smudge; the life has left it. All corrections show when the ink dries. So is life. We can never retract what we have once committed to deeds, nay, what has once passed through consciousness can never be rubbed out. Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going on, neither before nor after. It is an act of one instant. When Dharma was leaving China, as the legend has it, he asked his disciples what was their understanding of Zen, and one of them who happened to be a nun, replied, “It is like Ānanda’s looking into the kingdom of Akshobhya Buddha, it is seen once and has never been repeated.” This fleeting, unrepeatable, and ungraspable character of life is delineated graphically by Zen masters who have compared it to lightning or spark produced by the percussion of stones: 閃電光, 擊石火 (shan tien kuang, chi shih huo) is the phrase.

The idea of direct method appealed to by the masters is to get hold of this fleeting life as it flees and not after it has flown. While it is fleeing, there is no time to recall memory or to build ideas. No reasoning avails here. Language may be used, but this has been associated too long with ideation, and has lost directness or being by itself. As soon as words are used, they express meaning, reasoning; they represent something not belonging to themselves; they have no direct connection with life, except being a faint echo or image of something that is no longer here. This is the reason why the masters often avoid such expressions or statements as are intelligible in any logical way. Their aim is to have the pupil’s attention concentrated in the thing itself which he wishes to grasp and not in anything that is in the remotest possible connection liable to disturb him. Therefore when we attempt to find meaning in dharanis or exclamations or a nonsensical string of sounds taken as such, we are far away from the truth of Zen. We must penetrate into the mind itself as the spring of life, from which all these words are produced. The swinging of a stick, the crying of a “Kwats!” or the kicking of a ball must be understood in this sense, that is, as the directest demonstration of life, no, even as life itself. The direct method is thus not always the violent assertion of life-force, but a gentle movement of the body, the responding to a call, the listening to a murmuring stream, or to a singing bird, or any of our most ordinary everyday assertions of life.

Reiun (Ling-yün) was asked, “How were things before the appearance of the Buddha in the world?” He raised his hossu. “How were things after the appearance of the Buddha?” He again raised the hossu. This raising of the hossu was quite a favourite method with many masters to demonstrate the truth of Zen. As I stated elsewhere, the hossu and the staff were the religious insignias of the master, and it was natural that they would be in much display when the monks approached with questions. One day Ōbaku Kiun (Huang-po Hsi-yün) ascended the pulpit, and as soon as monks were gathered, the master took up his staff and drove them all out. When they were about all out, he called them, and they turned their heads back. The master said, “The moon looks like a bow, less rain and more wind.” The staff was thus wielded effectively by the masters, but who would ever have thought of a cane being made an instrument of illustrating the most profound truth of religion?

Jōshu was the readiest master for pithy retorts and his “Sayings” (Goroku) is filled with them, but he was also an adept at the direct method. When he was in his pulpit one day, a monk came out of the rank and made bows to him. Without waiting, however, for further movements on the part of the monk, Jōshu folded his hands and a parting salutation was given. Hyakujo Isei’s (Pai-chang Wei-chêng) way was somewhat different. He said to the monks, “You open the farm for me and I will talk to you about the great principle [of Zen].” When the monks finished attending to the farm and came back to the master to discourse on the great principle, he merely extended his open arms and said nothing.

A monk came to Yenkwan An, the National Teacher, and wanted to know what was the original body of Vairochana Buddha. The Teacher told him to pass the pitcher, which he did. The Teacher then said, “Put it back where you got it.” The monk faithfully obeyed, but not being told what was the original body of the Buddha, he proposed the question once more, “Who is the Buddha?” Answered the master, “Long gone is he!” In this case the direct method was practised more by the monk himself under the direction of the master, but unfortunately the pupil’s spiritual condition was not ripe enough to grasp the meaning of his own “direct method,” and alas, let go “the old Buddha!” Something similar to this case may be found in the following one:

Sekiso (Shih-shuang) asked Yenchi (Yüan-chih), who was a disciple of Yakusan (Yüeh-shan), “If some one after your death asked me about the ultimate fact, what should I say to him?” The master gave no answer, but instead called up the boy-attendant who at once responded. He said, “Fill up the pitcher,” and remained quiet for some little while. He now asked Sekiso, “What did you ask me before?” Sekiso re-stated the question, whereupon the master rose from his seat and left the room.

As some Zen masters remarked, Zen is our “ordinary mindedness,” that is to say, there is in Zen nothing supernatural or unusual or highly speculative that transcends our everyday life. When you feel sleepy, you retire; when you are hungry, you eat, just as much as the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, taking “no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” This is the spirit of Zen. Hence no specially didactic or dialectical instruction in the study of Zen except such as is given below by Dōgo.

Ryutan Sōshin (Lung-t‘an Sui-hsin) was a disciple of Tenno Dōgo (Tao-wu). He served the master as one of his personal attendants. He was with him for some time when one day he said to the master: “Since I came to you, I have not at all been instructed in the study of mind.” Replied the master, “Ever since you came to me, I have always been pointing to you how to study mind.” “In what way, sir?” “When you brought me a cup of tea, did I not accept it? When you served me with food, did I not partake of it? When you made bows to me, did I not return them? When did I ever neglect in giving you instructions?” Ryutan kept his head hanging for some time, when the master told him, “If you want to see, see directly into it; but when you try to think about it, it is altogether missed.”

Dōgo Yenchi (Tao-wu Yüan-chih) and Ungan Donjo (Yün-yen Tan-shêng) were standing by the master Yakusan (Yüeh-shan) as attendants, when Yakusan remarked, “Where our intellect cannot reach, I verily tell you to avoid talking about it; when you do, horns will grow on you. O Yenchi, what will you say to this?” Yenchi thereupon rose from his place and left the room. Ungan asked the master, “How is it, sir, that Brother Chi does not answer you?” “My back aches to-day,” said Yakusan, “You better go to Yenchi himself, for he understands.” Ungan came to his brother monk and inquired thus, “O Brother Senior, why did you not answer our master now?” “You better go back to the master himself and ask,” was all that poor Ungan could get out of his senior brother.

There was another favourite movement often practised by Zen masters, which was to call out to the questioner or somebody else. One case of this has already been given somewhere else in another connection. The following are the typical and classical ones. Chu, the National Teacher, called out to his attendant monk three times, to which the latter responded regularly. Said the Teacher, “I thought I was not fair to you, but it was you that were not fair to me.” This calling and responding took place also three times between Mayoku (Ma-ku) and Ryosui (Liang-sui), which at last made the latter exclaim: “O this stupid fellow!”

This trick of calling out and responding was frequently practised as is seen in the following cases: A high government dignitary called upon Ungo Doyo (Yün-chü Tao-ying) and asked: “I am told that the World-honoured One had a secret phrase and Mahākāśyapa did not keep it hidden; what was the secret phrase?” The master called out, “O honoured officer!” and the officer responded. “Do you understand?” demanded the master. “No, Reverend Sir!” was his natural answer. “If you do not understand, there is the secret phrase: if you understand, there is Mahākāśyapa in full revelation.”

Haikyu (P‘ai-hsiu) was a local governor in Shinan (Hsin-an) before he was appointed a state-minister. He once visited a Buddhist monastery in his district. While going around in the premises of the monastery, he came across a fine fresco painting and asked the accompanying priests whose portrait this was. “He was one of the high priests,” they answered. The governor now turned towards them and questioned, “Here is his portrait, but where is the high priest himself?” They all did not know how to answer him. He then further asked if there were any Zen monks about here. They replied, “We have recently a new comer in this monastery, he does some menial work for us and looks very much like a Zen monk.” He was then brought in the presence of the governor who at once spoke to him, “I have one question in which I wish to be enlightened, but the gentlemen here grudge the answer. May I ask you to give me a word for them?” “I humbly wish you to ask,” politely requested the monk. The officer repeated the first question, whereupon the monk loudly and clearly called out, “O Haikyu!” Haikyu responded at once, “Here, sir!” “Where is the high priest now?” cross-questioned the monk. This opened the governor’s eye to the sense of the monk’s counter-question, in which he could now read the solution of his first query.

The case between Yisan (Wei-shan) and Kyōzan (Yang-shan) was more intellectual and to that extent more intelligible than this mere calling and responding. Kyōzan was the chief disciple of Yisan, and one of the peculiar features of this school was to demonstrate the truth of Zen concordantly both by the master and disciple. They once went out picking tea-leaves. The master said to Kyōzan, “Picking tea-leaves all day, I hear only your voice and do not see your body; manifest your original body and let me see it.” Kyōzan shook the tea-plant. Said Yisan, “You have only got its function, you have not got the substance.” Kyōzan said, “Master, how with you then?” The master was quiet for a while whereupon the disciple said, “O master, you have got only the substance, you have not got the function.” “You will be spared of my twenty blows,” concluded the master. In Buddhist ontology three conceptions are distinguished, as was referred to previously; substance or body, appearance, and function or activity. “Body” or bhāva corresponds to the idea of mass or being, “appearance” (lakshaṇa) to that of form, and “function” (kṛitya) to that of force. Every reality is regarded by Buddhist philosophers as analysable into these three notions. Sometimes, however, the second conception, “appearance” is absorbed in that of “being,” or “body.” Without functioning no objects exist, but functioning cannot take place without something functioning. The two ideas, according to Buddhist philosophers, are thus inseparable for our understanding of the universe. But Yisan and Kyōzan were not metaphysicians and would not argue on the subject. The one shook the tree and the other stood still. We cannot say that there is Zen in this standing and shaking as we may interpret them philosophically, but we may glean something of Zen in their remarks on “body” and “function” together with their direct method.

So far the direct method has not been of any violent character as to involve a bodily injury or nervous shock, but the masters had no qualms if they thought necessary to shake the pupils roughly. Rinzai for one was noted for the directness and incisiveness of his dealings; the point of his sword cut through the heart of the opponent. The monk Jō (Ting) was one of his disciples, and when he asked the master what the fundamental principle of Buddhism was, Rinzai came down from his straw chair, and taking hold of the monk slapped him with the palm of his hand, and let him go. Jō stood still without knowing what to make of the whole procedure when a by-standing monk blamed him for not bowing to the master. While doing so, Jō all of a sudden awoke to the truth of Zen. Later, when he was passing over a bridge, he happened to meet a party of three Buddhist scholars, one of whom asked Jō, “The river of Zen is deep, and its bottom must be sounded. What does this mean?” Jō, disciple of Rinzai, at once seized the questioner and was at the point of throwing him over the bridge, when his two friends interceded and asked Jō’s merciful treatment of the offender. Jō released the scholar, saying, “If not for the intercession of his friends I would at once let him sound the bottom of the river himself.” With these people Zen was no joke, no mere play of ideas, it was on the contrary a most serious thing on which they would stake their lives.

Rinzai was a disciple of Ōbaku (Huang-po), but while under the master he did not get any special instruction on Zen; for whenever he asked him as to the fundamental truth of Buddhism, he was struck by Ōbaku. But it was these blows that opened Rinzai’s eye to the ultimate truth of Zen and made him exclaim, “After all there is not much in the Buddhism of Ōbaku!” In China and in Korea what little of Zen is left mostly belongs to the school of Rinzai. In Japan alone the Soto branch is flourishing as much as the Rinzai. The rigour and vitality of Zen Buddhism that is still present in the Rinzai school of Japan comes from the three blows of Ōbaku so mercifully dealt out to his poor disciple. There is in fact more truth in a blow or a kick than in the verbosity of logical discourse. At any rate the Zen masters were in dead earnest whenever the demonstration of Zen was demanded. See the following instance.

When Tō-Impo (Têng Yin-fêng) was pushing a cart, he happened to see his master Baso stretching his legs a little too far out in the roadway. He said, “Will you please draw your legs in?” Replied the master, “A thing once stretched out will never be contracted.” “If so,” said Tō, “a thing once pushed will never be retracted.” His cart went right over the master’s legs which were thus hurt. Later Baso went up to the Preaching Hall where he carried an axe and said to the monks gathered, “Let the one who wounded the old master’s legs awhile ago come out of the congregation.” Tō came forth and stretched his neck ready to receive the axe, but the master instead of chopping the disciple’s head off, quietly set the axe down.

Tō-Impo was ready to give up his life to re-assert the truth of his deed, through which the master got hurt. Mimicry or simulation was rampant everywhere, and therefore Baso wanted to ascertain the genuineness of Tō’s understanding of Zen. When the thing is at stake, the masters do not hesitate to sacrifice anything. In the case of Nansen, a kitten was done away with: Kyōzan broke a mirror into pieces; a woman follower of Zen burned up a whole house; and another woman threw her baby into a river. This latter was an extreme case, and perhaps the only one of the kind ever recorded in the history of Zen. As to minor cases such as mentioned above, they are plentiful and considered almost matters of course with Zen masters.