The Zennist

A huge impasse

In Mahayana Buddhism it is said the true Mind is empty which means it is absent of disturbances or oscillations.  In contrast to this Mind, the mind we are ordinarily familiar with is adventitious.  It is not the original or essential Mind (ekacitta).  Mahayana Buddhism also describes the true Mind to be like empty space in which nothing determinate is present but is real, nevertheless.  This is extremely difficult for Westerners to understand who expect to see Mind as something determinate; who believe an indeterminate absolute is nonsense.

The typical habit, especially on the part of Western Buddhists, is to take true Mind as something determinate.  This creates a huge impasse.  Such a impasse is certainly demonstrated by the enigmatic koan.  When Western Buddhists attempt to unravel a koan they are always expecting the answer to lie somewhere in the world of determinate being.  But it doesn’t.  

Making the task even more difficult is the problem Western Buddhist have with understanding that for Buddhism, Mind is causal, never caused.  Mind, in other words, doesn’t spring from biological matter.  The difficulty of thinking this way  is partly due to Western science’s influence which is mechanistic and atomistic; which champions materialism.  For Western science, the universe cannot be the appearance and expression of a mind substance.  It has even closed its mind off to the possibility that it could be seriously wrong.  Nevertheless the West has had it own share of unsung heroes like the English mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) who wrote:

“The universe, then, consists entirely of mind-stuff.  Some of this is woven into the complex form of human minds containing imperfect representations of the mind-stuff outside of them, and of themselves also, as a mirror reflects its own image in another mirror, ad infinitum.  Such an imperfect representation is called a material universe.  It is a picture in man's mind of the real universe of mind-stuff.”

For me, it is much easier to see the world as a representation of mind-stuff.  When I had my first awakening to Mind I was thoroughly amazed that something so pure and invisible could express itself as a world with all of its complexity beauty and terror.  But it did.

 

Before the koan traps us, driving us crazy

 The belief that a koan’s answer lies in some ingenious kind of interpretation is, frankly, absurd, even running counter to Zen’s real aim.  Most koans are, in fact, designed to wring out our human predisposition to decipher the koan through human language and actions.  But that is not all.  There is a positive side, too.  

Koans contain what is in Chinese called the “hua-t’ou” or in Japanese, “watô”, meaning literally a word or a thought’s source or head sometimes translated as “pre-voice”.  This is really the Mind before it is perturbed and transformed into words, thoughts or mental pictures—even our this universe!  Hence, to see the hua-t’ou is Mind seeing itself, empty of anything else.  In this state, one has instantaneously entered into the transcendent—enough, let us say, to have a peek at it and become a baby Bodhisattva.  

Allow me to illustrate what I mean using a koan from Thomas Cleary’s book, Unlocking the Zen Koan (p. 39).  The title of the koan is Wash your Bowl.  The brackets are mine.

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “I have just joined the community, and I request the teacher’s instruction.” [This monk wants instruction in Buddha Mind.]

Zhaozhou inquired, “Have you had your breakfast gruel yet?” [The old venerable is probing this monk to see if he has a mind to realize Buddha Mind.  It’s really a set up.]

The monk said, “I have had my gruel.” [Okay, nice answer so far.  No beating yet.]

Zhaozhou said, “Then go wash your bowl.” [That was the hua-t’ou in case you missed it.]

The monk had insight. [I seriously doubt it.  I bet if I asked him what he had just realized he couldn’t explain it.]

Remember that the hua-t’ou is intended to point to the immediacy of pure Mind before the koan traps us, driving us crazy.  No matter how many times we go over a koan—a hundred thousand times—direct insight into pure Mind will elude us if we are tied to words and explanations. 

 

The difference between zazen and koans

Koans are much different than sitting meditation or zazen.  When someone does zazen in the Soto Zen tradition they believe they are the Buddha because the Buddha sat in cross-legged in meditation.  

“We can experience Gautama Buddha’s world at any moment.  When we take the posture of Gautama Buddha, we become Buddhas at once.  That is our direct connection with Gautama Buddha.  It is our connection with the Truth.  It is Buddhism itself” (Gudo Wafu Nihijima & Jeffrey Alan Bailey, To Meet the Real Dragon, p. 129). 

Koans, for obvious reasons, are much different than zazen.  There is nothing automatic.  The student has to solve a great mystery.  The correct answer to a koan doesn’t come easy, as easy as just sitting (shikantaza).  

Every koan is about a teacher revealing the nature of Buddha Mind to the inquirer who is more than often a serious student of Zen Buddhism.  In this respect, the koan is like a mini lecture on the nature of Buddha Mind.  Because of the difficulty of realizing this Mind, the koan likewise shows no mercy.  To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, a koan “is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.”  And yes there is a key that breaks the code.  It’s our realization of pure Mind.

Those who take up the study of koans who also study what the Buddha taught and what Zen masters of the past taught, have to believe that realizing Mind is the alpha and omega of Buddhism.  No realization of Buddha Mind, no Buddhism.  In line with this, how many hours a person sits in zazen has no bearing on their capacity to realize Buddha Mind.  In respect to Buddha Mind there is no difference between sitting and standing; walking or lying down.  Sitting is no holy posture, in other words.

Zazen, with respect to Soto Zen, begins with the premise that zazen is at the heart of Zen unlike traditional Zen that begins with the premise that Buddha Mind is at the heart of Zen.  With zazen, if I sit correctly, I become the Buddha.  It’s automatic.  With koans, if I read and study a koan I am still an ignoramus—nothing is automatic.  Even though I have Buddha Mind, I still don’t recognize it even when the teacher gives a demonstration of its function.  The difference between doing zazen and working with koans is, understandably, huge.

 

Laid-back approach to Zen

Bankei (1622–1693) might not make it too well as a modern Zen teacher.  For one thing, he didn't rely on koans.  Another oddity, if we can call it that, he didn't insist on formal meditation:  maintaining a ramrod straight sitting posture with leg crossed for a certain length of time.  For Bankei, meditation went beyond just physical sitting.  Buddha Mind was just as present in zazen as it was in standing or walking.  For Bankei, even if a monk dozed off during zazen, that was okay.  According to Bankei sleeping doesn't obscure the Buddha Mind anymore than being awake automatically makes it manifest.  

This reminds me of one of my friends, Dennis, who used to sit in zazen when Shunyru Suzuki was Abbot at the San Francisco Zen Center, just before he died.  During zazen, Dennis had to take a piss, he just got up and did his business then sat back down on the zafu.  Old Suzuki never said a word although some of his student were—to put it mildly—flabbergasted.  Dennis, looking back, was following Bankei, who said, "Around here, if somebody has something to do while they're sitting, they're free to get up and do it; it's up to them, whatever they have a mind to do" (trans. Stephen Hodge). 

I like the laid-back approach.  For example, using a slant board, instead of sitting ramrod straight, and drinking Jasmine tea to stay awake are not unknown to Zen.  Pouring over Sutras are not unknown either.  Still, all this is insufficient to get us to an immediate glimpse of the unborn Mind.  We still have exhaust our presuppositions; to go to our wit’s end where there is nothing more to use or hang on to.  This is where the ox wanders.

 

Hua-t’ou: A Method of Zen Meditation by Stuart Lachs

This paper discusses a form of meditation practice known in Chinese as hua- t’ou. It was popularized by the Chinese Zen master Ta-Hui (1089 – 1163) a member of the Lin-Chi sect of Zen. While Ta-Hui did not invent this method of meditation, he popularized it in that he was the first to teach a theory of why hua`t’ou should be practiced, and also taught how to use it in Zen practice.2

In particular, this paper will discuss what a hua-t’ou is, why Ta-Hui placed so much importance on it, and why this practice could be of interest to people today. I will give examples of well known hua-t’ou, describe one way to practice this method, describe some states of mind that may arise when doing the practice, offer some personal experience from my own thirty years of practicing the hua-t’ou, and consider what it means to have a Zen awakening. I will then list Ta-Hui’s ”Ten Defects” of hua-t’ou practice, and finally offer some concluding remarks and cautions related to having an awakening experience and the importance of continuing practice thereafter.

For the rest of Stuart Lochs' paper please download:

Download LachsZen_2012_02_11.docx

 

Post script.  The hua-t'ou has not been ignored by The Zennist.  I am glad to see Stuart gives it some well deserved ink.  I think The Zennist blog readers will find a lot in Stuart's paper that is spiritually beneficial to their own practice.  Needless to say, the hua-t'ou method is all but ignored in most circles of Zen today.  Zazen is the method or the same, just sitting (shikataza).  But in China, Korea, and Vietnam the hua-t'ou is the preferred method—and a good method it is. 

 

 

An inadequate koan tradition

Western Zen is usually either Japanese Soto type Zen (Dogen's Zen) or some form of it which mainly involves the practice of ritual sitting.  For the most part, it really doesn't have an adequate koan tradition.  This could be because the majority of Western teachers don't understand koans enough to be confident with them having inherited Japanese Zen.  The Japanese koan system, itself, does not appear to have grasped the Chinese koan or kung-an (公案) in the same way the Koreans and Vietnamese have.  We need to keep in mind that koans are the brainchild of Chinese Zennists; the most notable document being the Blue Cliff Records (Pi-Yen-Lu) which is a collection of a hundred cases.  Incidentally, the Blue Cliff Records reveal how koans work by means of the hua-t'ou (here R.D.M. Shaw translates it with Pre-Voice).

“The real substance of the Universe, the ‘First Principle,’ that which is behind or beyond the Voice [hua] or expression of ultimate Truth, this ‘Pre-Voice’ is transmitted only from heart [mind] to heart [mind], and no matter how great or holy or advanced in Enlightenment a man may be he cannot transmit it by means of words and phrases.  This Pre-Voice is not far away, it is indeed quite close to us, but unless one has had intimate, immediate contact with it—has had audience of it as one who has audience of the Emperor—this very near-at-hand Truth will be as faw off and separated from us as by thousands of worlds” (brackets are mine).

From the above we can gather that koans are a means of realizing pure Mind which is the Mind to Mind Zen transmission.  The koan’s semantic structure, which is certainly well crafted, is set up for the realization of pure Mind; acting to judge anyone who might try to find Mind in the koan.  It is good to keep in mind that koans are not little stories intended to help us get through the day.  They are quite esoteric in nature.

Whatever the Zen master is doing in the koan is always pointing to pure Mind regardless of how strange his pointing may seem to those unacquainted with pure Mind.  In other words, he is trying to awaken his students to something quite profound which is right in front of their nose.

Because Western Zen seems to ignore pure Mind, hardly ever mentioning its importance, it is not surprising that their handling of koans, in my opinion, is inept and, to a certain degree, counterproductive.

 

Polishing a tile is making a Buddha mirror?

What—need more proof that Dogen is really confused about Buddhism and Zen? Well, first here is a little Zen story about Ma-tzu/Mazu doing zazen.  

One day while on Nan-yueh Mountain Ma-tsu was practicing seated meditation.  Upon seeing Ma-tsu in zazen the Abbot of Prajna Temple, Huai-jang, asked Ma-tsu, “In doing zazen what do you hope to accomplish?”  Ma-tsu quickly replied, “To attain Buddhahood.”  Huai-jang then bent down and took up a piece of tile and began to polish it.  When asked by Ma-tsu what he was doing, Huai-jang responded by saying, “I am trying to polish this tile into a mirror.”  Amused by all of this, Ma-tsu asked, “How can you hope to polish a tile and make it into a mirror?”  Huai-jang promptly shot back with, “Since a tile cannot be polished into a mirror how can you sit yourself into a Buddha?”  “So what must I do?” asked Ma-tsu.  “Well, take the example of an oxcart.  If it doesn’t move what to you whip, the cart or the ox?”  Ma-tsu was silent.  Then Huai-jang said something quite remarkable.

In learning seated meditation do you aspire to learn zazen or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha.  If the former, Zen does not consist in sitting or in lying down.  If the latter, the Buddha has no fixed postures.  The Dharma goes on forever, and never abides in anything.  You must not therefore be attached to nor abandon any particular phase of it.  To sit yourself into Buddha this is to kill the Buddha.  To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle.

So how does Dogen treat this rather interesting Zen koan?  In a rather bizarre way.  The following is taken from the book, Zen Ritual. 

"In one of his two verse comments, Dogen inverts Nanyue's action by saying, "How can people plan to take a mirror and make it a tile?" implying that such effort denigrates the Buddha already present.  In "Zazenshin," commenting after Nanyue says, "How can you make a Buddha through zazen?"  Dogen declares, "There is a principle that seated meditation does not await making a Buddha; there is nothing obscure about the essential message that making a Buddha is not connected with seated meditation."  For Dogen, zazen is adamantly not merely a means to achieve buddhahood.  But after commenting in detail on this story, Dogen says, "It is the seated Buddha that Buddha after Buddha and Patriarch after Patriarch have taken as their essential activity…for it is the essential function."  Although it is not an instrumental activity for gaining awakening, zazen is still the fundamental activity of buddhas for Dogen" (pp. 171–172).

Perhaps a clearer if not a different explanation of Dogen’s strange analysis of the same Zen koan comes from the book, Eihei Dogen by Hee-Jin Kim.

“Commenting on this story, Dogen gave an unconventional interpretation that was characteristic of his treatment of other koan stories as well.  He contended that the story advocated not only the Zen dictum "Do not attempt to become a Buddha" (fuzu-sabutsu) but more important, the necessity of zazen undefiled.  He wrote:

'Indeed we know that when a tile, as it is being polished, becomes a mirror, Ma-tsu becomes a Buddha.  When Ma-tsu becomes a Buddha, Ma-tsu becomes Ma-tsu instantly.  When Ma-tsu becomes Ma-tsu, zazen becomes zazen immediately. Therefore, the tradition of making a mirror by polishing a tile has been kept alive at the core of ancient Buddhas'.

In the activity of zazen undefiled, a tile and a mirror or Ma-tsu and Buddha are one, though not dissolved.  Although the tile is not transformed into the mirror, the tile is the mirror; the act of polishing the tile itself unfolds the purity of the mirror.  Consequently, zazen, likened to the act of polishing the tile in this case, is nothing less than the unfolding enactment of original enlightenment, or in other words the mirror" (pp. 67–68).

Putting this another way, we are bright mirrors and tiles.  When we do  zazen, i.e., the polishing, the mirrorness is manifest.  We are Buddhas.  

In truth, zazen which is the physical act of just sitting has nothing to do with the realization of Buddhahood since Buddhahood is transcendent.  Buddhahood is the complete and full awakening of Mind to itself beginning with becoming a first stage (bhumi) Bodhisattva having accomplished bodhicittotpada, that is, the inception of the Mind that is bodhi.  This hardly conflicts with Ma-tsu's sublime understanding of meditation when he said: “Not cultivation and not sitting is the Tathagata’s pure meditation.”  This meditation is a meditation that goes beyond all forms and postures.  It is certainly not Dogen's confused meditation.

 

Letting go, falling into Suchness

It is fundamental to Zen that the person who is committed to its process give up the strong belief that Suchness or tathata  (i.e., spiritual substance) is perceivable as something determinate for sensory consciousness.  It is not.  The direct penetration into Suchness is a mystery; moreover, it shall ever remain a mystery even while we stand in its presence, awakened. 

To reiterate, Suchness attained will always remain incapable of being adequately described or perceived by our senses, including consciousness.  Put a different way, when we step off of our psychophysical scaffolding onto Suchness, Suchness will still be a complete mystery except that we are now this mystery.  What we will see as a result of this stepping off is the psychophysical qua the psychophysical because we are no longer psychophysical scaffolding anymore.  In the words of Zen master Goso:

“The sweet melon is sweet even through the stem;
The bitter gourd is bitter even to the roots.”

The world, including this psychophysical body of ours, is a much different world from the standpoint of the mystery of attained Suchness.  A huge thing like a galaxy is now the huge body of mysterious Suchness—a photon is now a small body of mysterious Suchness.

With satori, the so-called abyss that we once feared, we have become.  Looking now from the vantage point of the abyss or Suchness, we really come to see what ‘clinging’ means and what drives it.  This reminds me of the fifth koan, Kyogen Mounts the Tree, in Paul Reps’ book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

"KYOGEN SAID:  “Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice.  His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb, and under the tree another person asks him:  ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?'

If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails; and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life.  Now what shall he do?”

Of course the obvious answer is simply to let go.  But now we come back to the beginning of this blog about the process of Zen.  The average person, as they look into the terrifying abyss of Suchness, demand to know what this Suchness is before they commit themselves to letting go.  But this can’t be done.  For those who have let go; who have converged with the mysterious, undying ground of Suchness—being Suchness, itself—they can only laugh at such stupid demands as they pull out a saw, or grease the scaffolding so the adept will slip off of it and fall into the mysterious abyss of Suchness.  

 

Going beyond profit and loss

Looking at the Chinese characters that make up the word, koan, we get the idea of a court, a trial, judgment and possible punishment.  The enigmantic stories or dialogues that make up koan collections, which are difficult to understand for Western Zennists, are an outgrowth of Chinese Ch’an’s (J., Zen) mystical exploration into the the recondite subject of pure Mind and bringing about its direct realization.  

Koans are not at all illogical or crazy if we have awakened to pure Mind.  If, on the other hand, we are one of those who is uncomfortable with the idea of spirit, yes, koans may seem to be weird.  So what I am about to say will probably make little or no sense.

Koans were born of pure Mind such that the composer [s] of the koan was, to some degree, awakened to Buddha Mind, enough to compose stories around it.  Mind is not only revealed in the koan composition but also there is bait fastened to a trap.  If we take the bait the koan’s judgment is swift.  Our answer turns out to be half-assed:  inadequate, nor convincing.  The verdict is, “You didn’t answer the koan—the punishment of samsara still awaits you.”  Here is just one example.  In koan case XXVI of the Mumonkan (trans. Blyth) we read:

Hogen of Seiryo went to the hall to speak to the monks before the midday meal.  He pointed at the bamboo blinds [Blyth in a footnote says they should have been raised].  At this moment, two monks went and rolled them up.  Hogen said, “One has it, the other hasn’t” [Blyth’s footnote to this reads:  “Literally, “One, profit; one, loss.”].

Yes, this is a head-scrathcher.  The koan forces us to think over, many times, the phrase, “One has it, the other hasn’t” as if this holds the key to unloking this mysterious koan (which, in fact, it does but not in the way we imagine).  Soon, doubt follows our attempts at trying to crack this phrase.  We read the koan again.  It dawns on us that maybe the bamboo blinds symbolize the defiled mind and lifting the blinds means seeing the pure Mind.  Still, this doesn’t tell us what pure Mind is really like?  In the end, we are left gnawing on the dry bone of:  “One has it, the other hasn’t.”

Mumon’s commentary offers us little if any help.  Maybe the koan is not really about profit and loss.  Okay—got it.  But what is this “single eye” business?  Is this one-pointedness of Mind?  Apparently, also, the teacher Seiryo failed to reveal the luminous Mind to the assembly.  Okay—that’t not difficult to accept.  But then when all starts to turn dark, out of compassion old Mumon lets us know the matter is all about Mind (brakets are mine).

When they are rolled up, the great sky is bright and clear [like pure Mind],
But the great sky [pure Mind] has no affinity with Zen,
To have nothing to do with the sky [Mind as a mental image] is better,
And never let the wind [that stirs the waves of Mind] through.

Let me say that Thomas Cleary translation is far better than Blyth’s.  Mind stands out much more as it should.

Rolling up, there’s utter clarity, penetrating space
But even space does not accord with our source.
Better to let go of everything, from space on,
For such subtle secrecy that nothing can get in.

For those who fail to see Mind in this and other koans, but claim to fully understand Zen, what do they really undestand?  It’s certainly not Mind.  It is really the Zen of wearing robes, following rituals, and dead sitting being always tethered to the Five Aggregates which hide Buddha Mind.  Thus, the bamboo blinds are never lifted. 

 

A discourse without Mind

In my blog, “The blockhead years” I noted that “Mind has been virtually ignored in the modern Buddhist discourse” which should be obvious to those of us who have studied Vajrayana Buddhism and the sermons of the Chinese and Korean Zen masters.  Mind is almost on every page.  

I suspect the main reason Mind has been absent from the modern Buddhist discourse is because mindfulness and awareness have taken over the spot.  But these two terms tend to be used in a psychological context except for mindfulness when it is used to translate smriti which has a highly technical meaning that eclipses the English word, mindfulness.  

With Mind stricken from the modern Buddhist discourse, Mind as the absolute medium of existence is stricken, too, including the realization of Bodhicitta.  By comparison, one cannot discuss Vajrayana Buddhism, that is, Tibetan Buddhism, without discussing the two forms of Bodhicitta, viz., Bodhicitta aspired to and Bodhicitta attained, not to mention luminous or clear light Mind.

More telling of Mind’s absence in the modern Buddhist discourse becomes apparent when we look at how Western Zennists handle koans.  To be frank, these Zennists just don’t get koans, that is, they are clueless about the real purpose of koans and what they are fundamentally based on.  At this point, I will only say that if one has truly awakened to Buddha Mind all the koans point to it, without exception, and do so ingeniously.  

Especially, with regard to Zen, without Mind being included in the modern Zen conversation and practice, much of what the old Chinese Zen master’s taught makes hardly any sense—and the koans become nonsense.  What is replacing the older works of Zen—and the core teaching of Buddha Mind—is modernist claptrap which points to the here and the now, which becomes a kind of aesthetic phenomenalism.  Such phenomenalism views phenomena as Buddha-nature so that everything we do from peeling onions to sitting on our ass in zazen half asleep becomes a manifestation of Buddha-nature.  This, to be sure, is not the right path to Buddha Mind.