I was looking through my old copy of Sohaku Ogata’s book, The Transmission of the Lamp. Incidentally, I was flabbergasted to learn later on that it’s selling for well over a hundred and fifty bucks! I bought it shortly after it was published. Lucky me. In any case, it has a few gems in it. Here is one I just came across.
Two monks, T’an Jan and Huai Jang, arrived to ask about the message of the Patriarch who came from the West.
The Master [Hui An of Sung Mountain] asked them, “Why do you not aks about your own message?”
They asked, “What is the message of ourselves?”
The Master replied, “You should observe your secret function.”
They asked, “What is our secret function?”
The Master demonstrated by flickering with his eyes. T’an Jan comprehended where it returned and stayed on the place. Huai Jang missed the point and left the Master to go to Ts’ao Ch’i Monastery. (Sohaku Ogata, The Transmission of the Lamp, p. 115)
For most, this is a difficult conversation to make heads or tails of. It’s not about a gay Zen master trying to pick up a monk! The “secret function” is such because both monks have neither knowledge nor the right view of true reality. In other words, they are unawakened to the unconditioned which is the animative principle (ātman). When the Master flickered his eyes he essentially did the same thing as when the Buddha held up a flower then blinked transmitting the Dharma to Mahākāśyapa who just smiled. This of course is anagogical: it has a particular spiritual meaning and significance. Likely the Buddha didn’t actually transmit to Mahākāśyapa. The profound Dharma is not like a flower. You just don’t hand it over to someone. Nevertheless this myth works well as an enigmatic koan.
Few Buddhists and few Zennist are open to the idea that what is absolute and unconditioned is always animating us. In fact, we are it but don’t know this yet. And why? Because we crave and covet the animated—all appearance, including our carnal bodies and thoughts. So deluded are we, that we imagine this animated world to be the true world. It ain’t. What animates it is. It is not the flickering, but what causes the flickering that is Dharma. The flickering is the function while what initiates the flickering is the essence. The study of dhyāna (contemplation) is the means by which we come into communion with the animative principle, i.e., the ātman or Buddha-nature.
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