One of my favorite sayings of Suzuki Roshi is "Don't be fooled!". This encapsulates Zen teaching and Buddhism. A favorite activity of Zen teachers is to cover the whole earth and all the heavens in a single phrase, like "Starting from zero" or "Nothing Holy" or "Chop wood carry water". It takes a heap of practice and understanding to whittle the cosmos into a single line, to illuminate the truth of the dharma with a turning word or phrase. "Don't be fooled" is a compassionate plea for us to live mindfully in the wholeness of Being. Sometimes these terse expressions can turn people off to Zen, how can you get inside their meaning? The Zen path is not easy pablum for the lazy, it requires strong effort and a rather indomitable spirit to practice Zen. You will keep falling down and scrapping your knee, so learning how to get up again is Zazen in daily life.
What can we be fooled by? Everything! We can be run by our desires, attracted to glitz, avoidant of suffering, insatiable in our longings, depressed in our emotions and attitude, disrespectful of others, judgmental, harsh, insensitive, and disembodied from our experience. The bottom line is that we are fooled by ourselves, by our own lack of clarity about who we are and about the fundamental intimacy and love that are the warp and woof of Dharma. Even thought we can break foolishness down into bits and pieces, at the end of the day we are fooled by the gap we cling to between ourselves and others, we are fooled by identifying with a separate reality.
I am continually amazed at my own foolishness. I find some comfort in the Zen teaching that practice is going from mistake to mistake. I think foolishness is actually one of my best teachers, for when I see myself saying things I wish I hadn't, or doing habitual things I thought I had stopped, I have a reference point for growing and maturing. It is easy to become self critical or ashamed or frustrated when you catch yourself out. But if you don't, others will! Guaranteed. That's why we practice in a loving sangha, so that we can help each other from being so foolish. Perhaps knowing your foolishness through and through is walking through the eye of a needle, or jumping off a hundred foot pole, or two arrow points meetings; you know, one of those Zen shouts. Kwatz!
one foot in my mouth
the other in a puddle
time to walk the middle
Don't Be Fooled
Five Ranks: Form and Emptiness
The five ranks demarking the relationship between the absolute and relative are unique to Zen, significant to the path of spiritual maturation, and difficult to comprehend and wrestle with. They remind me a bit of the trail markers on groomed cross country ski trails, they are nailed onto trees above normal viewing range during the dry season, but when it snows they are at eye level. Nobody can teach you the five ranks any more than they can teach you how to reach for your pillow when you are asleep. With practice and maturation, the subtleties of Mind reveal themselves. As students of Zen, we sit still, pay attention, and harmonize our lives.
Familiarizing yourself with the five ranks can give you some sense of the field of awakening. The absolute state is pure emptiness, and form is the relative state of the uniqueness of things, or the phenomenal world. The third state is the relative within the absolute, which is an appreciation of the dance between form and emptiness, with the foreground of perception on form. The fourth state is the absolute within the relative, which again is an appreciation of the dance between form and emptiness, but with the foreground of perception on emptiness. The fifth state is the integration of form and emptiness without attachment to anything; it is sometimes called 'the mysterious great way'. In Soto Zen, this is the realm of practice and the focus of dharma, not getting caught out by anything, not being run by the realization of emptiness nor the beauty of form, but finding yourself smack dab in the middle of the ever changing now. This is 'things as they is' to quote Suzuki Roshi.
Thinking about the five ranks raises the question of how do we learn about Reality in Zen practice. Zazen is the main way, which is sitting in the middle of not knowing. Sometimes we study teachings that can seem clear or abtuse, but again, they hopefully land us in the middle of not knowing. This not knowing is the stream of zen, of reality, of being, of givng and receiving, of picking up a book and putting it down, of being with friends and walking in solitude, of drinking tea and dying gracefully. The five ranks can give us some appreciation of the Zen path, and perhaps at various stages of our maturation process, they can help us appreciate the ground we share.
looking through five windows
the landscape changes
still the earth is round
Case 8: Eyebrows
After talking to his students all summer, Ts'ui Yen asked them to look and see if his eyebrows were still there. This is Zen in code. An old Zen idiom says that if you talk too much about what can't be described with words, your eyebrows will fall out. The teacher was really asking his students 'if they got it?', IT being some understanding of the great matter of living and dying that exists outside of words and concepts. He was also demonstrating that even though you can't talk about it, you have to talk about it in order to encourage people to sit still and discover their true mind.
If you train in Zen, you quickly learn that although teachers talk and the dharma is vast and profound, most of Zen is learned through activity and experience. It is learned by being around others with a deep practice, and through meditation and mindfulness to activity. Dharma teachings are transmitted through bows, washing rice, cleaning up, walking, chanting; namely, by learning to bring benefit to all activities through selfless engagement with the world. You also learn if you train in Zen about the vigorousness of it, that you pour all of your heart and spirit into whatever you are doing. This is the spirit of Zen that no words can convey.
I like watching skilled workmen. Once I spent an hour watching a man from Mexico dig with a shovel. He wouldn't force the shovel into the ground, he would work the tip in a pattern while digging shallowly and patiently, an ancient rhythm to it. He never lost his balance, and the shovel seemed to extend right out of his core. His digging was a natural extension of his being there with the earth and the shovel, as if they belonged together in a harmonious dance. Scrape scrape scrape dig dig dig shovel shovel shovel, the beat of life, the sound of earth, iron tools meeting the still center of things. He never got ahead of himself, never rushed, and never looked like he was proud of what he was doing. He was working, living, breathing. All was right with the world. He was a fine teacher for me.
don't be fooled by words
pick up a shovel
and be found
Case 7: What is Buddha?
When a monk named Hui Ch'ao asked Fa Yen "What is Buddha", he answered "You are Hui Ch'ao". This answer tipped the universe on its ear. Suzuki Roshi simply said "When you are you, Zen is Zen". Same thing. There is no room for explanation in this koan. The only path is the one in which you become yourself. The nuances of being yourself are as vast as the ocean, as wide as sky, as deep as a bottomless well. The question a Zen student faces is how to practice so that you know yourself through and through.
I was listening to my pet cockatiel's enchanted singing the other day, and marveling at the beautiful orange circles on his cheeks. I was wondering about his life, what it is like being him, what he sees. How does he know himself? Since Zippers (my bird) doesn't have self-reflexive awareness, the ability to have consciousness of the self, the whole world is who he is. He has never been separate from anything. In this non duality he is just himself. He is everything. He is also a cockatiel with orange cheeks.
A Zen teacher was sitting by a pool of fish. A boy came up and asked who he was. He said he was the fish. The boy said "You aren't the fish!". The teacher said "Since you aren't me, how can you know I'm not the fish?"! And so it goes. What is Buddha? Other questions cover the same ground: what is limitless freedom? what is dropping body and mind? what is outside of thought? what is your true and universal nature? who shops, cooks, and cleans?
Mouth closed
Eyes wide open
Nothing to grasp
Case 6: A Good Day
In response to a question about the before and after of today, Yun Men said "every day is a good day". This wonderful saying can give both hope and perspective, which we all need, but that is the tip of this ancient iceberg. Yun Men was espousing his understanding of time and space, the ontological twins of Zen and spiritual inquiry. What place do we inhabit? When do we live? Are we awake to it?
"Every day is a good day" gathers together all time and space into the present moment, into the luminosity of now. It gathers together all the Buddhas, bodhisattvas, ancestors, teachers, families, friends, beings, animals, rocks, tiles, and trees, and sets them on top of Mt. Sumuru, the sacred mountain. Where you stand and breathe right now is "It". There is no place apart from where you are now. Yun Men was asked a clever question to test his understanding of the here and now, and to expose how he included all life into his own sense of being. He revealed his understanding that there is nothing existent outside this moment nor separate from him, that we are all 'time-beings', to borrow from Dogen's understanding of Uji (His writing on time-being).
So, what do we do when we wake up grumpy and realize we are late getting to work? What do we do when we get behind? What do we do when our living becomes a 'to do' list? What do we do when 'there isn't enough time', when we feel crowded by others, when the clock is ticking out the seconds of mortality, when the race to get ahead has us galloping through the day?! Can we stop? Can we sit still? Can we return to this good day? Can we return to this wondrous moment of being? Can we find the still center out of which life arises? Can we bow to Yun Men and recollect ourselves so that our lives are centered in the present moment and place we find ourselves? Practice is making an effort to return to the peace of every day.
Lost in the woods
Take a breath
The jewel uncovers
Case 5: Grain of Rice
Hsueh Feng said "Pick up the whole great earth in your fingers, and it's as big as a grain of rice". This reminds me of Bobby Darin singing "He's got the whole wide world in his hands". Zen teachers of old didn't mess around with explanations, they pointed straight at the Dharma Kaya, the light body of Buddha, and the path that Dogen lays before us of "dropping body and mind", or as the classic Zen saying goes, letting the bottom of the bucket fall out. In a grain of rice, the whole earth, in the earth, a grain of rice. Going further, toss them both out and what remains?
When you chant the four bodhisattva vows, you say "dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them". The koan about the grain of rice is suggesting that everything you see and hear and touch and taste and feel and know is a grain of rice, a dharma gate that invites you to throw the doors and windows of your house wide open, to let go of clinging to your sense of separates and to realize the whole world as your own body, to let your great heart enter the world. This is called illumination and function in Zen, awakening to the blessing, grace, and dynamic of form and emptiness.
Sadly, the above two paragraphs are still Zen gobbledygook. The fundamental practice of zazen is your best teacher, just sitting and being, listening and learning from your body and breath. In Rinzai Zen emphasis is placed on Koan practice and awakening. In Soto Zen and the tradition of Suzuki Roshi, we think of koans as a good thing to study, but we mostly emphasize the importance of daily pratice, of cultivating mindful living in every day life. When fruit ripens it drops to the earth, what's the use of trying to make it ripen! This is letting go, trusting your practice, teachers, sangha, and life. Cultivating an attitude of non attainment is the path of one grain of rice. Enjoy each breath as you keep you feet warm and head cool.
a grain of rice
or a flat tire
keep on truckin
Case 4: Bundle of Emptiness
Te Shan walked back and forth in the meditation hall and said "There's nothing, no one", and then he left. The story continues that he decided he was being coarse, so he came back in to honor the teacher, but when the teacher reached for his whisk, the symbol of his teaching and authority, Te Shan let out a big shout and left. This case is a lot of Zen monkey business, and reading it will make your head spin with archaic references and commentaries that have stories within stories. What's a Zen shout? What's the meaning of there is 'nothing, no one', and why is it a half truth? Before you close the book on Zen koans and toss it into the fire, take a breath and relax into just being yourself, for that's what this koan is about.
Suzuki Roshi said that when you are you, Zen is Zen. That's another way of saying there's nothing, no one, and then shouting. Dogen's way of saying it was that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical. Zen teachers point toward the dynamic dance of the absolute and relative worlds, and they play with stories and sayings that remind us that you can't put Reality in a box. Te Shan's bundle carries the world of emptiness, and he was telling us that from the perspective of the absolute there is no person that exists separately from everything; he was enacting one of the marks of existence, that there is no Self. When he came back into the hall, he reminded us with his shout that he was a unique fellow, and that the world of form and color are also part of the deal, that we live on the earth and are of the earth. Somebody has to shop, cook, and clean.
Koans don't get solved, they get lived. I think the notion of carrying a bundle is a wonderful metaphor for living. What's in our bundle, how do we carry it? Zazen teaches us to stay in the present, close to our breath, and keep our mind in our feet when we are walking. Just by sitting this the bundle has the moon and the earth in it. But if you open the bundle up, everything will disappear, you can't find anything at all. The daily effort we make to let go of our self centered views and behaviors is carrying a bundle of emptiness. The daily effort we make to stand solidly through the day is a big shout, Kwatz! in Japanese, maybe Yeehaaaaaaaa! in Cowboy Zen.
Watching clouds
Pouring tea
Yeehaa!
Case 3: Sun Face Moon Face
When Master Ma was asked about his health, he slayed the great dragon when he said "Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha". The phrase itself is quite beautiful and stands alone, but the underlying meanings are like a mountain crag with no foothold. His response has no logical connection to a question about his well being that day, which like most koans is a clue that prajna is at play, something pointing us beyond thinking, understanding, and rationalization.
The notion of a sun face and moon face Buddha can suggest two sides of our nature, the male-female principles, the dark-light,day-night,known-unknown, outer-inner, ordinary-sacred, and of course the relative and absolute worlds of Reality. As your Zen practice unfolds these worlds unveil themselves. As you study your own character, habits, and posture you begin to learn about many different aspects of yourself. You also learn that rejecting any of your parts results in a death of the whole. Wholeness depends upon honoring all of your parts.
The cliff that Master Ma constructs is the cliff of duality and attachment, of samsaric life through our clinging to separateness, permanence, and difficulty. How do we go beyond, and then beyond beyond, how to we climb the cliff of Reality and then live as if it was never there? Gate Gate Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhisvaha! May you realize Sun Face Buddha Moon Face Buddha, the yin-yang dynamic workings of the universe. Going to the other shore means going beyond the other shore, it means to keep on flowing with the changes of life without attachment while recognizing things just the way they are. When are you a sun face Buddha? When are you a moon face Buddha?
Last night it rained,
This morning a clear sky.
How the Great Dragon plays!
Case 2: Avoid Choosing
Zen teacher Chao Chu liked saying "Avoid picking and choosing", which was a modification of Seng-T'san's (3rd Zen patriarch) " The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences". Is this an invitation to be irresponsible, to not make choices, and to give up sound judgment? How do you not pick and choose and how do you learn about how you pick and choose? And what is the Way? This koan is Zen as dense as a bamboo grove hiding the moon. How can one not have a life of difficulty, especially when Suzuki Roshi says 'Welcome your problems?".
The way, or the Tao, is the path of harmony and accord with all things, which requests us to put aside our egoism and self centered nature. Zazen is sitting in accord with all things, so when we pay attention to our posture and breathing we are avoiding picking and choosing, we are just awake to things as they are, to experience without commentary or judgment, and in terms of this koan, without making distinctions between things such as inside/outside, past/present, me/you. Chao Chu invites us to our universal nature where all things are Mind.
Zen practice makes you aware of your choices and habits, and how they might keep you from noticing and flowing with the whole context of reality as you move through the day. As you study your own habitual choices, you begin to learn about the hold they have on you. As you let them go, which is a way of not picking and choosing, you may find yourself carried on the wave of the moment in harmony with the ocean of things. As you begin to see that much of your suffering is an outgrowth of conditioned decision making and choices, the way of the unfolding present moment, of dynamic and intuitive responsiveness, and of awakening living and intimacy becomes possible.
To be or not to be,
Choices wax and wane,
Just this flow, Awake!
Case 1: Nothing Holy
Two of the most famous and important sayings of Zen come from the first koan in the Mumonkan, the Gateless Gate collection of Zen dialogues that point to the wisdom of emptiness and the manifestation of compassion. The fact that it is the first case and also about Bodhidharma, the revered Zen ancestor who brought Zen to China from India and was also famous for years of sitting facing a wall, emphasizes its importance as well.
When Emporor Wu asked Bodhidharma about the highest of holy truths he said "Empty, without holiness". This is the foundation of prajna and buddha nature as well as the Zen emphasis on a level playing field in Reality where nothing is special. "When you meet the Buddha kill her" and the tossing of a Wooden Buddha into the fire are other enactments of Shunyata, the ground of being and nuomena. In the Suzuki Roshi lineage of Zen, we emphasize the Zen sitting posture itself is a manifestation of Buddha nature, the universal nature that runs through all things and out of which the world of form and color appear, the phenomena of existence. When everything is without holiness, everything is sacred. In meditation practice you learn to settle the mind and body as a means of cultivating alertness and presence, the soil of beginner's mind.
The other quintessential response of Bodhidhamra to the question 'who are you?' was 'I don't know'. This phrase and comprehension has resounded through Zen for millennium and is the root of the Bodhi tree. We spend our lives trying to define ourselves, to establish an identity based on certainty, conviction, and conditioning. Zen simply takes it all away and doesn't replace it. This is the humble ground of just being somebody, an ordinary person that lives and dies, like all things and with all things. Zen is a steep cliff because of necessity we keep falling off it without a parachute. Refining your life in Zen means continually returning to ground zero, a place of not knowing, the fertile ground of being awake.
Ask all you want,
It remains unknown.
Can you swallow the moon?
Koans
Chop wood, carry water. When you finish your rice, clean your bowl. Does a dog have Buddha nature? What is the sound of one hand clapping? These are just a few of the hundredes of koans that are unique to Zen Buddhism. A hoard of hippies were attracted to Zen in the 60's by Paul Rep's and Nyogen Senzaki's Zen Flesh Zen Bones edition of koans. It remains one of my favorite books. In some schools of Zen, students take koans as objects of meditation, while in other schools, they are studied as confirmation of experience or for gaining perspective on the matter of living and dying.
The koan collections in the Blue Cliff Record, Mumonkan, and other sources, use dialogue, poetry, story telling, and commentary to espouse Zen dialectics. They are intended to help students awaken to luminous wisdom and loving kindness, beginner's mind and warm heartedness, Buddha nature and love. Unfortunately, they are difficult to read, study, and understand in the usual sense of the word. Like the famous Zen saying, 'they are fingers pointing at the moon', and not the moon itself. They are the symbolic language of Zen, stories that attempt to teach going beyond oneself into oneness, or as Dogen says, dropping body and mind.
If you find yourself bored, flabbergasted, and repulsed by the tediousness of ancient Chinese and Japanese symbolic dialog and nonsensical questions and sometimes blatantly ludicrous responses or demonstrative whacking and thwacking and play acting, your have officially begun your studies. Zen koans were written by the initiated, by mature Zen teachers who had integrated non-dual wisdom, and had gone beyond attachment to any particular state of mind. As a famous koan would have it, 'Ordinary mind is Buddha'. Worst case, isn't it great to be confused, to attempt to study something that by its very nature throws you into 'don't know' mind? O.K., pass the cookies.
Questions and answers
all dried up.
Mud on my shoes.
Karma
When you do something there is an effect. There is no escaping the laws of cause and effect, even though Buddha goes beyond the laws of cause and effect. Karma is simply the results of your actions. The Buddhist wheel of life splits the circle of karma into two halves, one 'good' and the other 'bad'. I prefer to think of all karma as learning experiences, some are wholesome and some are unwholesome. Hopefully we learn from both.
The saying "What comes around goes around" nails karma on the head. Your present life is the sum total of all of your actions of body, speech and mind. It is also the sum total of all activity of the present universe....but that's not within your control, so when it comes to developing your character, Zen practice teaches how to be responsible for your actions and how they influence others. This is the path away from self centered behavior and toward all inclusive activity that respects the uniqueness, dignity, and views of others. Each of our actions is a ripple in the big pond. How we bring benefit to others through our actions is the Bodhisattva path.
When I look honestly at myself I am sometimes appalled at my self-centeredness, as well as at the thoughtless ways I interact with people sometimes. As I heard one well known Zen teacher say, her practice has progressed from 'me me me me me me me' to 'me me me me you me me'! Suzuki Roshi said that our usual way is to point a finger towards ourselves, but that Zen is pointing a finger away from ourselves. Something changes quite profoundly when we become concerned about others. Eventually, taking care of them is taking care of ourselves, for in the non-dual world of dharma there is only total subjectivity, each being is your own face. What would the world be like if we could each add a few more 'yous' to our 'me me me' mantra?!
Walking gently
Each step touches
The whole earth