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