Hakuin

 

Tunnelling into the Secret Depths

WITH GREATEST respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth. I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, "At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment ... From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment."

Don't think the commitments and pressing duties of secular life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. Don't think your mind is so crowded with confused thoughts you are incapable of devoting yourself singlemindedly to Zen practice. Suppose a man was in a busy market place, pushing his way through the dense crowd, and some gold coins dropped out of his pocket into the dirt. Do you think he would just leave them there forget about them and continue on his way because of where he was? Do you think someone would leave the gold pieces behind because he was in a crowded place or because the coins were lying in the dirt? Of course not. He would be down there frantically pushing and shoving with tears in his eyes trying to find them. His mind wouldn't rest until he had recovered them. Yet what are a few pieces of gold when set against that priceless jewel found in the headdresses of kings -- the way of inconceivable being that exists within your own mind? Could a jewel of such worth be attained easily, without effort?

There once was a denizen of the Eastern Sea, Redfin Carp by name. He was endowed with an indomitable spirit and unbending integrity, a figure of immense stature among his fellow fish. He was constantly bemoaning the fate of his comrades. "How many untold millions of my brethren proudly swim the vast ocean deeps. They entrust themselves to its boundless silver waves, glide up and down among the swells, sport in the seaweed and kelp. Yet countless of them are taken by baited hooks and caught in nets. They wind up on a chopping block where they are sliced and cooked to fill the bellies of those in the human world. Their bones are cast away and mingle in the dust and mire. Their heads are thrown to the stray dogs. Some are dried or salted for inland markets, to be exposed in stalls and shopfronts for all to see. Not a single one finishes out his natural span. How sad is the life of a fish!"

With these sad musings there came a great welling of spirit in Redfin Carp's breast. He pledged a solemn vow. "I shall swim beyond the Dragon Gates. I shall brave the perilous bolts of fire and lightning. I shall transcend the estate of ordinary fish and achieve a place among the sacred order of dragons, ridding myself forever of the terrible suffering to which my race is heir, expunging every trace of our shame and humiliation."

Waiting until the third day of the third month, when the peach blossoms are in flower and the river is full, he made his way to the entrance of the Yu Barrier. Then with a flick of his tail, Redfin Carp swam forth.

You men have never laid eyes on the awesome torrent of water that rolls through the Dragon Gates. It falls all the way from the summits of the far-off Kunlun Range with tremendous force. There are wild, thousand-foot waves that rush down through perpendicular gorges towering on either side, carrying away whole hillsides as they go. Angry thunderbolts beat down on all sides with a deafening roar. Moaning whirlwinds whip up poisonous mists. Funnels of noisome vapor spit flashing forks of lightning. Even the mountain spirits are stunned into senselessness; the river spirits are limp with fright. Just a drop of this water will shatter the carapace of a giant tortoise break the bones of a giant whale.

It was into this maelstrom that Redfin Carp, his splendid golden-red scales girded to the full, his steely teeth thrumming like drums, made a direct all-out assault. Ah! Golden Carp! Golden Carp! You might have chosen an ordinary life out in the boundless ocean. It teems with lesser fish. You would not have gone hungry. Then why? What made you embark on this wild and bitter struggle? What was waiting for you up beyond the Barrier?

After being seared by cliff-shattering bolts of lightning, after being battered by heaven-scorching blasts of thunderfire, his scaly armor burned from head to tail, his fins singed through, Redfin Carp suddenly died the Great Death, and rose again as a divine dragon -- a supreme lord of the waters. Now, with the thunder god at his head and the fire god at his rear, flanked right and left by the gods of rain and wind, he moved at will with the clouds clutched in one hand and the mists in the other, bringing new life to the tender shoots withering in long-parched desert lands, keeping the true Dharma safe amid the defilements of the degenerate world.

Had he been content to pass his life like a lame turtle or blind tortoise, feeding on winkles and tiny shrimps, not even all the effort Vasuki, Manasvi and the other Dragon Kings might muster on his behalf could have done him any good. He could never have achieved the great success that he did.

What do I mean by "blind tortoise"? One of the current crop of sightless, irresponsible bungler-priests who regard koan as nonessential and the Zen interview (sanzen) as expedient means on the part of the master. While even such men are not totally devoid of understanding, they are clearly standing outside the gates, whence they peer fecklessly in, mouthing words like,

"The self-nature is naturally pure, the mind-source is deep as an ocean; there is no samsaric existence to be cast aside, there is no nirvana to be sought. It is a sheer and profound stillness, a transparent mass of boundless emptiness. It is here that is found the great treasure inherent in all people. How could anything be lacking?"

Ah, how plausible it sounds! All too plausible. Unfortunately, the words they speak do not possess even a shred of strength in practical application. These people are like snails. The moment anything approaches, they draw in their horns and come to a standstill. They are like lame turtles, pulling in their legs, heads, and tails at the slightest contact and hiding inside their shells. How can any spiritual energy emerge from such an attitude? If they happen to receive a sally from an authentic monk, they react like Master Yang's pet crane, who couldn't even move his neck. There's no difference between them and those fish who lie helpless on the chopping block, dying ten thousand deaths in their one life, their fate - whether they are to be sliced and served up raw or carved into fillets and roasted over hot coals - entirely in the hands of others. And throughout their ordeal they haven't the strength even to cry out. Can people of this kind be true descendents of the great Bodhidharma? They assure you that there is "nothing lacking." But are they happy? Are their minds free of care?

Genuine monks who negotiated the Way in the past flung themselves and everything they had into their masters' white-hot forges without a thought for their own lives or well-being. Once their minds were turned to the Way, they too, like Redfin Carp, gathered all their strength and courage and strove until they broke beyond the Dragon Gates. Thereafter, in whatever situation, under whatever circumstance, they functioned with total self-dependence and perfect, unattached freedom. What intense joy and gratification they must have felt. It is these people you must emulate, not the crane. Not those turtles and snails.

What is a "sacred dragon"? Those authentic patriarchs of the past with a strong and vigorous spirit who committed themselves singlemindedly to the practice of Zen. Ah, you are human beings, aren't you? If you let yourselves be outdone by a fish, you may as well be dead!

You often run up against obstructive demons of yet another type, ones who teach their followers:

"If you want to attain mastery of the Buddha's Way you must, to begin with, empty your mind of birth and death, of arising and subsiding thoughts. Birth and death exists, nirvana exists, heaven and hell exist, because the mind gives rise to them. None of them ever arises unless the mind causes them to. There is thus one and only one thing for you to do: make your minds completely empty."

Falling right into step, the students set out to empty their minds. The trouble is, though they try everything they know, emptying this way, emptying that way, working away at it for months, even years, they find it is like trying to sweep mist away by flailing at it with a pole, or trying to halt a river by blocking it with outstretched arms -- they only cause greater confusion.

Suppose a wealthy man mistakenly hired a master thief of the greatest skill and cunning to guard his house and, after seeing his granaries, treasures, and the rest of his fortune dwindle by the day, had several suspicious servants seized, and ordered the thief to interrogate them around the clock until they confessed. The family would be worried sick, the household on the brink of bankruptcy, yet the fortune would go on shrinking as before. All because of the man's original mistake in employing and placing his trust in a thief.

What you must learn from this is that all attempts to empty the mind are in themselves a sure sign that birth-and-death is in progress.

In the Shurangama Sutra the Buddha says, "You have continued to undergo transmigration in the cycle of birth and death from the beginningless past right on up to your present existence because you have acknowledged a thief as your son and heir and thus have remained unaware of the fundamental and changeless truth of your own true nature."

This passage is explained in a commentary on the Shurangama Sutra:

"The word 'thief' is used to describe the way in which you have been deprived of the virtues and merits of the Dharma's priceless resources. Having been deluded and thus unaware of this situation, you have mistaken this `thief' for something changeless and true, believing it to be your legitimate heir to whom your most valuable possessions can be entrusted. Instead, you have brought on your own downfall, reduced yourself to endless kalpas of wretchedness and poverty, all because you have been separated from the Dharma treasure."

If you really want to empty your mind of birth and death, what you should do is to tackle one of the totally impregnable, hard-to-pass koan. When you suddenly merge with the basic root of life and everything ceases to exist, you will know for the first time the profound meaning contained in Yoka Daishi's words "do not brush illusions away, do not seek the truth of enlightenment."

The Zen master Daie said: "At the present time, the evil one's influence is strong and the Dharma is weak. The great majority of people regard 'reverting to tranquillity and living within it' as the ultimate attainment."

He also said: "A race of sham Zennists has appeared in recent years who regard sitting with dropped eyelids and closed mouths letting illusory thoughts spin through their minds to be the attainment of a marvelous state that surpasses human understanding. They consider it to be the realm of primal Buddhahood 'existing prior to the timeless beginning.' If they do open their mouths and utter so much as a syllable, they will immediately tell you that they have slipped out of that marvelous realm. They believe this to be the most fundamental state it is possible to attain. Satori is a mere side issue -- 'a twig or branch.' Such people are completely mistaken from the time they take their first step along the Way."

These people who ally themselves with the devil are present in great numbers today as well. To them I say, "Never mind for now about what you consider 'non-essentials.' Tell me about your own fundamental matter, the one you are hiding away and treasuring so zealously. What is it like? Is it a solid piece of emptiness that you fix firmly in the ground like a post to fasten mules and horses to? Maybe it is a deep hole of sheer black silence? It is appalling, whatever it is."

It is also a good example of what is called falling into fixed views. It deceives a great many of the foolish and ignorant of the world. It's an ancient dwelling place of evil spirits, an old badger's den, a pitfall that traps people and buries them alive. Although you kept treasuring and defending it till the end of time, it would still be just a fragment from an old coin. It also goes by the name of "dark cave of the eighth Alaya consciousness." The ancients suffered through a great many hardships as they wandered in arduous pursuit of the truth. It was all for the sole purpose of getting themselves free of just such old nests as these.

Once a person is able to achieve true singlemindedness in his practice and smash apart the old nest of Alaya consciousness into which he has settled, the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom immediately appears, the other three great Wisdoms start to function, and the all-discerning Fivefold Eye opens wide.

If, on the other hand, he allows himself to be seduced by these latter-day devils into hunkering down inside an old nest and making himself at home there, turning it into a private treasure chamber and spending all his time dusting it, polishing it, sweeping and brushing it clean, what can he hope to achieve? Absolutely nothing. Basically, it is a piece of the eighth consciousness, the same eighth consciousness which enters the womb of a donkey and enters the belly of a horse. So I urgently exhort you to do everything you can, strive with all your strength, to strike down into that dark cave and destroy it.

On that day long ago when the World-Honored One attained his great awakening and clothed himself in the precious celestial robe to expound the true heart of the extensive Flower Garland, he preached for three whole weeks to an audience which listened, without comprehending, as though they were deaf and dumb. Therefore, in order to make salvation accessible to people of mediocre and inferior capacities, he erected a temporary resting place for them to use on the way to ultimate attainment, calling this provisional abode a "phantom dwelling." After that, Shakyamuni attempted to destroy this abode by preaching about it from within the Buddhist order; Layman Vimalakirti attempted to do the same by inveighing against it from without. They even likened those who attach to it, the adherents of the Two Vehicles (those content just to listen to the Buddha's teaching and those satisfied to enjoy their own private realization) to "supperating old polecats." But in the end they were between them unable to eradicate that dwelling place at its source in the Alaya consciousness.

Gradually, foster children spawned by adherents of the Two Vehicles multiplied and slowly and imperceptibly spread throughout India and the Western Regions. In time, even China filled with them. There venerable masters like Sekiso, Shinjo, Bukka, and Myoki set their jaws, clenched their teeth and strove valiantly to root them out, but even for them it was like trying to drive off a big wily rat by clapping your hands. He disappears over here, but he reappears over there, always lurking somewhere, furtively disparaging the true, untransmittable style of the patriarchal teachers. How lamentable!

In Japan, during the Jokyu (1219-21), Katei (l235-37), Karyaku (1326-28), and Kembu (1334-5) eras, twenty-four wise Zen sages entrusted their lives to the perilous whale-backed eastern seas, cast themselves bodily into the tiger's den, in order to transmit the difficult-to-believe methods of our authentic traditions. They fervently desired to fix the sun of wisdom permanently in the highest branches of the Divine Mulberry; to hang a previous Dharma lamp that would illuminate forever the dark hamlets of the Dragonfly Provinces. How could any of them have foreseen that their transmission would be slandered and maligned by these quietistic psuedo-Zennists and that in less than three hundred years the Zen they had transmitted would be lying in the dust? Would have no more life in it than last night's ashes? Nothing could be more deplorable than to be witness to the wasting away of the true Dharma in a degenerate age like this.

On the other hand, if a single person of superior capacity commits himself to the authentic pursuit of the Way and through sustained effort under the guidance of a true teacher fills with the power of sheer singlemindedness so that his normal processes of thought, perception consciousness, and emotion cease, so that he comes to resemble an utter fool who has exhausted his stock of words and reason, and everything, including his erstwhile determination to pursue the Way disappears, his very breath itself hangs almost suspended - at that point, what a pity that a Buddhist teacher, one who is supposed to act as his "great and good friend," should be unaware that this is the occasion when the tortoise shell is about to crack, the phoenix about to break free of its egg; should not know that these are all favorable signs seen in those poised on the threshold of enlightenment, should be stirred by grandmotherly kindness to immediately give in to tender effeminate feelings of compassion for the student and begin straight on explaining to him the reason for this and the principle for that, dragging him down into the abode of delusory surmise, pushing him down into the cave of intellectual understanding, and then taking a phoney winter melon seal and certifying his enlightenment with the pronouncement,

"You are like this. I am like this too. Preserve it carefully."

Ah! Ah! It's up to them if they want to preserve it. The trouble is they are still as far from the patriarchal groves as earth is from heaven. What are to all appearances acts of kindness on the part of a teacher helping a student are, in fact, doings which will bring about his doom. For his part, the student nods with satisfaction and, without an inkling of the mortal injury he has incurred, prances and frisks about wagging his tail, sure in the knowledge: "Now I have grasped the secret of Bodhidharma's coming from the West."

How are such students to know they haven't made it past any of the patriarchs' Barriers? That the thorny forests of Zen are much much deeper than they can even conceive? What a terrible shame for people of marvelous gifts, unexcelled capacity, who have it in them to become great beams and pillars of the house of Zen, to succumb to these corrupting winds and to spend the rest of their lives in a half-waking, half-drunk state, no different from the dull and witless type of people who never get around to doubting their way through anything! Is it any wonder that the groves of Zen are so barren of real men? Anyone who attaches to half-truths of this kind believing them to be essential and ultimate will probably not even know that he has fallen into the unfortunate category of "scorched buds and shrivelled seeds."

Long ago, when Zen master Nangaku sat in front of Baso's hermitage and began polishing a tile, he did so because of his desire to make Baso grasp his true meaning. When teachers of the past left phrases behind them, difficult-to-penetrate koan that would strip students' minds of their chronic inclination to attach to things, they did it because they wanted to kick over that comfortable old nesting place in the Alaya consciousness. Hence a master of the past said, "I made the mistake of burrowing into an old jackal hole for over thirty years myself, it's no mystery to me why so many students do the same."

There's no doubt about it, the practice of Zen is a formidable undertaking.

In his later years, Zen master Hoen enjoyed strolling the south corridor of his temple on Mount Goso. One day he saw a visiting monk pass by reading a book. He took it from him and, glancing through it, came to a passage which caught his attention:

"Most Zen students today are able to reach a state of serenity in which their minds and bodies are no longer troubled by afflicting passions, and their attachment to past and future is cut away so that each instant contains all time, but there they stop and abide contently like censers lying useless and forgotten in an ancient cemetery, cold and lifeless, with nothing but the sobbing of dead spirits to break the silence of their world. Assuming this to be the ultimate Zen has to offer them, they remain unaware that what they consider an unsurpassed realm is, in fact, obstructing them so that true knowing and seeing cannot appear and the radiant light of extraordinary spiritual power (jinzu) cannot shine free."

Hoen closed the book and raised his arms in a gesture of self- reproach. "Wonderful!" he exclaimed, "A true teacher! How well he expresses the essentials of the Dharma!"

He hurried to the quarters of his student Engo, who was serving as head monk, calling out to him, "It's extraordinary! I've come upon something really and truly extraordinary!" He placed the book in Engo's hands and had him read it too. Then Dharma father and Dharma son congratulated each other on their good fortune, and acclaimed the author with endless refrains of ecstatic praise.

When Daie Soko went to study under Zen master Engo for the first time, he had already decided on a course of action. "By the end of the ninety-day summer retreat," he declared to himself, "if Engo has affirmed my understanding like all the other teachers I've been to, I'm going to write a treatise debunking Zen."

Daie, did you really think Engo wouldn't be able to see through the fundamental matter you secretly treasured? If you had persisted in clinging to it like that, revering it and cherishing it for the rest of your life, the great "Reviler of Heaven" would never have emerged.

Fortunately, however, a poisonous breeze blowing from the south snuffed Daie's life out at its roots, cutting away past and future. When it happened, his teacher Engo said, "What you've accomplished is not easy. But you've merely finished killing yourself. You're incapable now of coming back to life and raising doubts about the words and phrases of the ancients. You have a serious ailment. You know the saying, 'Release your hold on the edge of the precipice. Die, and then be reborn'? You must believe that there's truth in those words."

Later, upon hearing Engo say, "What happens when the tree falls and the wistaria withers? The same thing happens." Daie suddenly achieved great enlightenment. When Engo tested him with several koans, he passed them easily.

Daie rose to become abbot of the Kinzan monastery, the most important in the land with a thousand resident monks. As he supervised his sterling collection of dragons and elephants he was like a hungry eagle gazing over a covey of rabbits. We should feel honored to have a man of such profound attainment among the teachers of our school. Yet, as we have seen, there are some who consider such attainment unimportant -- "nonessential." The matter they themselves regard as essential, and secretly cherish, is so worthless that even if you put it out together with a million pieces of gold, you would find no takers.

Engo said, "After the ancients had once achieved awakening, they went off and lived in thatched huts or caves, boiling wild vegetable roots in broken-legged pots to sustain themselves. They weren't interested in making names for themselves or in rising to positions of power. Being perfectly free from all ties whatever, they left turning words for their descendents because they wanted to repay their profound debt to the Buddha patriarchs."

The priest Mannan Dogan wrote a verse comment on the koan Nansen On The Mountain:

"Lying on a pillow of coral, eyes filled with tears,
Partly because he likes you, partly because he resents you."

When these lines came to Daie's notice he immediately ordered his attendant to take down the practice-schedules and gave his monks a day of rest, saying, "This single turning word amply requites Mannan's* debt to the Buddhas."

* A monk visited Nansen Fugan who was living by himself in a small hut. Nansen told him he had something to do up the mountain and asked him to carry some food to him when the meal-time came. When the monk didn't appear, Nansen returned and found the cooking vessels smashed and the monk asleep; thereupon he stretched out and took a nap himself. When he awoke, the monk was gone. In later years, Nansen said, "Back when I was living by myself in a small hut I had a visit from a splendid monk. I've never seen him since."

According to Tokiwa, Mannan's verse comment may allude to an encounter he had with a laywoman who was studying with Daie while Mannan was head monk at Daie's temple. Daie allowed the woman to stay in the abbot's quarters, despite Mannan's objections, on the grounds that she was "no ordinary woman." When finally, at Daie's insistence, Mannan went to see her, she asked him if he wished a worldly meeting or a spiritual one. He indicated the latter, but when he entered her room he found her lying on her back, completely naked. "What kind of place is that?" said Mannan, pointing at her. "The place from which all the Buddhas of the Three Worlds, all six Zen patriarchs, and all the venerable priests in the land have emerged," she said. "Would you allow me to enter there?" he asked. "lt isn't a place donkeys and horses can go," she said. Mannan was unable to reply. "The meeting is over," she said, and turned her back to him.

Most people arrange their altars with lamps and incense holders; they set out offerings of tea, flowers and sweets; they prostrate themselves over and over, perform various other practices around the clock; they even inflict burns on their fingers, arms, and bodies. But none of that repays even a tenth of the debt they owe the Buddhas. How, then, is it possible for a single couplet from an old poem that cuts away entanglements and complications to immediately repay that debt -- and repay it in full? This question is by no means an idle or trivial one. Daie was the Dragon Gate of his age, a towering shade tree who provided shelter to over 1700 students. Do you suppose a man of his stature would utter such words frivolously?

In the past, Haryo had his Three Turning Words. His teacher Ummon Daishi* told his disciples, "When I die, I don't want you to hold funeral observances of any kind. I just want each of you to take these three turning words and work on them."

* The Three Turning Words of Haryo Kokan, an heir of Ummon Bun'en (Yun-men Wen-yen, 862-949): 1. What is the Way? A clear-eyed man falls into a well. 2. What is the Blown Hair Sword? Each branch on the coral holds up the moon. 3. A monk asked Haryo, "What is the school of Devadatta?" "Filling a silver bowl with snow," Haryo replied.

Now do you really think that a Zen patriarch like Ummon would be espousing "non-essentials" just because he preferred them over offerings of flowers, sweets and rare foods?

Engo writes:

"If one of my monks came forward and said, `Since there is essentially no moving up toward satori and no moving back toward the everyday world, what's the use of practicing Zen?' I'd just say, 'I can see that you're living in a pitchdark hole with the other dead souls.' How sad!

"Many people like to cite the sayings of the Buddhist sages, or some words from the sutras such as 'ordinary speech, subtle speech, it all comes from the same ultimate source,' persuaded that they really understand their meaning. If any of you are operating under such an assumption, you'd better give up Zen. Devote your life to scholarship and become a great exegete."

"Nowadays you often hear people say, 'There's essentially no such thing as satori. The gate or teaching of satori was established as a way of making this fact known to people.' If that's the way you think, you're like a flea on the body of a lion, sustaining itself by drinking its lifeblood. Don't you know the ancient's words, 'If the source is not deep, the stream is not long; if the wisdom is not real, the discernment is not far-reaching'? If the Buddha Dharma was a teaching that had been created or fabricated as you say, how could it possibly have survived to the present day?"

Chosha Keijin sent a monk to the priest Tojin Nyoe, who belonged to the same lineage as his teacher Nansen. The monk asked him "What was it like after you saw Nansen?"

Nyoe was silent.

"What was it like before you saw Nansen?" he asked.

"There wasn't any difference," said Nyoe.

The monk returned to Chosha and reported Nyoe's response. Chosha set forth his own understanding in a verse:

"Perched motionless at the tip of a 100-foot pole
The man has attainment, but hasn't made it real.
He must advance one more step beyond the tip
And reveal his whole body in the ten directions."

Afterwards, Sansho Enen sent a monk named Shu Joza to ask Chosha some questions.

"When Nansen* passed away, where did he go?" said Shu.

* The story of Nansen's death is a famous koan. When Nansen was about to die, the head monk asked him where he would be a hundred years hence. "A water buffalo at the foot of the hill," he answered. "Do you mind if I follow you?" asked the monk. "If you do," replied Nansen, "you must hold a stalk of grass in your mouth."

"When Sekito was just a young monk, he went to visit the Sixth Patriarch," said Chosha.

"I'm not asking about when Sekito was a young monk," replied Shu. "I want to know where Nansen went when he died." "Give it deep consideration," said Chosha.

"You're like a noble old pine tree towering thousands of feet in the winter sky," said Shu. "You're not like a bamboo shoot springing straight up through the rocks."

Chosha was silent.

"Thank you for your answers," said Shu. Chosha was still silent.

Shu returned to Sansho and told him about his meeting with Chosha.

"If that's the way Chosha is," said Sansho, "he's a good seven steps ahead of Rinzai."

Now both Rinzai and Chosha are beyond question genuine dragons of the Buddha ocean. They are the celestial phoenix and auspicious unicorn that frequent the gardens of the patriarchs. There is no one comparable to them. Having far transcended all forms and appearances, they move slowly or move quickly in response to changing conditions like huge masses of blazing fire, like iron stakes burning at white heat. Neither gods nor demons can perceive their traces; neither devils nor non-Buddhists can discern their activity. Who could conceive their limits? Who could ascertain their differences?

Yet when Sansho, who was himself a direct Dharma heir of Rinzai, heard what Chosha had said, he praised him as being superior to his own teacher! Can words be so awesomely difficult? You must understand, however, that within what is to you a mass of entangling verbal complications is contained a small but wonderful element which is able to work miracles.

When Zen master Sekiso passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Kyuho, who had previously served as the master's attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, "The master often told us to 'cease all activity,' to 'do nothing whatever,' to 'become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to 'become a bolt of fine white silk,' to 'become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to 'become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

"His words," said the head monk, "refer to the essential oneness of all things."

"You have failed to understand the master's meaning," said Kyuho.

"Get some incense ready," replied the head monk. "If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns, it will mean I grasped the master's meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not."

Kyuho lit a stick of incense. Before it had burned down the head monk had ceased breathing. Kyuho patted the dead man on the back, and said, "Others have died while seated; some have died while standing. But you have just succeeded in proving that you could not have even seen the master's meaning in your dreams."

Often those who approach the end of their lives having devoted themselves singlemindedly to the practice of the Way will regard the solitude of their final hours, sitting in the light of a solitary lamp, as the last great and difficult barrier of their religious quest, and as the smoke from the incense burns down they will move quietly and calmly into death, without having made an authentic Zen utterance of any kind. It is them Kyuho is patting on the back when he says, "You haven't grasped your late master's meaning." We must reflect deeply on those words.

Once Zen master Ungo of Koshu had an attendant take a pair of trousers to a monk who was living by himself in a grass hut. The monk refused the trousers, saying he already had the pair that he was born with. When Ungo was informed of the monk's reply, he sent the attendant back to ask the question, "What did you wear prior to your birth?" The monk was unable to answer. Later, the monk died, and when his body was cremated, relics were found among his ashes. When these were brought to Ungo, he said "I'd much rather have had one phrase from him in response to that question I asked when he was living than ten bushels of relics from a dead man."

It is said that the relics found among the ashes of virtuous priests are produced as a natural result of meditation and wisdom they attained in their previous lives. Whenever a relic is discovered after a cremation even if it is only the size of a millet grain or mustard seed, there is a great rush of people, men and women, young and old, priests and laymen, crowding around to marvel at it and worship it with expressions of deep veneration. But doesn't Ungo say that ten bushels of such relics would not be worth a single phrase uttered while the monk was alive? What is this "one phrase" that it could it be more esteemed than genuine Buddhist relics which everyone venerates so deeply? This is a question that baffled me for a long time.

After the priest Hoan had retired to the Shifuku-in, he received an invitation to come to the monastery at Kinzan from the abbot Moan Genso, who appointed him to the post of senior priest. One of the monks at the monastery, Ho Joza, was a man of penetrating insight. He would always be there when the abbot or senior priest was receiving students and could invariably get the best of an opponent by seizing the slightest opening and turning his thrusts aside with a sudden and swift attack.

One day, as Hoan was teaching students, Ho Joza came into the room. Hoan was speaking and was midway through a passage he was quoting from the Hozo-ron, "amid heaven and earth, in all the universe, there is here . . ." when Ho looked as though he wanted to say something. Hoan suddenly slapped him and drove him out of the room.

Actually, Ho had planned to interject a comment the moment Hoan had finished the quotation, and Hoan had anticipated him. Ho was convinced that Hoan was deliberately out to humiliate him. After Ho left Hoan's room, he returned to his place in the meditation hall and expired. When his body was cremated, villagers from the neighboring areas found some relics among his ashes. They took them and presented them to Hoan. Hoan held them up and said, "Ho Joza. Even if there had been ten bushels of these among your ashes, I'd set them aside. I just want that one turning word while you were alive!" With that, he threw the relics to the ground. They turned out to be merely bits of pus and blood.

An ancient said that "of the seventeen hundred eminent masters included in the Records of the Lamp, relics were found among the ashes of only fourteen. Of the eighty monks who appear in the Biographies from the Groves of Zen, relics were recovered from the ashes of only a few. Moreover, there are just two things our school holds essential: thorough attainment of self-realization and thorough mastery in instructing others. That means being armed with the fangs and claws that spur students onward by dissolving their attachments and breaking off their chains. Buddhists also call this 'transmitting the Dharma, ferrying people to the other shore.' Everything else is unimportant."

The teachers of our Zen school have in their possession moves and maneuvers which are hard to believe, hard to understand, hard to penetrate, and hard to realize. They can take someone whose mind seems dead, devoid of consciousness, and transform him into a bright-eyed monk of awesome vitality. We call these methods the fangs and claws of the Dharma cave. It is like when an old tiger gives a long, terrifying roar and emerges from the forest, throwing such fear into the rabbits, foxes, badgers and their kind that their livers petrify and their eyes fix in glassy stares and they wobble around on rubbery knees, piddling and shitting involuntarily. Why do they react that way? Because the tiger is armed with claws of steel and a shining set of golden fangs like razor-sharp swords. Without those weapons, tigers would be no different from other animals.

Hence these words by a Zen master of the past: "In the first year of the Kien-chung era (1101), I obtained at the quarters of a now-deceased friend a copy of Zen master Tozan Shusho's recorded sayings compiled by his disciple Fukugon Ryoga. It contained words and phrases of great subtlety and profundity - the veritable claws and fangs of the Dharma cave."

What the ancients regarded as lonely and desolate would be considered thriving prosperity by people today, and what people today regard as thriving prosperity would have been considered lonely and desolate by the ancients. How can our school have fallen into such decline?

I haven't been telling you all this in hopes of impressing you with the originality of my ideas. All of the matters I have related here are ones that greatly concerned my teacher Shoju Rojin. He was constantly grieving and lamenting over them when I studied with him thirty years ago. I can never tell people about them without tears streaming down my old cheeks and dampening my robe. Now, recalling how earnestly old Shoju was in entrusting his teaching to me, the way he told me how much he was counting on me, I feel an immediate need to run off and hide my worthlessness somewhere. I am divulging my true sentiments to you like this only because I fervently desire that you will expend every effort to make the true, penetrating wind blow once again through the patriarchal gardens, breathing vigorous and enduring strength into the fundamental principles of our school.

Finally, I ask that you overlook once more an old man's foolish grumblings, and thank you all for listening so patiently and attentively during these long talks. Please take care of yourselves.

In the fifth year of Genbun [1740], during the final third of the first month.

 

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