Sunday, December 9, 2012

Xiangyan Zhixian’s Person Up a Tre

Dharma Talk by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Sensei 
Master Wumen’s Gateless Gate, Case 5
 Summer 1999

The Main Case
Master Xianyan Zhixian said, “It is like a person up a tree who hangs from a branch by their mouth; their hands can’t grasp a bough, their feet can’t touch the tree. Someone else comes underneath the tree and asks the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West. If the person does not answer, they do not meet the questioner’s need. If they answer, they lose their life. At such a time how should they answer?”
Commentary
Even though your eloquence flows like a river, it is all to no avail. Even if you can expound the Great Tripitaka, it is also of no use. If you can really answer it, you will revive the dead and kill the living. If, however, you are unable to answer, wait for Maitreya to come and ask him.
Poem
Xianyan Zhixian is just gibbering;
How vicious his poison is!
Stopping up the monks’ mouths
He makes their devil’s eyes glare!

We should be able to identify with this person up the tree. There we are, hanging by our mouth, unable to take hold of the branch or trunk, with nothing to secure ourselves. Just at that moment, someone comes and asks for help, “What is the truth of Zen?” They have a need that is great, and only we can respond. If we do, we sacrifice ourselves and fall to our death. If we don’t answer, we put our own interests before another. What are we to do? This is a classic koan that presents us with an impenetrable barrier: either way we choose, something is lost.
Although Xianyan Zhixian’s challenge points to all the dualities of life, we can use it to clarify our understanding of right action, the practice and fulfillment of our bodhisattva vows. One of the dominant currents in Western Buddhism is engaged Buddhism. This has come to be understood as a Buddhism that is involved in social action—environmental issues, helping the homeless, working with people dying of AIDS, or any kind of serious human social problem. Engaged Buddhism should address these problems in a way that is distinctly Buddhist. But what does that mean? Do practitioners of the Dharma, in fact, have something unique to contribute as we respond to the cries of the world?
If we’re to understand what it is to be engaged, then we must understand commitment. This is an important part of Zen training; indeed it is implicit in any spiritual practice. The dictionary defines commitment as “an engagement that restricts one’s choices.” Isn’t this precisely why so many of us do not want to make commitments? Our notion of freedom is to have as many choices as possible. Following this logic, people with the greatest number of choices would be most free.
Yet so often we see that this is not true. In the same vein, people with the fewest opportunities would be least free; that too is often not the case. This idea of freedom as equated with choice has driven our country’s development and attitudes for hundreds of years. Thus, the more choices we have, the harder it is to make a commitment. We don’t want to acknowledge that we can’t have everything.
Look at what happens in Zen training. When we enter the zendo, we’re asked to make a commitment to utterly engage our zazen, and if we can’t make this commitment, we’re not yet ready to enter. Without that commitment there is no zazen. So what is the commitment? It is that once we take our seat, we will not move away from ourselves. We commit to stillness, to silence, to practice whatever arises in our mind while we are sitting.
When we sit at home, most of us, particularly in the beginning of practice, move away when the pain hurts too much. When there is an itch, we scratch it, and when our mind is troubled we may not sit at all. But when we are in the zendo, we are moved to honor a deeper, larger commitment. We find that in restricting our choices, there is freedom. There is a liberation that far exceeds the “freedom” of moving away from ourselves. It seems paradoxical, but we can appreciate the fact that to make a commitment to one thing frees us to engage it completely, whether it be a relationship, our children, a career, or studying our lives. If we do not make that commitment, we are not yet free within that area of our life.
So what is our practice when—like this person up the tree—our choices have been restricted? What is demanded at this point is real, not abstract or theoretical. This person in the tree is asked to make a commitment: to be immersed in life, and yet not to be attached to it. That is the koan. It seems there are two mutually exclusive things being asked of this person, so how can they possibly respond to both? We vow to save all sentient beings, to alleviate their suffering and help bring them to awakening, and to do this for ourselves as well. The koan of the person up the tree is if they save their own life, they forsake the other; if they tend to the needs of the questioner, they lose their life.
There are many situations where we are the person up the tree. An inmate in our prison sangha comes to me about a situation he’s involved in where he’s being threatened and feels he must respond with violence. I say, “No, not with violence. That rakusu around your neck means something. It’s a vow, a commitment to finding another way to respond.” We explore that. He walks away, and I think, "What if he ends up dead because of what I have encouraged him to do?" I am the person up the tree. Do I get involved or not? Do I not get involved or not?
You go in in the evening to sit, hungry to do some zazen, and your child needs some help with their homework. Our best friend, we find out, is unfaithful to their partner who is also our friend. Somebody at work is lying, cheating, or stealing. What do we do? How do we respond? If we respond to our own self-protective needs, we risk neglecting the needs of the other or the situation. If we respond to the other, then what happens to us? Xianyan asks, “What do we do at just such a time?”
It is one thing to look at this question in terms of the interpersonal relationships between ourselves and others, but when we look at the larger global, environmental, community, and national issues, it is very easy to become paralyzed. Do you reach for the branch or do you respond to the person? While you are sitting there frantically trying to figure it out in your mind, the person walks away disappointed, without being helped. We have to respond without neglecting a single being. This is the incredible beauty of the bodhisattva vow. Yet how can we possibly do this?
Look at the three pure precepts. They begin with not creating evil. But it’s not enough just to stop creating evil. It’s not enough to enter into the stillness and solitude of the mountain. Thus the next pure precept drives us further and says we also must do good. You have to do something, and it needs to be nourishing. Yet even that is not enough. You have to make sure that the good you are doing is for others. Someone else must be the beneficiary of your action.
Most often we have to make choices which seem to leave someone or something out. It seems to be an either/or situation. Realizing oneself and alleviating the suffering of others are not two different things. Realizing wisdom and manifesting compassion are not two different things. How are they the same? How can this person up a tree realize that? How can the response completely fulfill both demands? That is what we’ve got to see. We need to see that in healing others, we heal ourselves, in realizing ourselves we realize others. That is why when the Buddha experienced enlightenment he said, “All sentient beings in this moment have attained the way.”
When we realize our true nature, the inherent emptiness and interdependence of all things, we realize the cessation of suffering: that all beings are buddhas and that they depend on us. Because there is no longer any obstruction called the self, we are free to respond as Avalokiteshvara, the one who hears the cries of the world. When we offer ourselves to others without any self-consciousness, we manifest the life of a bodhisattva.
To the extent we are not able to give freely, we can see how the idea of a separate self constricts us. As long as we are attached to the self, how do we know what we are hearing? Am I hearing your cry? Or am I only hearing what I think you’re saying, what I think you should be saying given your situation? In other words, if I am seeing through my own conditioning, I am not seeing you at all. I am not hearing you at all. I may respond, but will it be true compassion?
It is a very different response when we hear the cry through the ears of the one who is crying, when we see suffering through the eyes of the one who is suffering. Then the response is entirely natural. It is healing yourself through healing others. That’s why when we talk about engaged Buddhism, it’s essential that our activity comes forth from this experience of “I and all beings thus attain the Way.” In a sense, the whole notion of engaged Buddhism is redundant. If we are not engaged, then what kind of Buddhism is it? Not Zen. Not Mahayana. Not the raising of the bodhi mind and practice of the bodhisattva path.
So, the word “engaged” is really extra. We could just say “Buddhism.” Implicit in this is the compassionate activity of utter engagement. Or we could just say "engaged." Totally engaged in the sense Master Dogen was talking about: “In life, totally immersed in life without attachment. In death, totally immersed in death without attachment.”
Of course, this easily breaks down when you are the one in the tree. Wumen in his commentary to this koan says, Even though your eloquence flows like a river it is all to no avail. Even if you can expound the Great Tripitaka it is of no use. In other words, even if you respond with the most eloquent Dharma or a beautiful analysis of the situation, it doesn’t matter. It hasn’t solved the problem. Why? Because in that moment intellectual understanding doesn’t help the person in the tree.
However, If you can really answer it, you will revive the dead and kill the living. Those stuck in the tree are liberated, and those lost in the mountains can suddenly hear their neighbor’s cry. Wumen says: But if, however, you are unable to answer, wait for Maitreya to come. Maitreya is the Buddha of the future who will come to your aid aeons into the future. Wumen sticks our faces in our inability to respond. Are we willing to wait for help, or will we clarify this right now?
In Wumen’s poem he says, Xianyan Zhixian is just gibbering, how vicious his poison is. Stopping up the monks’ mouths, he makes their devils eyes glare. Xianyan Zhixian shows how much he cares through his willingness to create great discomfort in the minds and hearts of those he is teaching. He knows how painful our situation is because he has been there. He has been the one up the tree. He also knows that there is only one way through. That is the koan.
When we go into dokusan and are tested on the koan, what we are being tested on is our ability to respond to reality. It is not a game. It is not a performance. Wumen offers us this poison and asks us to take it in, to be affected by it, to allow ourselves to feel the extreme discomfort of our delusion. Perhaps our disease will move us to stop talking and thinking for just a moment, and see through into the place that is free of you and I. There we see the one who hears the cries and responds without knowing. We realize that being Buddhist and being engaged are the same thing, that wisdom and responding to our lives freely are one and the same.
In each moment you meet one dharma. In each moment you practice one dharma. Isn’t this the nature of our living and dying? So please take care of your practice, because what you do affects us all. Practice as though your life depends on it, because it does.

Dongshan’s Heat and Cold


Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi 
True Dharma Eye, Case 225
 Summer 1999

The Main Case
A monk asked Master Dongshan, “Cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?”Dongshan answered, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?”The monk continued, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?”Dongshan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.”4


The Commentary
Dongshan’s “go to the place where there is no cold or heat” is like flowers blooming on a withered tree in the midst of a frozen tundra. His “let the cold kill you, let the heat kill you” is the roaring furnace that consumes every phrase, idea, and thing in the universe. Even the Buddhas and sages cannot survive it. Nothing remains. We should understand clearly, however, that this “let the cold kill you” is not about cooling off. Cold is just cold, through and through. Also, “let the heat kill you” is not about facing the fire. Heat is just heat, through and through. Further, there is no relationship whatsoever between Dongshan’s heat and cold. Heat does not become cold. Cold does not become heat. The question really is, where do you find yourself?

The Capping Verse
Is it the bowl that rolls around the pearl,
Or is it the pearl that rolls around the bowl?
Is it the weather that is cold,
Or is it the person that is cold?
Think neither cold nor heat.
At that moment,
Where is the self to be found?

The dawn of the twenty-first century is a critical time in human history. Both our species and planet are in jeopardy. On the one hand, we have the knowledge and capacity for power undreamed of only decades ago. On the other hand, millions of people starve, our ecosystem is threatened, natural resources are being plundered, family and marriage relationships deteriorate, governments and corporations wallow in corruption, and personal and national conflicts prevail as the most common way we define ourselves. One unique characteristic of all this pain, confusion, and sense of impending doom, is that for the first time in the history of the world all the major threats to humankind are created by humans. The most dreadful dangers are not the natural disasters of advancing glaciers, plagues, earthquakes, floods, famines, or catastrophic meteor strikes. All the serious threats stem from human behavior, that emerges out of our deeply ingrained individual and collective conditioning and resulting delusions. We have the means—technology, materials, skills, and money—to solve the problems that we face. We have the inherent wisdom and compassion. Working with these difficulties is what engaged Buddhism should be all about. But somehow our delusions dominate and color even our practice.

We tend to approach the ancient tradition of the Buddha-dharma with a sophisticated attitude and a supposition that somehow it can’t address the complexities of modern times. We feel it needs adjustment. Yet, there is no question that the Buddha-dharma always manifests in accord with the encountered circumstances, in accord with the moment. But the adaptations needed to allow it to manifest appropriately in each time and location have to come from the same place from which the Dharma originally arose—the enlightened mind.

The most significant problem with arbitrarily “adjusting” Buddhism to become more contemporary or American is that people involved in introducing the changes frequently misunderstand or dismiss the fundamental teachings. With the focus of Buddhism in the West on socially responsible practice, we somehow have forgotten about realized Dharma. There is much talk these days about engaged Buddhism, but we need to see that “engaged Buddhism” cannot manifest unless it is first realized. If Buddhism is not realized, it is not engaged Buddhism. There can be all sorts of engaged activity, but engagement in itself doesn’t make engaged Buddhism.

What does Buddhism have to offer that is unique? Infinitely much. If the Buddha-dharma has not been realized, our reaching out and helping, our involvement, our engaged activities are no different than the work of the Red Cross or Catholic Charities. There are thousands of wonderful people doing good work, good deeds that are desperately needed and commendable. But when we talk about engaged Buddhism, we are not talking about good work. We are talking about compassion.

Compassion is totally different from goodness. It contains goodness but it is not motivated by the same forces that motivate goodness. Compassion is the direct manifestation of wisdom, the clear understanding that there is absolutely no distinction between self and other, no separation. Compassion arises out of intimacy, not out of pity.

Sometimes it seems like the greatest benefactors of so-called “engaged Buddhism” are the people who are engaged, rather than the recipients of the good-will and deeds. Compassion doesn’t work that way. That was not what the Buddha meant by compassion. That is not what Avalokiteshvara or Samantabhadra Bodhisattva are about. That is not what the subtle, profound, and boundless heart of compassion is about. Compassion is not superficial. It is not about gain and loss, sublime feelings, or satisfaction. It runs deep and moves in unique ways. There is nothing like it in Western religious traditions. And it really has not yet fully arrived in this country.

The fact that Buddhism must be realized before it can become engaged does not mean that we “put off” taking care of all sentient beings. We don’t wait to save all sentient beings until we are enlightened. We do it now. But it needs to happen in the context of practice. If there is no practice, then we are just “doing good.” It is not yet engaged Buddhism. Until we crack through the ego shell and get to the ground of being, we have not yet walked in the footsteps of the ancestors who transmitted this incredible Dharma from generation to generation.

The third line of this koan says, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?” Cold or heat, life or death, fear or anger, pain or confusion, are extremes that bog us down, extremes we try to avoid. Based on and nurtured by a 2,500 year-old tradition, we establish a Monastery on this mountain. Despite the tensions and difficulties of the community and society that surround it, the Monastery attempts to preserve the Three Treasures—the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—and tries to transmit the finest human values and deepest human wisdom. How can we use this wisdom? How can we take advantage of the opportunity to act compassionately in our world?

Dongshan answered, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.” Often, when we take refuge in these profound teachings, we smash up against them head-on. Even though we have not yet understood the training, we are eager to impose our personal opinions on how it should be. Isn’t that incredible? With assured self-conceit, we employ the same ignorance and delusions that cause the suffering and the imminent destruction of our universe, to redesign this amazing practice that has survived for two millennia on every continent of this great planet.

The impulse to let go of our opinions and positions, the thought of examining and changing ourselves, never occurs to us. We want the universe to shift and accommodate us. If it won’t do that, we adjust the universe. We deal with heat by making air-conditioning. When it gets too cold, we turn up the furnace. Turning us upside down, Dongshan says that when it is cold, let it be so cold it kills you. When it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you. When he talks about “killing,” he uses that word to mean “consume.” Let it be so hot that the heat consumes you. I remember a common saying from my days in the Navy. When somebody served you a drink, you would “kill it”—drink it straight down. Dongshan’s “killing” expresses a similar meaning, complete combustion. The cold and the heat stand for any condition we try to avoid, to run away from, to alter or control.

The footnotes I added are offered to help you better appreciate the exchange in the koan. The first line says, A monk asked Master Dongshan, “Cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?” The footnote says, Consider for a moment not trying to avoid it. What is that? What happens when you do not try to avoid it? What happens when fear comes and you remain still and centered? Avoiding it is delusion. Avoiding means you are trying to run away. How could you possibly do that? The fear has nothing to do with anything outside you. The fear is you. Wherever you go, the fear is there. There is no way to escape it. Not trying to avoid it, we tap into reality. Remaining still is the first step to doing something about it.

The second line says, Dongshan answered, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?” The footnote says, Dongshan freely entered the weeds with the monk. We should understand that “no cold or heat” is not a place. “No cold or heat” has to do with what you do with your mind.

The third line says, The monk continued, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?” The footnote adds, Seeing the hook, the monk freely impales himself on it.The fourth line says, Dongshan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.” The footnote concludes, Beyond describing, utterly beyond describing.

Dongshan addresses how we can deal with barriers in our lives and practice. The most insidious and important barrier that always comes up is the notion of a self. It creates distinctions—the server and the served, the giver and the receiver, me and you, us and them. In the teachings of Dongshan the distinctions are all consumed. There are no gaps, no way to speak of this and that. That is why the commentary says, Dongshan’s “go to the place where there is no cold or heat” is like flowers blooming on a withered tree in the midst of a frozen tundra. Inconceivable! flowers blooming on a withered tree in a frozen tundra. What does that mean? What is such a reality? His “let the cold kill you, let the heat kill you” is the roaring furnace that consumes every phrase, idea, and thing in the universe. Even the Buddhas and sages cannot survive it. Nothing remains. What state of mind is this?

Dongshan and his successor Coashan are the creators of the Five Ranks which elucidate the relationship of all dualities. The Five Ranks explicitly speak of absolute and relative, but they are pertinent to any duality—good and bad, up and down, enlightenment and delusion, isolation and engagement.

Dongshan’s First Rank is “the absolute containing the relative.” This is the absolute basis of reality—vast darkness with nothing in front of you. It cannot be known and cannot be spoken of. Body and mind have fallen away. Even though it is absolute, it contains the relative. Absolute and relative are always inseparable.
The Second Rank is “the relative containing the absolute.” This is the recognition that the world of phenomenon arises within the world of the absolute. When we first come into training we stress realizing that absolute basis of reality, arriving at “no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,” and experiencing the falling away of body and mind. But obviously that is not the whole point of practice. If it were, we would be producing a generation of zombies. Zen would have produced a generation of zombies thousands of years ago, and the Dharma would not have arrived in this country, because people with “no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomenon” don’t function and cannot communicate. They cannot walk, talk, or eat. There is more to Zen than that. Realization of the absolute basis of reality must inform all phenomenon, must be applicable to all of our life. We need to see the relationship between emptiness and form, absolute and relative, nirvana and samsara—the world of delusion, the world of cold and heat.

When Dongshan says, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?” this instruction comes from the perspective of the Second Rank: the relative containing the absolute. That is the flower blooming on a withered tree in the midst of a frozen tundra. Frozen tundra is nothingness, obliteration with no distinctions. In the midst of this vast darkness stands a withered tree with not a sign of life or vitality, except for hundreds of flowers all over it. The absolute manifesting in the world of relative phenomenon, darkness within light.

Dongshan’s “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. When hot, let it be so hot that it kills you” is the First Rank. Absolute darkness, vast emptiness. There is a poem Dongshan wrote about the First Rank:
Early in the night,
Before the moon shines—
No wonder they meet
Without knowing each other.

There is no illumination. You cannot see, cannot distinguish any contours or differences. You do not recognize anything. The moon has not yet arisen, the image of the moon standing as a symbol for realization. The commentary adds, This is the roaring furnace that consumes every phrase, idea, and thing in the universe. Even the Buddhas and sages cannot survive it. Nothing remains. Of course to get here, you have to let the cold kill you; let the heat kill you. Be consumed by the cold; be consumed by the heat.
Master Dogen devoted a whole fascicle in the Japanese Shobogenzo to this experience of realization. The title of the chapter is “Spring and Fall,” and this koan is at its heart. Dogen comments:
We must clarify the monk's question: “How can we avoid hot and cold?” We should examine closely the meaning of hot and cold. Hot is completely hot, cold is full of coldness, hot and cold are only themselves. Since they are only themselves, they arrive from the head and are actualized from the eye, that is from the root and from the essence of hot and cold. Above the head and within the eye is the place where there is no hot or cold. Dongshan said, “When it is cold, be completely cold, when it is hot, be completely hot.” This is to confront the essence of hot and cold. That is, when hot and cold arrive we must kill them, yet there is a place where they cannot be killed. Cold is completely cold, hot is completely hot.

The koan commentary says, We should understand clearly, however, that this “let the cold kill you” is not about cooling off. What the monk was trying to avoid cannot be avoided. When this koan was written down the buildings did not have air conditioning or central heating. When it was cold it was cold, and when it was hot it was hot. The notion of sustained avoidance is a relatively modern development. Technologically we are quite capable of avoidance, but we have not yet come up with technology for taking care of greed, anger, and ignorance. We have not come up with the technology for eradicating pain and suffering. In fact, our technology seems to be heading in the opposite direction, creating more pain and suffering, feeding into and perpetuating our tendencies to grasp or avoid.

There are some interesting reports about the new drug Viagra. Two years ago, prior to the appearance of this miracle drug, the number of impotent men was thought to be insignificant. Suddenly, with the arrival of Viagra, through calculations of how many men were using the drug, the estimates of male impotence sky-rocketed fiftyfold. People run around trying to solve their problems with a pill. We keep looking for that wonderful new happiness substance to get rid of our pain and fear, to help us not think about what we do not want to think about. Make us numb, preoccupied, distracted. Yet, after the effects of the pill wear off, we are back where we started, in pain and afraid. After you walk out of the air-conditioned car, you are in the heat. If the power fails, you have no heat. What do you do?

Dongshan says, Let the heat kill you. How do you do that? The same way you practice any barrier. The same way you engage the koan Mu. Let Mu kill you, or you kill Mu. Either way is OK; either way—the same result. It means to close the gap. There is no gap unless we create it. The hotter it gets, the bigger the gap grows. The more our legs hurt, the more we separate ourselves from the pain. The stronger the anger becomes, the greater the separation. When we encounter our barrier, the first impulse is to do a 180-degree turn and scurry in the opposite direction. When we do that, we stick to the barrier, because whatever the barrier, it just drags along behind us. When we turn around it is still there, in our face. It is not separate because it is us. How do we deal with it?

Many people think that the koan Mu is some kind of esoteric teaching. A monk asked Chao-chou, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” Chao-chou said “Mu!” or “No!”, when it is a basic fact that everything on the face of the earth has Buddha-nature. Why did he say “No”? Mu is really a teaching about intimacy. It shows us how not to be separate. It is about learning how to forget the self and realize the ten thousand things, the whole phenomenal universe. You cannot see Mu until you are Mu. You have to close the gap, and you cannot close the gap if you are holding on to something. Whatever we hold on to creates the idea that a self exists and is distinct from the barrier. Whatever the amount of self we hold on to, that is the degree to which we separate ourselves from the world. When students confront difficulties, I often direct them to be the barrier. They say, “I can’t be the barrier. I can’t do it.” If a person concludes that they can’t do something, then definitely they cannot. When I say to someone, “Be Mu,” and they say, “I’ll try,” I know they are not going to get very far. Forget trying. Just vow, "I’ll do it!" Then it is just a matter of time.

Mu is not a casual question. It is vital, and it is about now. It is about this life, the twenty-first century, and the generations of people who follow us. All the various barriers we confront keep us from realization. We do the barriers dance, trying to hop around them, avoid them, ignore them, wish them away. That just doesn’t work. We have to deal with them. Be the barrier. When you are the barrier, it fills the universe and there is nothing outside of it. When your whole body and mind is the breath, there is nothing other than breath. Your breath fills the universe. There is no way to step outside of it. There is no way to examine it, analyze it, judge it, measure it, or talk about it. That is intimacy. That is what Master Dogen means when he says, “Seeing form with the whole body and mind, hearing sounds with the whole body and mind, one understands them intimately.”

The commentary points out, We should understand clearly, however, that this “let the cold kill you,” is not about cooling off. Cold is just cold, through and through. The way we to need understand this is to be totally immersed in the cold. Also, “let the heat kill you” is not about facing the fire. It is not about facing the problem, the barrier, or Mu. It is about consuming it, swallowing it up so it becomes every cell in your body, every breath you breathe, every thought you think, every action you take. Still, it is heat through and through. That is all it is. There is nothing to compare it to. Do not juxtapose it against cold. Do not measure it in degrees of temperature. That is why the commentary says, There is no relationship whatsoever between Dongshan’s heat and cold. There is no relationship between these two, any more than there is a relationship between life and death. Life is a thing in and of itself. Death is a thing in and of itself. Life does not become death, nor does death succeed life. It is the same with cause and effect. Cause does not precede effect nor does effect follow cause. They are one.

There is no relationship whatsoever between Dongshan’s heat and cold. Heat does not become cold. Cold does not become heat. The question really is, where do you find yourself? That is the question that weaves itself through this entire koan. How do you understand the self? That is the question you confront when you practice Mu or deal with any koan. That is the question you need to penetrate when you manifest the great heart of compassion. Where do you find yourself? How much of what you are doing, are you doing because of the imperative of wisdom and compassion? You must do it because there is no alternative. Someone falls, you pick them up, and you don’t even know you are picking them up. Or do you act because it is the right thing to do, or you want to be a good person, or you want people to love you? Sooner or later, doing good that serves the ego is doomed to fail, because it is delusive. Giving that is self-serving fails. Receiving that is self-serving fails .

But there is giving, receiving, loving, helping, and nourishing that is not ego-based. It happens spontaneously, the way the flowers bloom or the rain falls. When the fruit is ready to fall from the tree, it falls. We can try to identify all the reasons it fell, but really it fell because it was ready to fall. It is the ripeness we need to appreciate. Until realized Buddhism is alive and well in the West, truly engaged Buddhism will not come to life. It will continue to be doing good. That’s OK, but let’s not mistake it for Buddhism. We need people doing good, but let’s not confuse it with compassion. Let’s not confuse it with the manifestation of the great heart of Avolakitishvara Bodhisattva.

The Capping Verse:
Is it the bowl that rolls around the pearl,
Or is it the pearl that rolls around the bowl?
Is it the weather that is cold,
Or is it the person that is cold?
Think neither cold nor heat.
At that moment,
Where is the self to be found?

The pearl is the absolute, the bowl is the relative. This is an image for the absolute within the relative, the relative within the absolute. Is it the weather that is cold, or is it the person that is cold? Think neither cold nor heat. At that moment, where is the self to be found? Think neither self nor other; at that very moment, where is Mu? Where is your true self?

Buddhism is growing very rapidly in this country. It is also being co-opted by the media, the press, and the advertising companies. Movie directors in Hollywood are creating images of Buddhism and informing the general public about the religion. In one of the episodes of Karate Kid, there are scenes that take place in a Zen monastery. I felt awful when I saw the movie because part of our karma is tied up with it. The producers, while building the sets for the movie, asked us for photos of the inside of our training center. They duplicated our zendo, then created a weird interpretation of Zen within their movie. Now, thousands of kids probably figure that is what Zen is. The public looks at these movies about Buddhism or reads “definitive” Time magazine articles and draws conclusions about Buddhism. There are hundreds of centers throughout the country and hundreds of teachers, but very little real Buddhism, in spite of all the publicity. Serious practitioners, people who are willing to put their lives on the line, to train in a vigorous and challenging way, and to plunge into the depths of their own psyches to realize their true nature, need to see what is going on. Buddhism is really in their hands. It is in your hands.

Serious practitioners are ultimately going to make the mark of Buddhism in this country. They are ultimately going to take care of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and caring for the environment. Zen is beyond doing good. It is about complete morality. It is about functioning ethics. The moral and ethical teachings of the Buddha are anchored deeply in wisdom and compassion. You cannot arrive at wisdom and compassion in any way other than by practicing. You cannot embody wisdom and compassion in any other way than by seeing your edges and practicing them ceaselessly. That is what counts. That is what is going to make our journey into the twenty-first century a vital and important one. Wisdom and compassion need to be realized. It is up to you. Please take care of it.

The Footnotes
1. Consider for a moment not trying to avoid it. What is that?
2. Dongshan freely entered the weeds with the monk.
3. Seeing the hook, the monk freely impales himself on it.
4. Beyond describing, utterly beyond describing.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Caoshan's Love Between Parent and Child


Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi 
True Dharma Eye, Case 211
Spring 1999

The Main Case
Caoshan was once asked by a monk, “A child went back to her parent. Why didn’t the parent pay attention to her?”1 Caoshan said, “It’s quite natural just like that.”2 The monk said, “Then where is the love between parent and child?”Caoshan said, “The love between parent and child.”4 The monk said, “What is the love between parent and child?”Caoshan said, “It cannot be split apart even when you hit it with an ax.”6

The Commentary
At the time of birth parent and child become each other. This means that in the middle of the night before the moon has appeared, do not be surprised if people meet without knowing each other. At this point the empty sky has vanished and the iron mountain has crumbled; there’s not an inch of ground to stand on. Be that as it may, still mountains are high and valleys are low. Thus, Caoshan says, “The love between parent and child neither arises nor vanishes.” How then can they be divided into fragments and segments? All this notwithstanding, how is it that parent and child can meet and yet not know each other?
The Capping Verse
Why must Yin and Yang be placed in an arrangement?
If you do, you will never have today.
When the wind blows, the grasses bend.
When the rain comes, the river fills.


Master Caoshan (Jpn., Sozan) was a Dharma heir of Master Dongshan (Jpn., Tozan). These two teachers are considered the cofounders of the Caodong, or the Soto, School of Zen, one of the five key lineages of Zen in Tang Dynasty China. They are responsible for creating The Five Ranks of the Relative and the Absolute, a collection of poems and commentaries on the relationships of all apparent dualities. They derived and elaborated the Five Ranks from the Flower Garland Sutra, studied by the Hua-yen Buddhists at the time.
Although Master Dogen, five hundred years after Dongshan and Caoshan, bluntly stated that the Five Ranks were overly intellectual and he wasn’t interested in using them, hisShobogenzo is filled with the teachings of the Five Ranks. Dogen’s originality and clarity shine in the way he presents the Five Ranks as a way of understanding the relationship between apparently different entities, reminding us that differentiation has to do with what we do with our minds.
In this koan, the reference to a parent and a child applies to a biological kinship as well as the relationship between a teacher and a student. The koan could be reworded from that perspective. The monk said, “The student went back to her teacher. Why didn’t the teacher pay any attention?” Caoshan said, “It’s quite natural.” The monk said, “Then where is the intimacy between teacher and student?” Caoshan said, “It’s the intimacy between teacher and student.” The monk said, “What is the intimacy between teacher and student?” Caoshan said, “It cannot be split apart even when hit with an ax.”

I added footnotes to shed some light on this exchange. Caoshan was once asked by a monk, “A child went back to her parent. Why didn’t the parent pay attention to her?”The footnote says, They meet but they don’t recognize each other. Next line, Caoshan said “It’s quite natural like that.” The footnote says, Although this is true, why does he call it natural? Caoshan’s response may seem shocking, but he is coming from a point of view in the Dharma that is critical to understanding this and any other relationship between dualities: parent and child, form and emptiness, good and bad, up and down, this and that.

The monk said, “Then where is the love between parent and child?” The footnote says, This monk thinks love is about differentiation. We all think love is about two things when, in reality, it is about intimacy. Intimacy means no gaps. When there are no gaps, no differentiation is possible.
The next line: Caoshan said, “The love between parent and child.” The footnote says, Beginningless and endless, intimacy is a continuum. It doesn’t start and it doesn’t end. Next, The monk said, “What is the love between parent and child?” The footnote says, He’s still sitting by the river dying of thirst. The last line says, “It cannot be split apart even when hit with an ax.” The footnote says, It is simply not two.

The commentary begins, At the time of birth parent and child become each other. During the summer months, many of the creatures that were born on this mountain in springtime come to maturation. When attentive, one gets many opportunities to witness this process and how it plays itself out within a parent and child relationship.

Recently, I watched ducklings imitating their mother as the family meandered up and down the stream. She turned, they turned. She ran on top of the water, they ran on top of the water. They were learning how to be ducklings. When a hungry mink appeared at the edge of a clearing, the mother duck first gave a warning signal for the ducklings to disappear into the thicket, and then proceeded to put on an incredible act. She played being wounded, flopping around on the water, distracting the mink. The mink immediately went after her. Apparently, she was an easy prey. The mink was quicksilver fast. Like lightning, it would close in on the duck. She would let it almost touch her, and then she would somehow slip away. Of course, she had the power of her flight. She could have simply taken off straight up from the surface of the water. She didn’t. She had another agenda, another responsibility. That mink was not a threat to her. Now, those ducklings were her body, and a concern for them was her personal responsibility
.
Clearly, that duck had been transformed into a parent.In the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, Master Dogen talks about how that transformation takes place. He says, “We should understand the true nature of birth. At the time of birth are both parent and child transformed?” Dogen goes on to say, “We must study and fully understand not only that birth is actualized in the child becoming a parent, but also that the practice and verification of the phenomenon of birth occurs when the parent becomes the child.” The line in the koan’s commentary, At the time of birth parent and child become each other, arises from Dogen’s statement.

And what Dogen says about parent and child holds true for the teacher and student relationship. That relationship, too, is marked by many transformations. In the beginning, the teacher-student relationship is very similar to a parent-child relationship. The student is in a completely new territory, unsure. There is a need for lot of fundamental instructions from the teacher. After a while that changes and the teacher becomes a guide, fine-tuning the assessment of the student and pointing appropriately. Still, the student is dependent on the guide. The next phase is characterized by the teacher being more like a spiritual friend. That evolves into spiritual equality between the teacher and the student. Still, the relationship continues.

At the time of the transmission of the Dharma, the parent becomes the child, the child becomes the parent; the teacher becomes the student, the student becomes the teacher. That fact is concretely expressed in the ceremony of transmission. First, the student circumambulates the teacher sitting on the high seat. Then the teacher steps down so that the student can sit on the high seat and the teacher circumambulates the student. The differences between the two become blurred.
A student can see the teacher because they are the teacher. A teacher seeing the student is meeting himself. My teacher meeting me is my teacher meeting himself, just as it is me meeting myself. Isn’t this the same as the Buddha meeting the Buddha?

We often say that to realize oneself is to be really intimate with oneself. Isn’t being intimate with oneself also the same as Buddha meeting Buddha? That’s what the transmission of the Dharma is about. It doesn’t go from A to B. It’s realized within A, just as it was realized within B.
In birth, both parent and child transform; they become each other. We don’t usually realize the full impact of that fact. It is fascinating when parents and their kids come to the Monastery for our Sunday programs. It is very clear which child belongs to which parent. Even if we scrambled the whole group, it would be straightforward to sort the families out. The kids are a perfect reflection of their parents. But we are not very conscious of that when we are raising our children.

When I look at my own children right now, I see myself the way I was twenty years back. I have a son who is forty-three and one who is forty. The things they struggle with are the things I was struggling with when I was raising them. Our appreciations are similar. Both of my sons have a deep love of nature and a need to spend long days in the wilderness. And that sense of confidence in the wild is being passed on to their kids. My two grandchildren are both avid hikers and canoeists who know their way around the back country. They also deal with anger much the same way I do.
As parents and teachers, we transmit our ways of life whether we realize it or not. What is most indelibly transmitted is what we do, not necessarily what we say. Master Dogen called this teaching through the whole body and mind. It’s not just words. It’s the actuality of our lives—our actions, our silence, our movements, the way we use our minds. We create karma through body, speech, and thought. What we do with our bodies, what we say, what we think, teaches. You can be thinking hate while smiling, and what you are communicating is hate and a mixed message
.
In the koan, the monk asks Caoshan, “A child went back to her parent. Why didn’t the parent pay attention to her?” The commentary says, At the time of birth parent and child become each other. This means that in the middle of the night before the moon appeared, do not be surprised that people meet without knowing each other. This is a reference to the first rank of Master Dongshan, the absolute containing the relative.

The poem that Dongshan wrote to illuminate this stage goes:

Early in the evening before the moon shines,
No wonder they meet without knowing each other,
For still hidden is their mutual aversion.

The first line, Early in the evening before the moon shines, refers to the absolute emptiness devoid of all differentiation. There is nothing left to see. Just as we chant in the Heart Sutra, “No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomenon.”
The second line states, No wonder they meet without knowing each other. It can’t be known. There is no way to differentiate. Knowing is about differentiation. Searching exhaustively, it cannot be grasped.

Then the third line: For still hidden is their mutual aversion. Still hidden refers to differentiation. The mountain is high, the valley is low. The differences do indeed exist, though on the surface you are dealing with complete identity. That’s the first rank. But keep in mind these ranks don’t exist independently of each other. When Caoshan said, “It’s quite natural just like that,” he was referring to the absolute perspective where two things are identical. When the parent and child become each other, the other is nothing but oneself. The teacher is nothing but oneself. The student is nothing but the teacher. Since there is no distinction between the two, how can you recognize them?

Before the moon appears there is darkness. With the appearance of the moon, light allows for differentiation to take place. The moon is also symbolic of realization. In the light of the moon there is differentiation—this and that, self and other. In the Identity of Relative and Absolute that we chant in our services, there is a line which says, "The dark makes all words one." Within darkness there is nothing to be seen or heard. Then, "The brightness distinguishes good and bad phrases." With light the differences appear. The chant goes on to say, "Within light there is darkness, within darkness there is light." They are completely linked and interdependent. We separate them to talk about them, to understand them, to philosophize, or to create koans about them, but the fact is they are one reality.

It is the same way when we talk about teacher and student, parent and child, or self and other. Once we begin to understand the identity of these apparent polarities in circumstances where it is easy to appreciate them, like in the relationship between a parent and a child, it becomes much easier to understand them in our relationship to the environment, or in our conflicts at work. This very body and mind is the body and mind of the universe. Past, present, and future are this very body and mind. Whatever happens to any aspect of this universe, throughout all space and time, affects this body and mind.

This means that in the middle of the night before the moon has appeared—before differentiation is possible—do not be surprised if people meet without knowing each other. At this point the empty sky has vanished and the iron mountain has crumbled. The intangible emptiness and the solidity of phenomena are both gone. There is no knowing, no differentiation whatsoever. In that first stage of the Five Ranks, there is no realization. It’s only when you come out of that state that realization can occur. That’s the second rank of Dongshan.

The second rank is the relative containing the absolute. You now see everything from the relative point of view, and within it you see the absolute basis of reality. There’s not an inch of ground to stand on. Be that as it may, mountains are high and valleys are low. Thus, Caoshan said, “The love between parent and child neither arises nor vanishes.” How then can it be divided into fragments or segments? When asked “Then where is the love between parent and child?” Caoshan answered, “The love between parent and child.” It’s not something that arises or vanishes. Intimacy is a beginningless and endless continuum.

All this notwithstanding, how is it that parent and child can meet yet not know each other? In order to know there needs to be distinctions and a sense of separation.

The Capping Verse:
Why must Yin and Yang be placed in an arrangement?
If you do, you will never have today.
When the wind blows, the grasses bend.
When the rain comes, the river fills.

Why should self and other be placed in an arrangement? Male and female, parent and child, teacher and student, good and bad, up and down—all of these pairs of opposites can be understood in terms of Master Dongshan’s integration or identity of absolute and relative.

In all of the aspects of Zen training we constantly point to the fact of unity. Every time we gassho we express unity. We gassho and bow to each other. We gassho and bow before we take a shower, before we eat a meal. We are bringing together the differences, left and right-handedness, into one reality. We are saying that you and I are the same thing. When we bow to the Buddha, we say that the Buddha and I are the same thing, the same reality. We are mutually arising and interdependent. We can’t exist separate from each other. You can’t have good unless you have bad. You can’t have up unless you have down. You can’t have self unless you have other. You can’t have enlightenment unless you have delusion.

We can choose to see two things as separate entities, or as aspects of the same reality. There is a big difference in how you combust your life depending upon which point of view you take. There is a big difference in how you deal with anger, fear, and anxiety depending upon how you understand self and other.

Why must Yin and Yang be placed in an arrangement? Essentially what I’m doing is denigrating the Five Ranks because the ranks are a series of arrangements of Yin and Yang: Yin coming from Yang, Yang coming from Yin, Yin and Yang interpenetrated. Each rank has a value in terms of understanding a particular facet of the relationship, but the fact is that while you’re understanding these facets you miss your life. You will never have today. What is today? Today is right now, this moment. Today is this breath, this action, this very thusness itself. It doesn’t know about Yin and Yang. It just is. When the wind blows, the grasses bend. When the rains come, the river fills. That moment is the reality of our lives.

Holding on to the absolute is a dead end. That’s one of the diseases of incomplete Zen practice. It’s got to do with using zazen as a place to hide. That’s not what zazen is about. We think of zazen as meditation. Zazen is not meditation. It’s not contemplation, introspection, quieting the mind, focusing the mind, mindfulness, mindlessness. Zazen is a way of using your mind. It is a way of living your life, a way of being with other people. In order to be able to do that you have to go very deeply into yourself to find the foundations of zazen, the foundations of your life.

Talking about recognizing and not recognizing that the love between parent and child are omnipresent is an important way of appreciating how our minds work. This way of talking about it helps us appreciate what the reality is behind this phenomenon. The fact remains “When the wind blows the grasses bend and when the rain comes the river fills.”

When we are dealing with children we are creating a karma that will continue for generations to come. Parents create that karma. Kids create that karma. Teachers in schools help create that karma. There are teachers I had in elementary school that I still bow to because I recognize now the transformation that took place in me through their encouragement, by simple words they said. There were also teachers in my elementary school that introduced inadequacies that even to this very day, twenty-eight years of Zen practice notwithstanding, I need to be alert for.

Kids are perfect. Each one of us arrives in this world perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Each of us lives this life perfect and complete, lacking nothing. The difference between us and the kids is that we have piled years of conditioning on top of that inherent perfection, conditioning by parents and teachers, nation, education, culture, peers. We’ve bought into conditioning. We reach adulthood and don’t know who we are and what our lives are. Then we encounter something like Zen practice—an opportunity to examine all of our presuppositions. Not just to arbitrarily throw them all out, but to examine and to learn from them. To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, layer by layer, nuance by nuance. Ultimately, to study the self is to forget the self, because once you’ve looked at all of the attributes you call the self, you realize that those attributes are not what the self is. The self is not a collection of personal aggregates. The self is not an idea. The self occupies the whole universe. There’s no place to put this gigantic body.

The kids are still malleable, still collecting their conditioning, so please be gentle, be aware, be sensitive to how you condition them. That doesn’t mean being laissez-faire. That doesn’t mean not doing anything. It means really being yourself. It means trusting yourself completely. When you learn to trust yourself, they’ll learn to trust themselves. When you learn to really be yourself, they’ll learn to be themselves. Whether you like it or not, you’re their teacher. That means in order to really do your parenting right you need to do it with wisdom and compassion. If you want your kids to be wise, you have to be wise. If you want your kids to live the precepts, you have to live the precepts. Is there any question that at the time of birth parent and child are transformed?


The Footnotes
1. They meet but they don’t recognize each other.
2. Although this is true, why does he call it natural?
3. This monk thinks love is about differentiation.
4. Beginningless and endless, intimacy is a continuum. It doesn’t start and it doesn’t end.
5. He’s still sitting by the river dying of thirst.
6. It is simply not two.


True Dharma Eye: Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans, is a complete, modern English translation of Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koan or Chinese Shobogenzo. This important collection of koans, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori, is accompanied by John Daido Loori’s commentary, capping verse and footnotes (Shambhala Publications, 2005).
John Daido Loori, Roshi (1931-2009) was the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and the founder of the Mountains and Rovers Order of Zen Buddhism. A successor to Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Roshi, Daido Roshi trained in rigorous koan Zen and in the subtle teachings of Master Dogen, and was a lineage holder in the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen.




Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Zen Mirror: Karmic Connections from the Past

Zen Mirror: Karmic Connections from the Past: Ven. Dr. Ananda, Ven. Dr. Thich Thien An, Zen Master Seung Sahn, Maezumi Roshi and Kozan Roshi. We have recently taken over the ope...

Monday, December 3, 2012

Free Online Classes


Mindfulness In Plain English By Ven. Henepola Gunaratana

Picture
Mindfulness In Plain English By Ven. Henepola Gunaratana, for-which is divided into 6 courses of study as to grasp the teachings set forth by the author.
  This course of study is of a number of books from the basics of the foundation to the last of a series as to prepare the student to under go the depth of the teachings of Zen master Dogens Shobogenzo. This is depending on the student and time spent on subject matter is ruffly a two year course of study. You can chose the books you wish to study, or go through the whole program. Only those who finish the foundation courses offered in full may be awarded their certificate and will be allowed to move into the depth of true study of the Shobogenzo collection of Master Dogen..

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Self Proclaimed Zen Teachers Do harm To Students


This is a cause that needs to be addressed for the benefit of all, just one is all the merit of life times: A student Quotes:
Just wanted you to know that I've officially dropped out of the CZBS and I've severed with my 5 Mountain teacher, Bill Murphy. I've connected with a new teacher and I'm moving forward. Thank you for letting me know what was up! "...... thank you!





www.causes.com
There are many such teachers in many religions that self proclaim under a religion as being something they`re 

Friday, November 23, 2012

Butter Sculpture Festival


Every year a butter sculpture festival is held in Tar monastery, located in the northwest province of Qinghai in China to celebrate the Tibetan New Year. During the this period which normally runs from mid February to early March , Tibetans and tourists alike throng the Tar temple to witness butter sculptures of various shapes and colours and skillful embroidery arts.

Butter sculpture originated from Tibet and was introduced to the Tar Monastery, also known as Kumbum Monastery, in the early 17th century. Many monasteries in China make butter sculptures, but those of Tar excel in technique and scale.

Legend says that in 641, when Princess Wencheng arrived in Lhasa to marry Songtsen Gampo, king of Tubo, she brought a statue in the shape of Sakyamuni, founder of Buddhism.

Following the Buddhist tradition, flowers must be offered as a tribute to the Buddha statue. But it was deep winter and no fresh flowers could be found. So people made a bunch of flowers with butter as an offering.

In 1409, founder of the Gelug Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who was born in today's Huangzhong County where the Tar Monastery was founded, held the Grand Sermons Ceremony in Lhasa.

He dreamed of thorny bushes turning into bright lanterns, weeds bursting into blossom amid numerous shiny treasures.

When he woke up, the great master immediately asked his followers to make the treasures and flowers as he had dreamed and offered them to the Buddha.

With pure yak and goat milk butter as the raw material, the sculptures are painted with mineral dyestuff. Often the sculptures are part of a series which depict a story, such as the life of Sakyamuni.

As the butter sculpture art entered the Tar Monastery in 1603, two academies devoted to its creation and study have been established. Every year, when the Grand Sermons Ceremony is held here during the Lantern Festival, the two academies bring out their best works




How the scultpures are made

The making of butter sculpture is a daunting task. As butter made from yak or goat milk melts in warm weather, butter sculpture has to be made in the coldest months of the year.

To sculpt butter, lamas must dip their hands in icy water. Only with numb hands can they begin the sculpting.

Over the past centuries, the art of butter sculpture has become very specialized: Making people, animals and flowers has each become a tradition requiring different techniques.


In sub-zero temperature rooms, the elderly lamas and their students first prepare the frame of sculpture with bamboo sticks, ropes and others. Then they mix old butter sculptures with wheat ashes to form black mud, which is used to make the primitive body of the sculptures.

After modifying the base, the lamas will apply colourful butter onto it. The figurines are outlined with gold and silver powder. Finally the small parts are fixed onto the frame with iron wire.

As the creation lasts some three months in winter, many lamas have found their fingers deformed by the time a grand display is prepared

Buddhist Retreat In Vietnam

More photos on the religious camp in Vietnam. At night a mass candle lighting ceremony was held, presided by prayer by monks. The most senior monks lighted the candles of the other monks before being passed on to each and every candles held by the close to 3000 students participants.