Summer 1999
The Main Case
A monk asked Master Dongshan,
“Cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?”1 Dongshan
answered, “Why don’t you go to the place where there is no cold or heat?”2 The
monk continued, “Where is the place where there is no cold or heat?”3 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.
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.
