Every morning, during prostration practice, our dharma students shout a line from this gatha after every 25 prostrations:
GREAT IS THE MATTER OF BIRTH AND DEATH!
IMPERMANENCE PERMEATES US!
BE AWAKE EACH MOMENT!
DO NOT SQUANDER YOUR LIFE!
Before anyone thinks we're encouraging ever greater "productivity" and more things to do and accomplish with that last line, we're not. We're exhorting ourselves and anyone with the ears to hear it that we should actually be here for the life we have! We squander it when we fail to actually embody our life; when we take it for granted -- as we tend to do when we live as if we have unlimited time. The contemplation of our mortality is designed to wake us up to this. Whatever this may be in any moment.
The original second line of the gatha was "Impermanence surrounds us" which to my ears sounded like we were these islands of permanence amidst an ocean of impermanence, so I changed it: "we" are permeated with it; it's not some defect or add-on.
And here's something we can add to our contemplation when we consider the impermanent nature of the earth herself:
1. In about 1.1 billion years, the sun will be 10% brighter. This will mean that Earth's oceans will begin to boil off into space. No more yachts; no more cruises; no more lemonade.
2. In 3.5 billion years, the Earth will look like a true twin of Venus: dry, hot and dead. Yup. We and all life will be over.
3. In 5 billion years, the sun itself is running down, its hydrogen fuel growing depleted. Its diameter expands out beyond the orbit of the Earth. Two scenarios here: the Earth may either be engulfed by the giant sun OR -- with the expansion of its size, it will lose weight and thus -- its lower gravitation may push the Earth away spiraling out into a more distant orbit.
4. In 5.4 billion years, the sun is a full-on red giant, with only a little bit of hydrogen left in a shell around its helium core.
5. By 6.4 billion years from now, the sun's outer layers will slough off, leaving behind a white dwarf, so dense that a teaspoon of it weighs 15-tons! If the Earth hadn't already been engulfed in the red giant stage, now the extreme gravity of the white dwarf may cause the now molten wasteland of the Earth to fall into the remains of its star,
Enjoy your day!
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Strawberries
There’s a story about the human condition that is quite
well-known that goes like this:
A woman is running from some tigers that are chasing her.
They are gaining on her when she comes to a cliff. She looks and sees a vine
growing out from the cliff, so she climbs out onto the vine and holds on tightly. The
tigers are now just above her head, pawing at the ground and sniffing the air.
Then she looks down and sees that there are tigers down there as well. Just
then she notices the mouse that had been there gnawing away at the vine above
her head, just out of reach. She also sees a few ripe, red strawberries growing
from a nearly clump of grass just within her reach. She looks up at the tigers,
she looks down at the tigers, she looks at the mouse. Then, she picks the largest
of the strawberries, pops it in her mouth and chews. It is lusciously delicious
and she enjoys it thoroughly.
The first time I heard this story was at a yoga ashram back in the 70s, and
the metaphor was made even more obvious by having two mice, one white and one black, gnawing away at the vine. Yes,
day and night is eating away at our lifeline. We were born and we will die and
each moment is just what it is. At the ashram, I was told that this is the
human predicament, and that we commonly and foolishly ignore the reality of life and death
and distract ourselves with “strawberries.” The swami said that, rather then
indulge in the sensual pleasures of life, we yoga students should dedicate all our energies
to getting out of this predicament. After all, for much of yoga philosophy, moksha, or “liberation,” is understood
as the ceasing of reincarnation, the constant ‘wandering forth’ from life
through death to life, again and again and again.
Now, the second time I heard this story was in a zen
monastery and the teacher mimed the act of reaching for the strawberry, popping
it into his mouth and chewing with obvious delight. Only this time, the message
conveyed to us zen students was that given our life situation, with each moment our life hanging by a
thread, being caught in anxiety, resentment, bitterness, and anger prevents us
from fully experiencing our life; Such reactivity keeps us from fully seeing, hearing,
tasting and delighting in "just this." This might be the only moment of our life;
this may be the only strawberry. Do we really want to miss it because we are
anxiously focused on our existential state? Given our life situation, we can be
depressed about this, or we could appreciate our life, as Maezumi Roshi would
encourage.
I can see how this plays out in my own life. When I find
myself caught in anger or anxiety – usually about how things are going in my
life or the fears about what may happen in the future – I completely lose the
reality of this moment. Please don't misunderstand; this moment may be painful, indeed. It’s not all
sweetness. Some strawberries are sour. But, as difficult as it may be, when
push comes to shove, I’d much rather taste that sourness completely then be
swept away by mental fabrications.
All this isn’t to say we should be all polly-annish about
life and the circumstances we must face. There’s a lot of oppression in this world, with lots of injustice that
we must resist, fight and change. And practice can challenge us to do this while engaging in each moment with as much integrity as we can muster. And that includes tasting
all the tastes life has to offer.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Confronting Abuse of Power...
The Winter 2014 issue of Buddhadharma had a dramatic, stark cover
with “Confronting Abuse of Power” emblazoned across its center. Under this, was
written, “How it harms practitioners and communities; What can be done to
prevent it; How to address abuse when it happens; Steps you can take to protect
yourself and others.”
When I saw this at the newsstand (I’ve
let my subscription lapse as I’ve grown increasingly disappointed with what
passes for contemporary buddhist ‘journalism’) I scooped it up and eagerly
looked forward to reading it with relief that finally at least some buddhist media was willing to actually confront abuse. What I found was weak
and frustratingly superficial.
In the same way, now a group of
90 zen teachers has published an open letter at Lion’s Roar (a website sponsored by Shambhala
Sun and Buddhadharma), initiated
by Abbess Myoan Grace Schireson of the Empty Nest Zendo and Rev. Genjo Joe
Marinello of the Choboji Zen Center. To my mind, it is yet another anemic
response offering too little and coming, if not too late, certainly long
overdue.
The letter pointedly mentions in
particular the wonderfully researched and written article written by Mark
Oppenheimer for The Atlantic that
covered the abuses of zen teacher Eido Shimano over the course of several
decades. Only now, with this “revelation,” the mainstream zen teacher community
pledges “to build more visible ethics codes” and work “toward consensus on
national standards of behavior.” The letter goes on to state that, “as Zen
Buddhist community leaders we are committed to changing the culture of silence
and the idealization of the teacher’s status that has been so detrimental to
students.”
After referring to “scoundrels
and sociopaths,” some of whom become teachers and priests, the letter states
that “revelations concerning Eido Shimano” are now taken “as a wake-up call to
each of us to pay close attention to the safety of the members of our community
and to monitor our own behavior as well as that of others.”
So, all this sounds good. What do
I have to criticize about such a sincere response? Am I simply being a
curmudgeon? Well, to begin, the letter suggests that Oppenheimer’s article
“exposed” a problem with Eido Shimano, and yet I – at best described as an
outlier of the zen community – had heard about such abuse twenty years ago. Stripping The Gurus notes that "rumors" about Eido were already spreading in the early 70s, just before I began practicing at the New York Zendo. What I hadn’t known until only a few years ago, but still way before the
Oppenheimer article, is that such a respected teacher as Aitken Roshi had known
for even longer and had kept quiet about what he knew in order to “protect the
dharma.” Of course this is a classic excuse for justifying and maintaining
silence when the right thing to do is clearly to speak out. For someone who has
written a classic on zen ethics (The Mind of Clover) this is one major ethical fail! It speaks to the tightly wound
web of secrecy that is endemic to zen tradition.
Second, why only now after this particular scandal are mainstream
zen teachers pledging to do something? This after Richard Baker Roshi, Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Genpo Marzel Roshi, and Joshu Sasaki Roshi which is already too many. And it’s not about sex. Or finances. It’s about power, hierarchical
structures of power that become oppressive and de-liberating. It’s about
secrecy and the obfuscation promoted by much of zen culture. For too long,
teachers and students have turned a blind eye to the problem posed by
“scoundrels” because they are merely the symptom of a problem that lies at the
very heart of zen culture. And that’s why the focus on “scoundrels and
sociopaths” is ultimately the safest, most anemic, and irresponsible position
the zen teacher community can take! The problem is not simply “a few bad
apples,” but the mythic-based structures that enshrine dysfunctional power
relations within zen communities, most particularly the magico-mythos of
“transmission” and the elevated ideal of the “teacher” found in zen, and in
particular Japanese zen, which has
had the biggest influence on American zen.
Interestingly, even James Myoun Ford has written at his blog, “So, I think we need teachers, but they need to be taken down a peg or
two. The analogy I’ve used in the past continues to hold for me. In the
Christian tradition the myth of Catholic apostolic succession and bishops as
magical successors in a lineage gives way to an Anglican view, where the form
of bishop is retained but seen as functional rather than magical. We need Zen
teachers in succession who see themselves not as magical inheritors but as long
time students entrusted with a terrible and beautiful responsibility.” What I
find ironic is that this is the same man who authored a book entitled Zen Master Who? In that book, Ford
writes: “This transmission – perhaps more correctly with a capital T -- was clearly about spiritual
authority. It was the acknowledgment of realization and the right to teach in
the name of the lineage. This Transmission was now clearly distinguishable from
simple ordination into the monastic sangha.” I would assert that transmission
(most especially with a capital T),
authorization, and lineage are at the heart of zen’s dysfunctional relationship
to power.
The legendary biography of the buddha has him a Prince, the son of a
King who ruled autocratically, as kings do, in his kingdom. The reality,
however, is that the buddha was born into the Sakiya (Sakhya) republic.
Republics were named after the ruling clan. His father was elected to a position equivalent to president of the republic and
speaker of the assembly. I think this is important to remember because it was
upon the structure of the republic and the council that the buddha modeled his
sangha, and not the kingdoms that
were forming at that time.
It appears that the buddha did not grant himself autocratic control of
the sangha, though I’ve no doubt his word generally received greatest respect and was mostly followed. That said,
there is a story I’ve found amusing about a time when the monks were caught in
an argument amongst themselves, and when they refused to take the buddha’s
advice, the buddha left the sangha for a few weeks, finding the monks tiresome!
It was only after they had resolved their issues that they approached the
buddha and requested he return to the sangha.
Before he died, the buddha was explicitly asked by Ananda, his cousin
and attendant, for “some last instructions respecting the community of bhikkhus.”
To this, the buddha responded: "What more does the community of bhikkhus expect
from me, Ananda? I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of
esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the
teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a
teacher who keeps some things back. Whosoever may think that it is he who should
lead the community of bhikkhus, or that the community depends upon him, it is
such a one that would have to give last instructions respecting them. But,
Ananda, the Tathagata has no such idea as that it is he who should lead the
community of bhikkhus, or that the community depends upon him. So what
instructions should he have to give respecting the community of bhikkhus?
The Tathagata held no idea that he led the community or
that the community depended upon him! But zen’s founding myth is the
mysterious, subtle “direct mind-to-mind transmission” from the buddha to
Mahakashyapa, the first of such “transmissions.”
What American zen teachers choose to ignore is that
zen’s origins in China were as an upstart sect that created the “transmission
outside the scriptures” supposedly creating a lineage of enlightened masters as
a way to create a sense of legitimacy and to gain acceptance of the Chinese
populace. This is already a far cry from the buddha’s assertion that he made no
distinction between esoteric and exoteric doctrine.” Along with this myth, the
emphasis on “authority” and “lineage” comes as the inheritance of Confucian
ancestor worship that encouraged the reverence for the patriarchs of zen.
Finally, with the “transmission” to the fifth Chinese patriarch, Hui-neng, we
see more mystification and secrecy, the transmission taking place in the dead
of night, with no witnesses, only teacher and disciple.
As I write in my essay on Hui-neng, lineage “has come to mean the
“certification,” the “seal of sanctioned approval” of one Master’s
enlightenment by another through a “mind-to-mind” transmission, certifying the
legitimacy of the succeeding teacher to be a teacher and leader of the Sangha.
It is this idea of lineage transmission
that is greatly emphasized in Zen. This practice can be seen as a means
of ensuring that only properly certified and genuinely enlightened people are
allowed to teach, which would be seen as a protection for those of us who are
unenlightened from being exploited, or it can be seen as a system for
maintaining priestly power and creating mystique.”
The elevating of the teacher found in zen is the
consequence of these various factors: the myth of “mind-to-mind transmission” certifying
one’s enlightenment; the emphasis on lineage inherited from Confucianism; and
the obfuscation to make the obvious non-obvious that I write about in the above
linked essay.
The blog post from James
Ford, and the open letter signed by 90 zen teachers both speak
of the need to “take teachers down a peg or two” and to “change the culture of
silence and the idealization of the teacher’s status that has been so detrimental
to students.”
I’ve been arguing this was needed for decades. I’m
happy to see the more established, mainstream zen teacher community finally
getting onboard. But as long as the focus is on “scoundrels,” I won’t expect
too much to change.
My teacher, Samu Sunim, created a seminary program with a curriculum of training leading to ordination as a dharma teacher (poep sa). This is a move of great transparency. But the term “dharma teacher” has itself become idealized through structures that treat the title and the person as “magical inheritors.” A well-respected zen teacher told me that he thought decades of practice and study are required before one can be authorized and authenticated to be a dharma teacher. Yet, the fact remains that every one of the teachers mentioned above who have shown themselves to be “scoundrels” were “authenticated and approved” to be inheritors of mind-to-mind transmission and enlightenment. Why not just treat them as teachers? Folk who know a bit more about the subject and who can give guidance and advice? Like, you know teachers!
It may be relevant to note that while
such examples of grievous misconduct are all too easy to find in the traditions
that idealize the role of teacher such as zen and Tibetan buddhism with its
guru-centric practice (to the point of adding going for refuge to the lama as a fourth
refuge!), there doesn’t seem to be the same issue in western vipassana (mostly
lay teachers who manage to keep precepts better than the zen priests!) or Theravada
buddhism. Perhaps among the reasons for this is that structurally, the
Theravada traditions view teachers as
teachers! They are not idealized, but rather appreciated, with reverence, as
friends-along-the-path (kalyana-mitta). This
is the difference Ford points to when he compares the apostolic succession of
Catholic and Anglican bishops. It is a function served, not mystical, magical
or even about the person per se.
Here in Tucson, our sangha is modeled
after the republican council of the buddha’s sangha. All our meetings:
community planning meetings, board of director meetings and membership meetings
are open to the public. Not just members of the sangha: the public. All decisions other than practice related (and some of
them are open to discussion) are made by consensus. I have no unilateral, absolute
power to make decisions outside of spending two-hundred dollars a quarter. This
commitment to transparency has empowered all our members to speak up and speak
out whenever anything seems less than obvious. These are structural issues that were put in place prophylactically, so to speak. And, despite this, we are currently
working on a Code of Ethics, as well as a Grievance Process, because being
prepared with eyes open truly is already the best protection for teacher, student and community.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Hui-neng: His Legendary Biography, the Platform Sutra and the Diamond-Cutter
Hui-neng,
the sixth Patriarch, asked, “Whence do you come?”
Huai-jang of
Nan-yueh said, “I come from Tung-shan.”
Hui-neng
asked, “What is it that thus comes?”
Huai-jang did not know what to answer. For eight
long years
he
pondered the question; then one day it dawned upon him,
and he
exclaimed,
“Even to say it is something does not hit the mark.”1
To attempt writing this post, I
have read five translations and commentaries on The Diamond Sutra including Hui-neng’s, and four translations of The
Platform Sutra, and I know nothing. Certainly I
know less than when I began, but it must be admitted that this is most surely a
good result. There are thoughts, reactions and opinions regarding what I have
read, but the questions are so much more
alive in me than anything I could positively say about any of this. To say anything is to miss the mark.
When I first read The
Platform Sutra many years ago, I wondered how this could be Buddhism? Indeed, there was much I recognized from other
readings, but there was also much that seemed foreign to what I had read
previously. I was especially taken aback by certain terms used by Hui-neng that
seemed terribly close to how Brahman is referred to in the Upanishads. Additionally, I was displeased by the sectarianism
that seemed to penetrate much of the text, and when I later learned about some
of the political maneuvering, and how the lineage was more created myth than
reality – and considering how the practice of lineage had been so misused up
until this day – I turned away from what Hui-neng could teach me.
This current engagement represents a new
grappling with Hui-neng and what his life has to teach me personally, as well
as all practitioners of Buddha-Dharma, and in no way is to be seen as
conclusive. It is but barely a beginning!
]
The dates generally agreed upon for Hui-neng, also
called Wei-lang, are 638 to 713 CE. He is recognized as the sixth Chinese
Patriarch of Ch’an, and as such is sometimes regarded as the “real” father of
the Ch’an tradition because of the strong Chinese “stamp” or “flavor” he
imparted to what until his time had been strongly marked by traditional Indian
Buddhism. While he never formally transmitted the patriarchate to a successor,
he did have several outstanding students, and among them, Huai-jang and Shen-hui
had a great impact on the “five houses—seven schools” of Ch’an during the T’ang
period.
For centuries it has been taught
that he gave the teachings recorded in the only Chinese Buddhist work accorded
the status of sutra: The Sutra Spoken from the High Seat of the Dharma
Treasure, more commonly referred to as The
Platform Sutra. From this sutra, we learn that
Hui-neng came from a poor background, supporting his widowed mother by
gathering and selling firewood, and thus had never learned to read or write.
One day, while tending to his
business, he heard someone reciting The Diamond Sutra, and upon hearing the sentence, “Let your mind flow
freely without dwelling on anything,” he had a spontaneous enlightenment (or
enlightening) experience. Upon questioning the man who had been reciting the
sutra, he learned about Hung-jen, the Fifth Patriarch of Ch’an and his
monastery on Mount Huang-mei.
Hui-neng left home (after
providing for his mother) to go see Hung-jen, who we are told, immediately
recognized his potential, but had Hui-neng assigned to the kitchen where his
chores were to split firewood and crank the rice mill. Apparently he worked
there for years, mostly unnoticed by all but the Fifth Patriarch.
When the time came for Hung-jen
to transmit the patriarchate to a successor, he asked his students to express
their experience and understanding of the Dharma in a poem. All the students,
sure that the senior monastic, Shen-hsiu, was destined to become Hung-jen’s
successor because of his intellectual brilliance, refrained from writing poems,
so that the only poem written was by Shen-hsiu.
In his poem, Shen-hsiu compared
the human body with the Bodhi-tree and the mind with a mirror-stand holding a
mirror that must be continuously cleaned in order to keep it free from dust
settling upon it. When Hui-neng had Shen-hsiu’s poem read to him, he composed a
poem in answer and had someone write it for him:
“Enlightenment
originally has no tree,
And
a clear mirror is not a stand.
Originally
there’s not a single thing –
Where
can dust be attracted?”2
Hung-jen, recognizing Hui-neng’s
deeper understanding, and fearing internecine strife, called for Hui-neng to
meet with him in the middle of the night and explained The Diamond Sutra to him. According to The Platform Sutra, when Hung-jen got to the point where The
Diamond Sutra says, “You should activate the
mind without dwelling on anything,” Hui-neng had the overwhelming realization
that “all things are not apart from inherent nature.”3
Realizing that Hui-neng had
realized original nature, Hung-jen transmitted the robe and bowl symbolizing
the transmission of the patriarchate, thus making Hui-neng the Sixth Patriarch.
Hung-jen told Hui-neng that the robe had become a “robe of contention” and that
its passing should stop with him, and that fearful for his safety if he should
remain, Hung-jen had Hui-neng leave the monastery under cover of the night and
go into hiding in southern China.
Fifteen years passed while
Hui-neng lived among hunters. Finally, it seemed to Hui-neng that the time had
come for him to start spreading the teaching, so he went to Fa-hsin monastery
in Kuang-chou where the doctrinal master Yin-tsung was expounding upon the Nirvana-Sutra. It was at this time that Hui-neng’s famous dialogue
with the monks arguing over whether it was the flag or the wind in motion took
place. He stepped forward and said, “It is not the flag or the wind moving; it
is your minds moving.”
With this statement, all who
heard it were impressed and master Yin-tsung, recognizing Hui-neng’s deep
understanding surmised that he must indeed be the carrier of the Dharma as
transmitted from Hung-jen. When Hui-neng acknowledged that he indeed was the
Dharma successor of Hung-jen, master Yin-tsung shaved Hui-neng’s head and ordained
him as a monk, while requesting that Hui-neng become his teacher.
This is how Hui-neng began his
teaching career, first at the Fa-hsin monastery, and then eventually at his own
monastery, the Pao-lin-ssu near Ts’ao-chi, near the port city of Canton. His
teaching became known as the Southern School of Ch’an, while Shen-hsiu and his
students taught what became known as the Northern School, also claiming the
true successorship of the Fifth Patriarch. As might be expected from the
respective verses of Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng, the Northern School advocated a
gradual approach to enlightenment along with the intellectual understanding of
the meaning of the sutras, whereas the Southern School stressed reaching
awakening through “a sudden, intuitive leap into intellect-transcending
immediacy of experience.”4
Shen-hsiu’s approach seems more
in keeping with the Dhyana movement and emphasis of Indian Buddhism, while
Hui-neng’s approach took the definitive step toward assimilating Indian Dhyana
Buddhism into the Chinese cultural milieu, marked at least as strongly by
Taoism (and perhaps some elements of Confucianism) as by Buddhism. Hiu-neng’s
Southern School, with its radical rejection of mere book learning, which was a
view already exemplified for centuries by Taoist sages,5 and the
more Chinese folk cultural traits of earthiness, combined with dry humor,
produced all the great lineages of Ch’an. During the T’ang and Sung periods the
successors of Hui-neng were responsible for what has come to be called the
“golden age of Ch’an” and it is many of their deeds and sayings that in the
form of koans have become an important component of Zen training.
]
Ching Ch'ing asked a monk, “What sound is that
outside the gate?” The monk said, “The sound of raindrops.”
Ching Ch’ing said, “Sentient beings are inverted.
They lose themselves and follow other things.”
The monk said, “What about you, Teacher?”
Ch’ing said, “I almost don’t lose myself.”
The monk said, “What is the meaning of ‘I almost
don’t lose myself?’”
Ch’ing said, “Though it still should be easy to
express oneself, to say the whole thing has to be difficult.”6
Reading the history of the Platform
Sutra, as one may find in Philip Yampolsky’s The
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, we find
that by the middle of the eighth century in China, there was a great
intensification of internecine quarrels among the various Buddhist groups.
Works attacking rival doctrines (and personages) contributed to the rise of
“sectarian Buddhism.”7 According to Yampolsky, due to a combination
of historical circumstances, political patronage and the very nature of its
teachings, Ch’an emerged as the primary school of Chinese Buddhism.
Yampolsky writes that as Indian
Buddhism infiltrated Chinese culture, its meditation teachings were adopted,
assimilated with the Taoist contemplative arts, and were put to use by the
various schools of Buddhism. Eventually groups of wandering ascetics who
emphasized meditation practice began to come together to form communities of
practice. By the end of the seventh century, one such community was that of
Hung-jen’s who had himself gained considerable prominence. It was with him and
his students that the story of Ch’an as a separate sect begins.
It can be somewhat disconcerting
to a Westerner to learn that the history of Ch’an she has been taught is no
more than “legend” or “myth.” And further, as Yampolsky says, “In the
manufacture of this history, accuracy was not a consideration; a tradition
traceable to the Indian Patriarchs was the objective.”8 Throughout the
eighth century, a two-fold movement took place: there was the primary attempt
to establish the upstart Ch’an as a legitimate sect within the larger fold of Buddhism, and
there was the internal struggle to gain acceptance for a particular school of
Ch’an within the Chinese society in which it existed.
The lovely story about the Buddha
holding a flower and thus “transmitting” the Dharma to Mahakashyapa, while
perhaps hinting at a deep and profound truth, is itself but one of these
manufactured legends that were repeated over time until they became accepted as
fact. Many Western students of Zen are totally unaware of this, and feel almost
a sense of betrayal when they find out. This was true for me, but over time I
have found a way to relate to the deeper existential truth in this and other stories. But I do believe we should
critically look at the history and extract what is useful and at least
revaluate other aspects that have proven to have had a truly devastating impact
on the history of Zen.
Yampolsky states that “To achieve
the aura of legitimacy so urgently needed, histories were compiled, tracing the
Ch’an sect back to the historical Buddha…”9 The whole lineage
chanted in many Japanese and American Zen centers rooted in Japanese Zen, is more fabrication than literal truth. Indeed, the
idea of lineage was Chinese manufactured, reflecting the more Confucian ideal
of ancestor worship and the hierarchal stratification of Chinese society. In
the Pali Canon, and throughout the Theravada tradition, it is explicitly made
clear that the Buddha rejected naming anyone as his successor. The almost obsessive
emphasis on lineage and authenticity of transmission found in Japanese Zen, in particular (we never chanted any so-called 'blood-line' in my Korean Seon training) has led to
much abuse, and ironically, we see its roots at the very beginning with the
story of Hui-neng and Shen-hsiu.
The various texts starting from
the eight century that purport to tell the history of Ch’an, and the
biographies of its major proponents have little to say about Hung-jen, who they
name as the Fifth Chinese Patriarch. One text, the Ch’uan fa-pao chi tells us that he died at the age of 74 in the year
675, after transmitting his teachings to Fa-ju. This same text tells us that
Shen-hsiu was the heir to Fa-ju, yet in all other works it is Shen-hsiu who was
the heir of Hung-jen. All the other works, that is, except for the Platform
Sutra that purports to tell us of the “true” transmission
line to Hui-neng.
Shen-hsiu (606? – 706) was
acknowledged as one of the great Ch’an masters, honored by court and populace
alike. He was the great leader of the Lankavatara School, which later came to
be known as the Northern Ch’an and was, according to all contemporary records,
one of the most eminent priests of his time. The first mention we have of
Hui-neng is found in the Leng-chia jen-fa chih where he is simply listed as one of the eleven principle disciples of
Hung-jen along with Shen-hsiu, Fa-ju, Chih-hsien and seven others. This same
text states that Shen-hsiu transmitted the Patriarchate to P’u-chi, and that
along with P’u-chi, Shen-hsiu had three other principle heirs: Ching-hsien,
I-fu, and Hui-fu.
While this Ch’an of Shen-hsiu and his disciples was enjoying
great popularity and prestige, a then unknown priest from Nan-yang, Shen-hui,
intent upon promulgating a new school of his own launched an attack upon the
Ch’an of Shen-hsiu, and after years of struggle, eventually carried the day. Apparently,
Shen-hui had been a student of Hui-neng’s, and it is most probable that The
Platform Sutra was actually written by a
student of Shen-hui’s and includes much that is similar to the Discourses of Shen-hui.
Paramount among Shen-hui’s
arguments is that "the true transmission" was from Hung-jen to Hui-neng, and not
to Shen-hsiu as had been accepted. This, of course, if true, would (conveniently) make
Shen-hui’s teachings, as a former student of Hui-neng, more “authentic” than
the teachings of students of Shen-hsiu.
Shen-hui did not criticize the
“Northern Ch’an” of Shen-hsiu only for its alleged usurpation of the
Patriarchate. He also accused the Northern School of holding erroneous views,
especially regarding meditation practice. In one of his Discourses, which parallels the alleged teaching of Hui-neng in
The Platform Sutra, Shen-hui includes
the following passage:
“Master Yuan said: ‘P’u-chi ch’an-shih of Sung-yueh
and Hsiang-mo of Tung-shan, these two priests of great virtue, teach men to
concentrate the mind to enter dhyana, to settle the mind to see purity, to
stimulate the mind to illuminate the external, to control the mind to
demonstrate the internal. On this they base their teaching. Why, when you talk
about Ch’an, don’t you teach men these things? What is sitting meditation?’
Shen-hui said: ‘If I taught people to do these
things, it would be a hindrance to attaining enlightenment. The sitting I’m
talking about means not to give rise to thoughts. The meditation I’m talking
about is to see the original nature.’”10
Further, in a passage that
closely resembles the passage in section 13 (of the Tun-huang text) of the Platform
Sutra and throughout chapters two, four, five
and eight of the other texts, Shen-hui elucidates his teaching on the identity
of prajna and dhyana:
“Not to give rise to thoughts, emptiness without
being, this is the true meditation. The ability to see the non-rising of
thoughts, to see emptiness without being, this is the true wisdom; at the
moment there is meditation, this is the substance of wisdom; at the moment
there is wisdom, this is the function of meditation. Thus the moment there is
meditation, it is no different from wisdom, The moment there is wisdom, it is
no different from meditation. Why? Because by their nature, of themselves, mediation
and wisdom are alike.”11
This point is further elaborated by Shen-hui and throughout the Platform Sutra, in the frequent criticism made against the Northern School that it taught a gradual method of attaining enlightenment (as epitomized in Shen-hsiu's poem) through diligent meditative practices, as opposed to the Southern School's "sudden method" of direct intuitive insight into "original nature."
In the following sections of this essay, I seek to describe some of my responses to these three points: 1. the issue of lineage and authenticity; 2. the issue of "practice" and 3. the issue of "gradual" or "sudden" ("immediate"), especially as to how these issues relate to the concepts of "Buddha-Nature" (dhatuvada) and "intrinsic enlightenment."
]
“The Dhamma I have taught has no secret and public
versions: there is no ‘teacher’s closed fist’ about good things here. Surely it
would be someone who thought this: ‘I shall govern the Sangha’ or ‘The Sangha
depends on me’ who might make a pronouncement about the Sangha? A Perfect One
does not think like that…each of you should make himself his island, himself
and no other his refuge; each of you should make the Dhamma his island, the
Dhamma and no other his refuge.”12
Lineage as a concept meaning that
every student and practitioner of the Dharma has learned from other students
and practitioners, and that this line of succession goes all the way back to
the Buddha in India is both unexceptional and true. It might even be accurate
to call it a “truism.” But it helps to deepen one's understanding of
continuity and connection to an ancestral stream. When I first took precepts, I felt like I was
stepping into a spiritual “ancestral lineage” and I took great support and nourishment from this
awareness, that I am not “alone” and that I am truly a part of something much
grander than “this life” or “this lifetime.”
However, lineage has come to mean
much more than this. It has come to mean the “certification,” the “seal of
sanctioned approval” of one Master’s enlightenment by another through a
“mind-to-mind” transmission, certifying the legitimacy of the succeeding
teacher to be a teacher and leader of the Sangha. It is this idea of lineage
transmission that is greatly
emphasized in Zen. This practice can be seen as a means of ensuring that only
properly certified and genuinely enlightened people are allowed to teach which
would be seen as a protection for those of us who are unenlightened from being
exploited, or it can be seen as a system for maintaining priestly power and creating
mystique.
It is obvious that the idea of
transmission and lineage is intended to impart the aura of legitimacy, but this
begs the question of why would a school or a teacher need such “legitimacy?”
Presumably, the answer would be that what they have to offer is non-obvious.
What they have to offer is something those of us who are unenlightened would be
unable to evaluate. David Brazier, in The New Buddhism, gives the example of using the services of a
greengrocer and a doctor. We do not ask to see certification from the
greengrocer. We just ask if he has cabbages for sale if that is what we seek and then we look to see their quality.
But we do ask to see certification from our doctor because if we wait to see if
he knows what he is doing through personal practical experimentation, it may be
too late before we realize he is a quack! The lineage system puts Dharma
Teachers in the same category as doctors and not in the same one as
greengrocers.
Interestingly, Brazier points out
that the Buddha put himself in the greengrocer category. “Come and see and try
it out for yourself,” he said. If you like what I offer and it helps you to
overcome suffering, use it. If not, not. The Buddha did not appoint a successor
(although the Mahayana created the legend of the flower sermon to legitimize
the idea of succession through Mahakashyapa). The Buddha did offer his opinion as to who was enlightened when
asked about particular people. However, there is a passage where Ananda,
seeming to pester the Buddha with this question, is told by the Buddha that
Ananda could simply see for himself whether someone is enlightened or not,
telling him that the test of one’s enlightenment and understanding is how well
they follow the discipline. So it seems that the Buddha thought that the matter
was obvious, not non-obvious. If a person was enlightened, you could tell from
what he or she did. You could know them by their deeds.
After the death of the Buddha,
differing camps began to arise, each with its own slant on the teachings of the
Buddha. Once the Mahasanghika, the spiritual ancestors of
the Mahayana, began to express willingness to change the rules and the form,
criterion other than orthodoxy was required to establish legitimacy. Lineage
was grasped onto as a way of showing that while the way a particular school
practices or teaches may not look like the way the Buddha did; it is directly
descended from and derived from him. Lineage also implies that as all the
changes were made by certified enlightened Masters, they are not only authentic
and true, they are perhaps even improvements on what the Buddha taught and how
the orthodoxy practices! That is to say again, lineage becomes a means of
legitimizing the non-obvious.
This use and understanding of
lineage is highly problematic. First of all, lineage is a form of “argument
from authority” which Western logic regards as a fallacious argument (although,
unfortunately as we have learned all too sadly in the USA throughout the “war
on terrorism,” all too accepted by popular opinion). Just because someone holds
a high position does not, of itself, ensure that he or she is right. The Buddha
himself stressed this in his Discourse to the Kalamas when he told them not to believe and accept
something just because of the position of the person who has told you it –
including himself in this. Things are not true simply because the Buddha says
it. They are true if they are true, and
regarding things that matter, like birth and death and how to live a “noble”
life, while we may need wiser folk to point it out to us, we still need to test
what they say for ourselves. Sadly, humans like to shirk this responsibility
and simply accept authority all too easily. Those societies based upon
legitimization systems, such as the Roman Catholic Church, as seen most
recently in their handling of the sexual abuse crisis, tend to work quite
badly.
The fact is that in the last
fifty years there have indeed been some disturbingly significant examples of
“legitimately authorized” Buddhist Masters acting in such ways that one must
question the usefulness of lineage. Recently, there seems to have been a spate of such abuse, (Richard Baker, Genpo Roshi, Shimano Roshi and way too many others) I will only address one, and that is the
case of Yasutani Roshi who received “transmission” and was legitimated by the
lineage system of the Soto Zen School two months after publishing a book on
Dogen which is full of militarist and anti-Semitic propaganda. The book uses
the teachings of Dogen to “support the war, deify the emperor, promote the
superiority of Japan, foster anti-Semitism and encourage people to exterminate
the enemy.”13 Included in his commentary on the First Precept is the
following passage: “Failing to kill an evil man who ought to be killed, or
destroying an enemy army that ought to be destroyed, would be to betray
compassion and filial obedience, to break the precept forbidding the taking of
life. This is a special characteristic of the Mahayana precepts.” Thankfully,
most teachers within the Buddhist world do not hold this non-obvious “special characteristic”.
The merits of a system that
rewards someone with its highest seal of approval and spiritual authority when
he is confirmed in such warmongering attitudes are also non-obvious! It is
clear that if the function and purpose of lineage is to offer a “guarantee” of
someone’s enlightenment it has failed to do so – in this case at least. A
guarantee that is unreliable is no guarantee at all. It seems to me that
lineage, as an authentication system is not a system that was accepted by the
Buddha and is not one he would have approved of. I believe that Buddhism is
hindered, not served, by unnecessary mystification, and much of “transmission”
and lineage reeks of mystification and obscuration. While I agree that people
rarely become enlightened without spiritual teachers, it is ultimately the
students who authenticate and authorize the teachers. It is our responsibility
to, as the Dalai Lama points out, examine the teacher before committing to
studying with him or her, and evaluate how he or she lives according to the
discipline. An enlightened being is one who embodies the precepts, and if
someone says they are above the precepts, they have not fully understood the
Dharma.
What is perhaps even more
troubling is the response of those who were given transmission by Yasutani to
the uncovering of their teacher’s ideology. All seemed to defend Yasutani
through various twists of non-obvious logic, but Jiun Kubota, the Third
Patriarch of the Religious Foundation Sanbo-kyodan founded by Yasutani
published an apology for his teacher’s expressions of support for war that
still harbors what I feel is a dangerous doctrine. He states in his “apology”
that Dharma and political ideology are two separate things and that Yasutani’s
disciples were only interested in the dharma and not in the ideology. I reject
this unequivocally. The task of the Dharma Teacher is, not to be perfect
perhaps, but surely involves “imparting values, vision and inspiration that
touch all aspects of the disciple’s lives.”14 The doctrine that says
Dharma and social attitudes are unrelated is not what I understand to be the
teachings of the Buddha.
]
The farmer channels water to his land.
The fletcher whittles his arrows.
And the carpenter turns his wood.
So the wise man directs his mind.15
Statements attributed to Hui-neng
that echo the statements from Shen-hui’s Discourses as quoted above, and other statements such as, “Do
not say there is a difference between stabilization coming first and then
producing insight, and insight coming first and then producing stabilization.
Those who entertain this view are dualistic in their doctrine;”16 and
“Deluded people stick to the appearances of things: they cling to the idea of
absorption in one practice as only meaning constantly sitting unmoving, not
letting the mind be aroused at random. They identify this with absorption in
one practice, but those who make this interpretation are equivalent to
inanimate objects,”17 as well as his response to Shen-hsiu’s
student, Chih-ch’eng who asserts that Shen-hsiu “instructs people to stop the
mind, and contemplate quietude, sitting constantly without lying down” by saying,
“Stopping the mind and contemplating quietude is pathological: it is not Ch’an.
Sitting all the time constricts the body – how does it help toward truth?”18
have led many to conclude that Hui-neng and Shen-hui swept aside all
meditation and rejected sitting practice.
However, if this is so, we would
find ourselves in the awkward position of studying and honoring the teaching of
a teacher while practicing the complete opposite, for as anyone who has ever
practiced in any Zen tradition knows, sitting meditation is central to
practice. We would have to conclude, based upon this fact, that Hui-neng’s
ideas were completely ignored by later Ch’an teachers. Yet, as Hui-neng makes
it explicitly clear in his response to Fa-ta regarding the latter’s recitation practice,
Hui-neng was criticizing the method, not
the meditation. He was criticizing the attachment to the form of practice,
whether the ritualized and unmindful recitation of sutras, or the limiting of
meditation to formalized sitting practice; he was basically saying that it can
be and must be “practiced” at all times. Hui-neng was attempting to correct the
rather common misperception of meditation practice as being completely
immobile, thoughtless and actionless.
As he asserts in The Platform Sutra,
“Freedom from form means detachment from forms in the midst of forms. Freedom
from thought means having no thoughts in the midst of thoughts,”19 which
is no more than the central teaching of The Diamond Sutra that first startled Hui-neng into spontaneous realization,
“Let your mind flow freely without dwelling on anything.”
Indeed, within Hui-neng’s
teaching of the “Five Perfumes,” he says, “Once one’s own mind is not fixated
on anything, good or bad, it will not do to sink into vacuity and keep to
quiescence; one should study broadly and learn a lot, (emphasis added) recognizing one’s own original
mind and master the principles of the buddhas, harmonize enlightenment to deal
with people, free from egoistic personality, unchanging right up to the
attainment of the true nature of enlightenment.”20 This is a
wonderful prescription for “engaged practice,” and the obviousness of the
non-dual nature of dharma and politics, among other things. It also puts to
rest that Hui-neng completely rejected scholarship.
And yet, the truth is, this
teaching which is often claimed by Ch’an as one of its great innovations over
the original Indian Buddhist tradition is already present in some of the
earliest teachings of the Buddha as we find in the Anapanasati and Satipatthana
Suttas where the Buddha tells us that we
should be able to practice full awareness when sitting, walking, lying down and
standing. He goes on to include everything from eating to defecation, making it
obvious and quite clear that nothing of our moment-to-moment experience is to
be excluded from practice.
The great Theravadin Vipassana
teacher, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu concludes his commentary on the Anapanasati
Sutta with a discussion of the three qualities
needed for correct practice: stability, purity, and readiness. He tells us,
“This kind of concentration can be used not only in formal meditation practice
but in any of the necessary activities of life… Obviously, concentration is
more than sitting like a lump of rock or a block of wood – stiff, rigid, and dead
to the world. Instead, with concentration, the citta is perfectly ready to
perform its duty, namely, to grow in knowledge and understanding from moment to
moment.”21 He concludes by emphasizing “the essential point: when
the mind is in samadhi, we can walk or stand or sit or lie down or work or
taste the fruit of our labor or help others or help ourselves… One who has
samadhi (is) able to perform every kind of duty.”22 This seems to
perfectly coincide with Hui-neng’s exhortation above to “study broadly and
learn a lot, harmonizing enlightenment to deal with people.”
]
There are trivial truths and the great truths. The
opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is
also true.
-- Niels Bohr23
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two,
because one and one are two. We are finding that we must first learn a great
deal more about ‘and.’
-- Sir Arthur
Eddington24
In the dialogue between Hui-neng
and Fa-tu alluded to above, Hui-neng continues to tell Fa-tu, “indeed, the
scripture clearly tells you, ‘There is only one vehicle of buddhahood, no other
vehicle, no two or three… The countless expedients, various stories, metaphors,
and expressions, these teachings are all for the sake of the one vehicle of
buddhahood.’ Why do you not realize that the three vehicles are provisional,
being for the past, while the one vehicle is real, being for the present? I am
only teaching you to leave the provisional and return to the real. After you
return to the real, the real has no name either.”25 This point made by Hui-neng goes
right to the heart of both the “gradual versus sudden enlightenment” debate and
the difficulties raised by Hui-neng’s and the Ch’an tradition extolling the
notions of “Buddha-nature” and “intrinsic enlightenment.”
Dating from the early 1990s, a
movement that has come to be known as “Critical Buddhism” arose in Japan as a
strong critique of the Soto Zen tradition, and as it is this tradition that has
had such a tremendous influence on the Western interpretation and practice of
Buddhism, its arguments present us with a serious challenge. While I do not
agree with all the points raised by the Critical Buddhists, much of what they
have to say relates to my initial difficulty with the teaching of Hui-neng as
presented in The Platform Sutra.
The Critical Buddhists assert
that the teaching of Buddha Nature “is not Buddhist.” They say that this idea
and others closely related to it were introduced into Buddhism over 500 years
after the Buddha’s own time and hinder the radical critique and program of the
Buddha’s original teaching. They argue that these concepts were made to
accommodate popular spirituality first in India, and then particularly in
China.
Among the main elements of
“popular spirituality” that have in the Critical Buddhist view been
incorporated into Buddhism are:
* Belief in an underlying, eternal, transcendental unity in the world
called God, Tao, the Great Spirit or what have you.
* Belief in an underlying, immortal, transcendental unity in the person
called a soul, spirit, atma, self, etc.
* Belief that these metaphysical entities are superior, magical and
more real than the things of the ordinary world.
* Because of this metaphysical reality, although bad things may happen
in the world, it is really all right because the world and what happens in it
are less real.
* A sense that those who believe in this metaphysical reality are
“saved.”
This then is the basic structure
of what the Critical Buddhists call “popular spirituality” found throughout the
world in various particularities. At the other extreme are those who reject
this whole idea and assert materialism, that is to say, that there is no
metaphysical realm and because of this it matters not what one believes or
does. Pleasure then is thought to be the only guide to action. The Buddha
rejected both these positions, and this is one of the reasons his teaching is
referred to as the Middle Way. The challenge, as articulated by Vasubandhu in
the early fourth century is to distinguish the middle from the extremes.
The problem with these “popular
spirituality” ideas is that they collude to put people in a less responsible
position vis a vis their life and the
situation they find in the world. These metaphysical ideas can even be used to
support social discrimination, since the metaphysical realm is hierarchical
itself. This is just how it was used in the time of the Buddha (and even, sadly
today) to justify the caste system that the Buddha, rejecting the metaphysical
basis, also rejected. As he put it, people are not “chosen” or “born noble,”
but it is by one’s actions that one becomes noble. The Critical Buddhists assert that Buddhism
was and should remain a critical countercurrent that can arise within different
religious contexts and that to align itself with such creeds, as just another
religion may be a serious mistake.
The main issue I would like to
address is that of the concept of the “dhatuvada.” The Sanskrit word “dhatu” means “ constructing element,” and
any teaching that asserts that underlying manifest reality as we experience it
is a more fundamental, metaphysical substratum is referred to as “Dhatuvada.”
An example of a Dhatuvada is Brahmanism (Brahman is the substratum) and another
is the Tao of Taoism. Two related notions the Critical Buddhists challenge are
the concepts of Buddha Nature and the concept of original or inherent
enlightenment. These concepts evolved in China as Buddhism assimilated ideas
from Taoism. The related idea of the tathagata-garbha arose in India and influenced the other two
concepts. The scenario for how this happened over time is something like this:
* The tathagata-garbha concept
entered into Mahayana Buddhism to appease those who wanted to be Buddhists but
couldn’t or wouldn’t give up some of their Brahmanical ideas. The tathagata-garbha clearly is a re-working of the Vedic idea of Hiranya-garbha.
* The Buddha Nature concept derived from tathagata-garbha appeasing and making more palatable to the Chinese
who were acculturated with Taoist ideas.
* Inherent Enlightenment gives even fuller expression to Taoist thought
in China.
* Finally, in Japan the idea of inherent enlightenment was extended to
include even insentient objects through the influence of Shintoism. This is an
idea that has no basis in canonical texts and is often cited as the epitome of
the distinctively Japanese approach to Buddhism, as expressed in the popular
slogan, “even the grasses, trees, mountains and rivers all attain Buddhahood.”
So, what does it matter? Isn’t this an example of Buddhism’s flexibility
and tolerance for other cultures? Hasn’t Buddhism become enriched rather than
made poorer for its assimilation of these ideas from the cultures it has become
exposed to? No, say the Critical Buddhists, because they say these ideas
detract from the Buddha’s emphasis on personal responsibility, karma, and
clarity of understanding, as well as having been used to support the arrogant,
nationalist spirituality that accommodates itself to oppressive world powers
all too easily, and to rationalize all manners of social discriminatory
practices.
As Niels Bohr’s quote that opens
this section states, I think that they are right, and that these concepts can be useful, if we remember
Hui-neng’s advice not to get attached to the form. The “gradual versus sudden”
debate has its basis in the idea of “inherent enlightenment” and Buddha Nature.
The idea of “original enlightenment” first arose in China in the fourth century
in the text The Awakening of Mahayana Faith.
Originally thought to have originated in Sanskrit, modern scholarship now
recognizes that the text was written in Chinese, and there was no Indian
version. The tathagata-garbha concept
arose in India in texts that use positive language to describe the ability of
all beings to attain enlightenment. The mainstream understanding is simply that
all people, including corrupt or evil people, can become enlightened in the
future. A later interpretation treated the tathagata-garbha as some kind of self-existent soul. In Tibet, there
are in fact two different readings of the Tathagatagarbha Sutra along these two lines of interpretation. The
non-soul one is, of course, the older.
In China, intrinsic enlightenment
became aligned with the notion of Buddha Nature, a Chinese notion that
reflected essentially Taoist ideas. In fact, early Buddhist missionaries to
China utilized many Taoist notions to combat the conservative thrust of
Confucianism that rejected Buddhism as “un-Chinese.” The presentation of
Buddhism that included the ideas of intrinsic enlightenment and Buddha Nature
allowed it to spread throughout China and those lands within the Chinese zone
of cultural influence.
In India these ideas never took
root, with tathagata-garbha merely
signifying that enlightenment is always possible and for all beings. As one
Indian text puts it, “ordinary people have tathagata-garbha whereas buddhas do not,” which is to say we who are
ordinary have the potential for enlightenment, while buddhas really are
enlightened. If we do not take Hui-neng’s pronouncements of “essence of mind”
as literally referring to a dhatu (that which is an “only real” essence or
substratum to empirical existence) we could read his statement “When they’re
deluded, buddhas become beings. When they’re awake, beings become buddhas”26 in this same vein.
Hui-neng uses many phrases in the
Platform Sutra that sound very much like
essentialist statements. It has always been a tendency for people to reify
ideas and concepts, making “emptiness” for instance into “The Void,” as if
emptiness were just another word for Tao, or Godhead or Brahman. Nagarjuna’s
dialectic, echoing The Diamond Sutra’s
approach reminds us that emptiness is not to be found outside of the 10,000
things. Tang Hoi the 10th century Vietnamese Zen Master told his
students, “Be diligent in order to attain the state of no-birth and no-death.”
He was asked by a student, “Where can we touch the world of no-birth and
no-death?” Tang Hoi responded, “Right here in the world of birth and death.”27
Thus we can see that there is a difference between the monistic notions of “The
One” and the highest teaching of the non-dual nature of reality as taught in The
Diamond Sutra.
]
If you do not comprehend
the middle way, but see and hear and think and ponder, fixated on the externals
of doctrine, talking about the conduct of Buddha without applying it in your
own mind, that is called thinking.
Confused people who sit in
meditation frantically trying to get rid of illusion and do not learn kindness,
compassion, joyfulness, equanimity, wisdom, and expedient skills, and so are
like wood or stone, without any function, are called nonthinking.
--Hui-neng28
The above quotation from Hui-neng’s
commentary on The Diamond Sutra
elucidates that text’s profound teaching of non-attachment to forms and
concepts, and points out that to become a buddha is to act as a buddha. Our
problem as students of the Buddha is we do, repeatedly, allow ourselves to get
caught in thinking and non-thinking. We get caught in our notions about reality
and fail to see through and beyond the cage of self that is created though our
identification with the thinking mind. This is not to say, once again, that we
must stop thinking. Hui-neng makes it plain that to do so is to become as
insentient at a block of wood or a stone. The Dhammapada tells us that our work is to discover our work and
then to give ourselves to it with all our heart. It tells us, “So awake, reflect,
watch. Work with care and attention. Live in the way, and the light will grow
in you.”29
When we learn in the Platform
Sutra that Hui-neng was chosen over Shen-hsiu,
many have taken this to mean that the poem of Shen-hsiu was wrong. Yet all
evidence points to the truth that his poem literally states the obvious – that
we do indeed need to practice in order to clear the mind of the hindrances.
Even Hui-neng tells us in his commentary to The Diamond Sutra that while “there are no habit forces or afflictions;
nirvana means complete purity, it is attained only by extinguishing all habit
energies.” Hui-neng’s poem may indeed state the non-obvious truth from the
enlightened perspective, but if we stop there and do not cultivate that wisdom
and vision, we are caught in thinking. If we do not act from the awareness of
buddhahood, than we are caught in nonthinking.
The Diamond Sutra is clear that the bodhisattva is unsparing in his or
her work to liberate all beings. And it is equally clear in reminding us that there
is no self to do the liberating and no others to liberate. “All beings”
includes all the states of mind we “inhabit” or manifest throughout any given
day – throughout any given hour! Our task is to liberate all the beings in our
own mind.
In Living Buddha, Living
Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “When you begin
to practice, you need some tools, just as someone who comes to work on a farm
needs tools to work the soil. When you are given tools there is no use in
having them and not working the soil… Certain ideas and images can be accepted
as tools of spiritual practice. By using them you can acquire some peace,
comfort, stability, and joy. If you continue the practice and make some
progress, more sophisticated images and ideas will be provided. These are tools
to help you explore the soil of your own life. The Buddha described the
practice as citta-bhavana, cultivating
the mind and heart.”30
Thay issues a warning that echoes
that of the Critical Buddhists when he points out that many Buddhists (and
Christians) do not truly practice – or if they do, they practice only in difficult
times or it is a mere superficial practice. He says that many practitioners align
themselves with those in power in order to strengthen the position of their
church or community. “They build up a self instead of letting go of the ideas
of self. This is a very dangerous attitude; it always leads to conflicts and
war. Its nature is intolerance.”31
The Diamond Sutra teaches that the Tathagata cannot be seen through sounds or images. The Tathagata neither comes nor goes. “Great Doubt” in Zen practice involves the constant
questioning of all our beliefs. This includes questioning all our notions about
Buddha, nirvana, emptiness, self, no-self, god etc. Thomas Merton wrote, “Here
we are advancing beyond the stage where God made himself accessible to our mind
in simple and primitive images. Here He becomes present without any
image, beyond any satisfactory mental representation. ”32 There is
no longer any notion we can have that can represent God, just as there is no
longer any notion that can represent suchness or nirvana – both words that
point to a reality beyond the cessation of all notions. But this
need not be posited as a transcendental substratum or dhatu – what are
transcended are the notions that stand between us and reality. But even
saying this is not right, because there never is or could be a “real”
separation.
Prajnaparamita is the wisdom that goes beyond all that keeps us intimately aware of all that is; beyond our ideas about reality and how reality is or should be so that we can be intimately engaged with what and how things really are. It is the direct
realization of what is beyond all representations in the way that a night in
New York City is beyond any and all maps representing it. It is the simply realization that we've no representation for whether the candle flame now is the same or different from the flame of five minutes ago. It offers the warning against taking the map for the land, the finger for the moon to which it points.
The Buddha in The Diamond
Sutra could not be any clearer when he tells
us, through his dialogue with Subhuti, “Those who know that the teaching of the
good law is like a raft abandon it. How much more do they abandon that which is
not the teaching.”33
Notes
1 Steve Hagen, How The World Can Be The Way It
Is (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1995), p.17
2 Thomas
Cleary, The Sutra of Hui Neng Grand Master of Zen (Boston: Shambhala, 1998), p.10
3 ibid., p. 11
4
Stephan Schuhmacher & Gert Woerner, The Encyclopedia of Eastern
Philosophy and Religion (Boston: Shambhala,
1994), p. 148
5 ibid., p. 148
6 Hagen,
op. cit., p. 249
7 Philip
Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch ( NY: Columbia University
Press, 1967), p. 2
8 ibid., p. 4
9 ibid., p. 4
10 ibid.,
pp. 32-33
11 ibid., p. 33
12
Bhikkhu Nanamoli, The Life of the Buddha (Kandy,
Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1992 3rd. edition), p.299
13 David
Brazier, The New Buddhism (NY: Palgrave,
2002), p. 162
14 ibid., p. 177
15
Thomas Byrom, The Dhammapada (Boston:
Shambhala, 1993), p. 24
16
Cleary, op. cit., p. 31
17 ibid., p. 32
18 ibid., p. 61
19 ibid.,
p. 32
20 ibid.,
p. 38
21
Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Mindfulness with Breathing (Boston: Wisdom, 1997 Rev. Edition), p. 85
22 ibid.,
p. 86
23
Hagen, op. cit., p. 251
24 ibid.,
p. 109
25
Cleary, op. cit., p. 49
26 Red
Pine, The Diamond Sutra (NY:
Counterpoint, 2001), p. 82
27 Thich
Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998), p. 130
28
Cleary, op. cit., p. 93
29
Byrom, op. cit., p. 8
30 Thich
Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (NY:
Riverhead, 1995), p. 162
31 ibid.,
p. 169
32 ibid.,
p. 170
33 The
Buddhist Publishing Group, The Diamond Sutra (Leicester, England: Buddhist Publishing Group, 1984), p. 10
Bibliography
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