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The Gateless Barrier, Case 1, Joshu’s Dog

The Gateless Barrier, Case 1, Joshu’s Dog

The case:
A monk asked Joshu “Does a dog have Buddha Nature?”
Joshu said “Mu” [no]

Commentary:

Case 18 in The Book of Serenity has a longer version of this story. In that version, Joshu is asked the same question by two monks. To the first he answers ‘Yes’. To the second, he answers ‘No’.

You can see in this a characteristic way of talking about Emptiness, similar to the apparent negations that appear in the Heart Sutra.

In early buddhism in India, Buddha Nature, the potential to become enlightened, is restricted to human and similar beings. Dogs don’t have it. When buddhism develops in China, there’s a change. All living things have Buddha Nature, and, eventually, all things have Buddha Nature, which is taken to its logical end point in Dogen’s reworking of ‘All things have Buddha Nature’ to ‘All existence is Buddha Nature’. Enlightenment ceases to be a personal quality or possibility, and becomes universal. Every window springs open.

On the one side people, insects, birds and grasses. On the other, the Universal Body of the Buddha. On the one side your karmic consciousness, on the other side Buddha. On the one side form, on the other side emptiness. On the one side the complete exertion of a single thing, on the other the complete dynamic functioning of all things.

And although these two sides are the same, they don’t encounter each other. When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.

So, the dog doesn’t have Buddha Nature.

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Case 47 of The Blue Cliff Record

Case 47 of The Blue Cliff Record is usually rendered as follows:

A monk asked Master Yunmen: What is the Buddha’s Dharma Body? Yunmen replied ” The six (senses) cannot grasp it”

However, it can also be rendered as an exchange between the two, the monk making a statement “The Buddha’s Dharma Body Is What (Suchness)” and Master Yunmen, by implication, affirming the statement.

The temptation is for us to think that the Dharmakaya is ‘real’ and that the world of sensory grasping, the one we immediately recognise, is illusory. And, because we find contradiction and paradox difficult to bear, we imagine that to get the one, we must exclude the other. And because we never can, we suffer.

That is why the most common Buddhist metaphor is space, because it accommodates everything.

If someone asked you “Does the birdsong fill the space, or not?”, you wouldn’t answer yes or no, you would tell them to re-frame their question.

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Kusen

Master Yakusan Is Dying

Master Yakusan Is Dying

The Case:
When Master Yakusan was dying, his monks gathered around him. He said to them “The Dharma Hall is falling down!”, whereupon the monks rushed to the Dharma Hall and held themselves against the pillars and the walls. Master Yakusan said “You don’t understand me”, and died.

Commentary

1. We think there is a pre-existing world which we enter and leave, but that’s not so. Our world is like a picture in water. We think there are two things, but really there is just pictured water. Millions of worlds. Millions of Dharma Halls. Our own, and others. Master Yakusan is dying. The Dharma Hall is falling down. The world is falling down.

2. Master Yakusan was able to die because the monks did understand. They understood that the Dharma Hall was not a thing in a world of other things, but their own complete effort, moment to moment. And because they enacted this with their whole body and mind, there was no separation between them and Yakusan, between his words and their deeds. And so, they did not ‘understand’

3. In the layout of a Chinese Zen monastery, the Buddha Hall, the place of formal teaching, is at the head, and the Dharma Hall is at the heart. The essence of Yakusan’s teaching was not where his head lay, or where his body lay, or where his words lay. Both the monks and Yakusan freely jumped in and out of his heart.

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75. Dependent Origination

Kusen collaboration artwork by Margaret Kerr

The foundation of buddhism is dependent origination. The most frequent metaphor for that is Indra’s Net.

We can’t know, but it seems a reasonable guess that the inspiration came from someone looking up at the night sky; the glistening stars through the clear dark air.

For that person, the image was static. For us, it’s dynamic, because we know that when we look at the sky, we’re looking at time. Many of the stars we appear to be seeing are no longer there. There.

From this dharma position, here, now, the star exists. From another dharma position the star doesn’t exist. From the position of the whole, the star exists and doesn’t exist. Hence, empty.

And not just for the star, obviously.

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Kusen

The Gateless Gate, case 46 Shi- shuang:”Step from the top of the pole”

The case:

The priest Shi-shuang said, “How do you step from the top of a hundred foot pole?”

Another eminent master of former times said:

You who sit on the top of a hundred foot pole,

Although you have entered the Way, it is not yet genuine.

Take a step from the top of the pole

And worlds of the ten directions are your total body

Commentary:

The cornerstone of Buddhism is dependent origination, that all things arise within this full dynamic functioning and are not separate from it, hence “empty”

But if emptiness is seen from the mind, sitting on top of the hundred foot pole of the spine, balanced, serene, it is a sickness. That is why, in elevating emptiness, Mahayana required to equally emphasise compassion.

Our whole life is a struggle between fear and love. It is no use understanding that the approaching army is a chimera if the fortifications still remain.

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Kusen

74. Jinzu

In the Shōbōgenzō chapter, Jinzu, Dogen talks about mystical powers.

At his time, many people thought that through the practice of Zazen, practitioners acquired mystical powers, such as the ability to see into past lives, to change form, and so forth.

The hope of personal enlightenment is a residue of this sort of thinking. But we need to understand that whatever can be grasped makes us a fist.

For Dogen, these mystical powers were the small mystical powers, not the great mystical power.

So what is the great mystical power?

For him, it was chopping firewood and carrying water. In other words, ordinary activity. The great miracle that there is something, not nothing.

Zenki is the great mystical power

Gratitude, love, is the great mystical power

Unclenching the fist of the mind is the great mystical power

The world and the heart leaping out of each other. The Great Mystical Power.

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Kusen

Book of a Serenity, Case 41 (adapted)

Master Luopu about to die.

The Case:

When he was about to die, Luopu addressed the assembly:

“If you say this is true, you are putting another head on top of your own. If you say this is not true, you are looking for life by cutting off your head”

The Head Monk said: ” The East Mountain is always walking. You don’t need a lamp in daylight”

Luopu said: “What time is this for such a speech?”

A senior monk said “Master, please do not ask us”

Luopu said : “That’s not enough. Say more.”

The monk said: “I cannot say it fully”

The Master said: ” I don’t care if you can say it fully or not”

That evening Master Luopu called the same monk to see him and said:

“My late teacher said:

There are no things before the eyes

Just consciousness

The Dharma isn’t before the eyes

Neither eyes or ears can reach it

Which phrase is the essential one? If you can tell me, I’ll transmit to you”

The monk said: “I don’t understand”

Luopu said: ” You should understand”

The monk said: ” I really don’t”

Luopu shouted at him “How miserable! How miserable!” and sent him away.

The next day, another monk asked Luopu

“What is your teaching?”

Luopu said: ” the boat of compassion is not rowed over pure waves. It is wasted effort releasing a wooden goose down a precipitous river”

The Master then died.

Commentary:

(1) If Buddhism is Reality, why do we need to practice? Why do we need to be ‘ Buddhists’? Why did Luopu and his monks need to live a life of monastic rigour? Isn’t this putting a Buddhist mask on our True Face? But if we renounce this life of practice, if we just try to live spontaneously, then we cannot avoid falling into dualism. By trying to stop thought, isn’t this like trying to cut off our own head, sundering ourselves into two?

(2) The first part of the Head Monk’s response is a direct quote from Luopu’s own teaching. But Luopu does not regard it as adequate. He challenges the Head Monk, who is not able to respond. The Head Monk is reflecting Luopu’s own teachings, that we should not rely on words, yet Luopu is challenging him to speak. Why?

(3) The senior monk understands that Luopu’s words are an impossible challenge, but he has to say something. Why doesn’t it matter whether or not he expresses the great matter fully? Who can? Yet, if there is wholehearted expression, whether with words or actions or silence, how is the great matter not expressed?

(4) A wooden goose is a device which captains would send down precipitous gorges of rivers, to see if it would crash onto rocks, or crash into other boats.

But Luopu is saying that compassionate activity is exactly this crashing and smashing of everything with everything, and specifically between the teacher and the student. The students are too tentative, either quoting back the teacher’s own words, or saying that they don’t know. That is why he dismisses them. Their “wrongness” is their anxiety to be right.

Our life isn’t a rehearsal for a drama which never happens.

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The Gateless Gate, case 29 (adapted)

The Sixth Patriarch heard two monks arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind.

One said “It’s the flag which moves”

The other said “It’s the wind which moves”

The Sixth Patriarch said “It’s the mind which moves”

Commentary: The Sixth Patriarch isn’t saying that the mind moves, but the flag and the wind are still. He doesn’t say that the mind shouldn’t move. He doesn’t say that if the mind was still, then everything would be still.

Everything: flag, wind, mind is dependent origination. To imagine that the mind is separate, is “mine” and can and should be quietened is the root of suffering.

Because everything is dependent origination, everything moves and everything is still.

Zazen is the vast space which holds everything.

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Kusen

73. Buddha Nature

One of the principal differences between Theravada and Mahayana is the doctrine of Buddha Nature.

This takes a number of forms–and Dogen has a unique position on it–but generally, it is the idea that we have Buddha Nature as a kind of foundational ground or potentiality.

The doctrine probably derives from the Tathāgata Garbha tradition. Tathāgata is Buddha; Garbha means both embryo and womb.

But who is giving birth to whom?

We might be inclined to see the embryo as our latent Buddha nature, but perhaps it’s the other way around. Perhaps the doctrines, the ritual, the lineage, the traditions; everything, is the womb which enables us to give birth to ourselves.

It is as if Buddhism is a plaster-cast on something broken. When the body is healed, when the body is whole, Buddhism is no longer needed.

When we have crossed the river, do we still require to carry the boat?

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72. Switching

A striking paradox in Mahāyāna is that whilst it is avowedly non-dualistic, it seems full of dualisms.

Saying that Saṃsāra is Nirvana appears to oblige one to explain why they seem different. So for Nāgārjuna there is the absolute and the relative, for Baso there is the phenomenal world and the truth underlying it, and for almost everyone there is the contrast of delusion and enlightenment.

Dogen is different. For him, reality can be approached by switching between perspectives, specifically between the perspective of one dharma dynamically functioning and the whole network of dependent origination functioning.

So Genjo ( manifestation) is the first, Todatsu ( liberation) is the second.

But they can switch.

Being is the first, Time is the second.

But they can switch.

The perspectives swap places.

The particular and the universal swop places.

Jumping in and out of each other.