Category: Kusen

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Master instructed the assembly saying, “ I do not enjoy hearing the word ‘Buddha’

A monk asked, “Do you help people, or not?”

The Master said, “ I help people”

The monk said, “ How do you help people?”

The Master said, “Not aware of the deep principle, futilely labouring to calm the mind”

The monk said, “ You said it was deep, but what is the principle?”

The Master said, “ I don’t hold on to a basis”

The monk said, “ That is deep, what is the principle?”

The master said, “ The principle is answering you”

Commentary

Joshu’s “Not aware..” is a direct quote from the Verses of Faith Mind.

This Faith Mind includes your karmic mind, but is much deeper. A frequent analogy is with the ocean. At the surface, the ocean may be calm or agitated, but it is of infinite depth, and so we shouldn’t be too concerned about these surface fluctuations, even although the waves can only see themselves.

The monk’s response seems to indicate that he is looking for a conceptual answer, as if we are some way off the ground, and can only touch it through a scaffolding of ideas. And that scaffolding can be ‘buddha’ or ‘dependent origination’, or whatever. But we aren’t castles in the air, we’re human beings.

Okumura roshi says [pointing to the head] that we are five or six feet off the ground, and it’s true. But the Body of faith grounds us.