Tag: Koan and Other Commentary

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The Case

When Master Baso and Hyakujo were out walking, a flock of ducks flew overhead. Baso said “where have the ducks gone?”. Hyakujo replied “they have flown away”. Baso grabbed Hyakujo’s nose and twisted it, causing him to cry out in pain.

Commentary:

In what way was Hyakujo’s answer deficient, if it was? Well, we could say that his answer was conceptual. It didn’t describe his immediate, momentary experience because it imposed space and time onto it. In a similar vein, we can say it was dualistic. The ducks had only flown away from his perspective. From the perspective of the ducks, Hyakujo had flown away. From the perspective of the sky, neither had.

There is, arguably, a deeper dualism there, which can often be missed: the dualism of container/contained. We are familiar with the dualisms of mind/body and self/world, but this is more insidious. In his answer, the Sky is the container and the birds are the contained, but it works more generally. We can equally say that in his reply Time is the container and the flying birds are the contained. Dogen identifies it in the Genjokoan, when he talks about Spring. And in our own lives, we imagine that there is a container called My Life, within which all the events of this life occur.

The problem with all dualisms is they leave a gap, through which our vitality gradually seeps away.

For further information and references on this kusen, please click this link.

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The Case

One day in master Nansen’s temple two group of monks were arguing over a cat. Nansen came across them, grabbed the cat and said, ‘if you can say one true word about the cat I won’t kill it.’ The monks were silent and Nansen cut the cat in two.

This koan story also appears as case 14 in ‘The Gateless Gate,’ which was compiled about 100 years after ‘The Blue Cliff’ record and which has a coda. In that coda, Master Joshu, who is Nansen’s successor, has been away whilst this incident happened. Master Nansen relates the incident to him and Nansen says, ‘what would you have said?’  Joshu without saying anything, takes off his sandals, puts them on his head and walks out. Nansen approvingly says, ‘if you had been there the cat would have been saved.’

Dogen comments extensively on this Koan in the ‘Zuimonki,’ where he imagines himself in the position of Nansen and the position of the monks.

 In the position of Nansen, he would actually sharpen the monk’s dilemma by saying to them, ‘whether or not you can say a true word, I will cut the cat.’ But then the teaching purpose having been served, he would simply let the cat go.

From the position of the monks he would have challenged Nansen by saying ‘you can cut the cat in two but why don’t you cut the cat in one?’ From this brilliant proposition we can see why Dogen says that Nansen cuts the cat in two with the sword.The other stories refer to a knife or don’t say how the cat was cut. However, so far as a sword is concerned, the only ‘person’ in the monastery likely to have a sword is Manjushri ( The Bodhisattva of wisdom) whose statue we usually find on the altar.

Manjushri is wielding the sword which cuts delusion. From Dogen’s perspective the cutting of delusion is the restoration of wholeness. Manjushri is mounted on a lion, a very big cat.

Manjushri is the Bodhisattva of wisdom, but ‘wisdom’ is something of a misnomer because what is translated as wisdom is – prajna – pre-knowing which is equivalent to -hishiro – before thinking or beyond thinking that we were talking of previously. The point Dogen is making is that by making the cat an object, both the monks and arguably Nansen have already cut the cat in two; because they have created the cat as an object of thought and discrimination in the world, and the restoration of the wholeness of prajna is what cuts the world and the cat into one.

The case:

When Layman Pang was taking his leave of Yaoshan monastery, the Abbot ordered ten of his senior monks to accompany him to the temple gate as a gesture of respect.

As the party was walking towards the temple gate, snow started to fall. Layman Pang looked up and said, ‘this snow is wonderful, it falls only here’ The senior monk asked, ‘where does it fall?’ Layman Pang said to him, ‘even though you are a zen monk, the King of Death won’t let you go’

Commentary:

Who or what, in this context, is the King of Death? 

The error the monk made was thinking that Layman Pang’s expression of wonder, astonishment and gratitude at the immediacy and beauty of the falling snow was a zen language game and so responding accordingly.

It’s a fundamental misunderstanding, and one that is replicated in many of the ways in which we talk about Buddhism generally and the koan stories in particular. We think of it as a kind of code that we need to crack, a text we need to interpret, but when we see in this way, the King of Death is standing so close to us that we can see nothing else. Nor him, other than as a kind of falling.

The Book of Serenity Case 36.

The case:

Master Ma (Baso) was unwell. His attendant asked “Master, how are you?”. Ma replied “sun face Buddha, moon face Buddha”

Commentary:

By the time of this exchange, Baso had foretold his own death, and would die shortly afterwards. Sun face Buddha had a lifespan of 1,800 years. Moon face Buddha lived just a single day and night. So, at one level Baso is talking about the dual aspect of our life: the particular and karmic, and the Universal. The same theme appears in Uchiyama’s poem (adapted):

Though poor, never poor
Though sick, never sick
Though aging, never aging
Though dying, never dying
Reality before separation:
Endless depth

but on another level, he is talking about our experience as human beings prior to that separation. In the sunlight, the vast alive body of the world is illuminated yet the light is, in a sense, invisible. In the moonlight, by contrast, everything is absorbed by the moonlight, becoming a part of it, tranquil and beautiful.

Dogen’s Dharma Hall Discourse 463 [adapted]

Dropping off body and mind; dropping off this skin, flesh, bones and marrow; dropping off this vivid waterfall of experience: How can this be you? How can this be other?

Breaking into a smile, nothing has ever been separated.

(after a pause)

In other days, we have mapped out this entire miraculous world, but this day, we are as innocent as children singing

A monk asked Master Jisai – “How is the moon when not yet round?”

The master said, “swallowing three or four moons”

The monk said, “And when the moon is round?”

The master said, “vomiting seven or eight moons”.

In this story the moon is a symbol of enlightenment, so the monk’s question really is: what is the person like before and after enlightenment?

The Master’s answer seems to be that before enlightenment the person is primarily conceptual. So, the various concrete moons the person experiences – the harvest moon, the waxing moon, the present moon and so on – all arise within [swallowed] the concept of ‘moon’, whereas for the enlightened person, the actual limitless manifestations of moon are – as it were- liberated [vomited] from the concept of moon.

This interpretation isn’t wrong but it can lead to a terrible literal Zen, where there is an unbalanced emphasis is on concrete reality and a lot of banal and formulaic talk about the Here and Now. And in this block of concrete Zen, delusion is considered as the other: thoughts, dreams, imaginings, visions and so on.

In his commentary on this koan, Dogen says that the whole world is expressed in the act of swallowing and the whole world is expressed in the act of vomiting. We should swallow the self and the whole world. We should vomit the self and the whole world

Or, to put it slightly differently – there is a dynamic folding and re-folding between wholeness-ising everything [swallowing], and releasing everything in its own vivid expression-ing [vomiting]

Which is our practice.