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The Book of Serenity, Case 4 (adapted)

The case:

The Buddha was walking with his sangha. He pointed to the ground and said, ‘This is where the temple should be built’. The God Indra took a stalk of grass and replanted it in the ground, saying, ‘There, the temple is built.’

It is clear from the story that the stalk of grass is the practitioner, but what is the ground, and why is it not a person but a divinity who places the stalk of grass there?

We re-enact this story when we place a stalk of incense in the incense bowl: the burning stick is each of us in this Dharma position. This incense stick, held by the ash so it will not fall.

Isn’t the ash all beings? Isn’t the ground all beings?

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Book of Serenity, Case 63

Book of Serenity, Case 63

The case:

Joshu asked master Touzi: “When someone who has undergone the great death returns to life, how is it?”

Master Touzi said, “He can’t go by night, he should arrive in daylight.”

Commentary:

Enlightenment is often referred to as the great death, particularly in Rinzai. Practitioners in that tradition are encouraged to have dramatic and extreme experiences. Likewise, ‘night’ or ‘darkness’ is often used in Koan stories as a way of talking about non-duality. In the dark we can’t see individual things, so everything is whole; likewise in the non-dual state, although the metaphor is not exact: in the non dual state, this and that don’t disappear into an ambient mush, yet things cease to exist in the familiar way. So Joshu’s question is: how does the person who has experienced non duality function in the world?

The tone of ‘great death’ and ‘night’ however is different. In Joshu’s question, there is the seed of our self sickness. The assumption that practice is to get something, some special experience. Master Touzi’s answer is less dramatic, more realistic: night and day balance each other, duality and non duality are in a dance of forward and backward.

We call it the great death because the experience does not belong to the self.

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Book of Serenity, Case 98

Book of Serenity, Case 98

The case:

A monk asked Dongshan “Among the three Buddha Bodies, which one does not fall into any category?”

Dongshan said, “I am always intimate with this.”

Commentary:

In Mahayana Buddhism, the three bodies of the Buddha are the dharmakaya, which is identified with all existence, the sambhokaya, which is identified with practice and the fruits of practice, and the nirmanakaya, which is the body of the historical Buddha. It is quite conceptual, and the monk’s question seems be be enquiring into the relationship between the conceptual (“category”) and the ineffable.

What should be make of Dongshan’s reply? What is the ‘this’ that he is always intimate with?

Frequently in Chinese Buddhism, words like ‘this’ or ‘what’ or ‘that’ refer to ineffable reality, reality before thinking. So we might imagine Dongshan’s response means something like ‘unlike you, with your conceptual question, I am always intimate with the ineffable’. But I don’t think that is what he means. Dongshan is making a point about practice. So, when we sit, often we imagine that thinking is bad; but that feeling sensing, being-ness is good. The ineffable is good. But somehow we can’t stop thinking. We could say that Dongshan’s intimacy is with both the conceptual, exemplified here by the schema the monk is putting forth, and also ineffable reality. And that the conceptual and the ineffable are intimate with each other.

This is a very important point about practice. The head is not suspended in mid-air, and practice is not nullified by the natural movements of the karmic mind. But, as it were, we see the smoke of our thoughts through the flames of our being.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 24

The Gateless Gate, Case 24

The case: A monk asked Feng- hsueh, “Speech and silence are concerned with equality and differentiation, how can I transcend equality and differentiation?”

Feng- hsueh replied, “I always think of Chiang-nan in March, Partridges chirping among the many fragrant flowers.”

Commentary:

In this koan story, the monk is asking a clear question about Buddhist Doctrine. The master replies with what appears to be a complete non-sequitur, quoting a poem, which isn’t even his own poem. So one might imagine that the monk is asking an intellectual question and the master is trying to defeat it. But perhaps we are better seeing the monk’s question as exemplifying him having a particular, heroic idea of practice. Smashing through barriers. The master is balancing – not correcting- that understanding by simply expressing his present feeling state.

If as practitioners our attention is always on progress, like a fly trying to find where there is no glass, we pay no attention to the ground, the ground of our feeling being. Which is not heroic, but real. Not somewhere in the future, but now.

The thinking mind freezes all things, and itself. Everything can be seen yet nothing can be felt. Our practice is a kind of thawing out, a softening, despite ourself.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 41

The Gateless Gate, Case 41.

The Case: Eko approached Bodhidharma and said, ‘My mind is not at peace, please pacify it.’

Bodhidharma said ‘bring me your mind and I will pacify it.’

After a while Eko said, ‘I’ve looked everywhere for my mind and I can’t find it.’

Bodhidharma said, ‘There, I have pacified it.’

Commentary: People, looking at us, might imagine that we are trying to remove something, like a person, inside a house, might want to clear the dirt from the window to enable him to see the world clearly. But there isn’t a person, and there isn’t a house either. The self is the dust cloud, innocently wishing the window clear; the wound, thinking some more picking will heal it.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 7

The Gateless Gate, Case 7.

The case: A monk said to Joshu, “I’ve just arrived at the monastery, please teach me”.

Joshu said, “Have you eaten your rice?” The monk said, “yes I have.” Joshu said, “Then wash your bowl.”

Commentary: In the Chinese monasteries the monks would eat a kind of rice gruel, vegetables would be cut very small and the gruel – the rice and vegetables – would be cooked and cooked until everything interpenetrated each other. So, the gruel was a symbol for dependent origination, the whole cosmos.

And before the monks could eat, they would chant, and that chant would express gratitude for the rice and an acknowledgement of where the food came from; an acknowledgement that the whole universe was feeding them. So the gruel was also the reality of dependent origination.

Likewise, in the bowl of this bodymind, our experience, all of it, is like this rice gruel. Our experience now, all of it, is given to us by this entire universe. If we reject it, it will putrefy. If we cling to it, it will never be digested. To wish it different is a wrong view, because it is an expression of the whole universe, this miracle of something rather than nothing.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 30

The Gateless Gate, Case 30.

The Case: A monk asked Baso, “What is Buddha?”

Baso said, “This very mind is Buddha”

Commentary: Baso’s ‘Mind is Buddha’ has been persistently misunderstood. People might think there is a special state of mind free from delusion, or a mind realm of Buddha, or that mind is true reality, or similar, but they are mistaken.

Baso said “This very mind”. That is: your mind now, your experience now, but unconstellated by the self, not stained by attachment or aversion. When we sit, we wobble between self and buddha.

The crucial issue is not what is true and what is false, but how we live.

Picture vigorous fish in the ocean: they might want to see the water clearly but they can’t: their activity blurs and distorts it. But this same activity is the ocean’s life. It is nowhere else.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 37

The Gateless Gate, Case 37

The Case: A monk asked Joshu: “Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?”

Joshu said “The cypress tree in the courtyard”

Commentary: The standard interpretation of this koan is that the questioner was caught by language. He thought the tree was an objective thing. He couldn’t see the being- ness of the tree, and so he couldn’t see the dynamic being- ness of everything.

But there is something else hidden in there. In our usual way of thinking, Bodhidharma travelled from India to China. The tree didn’t move at all. Likewise, we may act as if we are the subject and the world is the object; we are active and ‘things’ are passive.

If we look at a clutch of trees, we can often see the oldest tree, then, a little distance away, another tree, derived from the first, and so on. The tree is walking through time. We don’t see it, the tree doesn’t see it, but it’s there.

The path is walking and we are walking. Everything is expressing and exerting itself, together.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 1

The Gateless Gate, Case 1.

The case: A monk asked Joshu “Does a dog have Buddha nature?”

Joshu said “Mu” (no).

Commentary: There is an assumption buried within the question, which isn’t immediately obvious. But consider: why didn’t the monk ask ” Does Buddha nature have the dog?” ” Does Buddha nature have you?”, “Is Buddha nature all of creation?” or similar?

He did not because he assumed that the aim of spiritual life is the enhancement and enlightenment of the self, the steady or sudden uncovering of a jewel within us.

This colossal mistake is endemic. We need to understand that the aim of practice isn’t the liberation of the self from the world, but the liberation of the world – all of it – from the self. Enlightenment is universal, not personal.

We are like snow falling.

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The Gateless Gate, Case 5

The Gateless Gate, Case 5.

The case: Hsiang- yen said: “It is just as though you were up a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can’t touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?” If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?”

Commentary: How many are in this story: two, one, or many?

Sometimes, when we sit, we feel completely concentrated and unified. Like the man holding onto the branch with his teeth, our complete effort in this moment occupies the whole space.

Then, it is as if, from within our experience someone, someone just like us, asks a question, makes a statement, or something similar. It is as if we are suddenly divided. Do we ignore it? Do we engage with it? Either way, we appear to fall into duality.

We need to understand that just as the man holding onto the branch is making a complete effort, just as the branch and the tree are making a complete effort, so the questioner is making a complete effort, entirely expressing his nature. We imagine a response is called for, but we are mistaken.

Likewise with delusion.