Tag: Koan and Other Commentary

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.

Mazu’s ‘White and Black’

The case:

A monk asked Great Master Mazu, “Apart from the four propositions and beyond the hundred negations, please directly point out the meaning of living Buddhism”

The Great Master said, “I’m tired out today and can’t explain for you. Go ask Zhizang”

The monk asked Zhizang. Zhizang said, “Why don’t you ask the teacher?”

The monk said, “the teacher told me to ask you”

Zhizang said, “I have a headache today and can’t explain for you. Ask brother Hai”

The monk asked Hai. Hai said, ” Now, at this point, I don’t understand Buddhism”

The monk related this to the Great Master. Mazu said, Zang’s head is white, Hai’s head is black”

Commentary:

The four propositions derive from Nagarjuna and are:

It exists

It does not exist

It both exists and does not exist

It neither exists nor not exists

These propositions, which appear to exhaust the possibilities of expressing the nature of reality, or living Buddhism, in words, are said by Nagarjuna to be incapable of describing things as they are.

So the monk’s enquiry appears to rule out an answer in language, and of course, he doesn’t ask for this, he asks only for Mazu (Baso) to “directly point out”. If he misunderstands the answers, do the Masters misunderstand his enquiry? Or is something else going on?

If it were Rinzai or his descendants, one might picture a shout or a blow, but Baso simply describes his actual state. Does he answer the request or not? Does his tiredness make any difference, or not?

Does he answer the request in his second response?

‘White’ suggests differentiation and ‘Black’ suggests non differentiation. Hai is ‘unable’ to ‘understand’ the reality of which he is a part, because he is not separate from it. Both black and white have their place and function within dependent origination.

“The Buddha’s True Dharma Body

Is just like space

Manifesting its form according to circumstances

It is like the moon in water”

(poem from Tsuki)

‘Space’ [koku] was two connotations.

The ‘ku’ in ‘koku’ is the ku [emptiness] of the Heart Sutra: ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’

So, the suggestion is that the monk is ’empty’. Emptiness is not something separate from Existence.

The second connotation is that ‘space’ is a metaphor for Buddha Nature. Everywhere is the one ‘space’; there is no separation. We normally think that if something comes into existence and occupies a ‘space’, the ‘space’ disappears. However, buddhism says that the ‘something’ manifests both itself and the space it occupies. In other words, if there are no beings, there is no space. If there are no beings, then buddha nature does not appear.

The Case: Master Ma ( Baso) was unwell. The monastery superintendent asked

“Master, how is your venerable state these days?”

The Great Teacher said “Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha”

This exchange happened very near the end of Baso’s life. He was aware that he would die soon, and had already foretold his death.

The Buddha Name Sutra lists 1,193 names of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Among them are Sun Face Buddha, who is said to live for 1,800 years, and Moon Face Buddha, who lives only for one day and one night.

In one sense, Baso was talking of the inter fusion of Buddha nature and Karmic nature. Although in his dharma position Baso was aware that death was close, he – and each thing – was also the entirety of dependent origination. So, not- dying, even although he was dying.

But his phrase also says something about two aspects of nonduality we experience in our practice, and so our life.

The first aspect – the Sun Face – is clear and bright, like sunlight. Sometimes, it is as if the world (including the self) is illuminated. Sometimes it is as if the self ( including the world) is illuminated. So one side (world/self) is illuminated, the other is dark, and this switches around.

When self is illuminated, exertion is illuminated. When world is illuminated, experience is illuminated.

In contrast, Moon Face Buddha doesn’t have this switching aspect, and is much more feeling. The moon manifests in reflection; in the water, in the eye, in the mind, it throws its light onto the myriad things like a white sheet. Here, what is prevalent is intimacy, non separation, devotional love.

Sun Face Buddha is the eye of practice

Moon Face Buddha is the heart of practice

Book Of Serenity, Case 4

The Case: As the Buddha was walking with his monks, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said “This place is a good place to build a temple”. Indra, Emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said “The temple is built”.The Buddha smiled.

“This place” is not a location, “This place” is thusness, the place of practice. “The ground” is the same ground that Buddha touched during his enlightenment. “Temple” is not a structure, it is this place. Because practice and realisation are not separate, in this place there is always a temple.

We are each a blade of grass within all existence. We are taken out of the ground of being and through practice we are restored to the ground.

Each time we practice, we burn a stick of incense. A stump of incense, no longer than a small stalk of grass, remains in the bowl. Over time, many stumps, hundreds of grasses. When we are on sesshin, the stumps are gathered from the bowl and thrown upwards, into the empty open air. Hundreds of temples are falling.

Koan Commentaries

When Master Kyozan Ejaku was master of Tohei Temple, Master Isan Reiyu sent him a letter along with a mirror.

The package arrived at the temple and Master Kyozan took it with him to the Lecture Hall, held up the mirror and said to his assembly: Students, Master Isan sent this mirror and it has arrived here. Now I would like you to discuss this for a while. Is this mirror Isan’s or is it Tohei’s? If you say this mirror is now Tohei’s, I will say it is a present from Isan. If you say it was sent from Isan, I will say it is now in the Master of Tohei’s hand. If you can show me the truth I will keep the mirror, if you cannot show me anything I will smash the mirror at once.

He repeated this three times. None of the assembly could answer so the Master smashed the mirror into pieces.