SECTARIANISM AND THE KOAN
. . . in which the Ch'an movement diversifies into a variety of
schools, each beholden to a master or masters advocating an
individualized path to enlightenment. From this period of personality
and experimentation gradually emerge two main Ch'an paths, the Lin-chi
and the Ts'ao-tung (later called Rinzai and Soto in Japan). The Lin-chi
school concludes that enlightenment can be precipitated in a prepared
novice through shouts, jolts, and mental paradoxes. The Ts'ao-tung
relies more heavily on the traditional practice of meditation to
gradually release enlightenment. The faith grows in numbers, but
quality declines. To maintain Ch'an's intellectual vigor, there emerges
a new technique, called the koan, which uses episodes from Ch'an's
Golden Age to challenge novices' mental complacency. This invention
becomes the hallmark of the later Lin-chi sect, and through the
refinement of the koan technique Ch'an enjoys a renaissance of
creativity in China.
Chapter Eleven
LIN-CHI:
FOUNDER OF RINZAI ZEN
The Great Persecution of 845 brought to a close the creative Golden Age
of Ch'an, while also leaving Ch'an as the dominant form of Chinese
Buddhism. In the absence of an establishment Buddhism for Ch'an to
distinguish itself against, the sect proceeded to evolve its own
internal sectarianism. There arose what are today known as the "five
houses," regional versions of Ch'an that differed in minor but
significant ways.1 Yet there was no animosity among the schools, merely
a friendly rivalry. In fact, the teachers themselves referred back to
the prophecy attributed to Bodhidharma that the flower of _dhyana_
Buddhism would one day have five petals.
The masters who founded the five schools were all individualists of
idiosyncratic character. Yet the times were such that for the most part
their flowers bloomed gloriously only a few decades before slowly
fading. However, two of the sects did prosper and eventually went on to
take over the garden. These two houses, the Lin-chi and the Ts'ao-tung,
both were concerned with dialectics and became the forerunners of the
two Zen sects (Rinzai and Soto) eventually to flourish in Japan. Of the
two, the Lin-chi is most directly traceable back to the earlier
masters, since its founder actually studied under the master Huang-po.
The master known today as Lin-chi (d. 866?) was born in the prefecture
of Nan-hua, in what today is Shantung province.2 He reportedly was
brilliant, well behaved, and filled with the filial devotion expected
of good Chinese boys. Drawn early to Buddhism, although not necessarily
to Ch'an, he shaved his head and became a monk while still young. His
early studies were of the sutras, as well as the _vinaya_ or Buddhist
rules and the _sastra_ or commentaries. But in his early twenties he
decided that he was
more interested in intuitive wisdom than orthodoxy and consequently
took the road in search of a master.
Thus he arrived at the monastery of Huang-po already a fully ordained
monk. But his learning was traditional and his personality that of a
timorous fledgling monk. For three years he dutifully attended the
master's sermons and practiced all the observances of the mountain
community, but his advancement was minimal. Finally the head disciple
suggested that he visit Huang-po for an interview to try to gain
insight. The young man obligingly went in to see the master and asked
him the standard opener: "What is the real meaning of Bodhidharma's
coming from the West?" Huang-po's wordless response was to lay him low
with a blow of his stick.
Lin-chi scurried away in perplexity and related the story to the head
disciple, who encouraged him to return, which he did twice more. But
each time he received the same harsh reception. He was finally so
demoralized that he announced plans to leave the monastery and seek
enlightenment elsewhere. The head monk related this to Huang-po
together with the opinion that this young novice showed significant
promise. So when Lin-chi came to bid Huang-po farewell, the master
sympathetically directed him to the monastery of a kindly nearby
teacher, the master Ta-yu.
Perhaps it was all planned, but when Lin-chi arrived at the second
monastery and related his unhappy treatment at the hands of Huang-po
the master Ta-yu listened patiently and then declared, "Huang-po
treated you with great compassion. He merely wanted to relieve your
distress." Upon hearing this Lin-chi suddenly understood that Huang-po
was transmitting the wordless insight to him, the understanding that
Ch'an lies not in the words produced in the abbot's room but rather in
the realization of his intuitive mind. It suddenly was all so obvious
that the young monk could not contain his joy and declared, "So Huang-
po's Buddhism is actually very simple; there's nothing to it after
all!" This struck the master Ta-yu as either impertinent or a
significant breakthrough, so he grabbed Lin-chi and yelled, "You scamp!
A minute ago you complained that Huang-po's teaching was impossible to
understand and now you say there is nothing to it. What is it you just
realized? Speak quickly!" (Only in a spontaneous utterance is there
real, uncalculated evidence of enlightenment.)
Lin-chi's answer was to pummel Ta-yu in the ribs three times with his
fist. The older master then discharged him (or perhaps kicked him out)
with the observation, "Your teacher is Huang-po, and therefore you do
not concern me." Thus the enlightened young novice trudged back up the
mountain to Huang-po's monastery. The master greeted him with the
puzzled observation: "Haven't you come back a bit too soon? You only
just left." In response Lin-chi bowed and said, "It's because you've
been so kind to me that I came back so quickly," and he proceeded to
relate the story of his sudden enlightenment. To which Huang-po
declared, "What a big mouth that old man has. The next time I see him
I'll give him a taste of my staff." To this Lin-chi yelled, "Why wait!
I can give it to you now," and proceeded to slap the master's face. The
startled Huang-po declared, "This crazy monk is plucking the tiger's
whiskers." Whereupon Lin-chi emitted the first of what was to be a
lifetime of shouts, affirming his wordless insight. The satisfied
Huang-po called an attendant and said, "Take this crazy fellow to the
assembly hall."
This is a perfect example of "sudden" enlightenment that took many
years to achieve. Lin-chi had been a plodding, earnest young man until
the moment of his "sudden" enlightenment, which occurred over a
seemingly uncalculated remark by a teacher not even his own master. In
fact, all Huang-po had done was to assail him with a staff. But Lin-chi
was transformed suddenly from a milksop to the founder of a school,
probably the greatest radicalization since the Apostle Paul was struck
down on the road to Damascus.3 Still, Lin-chi's "sudden" enlightenment
had come about at the end of a highly disciplined period of
preparation. As he later described it:
_In bygone days I devoted myself to the _vinaya_ and also delved into
the _sutras _and _sastras_. Later, when I realized that they were
medicines for salvation and displays of doctrines in written words, I
once and for all threw them away, and searching for the Way, I
practiced meditation. Still later I met great teachers. Then it was,
with my Dharma Eye becoming clear, that I could discern all the old
teachers under Heaven and tell the false ones from the true. It is not
that I understood from the moment I was born of my mother, but that,
after exhaustive investigation and grinding discipline, in an instant I
knew of myself.4
_
Like a reformed addict, he railed most against his own recent
practices. He proceeded to denounce all the trappings of Buddhism, even
the Ch'an Patriarchs themselves, as he shattered the chains of his
former beliefs:
_Followers of the Way, if you want insight into Dharma as is, just
don't be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you
encounter, either within or without, slay it at once: on meeting a
buddha slay the buddha, on meeting a patriarch slay the patriarch, on
meeting an arhat slay the arhat, on meeting your parents slay your
parents, on meeting your kinsman slay your kinsman, and you attain
emancipation. By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through.5
_
After his enlightenment, he had many exchanges with Huang-po in which
he came off ahead as often as not. It is also interesting that many of
the interactions involved the manual labor of the monastery, an
indication of the significance of work in Ch'an life. One famous joust
between Lin-chi and Huang-po went as follows:
_One day Master Lin-chi went with Huang-po to do some work in which all
the monks participated. Lin-chi followed his master who, turning his
head, noticed that Lin-chi was carrying nothing in his hand.
"Where is your hoe?"
"Somebody took it away."
"Come here: let us discuss something," commanded Huang-po and as Lin-
chi drew nearer, he thrust his hoe into the ground and continued,
"There is no one in the world who can pick up my hoe."
However, Lin-chi seized the tool, lifted it up, and exclaimed, "How
then could it be in my hands?"
"Today we have another hand with us; it is not necessary for me to join
in."
And Huang-po returned to the temple.6
_ This story can be interpreted many ways. John Wu says,
"Obviously he was using the hoe as a pointer to the great function of
teaching and transmitting the lamp of Ch'an. . . . [This was] a
symbolic way of saying that in a mysterious manner the charge was now
in his hands."7 However, as Freud once remarked concerning the
celebrated phallic symbolism of his stogie, "Sometimes, madam, it's
just a cigar," and one suspects that in this little slapstick episode,
the hoe might possibly be just a hoe.
Another exchange between Huang-po and Lin-chi may have more dialectical
significance. According to the story:
_One day Huang-po ordered all the monks of the temple to work in the
tea garden. He himself was the last to arrive. Lin-chi greeted him, but
stood there with his hands resting on the hoe.
"Are you tired?" asked Huang-po
"I just started working; how can you say that I am tired?"
Huang-po immediately lifted his stick and struck Lin-chi, who then
seized the stick, and with a push, made his master fall to the ground.
Huang-po called the supervisor to help him up. After doing so, the
supervisor asked, "Master, how can you let such a madman insult you
like that?" Huang-po picked up the stick and struck the supervisor.
Lin-chi, digging the ground by himself, made this remark: "Let all
other places use cremation; here I will bury you alive._"8_
_
Of Lin-chi's final quip, which tends to take the edge off a really
first-rate absurdist anecdote, John Wu makes the following observation,
"This was a tremendous utterance, the first authentic roaring, as it
were, of a young lion. It was tantamount to declaring that his old
conventional self was now dead and buried, with only the True Self
living in him; that this death may and should take place long before
one's physical decease; that it is when this death has taken place that
one becomes one's True Self which, being unborn, cannot die. From that
time on, there could no longer be any doubt in Huang-po's mind that his
disciple was thoroughly enlightened, destined to carry on and brighten
the torch of Ch'an."9 Whether this is true or not, it does seem clear
that Lin-chi's pronounced personality appealed to old Huang-po, who
loved to match wits with him as he came and went around the monastery.
He even allowed the young master liberties he denied others. For
example, Lin-chi once showed up during the middle of a summer
meditation retreat, something strictly forbidden. He then decided to
leave before it was over, something equally unprecedented:
_One day after half the summer session had already passed, Lin-chi went
up the mountain to visit his master Huang-po whom he found reading a
sutra. Lin-chi said to him:
"I thought you were the perfect man, but here you are apparently a dull
old monk, swallowing black beans [Chinese characters]."
Lin-chi stayed only a few days and then bid farewell to Huang-po, who
said:
"You came here after the summer session had started, and now you are
leaving before the summer session is over."
"I came here simply to visit you, Master!"
Without ado, Huang-po struck him and chased him away. After having
walked a few li, Lin-chi began to doubt his enlightenment in Ch'an, so
he returned to Huang-po for the rest of the summer.10
_
Some time after Lin-chi received the seal of enlightenment from Huang-
po, he decided to go his own way and departed for the province of
Hopei, where he became the priest of a small temple on the banks of a
river. This little temple was called "Overlooking the Ford," or _lin-
chi_ in Chinese, and it was from this locale that he took his name.
After he was there for a time, however, some local fighting broke out,
forcing him to abandon his pastoral riverbank location. (This
disturbance may well have been connected with the disruptions of the
845 persecution of Buddhism.) But even when in the middle of a war he
seems to have always been a man of Ch'an. There is an episode that
strongly resembles the eighteenth-century essayist Dr. Samuel Johnson's
kicking a stone to refute Berkeley's proposition that matter is
nonexistent:
_One day the Master entered an army camp to attend a feast. At the gate
he saw a staff officer. Pointing to an open-air pillar, he asked: "Is
this secular or sacred?"
The officer had no reply.
Striking the pillar, the Master said: "Even if you could speak, this is
still only a wooden post." Then he went in.11
_
Fortunately, Ch'an was not a sect that required a lot of paraphernalia,
and Lin-chi merely moved into the nearby town, where the grand marshal
donated his house for a temple. He even hung up a plaque with the name
"Lin-chi," just to make the master feel at home. But things may have
heated up too much, for Lin-chi later traveled south to the prefecture
of Ho, where the governor, Counselor Wang, honored him as a master.
There is a telling conversation between the two that reveals much about
the teaching of Ch'an at the time. Apparently the Ch'anists had
completely abandoned even any pretense of traditional Buddhism--again a
fortuitous development, considering traditional Buddhism's imminent
destruction.
_One day the Counselor Wang visited the Master. When he met the Master
in front of the Monks' Hall, he asked: "Do the monks of this monastery
read the sutras?"
"No, they don't read sutras," said the Master.
"Then do they learn meditation?" asked the Counselor.
"No, they don't learn meditation," answered the Master.
"If they neither read sutras nor learn meditation, what in the world
are they doing?" asked the Counselor.
"All I do is make them become buddhas and patriarchs," said the
Master.12
_
Lin-chi eventually traveled on, finally settling at the Hsing-hua
temple in Taming prefecture, where he took up his final residence. It
was here that a record of his sermons was transcribed by a "humble
heir" named Ts'un-chiang. The result was _The Record of Lin-chi_, one
of the purest exercises in the dialectics of the nondialectical
understanding. But, as Heinrich Dumoulin observed, "Zen has never
existed in pure experience only, without admixture of theoretical
teachings or methodical practice, as it has sometimes been idealized.
It could not exist in that fashion, for mysticism, like all other human
experience, is dependent on the actual conditions of human life."13
Indeed, Lin-chi was one of the first to develop what might be called a
dialectic of irrationality. He loved categories and analysis in the
service of nonconceptual inquiry, and what he created were guides to
the uncharted seas of the intuitive mind.
Lin-chi is best known for his use of the shout. He shared the concern
of Huang-po and Ma-tsu with the problem of wordless transmission and to
their repertory of beatings and silences he added the yell, another way
to affirm insights that cannot be reasoned. We may speculate that the
shout was rather like a watered-down version of the beating, requiring
less effort but still able to startle at a critical instant.14 He seems
to have been particularly fond of classifying things into groups of
four, and one of his most famous classifications was of the shout
itself. He once demonstrated the shout to a hapless monk as follows:
_The Master asked a monk: "Sometimes a shout is like the jeweled sword
of a spirit King [i.e., extremely hard and durable]; sometimes a shout
is like the golden-haired lion crouching on the ground [i.e., strong,
taut, and powerful]; sometimes a shout is like a weed-tipped fishing
pole [i.e., probing and attracting the unwary]; and sometimes a shout
doesn't function as a shout. How do you understand this?"
As the monk fumbled for an answer, Lin-chi gave a shout.15
_
His philosophy of the shout as a device for cutting off sequential
reasoning was thus demonstrated by example. But the question those who
relate this story never resolve is: Which of the four shouts was the
shout he used on the student? [John Wu in _The Golden Age of Zen
_speculates that this shout was of the first category, since it was
meant to "cut off" the monk's sequential thought, but that seems a
rather simplistic mixing of the metaphorical with the concrete.16)
Lin-chi also was not averse to the use of the stick in the
pursuit of reality, as the following example illustrates. The story
also shows that the use of the stick was meaningful only if it was
unexpected.
_Once the Master addressed the assembly.
"Listen, all of you! He who wants to learn Dharma must never worry
about the loss of his own life. When I was with Master Huang-po I asked
three times for the real meaning of Buddhism, and three times I was
struck as if tall reeds whipped me in the wind. I want those blows
again, but who can give them to me now?"
A monk came forth from the crowd, answering: "I can give them to you!"
Master Lin-chi picked up a stick and handed it to him. When the monk
tried to grab it, the Master struck him instead.17
_
There also is a story indicating that Lin-chi believed that when the
shout failed to work, the stick might be required.
_The Master took the high seat in the Hall. A monk asked, "What about
the cardinal principle of the Buddha-dharma?"
The Master raised his whisk.
The monk shouted. The Master struck him.
Another monk asked: "What about the cardinal principle of the Buddha-
dharma?"
Again the Master raised his whisk.
The monk shouted. The Master also shouted.
The monk faltered; the Master struck him.18
_
Yet another series of exchanges sounds a similar theme.
_The Master asked a monk, "Where do you come from?"
The monk shouted.
The master saluted him and motioned him to sit down. The monk
hestitated. The Master hit him.
Seeing another monk coming, the Master raised his whisk.
The monk bowed low. The Master hit him.
Seeing still another monk coming, the Master again raised his whisk.
The monk paid no attention. The Master hit him too.19
_He was also challenged by a nun, one of the few recorded
instances of a master actually matching wits with a woman who had taken
Ch'an orders.
_The Master asked a nun: "Well-come or ill-come?"
The nun shouted.
"Go on, go on, speak!" cried the Master, taking up his stick.
Again the nun shouted. The Master hit her.20
_
What Lin-chi also brought to Ch'an was a dialectical inquiry into the
relationship between master and pupil, together with a similar analysis
of the mind states that lead to enlightenment. He seems remarkably
sophisticated for the ninth century, and indeed we would be hard
pressed to find this kind of psychological analysis anywhere in the
West that early. The puzzling, contradictory quality about all this is
that Lin-chi believed fervently in intuitive intelligence, and in the
uselessness of words--even warning that questions were irrelevant:
_Does anyone have a question? If so, let him ask it now. But the
instant you open your mouth you are already way off.21
_
Among his dialectical creations were various fourfold categorizations
of the intangible. We have already seen his four categories of the
shout. He also created the four categories of relationship between
subject and object, also sometimes called the Four Processes of
Liberation from Subjectivity and Objectivity. Some believe this served
to structure the "four standpoints or points of view which Lin-chi used
in instructing his students."22 Lin-chi's original proposition, the
basis of all the later commentary, is provided in _The Record of Lin-
chi _as follows:
_At the evening gathering the Master addressed the assembly, saying:
"Sometimes I take away man and do not take away the surroundings;
sometimes I take away the surroundings and do not take away man;
sometimes I take away both man and the surroundings; sometimes I take
away neither man nor the surroundings._"23_
_As Chang Chung-yuan describes these four arrangements, the first is to
"take away the man but not his objective situation," i.e., to take away
all interpretation and just experience the world without subjective
associations.24 (This is quite similar to the approach of the Japanese
haiku poem, in which a description of something is provided completely
devoid of interpretation or explicit emotional response.)
The second arrangement is to let the man remain but take away
objectivity. As John Wu interprets this, "In the second stage, people
of normal vision, who see mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers,
must be reminded of the part that their own mind contributes to the
appearance of things, and that what they naively take for objectivity
is inextricably mixed with subjectivity. Once aware of subjectivity,
one is initiated into the first stages of Ch'an, when one no longer
sees mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers."25 This is merely the
Ch'an commonplace that "non-attachment or objectivity liberates one's
self from bondage to the outside and thus leads to enlightenment."26 As
Dumoulin describes these, "In the first and second stages, illusion
departs first from the subject and then from the object; clinging to
subjective intellectual perception and to the objective world is
overcome."27
Lin-chi's third stage is to "take away both the man and his objective
situation. In other words, it is liberation from . . . the attachments
of both subjectivity and objectivity. Lin-chi's famous 'Ho!' . . .
often served this purpose."28 In a blow of a master's staff or a shout
there is nothing one can grasp, either objectively or subjectively.
This is the next-to-last stage in the progression toward liberation
from the mind's tyranny.
In the fourth stage we find the final condition, in which objectivity
and subjectivity cease to be distinguishable. What this means is that
there is no intellectuation at all, that the world simply is. As
Dumoulin declares, "reality is comprehended in its final oneness."29 Or
as the story says: Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and
rivers are rivers; during the study of Zen, mountains are not mountains
and rivers are not rivers; but when there finally is enlightenment,
mountains are again mountains and rivers are rivers. In this final
state the distinction and confrontation of subject and object dissolve,
as we are finally at one with the nameless world.
Another of Lin-chi's famous dialectical categories is his "Fourfold
Relationship possible Between Questioner and Answerer or Between Guest
and Host." The point of the structure he sets up is to elucidate the
interaction of master and novice, but he does so using metaphor of host
and guest--where the host represents the universal Self and the guest
the ego-form self.30 Lin-chi's sermon on the subject went as follows:
_A true student gives a shout, and to start with holds out a
sticky lacquer tray. The teacher, not discerning that this is an
objective circumstance, goes after it and performs a lot of antics with
it. The student again shouts but still the teacher is unwilling to let
go. This is . . . called "the guest examines the host."
Sometimes a teacher will proffer nothing, but the instant a student
asks a question, robs him of it. The student, having been robbed,
resists to the death and will not let go; this is called "the host
examines the guest."
Sometimes a student comes forth before a teacher in conformity with a
state of purity. The teacher, discerning that this is an objective
circumstance, seizes it and flings it into a pit. "What an excellent
teacher!" exclaims the student, and the teacher replies, "Bah! You
can't tell good from bad!" Thereupon the student makes a deep bow; this
is called "the host examines the host."
Or again, a student will appear before a teacher wearing a cangue and
bound with chains. The teacher fastens on still more chains and cangues
for him. The student is so delighted that he can't tell what is what:
this is called "the guest examines the guest._"31_
_In the first category, according to Chang Chung-yuan, the ego meets
the universal Self.32 In the second category the universal Self
encounters the ego-form self. In the third category, the universal Self
of one meets the universal Self of another, and in the fourth category
the ego of one encounters the ego of another. Or if we are to interpret
this in the concrete, in the first encounter, an enlightened master
meets an unenlightened novice; in the second an enlightened novice
meets an unenlightened master (which did happen); in the third an
enlightened master meets an enlightened novice; and in the fourth
category an unenlightened master meets an unenlightened novice, to the
mutual delusion of both.33
Lin-chi has been called the most powerful master in the entire history
of Ch'an, and not without reason. His mind was capable of operating at
several levels simultaneously, enabling him to overlay very practical
instruction with a comprehensive dialectic. He believed in complete
spontaneity, total freedom of thought and deed, and a teaching approach
that has been called the "lightning" method--because it was swift and
unpredictable. He was uncompromising in his approach, and he was also
extremely critical of the state of Ch'an in his time--a criticism
probably justified. He found both monks and masters wanting. It seems
that Ch' an had become fashionable, with the result that there were
many masters who were more followers of the trend than followers of the
Way. So whereas Huang-po often railed against other sects of Buddhism,
Lin-chi reserved his ire for other followers of Ch'an (there being few
other Buddhist sects left to criticize).
He even denounced his own students, who often mimicked his shouting
without perceiving his discernment in its use. He finally had to set
standards for this, announcing to the assembly one day that henceforth
only those who could tell the enlightened from the unenlightened would
have the right to shout.
_ "You all imitate my shouting," he said, "but let me give you a
test now. One person comes out from the eastern hall. Another person
comes out from the western hall. At their meeting, they simultaneously
shout. Do you possess enough discernment to distinguish the guest from
the host [i.e., the unenlightened from the enlightened]? If you have no
such discernment, you are forbidden hereafter to imitate my shouting.34
_
His major concern seems to have been that his students resist
intellection. Lin-chi himself was able to speculate philosophically
while still a natural man, using conceptual thought only when it served
his purpose. But perhaps his students could not, for he constantly had
to remind them that striving and learning were counterproductive.
_"Followers of Tao!" Lin-chi said, "the way of Buddhism admits
of no artificial effort; it only consists in doing the ordinary things
without any fuss--going to the stool, making water, putting on clothes,
taking a meal, sleeping when tired. Let the fools laugh at me. Only the
wise know what I mean._"35_
_Or as he said at another time:
_The moment a student blinks his eyes, he's already way off. The moment
he tries to think, he's already differed. The moment he arouses a
thought, he's already deviated. But for the man who understands, it's
always right here before his eyes.36
_
The problem, he believed, was that too many teachers had started
"teaching" and explaining rather than forcing students to experience
truth for themselves. Thus these teachers had no right
to criticize their monks, since they themselves had failed in their
responsibility.
_There are teachers all around who can't distinguish the false from the
true. When students come asking about . . . the [objective]
surroundings and the [subjective] mind, the blind old teachers
immediately start explaining to them. When they're railed at by the
students they grab their sticks and hit them, [shouting], "What
insolent talk!" Obviously you teachers yourselves are without an eye so
you've no right to get angry with them.37
_
And finally, in his old age, Lin-chi became something of a monument
himself, a testing point for enlightenment in a world where true
teachers were rare. He even complained about it.
_Hearing everywhere of old man Lin-chi, you come here intending to bait
me with difficult questions and make it impossible for me to answer.
Faced with a demonstration of the activity of my whole body, you
students just stare blankly and can't move your mouths at all; you're
at such a loss you don't know how to answer me. You go around
everywhere thumping your own chests and whacking your own ribs, saying,
"I understand Ch'an! I understand the Way!" But let two or three of you
come here and you can't do a thing. Bah! Carrying that body and mind of
yours, you go around everywhere flapping your lips like winnowing fans
and deceiving villagers.38
_His school prospered, becoming the leading expression of Ch'an in
China as well as a vital force in the Zen that later arose among
Japan's samurai. And his dialectical teachings became the philosophical
basis for later Zen, something he himself probably would have deplored.
(Later teachers seem to have given Lin-chi's categories more importance
than he actually intended, for he professed to loathe systems and was
in fact much more concerned with enlightenment as pure experience.) In
any case, when he decided that his days were through he put on his
finest robes, seated himself in the meditation posture, made a brief
statement, and passed on. The year is said to have been 866 or 867.
Chapter Twelve
TUNG-SHAN AND TS'AO-SHAN:
FOUNDERS OF SOTO ZEN
_Tung-shan_
Virtually all the masters encountered up to this point have been
traceable to Ma-tsu, descendant in Dharma of the legendary Huai-jang
and his master, the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng. This was the line that
became Japanese Rinzai Zen, many centuries later. However, Hui-neng had
another follower, a shadowy figure remembered as Ch'ing-yuan Hsing-ssu
(d. 740) whose line also was perpetuated to present-day Japan.1 His
foremost pupil was Shih-t'ou (700-90), and a common description of the
eighth-cen- tury Ch'an establishment was: "In Kiangsi the master was
Ma-tsu; in Hunan the master was Shih-t'ou. People went back and forth
between them all the time, and those who never met these two great
masters were completely ignorant."2 Shih-t'ou jousted with Ma-tsu, and
they often swapped students. Ma-tsu sent his pupils on their way with a
wink and the advice that Shih-t'ou was "slippery."3 This legendary
master was forebear of three of the five "houses" of Ch'an arising
after the Great Persecution of 845, although the only one of the three
surviving is the Ts'ao-tung, which arose during the later T'ang (618-
907) and early Five Dynasties (907-960) period and remains today as
Japanese Soto.
One of the cofounders of the Ts'ao-tung house was known as Tung-shan
Liang-chieh (807-869), who was born in present day Chekiang but
eventually found his way to what is now northern Kiangsi province.4 As
did most great masters, he took Buddhist orders early, and one of the
most enduring stories of his life has him confounding his elders--an
event common to many spiritual biographies. He began as a novice in the
Vinaya sect, an
organization often more concerned with the letter of the law than its
spirit. One day he was asked to recite the Heart Sutra, but when he
came to the phrase "There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind,"
he wonderingly touched his own face and then inquired of his master, "I
have eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and so forth; how, then, can the sutra
say there are no such things?"5 The Vinaya master was dumbfounded by his
iconoclasm and suggested that his bent of mind would be more readily
cultivated in the Ch'an sect. So off he went to Mt. Sung, where he
subsequently was ordained at the precocious age of twenty-one.
Afterward he traveled across China, typical for young monks of the age.
Ironically enough, considering that his line eventually rivaled Ma-
tsu's, his first stop was the monastery of Nan-ch'uan, one of the
foremost disciples of Ma-tsu. As he arrived, Nan-ch'uan was announcing
a memorial service to be conducted the next day on the anniversary of
his master's death, a standard Chinese custom.
_Nan-ch'uan remarked, "When we serve food for Master Ma-tsu tomorrow, I
do wonder whether he will come for it." None of the monks made a reply
but [Tung-shan] came forth out of the crowd and said, "As soon as he
has companions he will come." Hearing this, Nan-ch'uan praised him:
"Although this man is young, he is worthy of being trained.'' [Tung-
shan] said to him, "Master, you should not make a slave out of an
honorable person._"6_
_Tung-shan studied briefly with Nan-ch'uan making a name for himself in
the process and then traveled on. He later landed at the monastery of a
teacher named Yun-yen, but after a successful period of study he
announced his intention to again continue down the road. Yun-yen,
however, protested losing his star pupil.
_"After you leave here, it will be very hard for us to see each other
again," said Master Yun-yen.
"It will be very hard for us not to see each other again," answered
[Tung-shan]. . . . Then Yun-yen said to him, "You must be very careful,
as you are carrying this great thing."
[Tung-shan] was puzzled. Later when he was crossing the water and saw
his image reflected, he suddenly understood the teaching of Yun-yen.7
_
By the year 860 Tung-shan had a monastery of his own and was besieged
by disciples. He subsequently moved to Tung-shan (Mt. Tung) in what is
today Kiangsi province, the locale that provided his historic name. His
respect for Yun-yen's enigmatic wisdom was explained years later.
_One day, when the Master was conducting the annual memorial service
for Master Yun-yen, a monk asked him:
"What instruction did you receive from the late Master Yun-yen?"
"Although I was there with him, he gave me no instruction," answered
the Master.
"Then why should you conduct the memorial service for him, if he did
not instruct you?" persisted the monk. . . .
"It is neither for his moral character nor his teaching of Dharma that
I respect him. What I consider important is that he never told me
anything openly._"8_
_
Yet Tung-shan does not seem completely against the cultivation of
enlightenment, as were some of the other, more radical Ch'anists. Take,
for example, the following reported encounter:
_A government officer wanted to know whether there was anyone
approaching Ch'an through cultivation. The Master answered: "When you
become a laborer, then there will be someone to do cultivation._"9_
_
The officer's question would have elicited a shout from Lin-chi, a blow
from Huang-po, and advice from Chao-chou to go wash his rice bowl.
Although Tung-shan may have avoided the deliberate absurdities of the
Lin-chi masters, his utterances are often puzzling nonetheless. Part of
the reason is that he preferred the metaphor to the concrete example.
Unlike the repartee of the absurdist Lin-chi masters, his exchanges are
not deliberately illogical. Instead we find a simple reluctance to say
anything straight. But if you follow the symbolic language, you realize
it is merely another clever way of never teaching with words, while
still using language. His frequent speaking in metaphors can be
appreciated by the following exchange, which uses language emeshed in
symbols.
_
Monk: "With what man of Tao should one associate, so that one will hear
constantly what one has never heard?"
The Master: "That which is under the same coverlet with you."
Monk: "This is still what you, Master, can hear yourself. What is it
that one will hear constantly which one has never heard?"
The Master: "It is not the same as wood and stone." . . .
Monk: "Who is he in our country that holds a sword in his hand?"
The Master: "It is Ts'ao-shan."
Monk: "Whom do you want to kill?"
The Master: "All those who are alive will die."
Monk: "When you happen to meet your parents, what should
you do?"
The Master: "Why should you have any choice?"
Monk: "How about yourself?"
The Master: "Who can do anything to me?"
Monk: "Why should you not kill yourself, too?"
The Master: "There is no place on which I can lay my hands._"10
The Ch'an teachers deliberately avoided specifics, since these might
cause students to start worrying about the precise definition of words
and end up bogged down in conceptual quandries, neglecting their real
nature--which cannot be reached using words.11 But further than this, the
monk thinks he will trap the master by asking him if his injunction to
kill includes his own parents. (Remember Lin-chi's "On meeting your
parents, slay your parents.") But Tung-shan answered by accusing the
monk--indirectly--of making discriminations. As for self-murder, Tung-
shan maintains his immaterial self-nature is indestructible.12
The dialectic of Tung-shan, subsequently elaborated by his star pupil,
Ts'ao-shan, represents one of the last great expressions of Chinese
metaphysical thought. He defined a system of five positions or
relations between the Particular or Relative and the Universal or
Absolute, defined as follows.13
In the first state, called the Universal within the Particular, the
Absolute is hidden and obscured by our preoccupation with the world of
appearances. However, the world of appearances is in fact a part of the
larger world of Absolute reality. When we have achieved a true
understanding of the objective world we realize that it is no more real
than our senses make it, and consequently it represents not absolute
reality but merely our perception. This realization leads to the second
phase.
In the second state, called the Particular within the Universal, we
recognize that objective reality must always be perceived through our
subjective apparatus, just as the Absolute must be approached through
the relative, since all particularities merely exemplify the Absolute.
Even good and bad are part of this same Universality. It is all real,
but simply that--no values are attached, since it is all part of
existence. This, says the scholar John Wu, is the state of
enlightenment.14
In dialectical terms, this rounds out the comparison of the Particular
and the Universal, with each shown to be part of the other. But they
must ultimately be resolved back into sunyata, the Void that
encompasses everything. Neither the Universal or Absolute, nor the
particulars that give it physical form, are the ultimate reality. They
both are merely systems in the all-encompassing Void.
The third and fourth stages he defines exemplify achieving
enlightenment by Universality alone and achieving enlightenment by
Particularity alone. The third stage, enlightenment through
Universality, leads one to meditate on the Absolute, upon the single
wordless truth that defines the particular around us as part of itself.
(It sounds remarkably similar to the Tao.) This meditation is done
without props, language, or any of the physical world (the particular)
surrounding us.
Enlightenment through the Particular, through experience with the
phenomenal world, was the fourth stage. This received the most
attention from the Lin-chi sect--whose masters would answer the question
"What is the meaning of Ch'an?" with "The cypress tree in the
courtyard" or "Three pounds of flax."15
At the fifth stage, enlightenment reaches the Void, the state that
cannot be contained in a concept, since all concepts are inside it.
When you finally reach this state of wordless insight, you realize that
both words and wordlessness are merely part of this larger reality.
Action and nonaction are equally legitimate responses to the world.
Tung-shan demonstrated this when he was asked, "When a snake is
swallowing a frog, should you save the frog's life?" To this he
answered, "To save the frog is to be blind [i.e., to ultimate oneness
and therefore to discriminate between frog and snake]; not to save the
frog is not to let form and shadow appear [i.e., to ignore the
phenomena].16 Perhaps Tung-shan was demonstrating that he was free of
discrimination between either option.17
The question of the subjective and the objective, the Universal and the
Particular, permeated Tung-shan's teachings.
_Once the Master asked a monk what his name was. The monk answered that
his name was so-and-so. The Master then asked: "What one is your real
self?"
"The one who is just facing you."
"What a pity! What a pity! The men of the present day are all like
this. They take what is in the front of an ass or at the back of a
horse and call it themselves. This illustrates the downfall of
Buddhism. If you cannot recognize your real self objectively, how can
you see your real self subjectively?"
"How do you see your real self subjectively?" the monk immediately
asked.
"You have to tell me that yourself."
"If I were to tell you myself, it would be seeing myself objectively.
What is the self that is known subjectively?"
"To talk about it in such a way is easy to do, but to continue our
talking makes it impossible to reach the truth._"18
There also is a poem, known as the Pao-ching San-mei, traditionally
attributed to Tung-shan.19 One quatrain will give the flavor of the
verse:
_The man of wood sings,
The woman of stone gets up and dances,
This cannot be done by passion or learning,
It cannot be done by reasoning._20
This has been interpreted as the idea of Universality penetrating into
Particularity. The wooden man singing and the stone maiden dancing are
explained as evidence of the power of Universality.21 Tung-shan had a
number of distinguishing qualities. He often used Taoist language in
his teachings, quoting Chuang Tzu to make a point. Reportedly he never
used the shout or the stick to shock a novice into self-awareness. And
whereas his dialogues often used metaphors that at first appear
obscure, there are never the deliberate absurdities of the Lin-chi
masters, who frequently answered a perfectly reasonable question with a
deliberate inanity merely to demonstrate the absurdity of words. Unlike
the Lin-chi masters, he seems less concerned with the process of
transmission than with what exactly is transmitted. Tung-shan viewed
words as did Chuang Tzu, namely as the net in which to catch the fish.
Whereas the Lin-chi masters viewed enlightenment as a totality, Tung-
shan teachers believed that enlightenment arrived in stages, and they
were concerned with identifying what these stages were. This was, in
fact, the purpose of his five categories of Particularity and
Universality, which became a part of the historic dialectic of Zen
enlightenment. Ironically, with the emergence of the idea of stages, we
seem back to a concept of "gradual" enlightenment--arrived at because
the Chinese mind could not resist theoretical speculations.
Tung-shan's deathbed scene was almost worthy of comic opera. One day in
the third month of 869 he made known his resolve to die and, shaving
his head and donning his formal robes, ordered the gong to be struck as
he seated himself in meditation. But his disciples began sobbing so
disturbingly that he finally despaired of dying in peace and, opening
his eyes, chided them.
_Those who are Buddhists should not attach themselves to externalities.
This is the real self-cultivation. In living they work hard; in death
they are at rest. Why should there be any grief?_22
He then instructed the head monk to prepare "offerings of food to
ignorance" for everyone at the monastery, intending to shame all those
who still clung to the emotions of the flesh. The monks took a full
week to prepare the meal, knowing it was to be his last supper. And
sure enough, upon dining he bade them farewell and, after a ceremonial
bath, passed on.
The most famous disciple of Tung-shan, Master Ts'ao-shan (840-901), was
born as Pen-chi on the Fukien coast. Passing through an early interest
in Confucianism, he left home at nineteen and became a Buddhist. He was
ordained at age twenty-five and seems to have found frequent occasion
to Visit Tung-shan. Then one day they had an encounter that catapulted
Ts'ao-shan into the position of favored pupil. The exchange began with
a question by Tung-shan:
_"What is your name?"
"My name is [Ts'ao-shan]."
"Say something toward Ultimate Reality."
"I will not say anything."
"Why don't you speak of it?"
"It is not called [Ts'ao-shan]._"23
It is said that Tung-shan gave Ts'ao-shan private instruction after
this and regarded his capability highly. The anecdote, if we may
venture a guess, seems to assert that the Universal cannot be reached
through language, and hence he could only converse about his objective,
physical form.
After several years of study, Ts'ao-shan decided to strike out on his
own, and he announced this intention to Tung-shan. The older master
then inquired:
_
"Where are you going?"
"I go where it is changeless."
"How can you go where it is changeless?"
"My going is no change._"24
Ts'ao-shan subsequently left his master and went wandering and
teaching. Finally, in late summer of 901, the story says that Ts'ao-
shan one evening inquired about the date, and early the next morning he
died.
Although the recorded exchanges between Tung-shan and Ts'ao-shan are
limited to the two rather brief encounters given, the younger master
actually seems to have been the moving force behind the dialectical
constructions of the Ts'ao-tung school. The ancient records, such as
_The Transmission of the Lamp_, all declare that Ts'ao-shan was
inspired by the Five States of Universality and Particularity to become
a great Buddhist. As Dumoulin judges, "It was [Ts'ao-shan] who first,
in the spirit of and in accordance with the master's teachings,
arranged the five ranks in their transmuted form and explained them in
many ways. . . . The fundamental principles, however, stem from [Tung-
shan], who for that reason must be considered to be their originator."25
The ultimate concern of both the Ts'ao-tung and Lin-chi doctrines was
enlightenment. The difference was that Ts'ao-tung masters believed
quiet meditation was the way, rather than the mind-shattering
techniques of Lin-chi. Ts'ao-tung (Soto Zen) strives to soothe the
spirit rather than deliberately instigate psychic turmoil, as sometimes
does the Lin-chi (Rinzai). The aim is to be in the world but not of it;
to occupy the physical world but transcend it mentally, aloof and
serene.
A further difference has been identified by the British scholar Sir
Charles Eliot, who concludes that whereas Lin-chi "regards the
knowledge of the Buddha nature ... as an end in itself, all-satisfying
and all-engrossing, the [Ts'ao-tung] . . . held that it is necessary to
have enlightenment after Enlightenment, that is to say that the inner
illumination must display itself in a good life."26 Thus Eliot suggests
the Ts'ao-tung took something of an interest in what you do, in
distinction to the Lin-chi school, which preferred to focus on inner
wisdom.
The Ts'ao-tung sect, at least in its early forms, was fully as
dialectical in outlook as was the Lin-chi. In this it was merely
carrying on, to some extent, the example of its forebear Shih-t'ou, who
was himself remembered as deeply interested in theoretical and
intellectual speculations. Today the Ts'ao-tung sect is differentiated
from the Lin-chi primarily by its methods for teaching novices. There
is no disagreement about the goal, merely about the path.
It is interesting that the whole business of the Five Ranks seems not
to have survived the Sung Dynasty. Ts'ao-tung's real contribution was
essentially to revive the approach of Northern Ch'an, with its stress
on meditation, intellectual inquiry, stages of enlightenment, and the
idea that Ch'an is not entirely inner- directed but may also have some
place in the world at large. This is the real achievement of Ts'ao-
tung, and the quality that enabled it to survive and become Soto.
Chapter Thirteen
KUEI-SHAN, YUN-MEN, AND FA-YEN:
THREE MINOR HOUSES
_
Yun-men (left)
_The "five houses" or sects of Ch'an that arose after the Great
Persecution of 845 did not all appear simultaneously, nor did they
enjoy equal influence. Whereas the Lin-chi and the Ts'ao-tung were
destined to survive and find their way to Japan, the three other houses
were treated less kindly by history. Nonetheless, in the search for
enlightenment, each of the three other houses contributed techniques,
insights, and original ideas that enriched the Zen tradition. It is
with the stories of the masters who founded the three extinct houses
that we close out the era preceding the Sung Dynasty and the rise of
the koan.
KUEI-SHAN, FOUNDER OF THE KUEI-YANG SECT
This earliest of the five houses was founded by a contemporary of
Huang-po and follower of the Ma-tsu tradition known by the name Kuei-
shan (771-853). Under his original name, Ling-yu, he left home at
fifteen to become a monk, studying under a local Vinaya master in
present-day Fukien province. He later was ordained at Hangchow, where
he assiduously absorbed the _vinaya _and sutras of both Theravada and
Mahayana.1 Then at age twenty-three he traveled to Kiangsi and became a
pupil of the famous Ch'an lawgiver Po-chang Huai-hai.
The moment of Kuei-shan's enlightenment at the hands of Huai-hai is a
Zen classic. As the story goes:
_One day as he was waiting upon [Huai-hai], the latter asked him to
poke the stove, to see whether there was any fire left in it. Kuei-shan
poked but found no fire. [Huai-hai] rose to poke it himself, and
succeeded in discovering a little spark. Showing it to his disciple, he
asked, "Is this not fire?" Thereupon Kuei-shan became enlightened.2
_Just why this seemingly trivial incident should trigger enlightenment
is clearly a matter that must be approached intuitively.3
Kuei-shan received his name from Mt. Kuei, where he was sent to found a
monastery by Po-chang Huai-hai. The circumstances of his selection
reveal almost more than we would wish to know about the Ch'an monastic
world at the beginning of the ninth century. It happened that Huai-hai
was considering the idea of founding a new monastery on Mt. Kuei in
Hunan province. However, he was uncertain whether the venture would
flourish, and consequently he turned for advice to a wandering
fortuneteller named Ssu-ma.4 This seer responded that Mt. Kuei was an
ideal location and would support fifteen hundred monks. However, Huai-
hai himself would not prosper there, since "You are a bony, ascetic man
and it is a fleshy, sensuous mountain." The advice was to find somebody
else.
Huai-hai consented and began calling in his candidates for Ssu-ma to
examine. The first to be summoned was the head monk--whom Ssu-ma asked
to produce a deep cough and then walk several steps. The wizened old
mystic watched carefully and then whispered to Huai-hai that this was
not the man. Next to be called in was Kuei-shan, currently
administrator of the monastery. Ssu-ma took one look and nodded his
approval to Huai-hai. That night Huai-hai summoned Kuei-shan and
assigned his new mission: "Go to Mt. Kuei and found the monastery that
will perpetuate my teachings."
When the head monk discovered he had been passed over he was outraged
and at the next morning's convocation demanded that Huai-hai justify
this slight. The master replied:
_"If you can make an outstanding response in front of the assembly, you
shall receive the appointment." [Huai-hai] then pointed to a pitcher
and said to him, "Do not call this a pitcher. What, instead, should you
call it?" [The head monk] answered, "It cannot be called a wooden
wedge." Master [Huai-hai] did not accept this, and turned to [Kuei-
shan], demanding his answer. [Kuei-shan] kicked the pitcher and knocked
it over. Master [Huai-hai] laughed and said, "Our head monk has lost
his bid for Mount Kuei._"5
The head monk's reply had been intellectualizing wordplay, caught up in
the world of names and categories. Kuei-shan's reply was spontaneous,
wordless, and devoid of distinctions. His was a mind that could
transcend rationality.
Kuei-shan did establish the monastery and from it a short-lived school.
However, Kuei-shan's memory was perpetuated largely through a brilliant
pupil later known as Yang-shan (807-883) owing to his founding a
monastery on Mt. Yang in Kiangsi province. Together their teachings
became known as the Kuei-yang school, the first of the "five houses."
The exchanges between Kuei-shan and Yang-shan reported in _The
Transmission of the Lamp_ are among the most electric in all Ch'an. In
the following they joust over the distinction between function of
wisdom (which is revealed through action) and substance or self-nature
(which is revealed through nonaction).
_Once when all the monks were out picking tea leaves the Master said to
Yang-shan, "All day as we were picking tea leaves I have heard your
voice, but I have not seen you yourself. Show me your original self."
Yang-shan thereupon shook the tea tree.
The Master said, "You have attained only the function, not the
substance." Yang-shan remarked, "I do not know how you yourself would
answer the question." The Master was silent for a time. Yang-shan
commented, "You, Master, have attained only the substance, not the
function." Master Kuei-shan responded, "I absolve you from twenty
blows!_"6
Commentators differ on who won this exchange and whether Kuei-shan was
really satisfied. Another story relates similar fast-witted but serious
repartee.
_Two Ch'an monks came from [a rival] community and said, "There is not
a man here who can understand Ch'an." Later, when all the monks went
out to gather firewood, Yang-shan saw the two, who were resting; he
took a piece of firewood and asked them, "Can you talk (about it)?" As
both remained silent, Yang-shan said to them, "Do not say that there is
no one here who can understand Ch'an."
When he returned to the monastery, Yang-shan reported to the master,
"Today, two Ch'an monks were exposed by me." The master asked, "How did
you expose them?" Yang-shan related the incident and the master said,
"I have now exposed you as well._"7
The translator Charles Luk suggests that Kuei-shan had "exposed" Yang-
shan by showing that he still distinguished between himself and the
other monks.
Yet another story, reminiscent of Nan-ch'uan, further dramatizes the
school's teaching of nondiscrimination. The report recounts a present
that Kuei-shan sent to Yang-shan, now also a master and co-founder of
their school:
_Kuei-shan sent [Yang-shan] a parcel containing a mirror. When he went
to the hall, [Yang-shan] held up the mirror and said to the assembly,
"Please say whether this is Kuei-shan's or Yang-shan's mirror. If
someone can give a correct reply, I will not smash it." As no one
answered, the master smashed the mirror.8
_
Kuei-shan's answer to one pupil who requested that he "explain" Ch'an
to him was to declare:
_If I should expound it explicitly for you, in the future you will
reproach me for it. Anyway, whatever I speak still belongs to me and
has nothing to do with you.9
_This monk, who later became the famous master Hsiang-yen, subsequently
burned his sutras and wandered the countryside in despair. Then one day
while cutting grass he nicked a piece of broken tile against some
bamboo, producing a sharp snap that suddenly triggered his
enlightenment. In elation he hurried back to his cell in the abandoned
monastery where he was living and burned incense to Kuei-shan,
declaring, "If you had broken the secret to me then, how could I have
experienced the wonderful event of today."10
The real contribution of the Kuei-yang sect is agreed to be the final
distinction Yang-shan made between the Ch'an of meditation (based on
the Lankavatara Sutra) and instantaneous Ch'an (that completely
divorced from the sutras). In this final revision of Ch'an history,
"traditional" or "Patriarchal" Ch'an was redefined as the anti-sutra
establishment of the Southern school, while the teaching of the
Lankavatara, which actually had been the basis of the faith until the
middle of the eighth century, was scorned as an aberration. He
emphasized, in a sense, Ch'an's ultimate disowning of Buddhism--through
a new, manufactured "history."
Kuei-shan died in the prescribed manner: After a ritual ablution he
seated himself in the meditation posture and passed on with a smile. He
was buried on Mt. Kuei, home of his monastery. His followers and those
of his pupil Yang-shan composed the Kuei-yang school, an early attempt
to formalize the anti-sutra position of Ma-tsu.11 However, they were
supplanted by other much more successful followers of Huai-hai, such as
Huang-po and Lin-chi, whose school became the real perpetuator of Ma-
tsu's iconoclasm.
THE YUN-MEN SECT
_
_The Master Yun-men (862/4-949) was born in Kiangsu province (some say
Chekiang) to a family whose circumstances forced them to place him in a
Vinaya temple as a novice. But his inquiring mind eventually turned to
Ch'an, and off he went to a master, with his first target being the
famous Mu-chou, disciple of Huang-po. (Mu-chou is remembered as the
monk who sent Lin-chi in for his first three withering interviews with
Huang-po.) For two days running, Yun-men tried to gain entry to see the
master, but each time he was ejected. The third day he succeeded in
reaching Mu-chou, who grabbed him and demanded, "Speak! Speak!" But
before Yun-men could open his mouth, the master shoved him out of the
room and slammed the door, catching his leg and breaking it in the
process. The unexpected bolt of pain shooting through Yun-men's body
suddenly brought his first enlightenment.12
He journeyed on, studying with several famous masters, until finally he
inherited a monastery from a retiring master who sensed his genius.
Yun-men was one of the best-known figures from Ch'an's waning Golden
Age, and stories of his exchanges with monks became a major source of
koans.13 He loathed words and forbade his followers to take notes or
write down his sermons. (However, his talks were secretly recorded by a
follower who attended in a paper robe and kept notes on the garment.)
As did the earlier masters, he struggled mightily with the problem of
how to prevent novices from becoming attached to his words and phrases.
_
[Yun-men] came to the assembly again and said: "My work here is
something that I cannot help. When I tell you to penetrate directly
into all things and to be non-attached to them, I have already
concealed what is within you. Yet you all continue looking for Ch'an
among my words, so that you may achieve enlightenment. With myriad
deviations and artificialities, you raise endless questions and
arguments. Thus, you merely gain temporary satisfactions from verbal
contests, repeatedly quarrel with words, and deviate even further from
Ch'an. When will you obtain it, and rest?_"14
He firmly believed that all teaching was useless; that all
explanations do more harm than good; and that, in fact, nothing
worthwhile can ever be taught.
_The Master said, "If I should give you a statement that would teach
you how to achieve Ch'an immediately, dirt would already be spread on
top of your head. . . . To grasp Ch'an, you must experience it. If you
have not experienced it, do not pretend to know. You should withdraw
inwardly and search for the ground upon which you stand; thereby you
will find out what Truth is._"15
One of Yun-men's sermons reveals much about the growing pains of Ch'an.
The seriousness of the novices seems to have been steadily
deteriorating, and his characterization of the run-of-the- mill novices
of his time presents a picture of waning dynamism. Success was clearly
bringing a more frivolous student to the monasteries, and we sense here
the warning of a man who rightly feared for the future quality of
Ch'an.
_Furthermore, some monks, idle and not serious in their studies, gather
together trying to learn the sayings of the ancients, and attempt to
reveal their own nature through memorizing, imagining, prophesying.
These people often claim that they understand what Dharma is. What they
actually do is simply talk themselves into endless entanglements and
use meditation to pass the time.16
_
He also felt the traditional pilgrimages from master to master had
become hardly more than a glorified version of sightseeing.
_Do not waste your time wandering thousands of [miles], through this
town and that, with your staff on your shoulder, wintering in one place
and spending the summer in another. Do not seek out beautiful mountains
and rivers to contemplate. . . . [T]he fundamental thing for you to do
is to obtain the essence of Ch'an. Then your travels will not have been
in vain. If you find a way to guide your understanding under a severe
master . . . wake up, hang up your bowl-bag, and break your staff.
Spend ten or twenty years of study under him until you are thoroughly
enlightened.17
_
He also advised that they try to simplify their search, that they try
to realize how uncomplicated Ch'an really is.
_Let me tell you that anything you can directly point at will not lead
you to the right trail. . . . Besides dressing, eating, moving bowels,
releasing water, what else is there to do?18
_
Yun-men was one of the most dynamic masters of the late ninth and early
tenth century, providing new twists to the historic problem of
nonlanguage transmission. His celebrated solution was the so-called
one-word answer. Several of these are preserved in the two major koan
collections of later years. Two of the better-known follow:
_A monk asked Yun-men, "What is the teaching that transcends the Buddha
and patriarchs?" Yun-men said, "A sesame bun._"19_
A monk asked Yun-men, "What is Buddha?" Yun-men replied, "A dried piece
of shit._"20_
_
The "one-word" was his version of the blow and the shout. R. H. Blyth
is particularly fond of Yun-men and suggests he may have had the
keenest intellect of any Ch'an master--and even goes so far as to
declare him the greatest man China has produced.21
At the very least Yun-men was in the great tradition of the
iconoclastic T'ang masters, with a touch that bears comparison to
Huang-po. And he probably was wise in attempting to stop copyists, for
his teachings eventually were reduced to yet another abominable system,
as seemed irresistible to the Chinese followers of the five houses. A
later disciple produced what is known as the "Three propositions of the
house of Yun-men." It is not difficult to imagine the barnyard response
Yun-men would have had to this "systematization" of his thought.22 The
school of this "most eloquent of Ch'an masters" lasted through the Sung
dynasty, but its failure to find a transplant in Japan eventually meant
that history would pass it by. Nonetheless, the cutting intellect of
Yun-men was one of the bright stars in the constellation of Ch'an,
providing what is possibly its purest antirational statement.
THE FA-YEN SECT
The master known as Fa-yen (885-958), founder of the third short-lived
house of Ch'an, need not detain us long. Fa-yen's novel method for
triggering enlightenment was to repeat back the
questioner's own query, thereby isolating the words and draining them
of their meaning. It was his version of the shout, the silence, the
single word. And whereas the Lin-chi school was concerned with the Four
Processes of Liberation from Subjectivity and Objectivity and the
Ts'ao-tung school constructed the five relations between Particularity
and Universality, the Fa-yen school invented the Six Attributes of
Being.23 The Six Attributes of Being (totality and differentiation,
sameness and difference, becoming and disappearing) were adapted from
the doctrine of another Buddhist sect, and in fact later attempts by
one of Fa-yen's disciples to combine Ch'an and Pure Land Buddhism have
been credited with accelerating the disappearance of his school.
According to _The Transmission of the Lamp_, the master remembered as
Fa-yen was born as Wen-i, near Hangchow. He became a Ch'an novice at
age seven and was ordained at twenty. Learned in both Buddhist and
Confucianist literature (though not, significantly enough, in the
Taoist classics), he then got the wanderlust, as was common, and headed
south to seek out more Ch'an teachers. He ended up in Kiangsi province
in the city of Fuchou, where to escape the floodings of a rainstorm he
found himself one evening in a local monastery. He struck up a
conversation with the master there, who suddenly asked him:
_"Where are you going, sir?"
"I shall continue my foot travels along the road."
"What is that which is called foot travel?"
"I do not know."
"Not-knowing most closely approaches the Truth._"24
The _Transmission of the Lamp _states that he was enlightened on the
spot and decided to settle down for a period of study. He eventually
became a famous teacher himself, shepherding as many as a thousand
students at one time.
One of his most often repeated exchanges concerned the question of the
difference between the "moon" (i.e., enlightenment) and the "finger
pointing at the moon," (i.e., the teaching leading to enlightenment).
It was a common observation that students confused the finger pointing
at the moon with the moon itself, which is to say they confused talk
about enlightenment with the state. One day a monk came along who
thought he was smart enough to get around the dilemma.
_A monk asked, "As for the finger, I will not ask you about it. But
what is the moon?"
The Master said, "Where is the finger that you do not ask about?"
So the monk asked, "As for the moon, I will not ask you about it. But
what is the finger?"
The Master said, "The moon!"
The monk challenged him, "I asked about the finger; why should you
answer me, 'the moon'?"
The Master replied, "Because you asked about the finger._"25
At age seventy-four Fa-yen died in the manner of other great masters,
calmly and seated in the meditation posture. Part of the lineage of
Shih-t'ou and an offshoot of the branch of Ch'an that would become
Soto, he was a kindly individual with none of the violence and
histrionics of the livelier masters. However, his school lasted only
briefly before passing into history. Nonetheless, a number of disciples
initially perpetuated his memory, and his wisdom is preserved in
various Sung-period compilations of Ch'an sermons.
Chapter Fourteen
TA-HUI:
MASTER OF THE KOAN
To confront the koan--the most discussed, least understood teaching
concept of the East--is to address the very essence of Zen itself. In
simple terms the koan is merely a brief story--all the encounters
between two monks related here could be koans. During the Sung Dynasty
(960-1279) these stories were organized into collections, commented
upon, and structured into a system of study--which involved meditating
on a koan and arriving at an intuitive "answer" acceptable to a Zen
master. Faced with the threatening intellectualism of the Sung
scholars, Ch'anists created the koan out of the experience of the older
masters, much the way a liferaft might be constructed from the timbers
of a storm-torn ship. But before we examine this raft, it would be well
to look again at the ship.
It will be recalled that Ch'an grew out of both Buddhism and Taoism,
extracting from them the belief that a fundamental unifying quality
transcends all the diversity of the world, including things that appear
to be opposite. However, Ch'an taught that this cannot be understood
using intellectualism, which rationally makes distinctions and relates
to the world by reducing it to concepts and systems. One reason is that
all rationality and concepts are merely part of a larger, encompassing
Reality; and trying to reach this Reality intellectually is like trying
to describe the outside of a building while trapped inside.
There is, however, a kind of thought--not beholden to concepts, systems,
discriminations, or rationality--that can reach this new understanding.
It is intuition, which operates in a mode entirely different from
rationality. It is holistic, not linear; it is unself-conscious and
noncritical; and it doesn't bother with any of the rational systems of
analysis we have invented for ourselves. But since we can't call on it
at our pleasure, the next best thing we can do is clear the way for it
to operate--by shutting off the rational part of the mind. Then
intuition starts hesitantly coming out of the shadows. Now, if we
carefully wait for the right moment and then suddenly create a
disturbance that momentarily short-circuits the rational mind--the way
shock suppresses our sense of pain in the first moments of a serious
accident--we may get a glimpse of the intuitive mind in full flower. In
that instant we intuitively understand the oneness of the world, the
Void, the greater Reality that words and rationality have never allowed
us to experience.
The Zen teachers have a very efficient technique for making all this
happen. They first discredit rationality for a novice by making him
feel foolish for using it. Each time the novice submits a rational
solution to a koan, he receives a humiliating rebuff. After a while the
strain begins to tell. In the same way that a military boot camp
destroys the ego and self-identity of a recruit, the Zen master slowly
erodes the novice's confidence in his own logical powers.
At this point his intuitive mind begins overcoming its previous
repression. Distinctions slowly start to seem absurd, because every
time he makes one he is ridiculed. Little by little he dissolves his
sense of object and subject, knower and known. The fruit now is almost
ready to fall from the tree. (Although enlightenment cannot be made to
happen, it can be made possible.) Enter at this point the unexpected
blow, the shout, the click of bamboo, the broken leg. If the student is
caught unawares, rationality may be momentarily short-circuited and
suddenly he glimpses--Reality.
The irony is that what he glimpses is no different from what he saw
before, only now he understands it intuitively and realizes how
simplistic and confining are rational categories and distinctions.
Mountains are once again mountains; rivers are once again rivers. But
with one vital difference: Now he is not attached to them. He travels
through the world just as always, but now he is at one with it: no
distinctions, no critical judgments, no tension. After all that
preparatory mental anguish there is no apparent external change. But
internally he is enlightened: He thinks differently, he understands
differently, and ultimately he lives differently.
Ch'an began by working out the question of what this enlightenment
really is. Prior to Ma-tsu the search was more for the nature of
enlightenment than for its transmission. This was the doctrinal phase
of Ch'an. As time went by, however, the concern shifted more and more
from defining enlightenment--which the Ch'an masters believed had been
done sufficiently--to struggling with the process. After Ma-tsu, Ch'an
turned its attention to "auxiliary means" for helping along
transmission: paradoxical words and actions, shouts, beatings, and
eventually the koan.1
The koan, then, is the final step in the "auxiliary means." A succinct
analysis of the koan technique is provided by Ruth F. Sasaki in _Zen
Dust_: "Briefly, [koans] consisted of questions the early masters had
asked individual students, together with the answers given by the
students; questions put to the masters by students in personal talks or
in the course of the masters' lectures, together with the masters'
answers; statements of formulas in which the masters had pointed to the
profound Principle; anecdotes from the daily life of the masters in
which their attitudes or actions illustrated the functioning of the
Principle; and occasionally a phrase from a sutra in which the
Principle or some aspect of it was crystallized in words. By presenting
a student with one or another of these koans and observing his reaction
to it, the degree or depth of his realization could be judged. The
koans were the criteria of attainment."2
Called _kung-an _in Chinese (meaning a "case" or a problem), the koan
was a response to two major challenges that beset Ch'an in the Sung
era: First, the large number of students that appeared at Ch'an
monasteries as a result of the demise of other sects meant that some
new means was needed to preserve personalized attention (some masters
reportedly had one thousand or even two thousand followers at a
monastery); and second, there was a noticeable decline in the
spontaneity of both novices and masters. The masters had lost much of
the creative fire of Ch'an's Golden Age, and the novices were caught up
in the intellectual, literary world of the Sung, to the point that
intellectualism actually threatened the vitality of the sect.
The koan, then, was the answer to this dilemma. It systematized
instruction such that large numbers of students could be treated to the
finest antirational tradition of the Ch'an sect, and it rescued the
dynamism of the earlier centuries. Although mention of kung-an occurs
in the Ch'an literature before the end of the T'ang era (618-907), the
reference was to a master's use of a particularly effectual question on
more than one student. This was still an instance of a master using his
own questions or paradoxes. The koan in its true form--that is, the use
of a classic incident from the literature, posed as a conundrum--is said
to have been created when a descendant of Lin-chi, in the third
generation, interviewed a novice about some of Lin-chi's sayings.3 This
systematic use of the existing literature was found effective, and soon
a new teaching technique was in the making.
Examples of classic koans already have been seen throughout this book,
since many of the exchanges of the early masters were later isolated
for use as kung-an. But there are many, many others, Perhaps the best-
known koan of all time is the exchange between Chao-chou (778-897) and
a monk:
_A monk asked Chao-chou. "Does a dog have Buddha nature [i.e., is a dog
capable of being enlightened]?" Chao-chou answered, _"Mu _[a word whose
strict meaning is "nothingness"]._"4
Quick, what does it mean? Speak! Speak! If you were a Ch'an novice, a
master would be glaring at you demanding an immediate, intuitive
answer. (A favored resolution of this, incidentally, is simply "Mu,"
but bellowed with all the force of the universe's inherent Oneness
behind it. And if you try to fake it, the master will know.) Or take
another koan, drawn completely at random.
_When the monks assembled before the noon meal to hear his lecture, the
Master Fa-yen [885-958] pointed at the bamboo blinds. Two monks
simultaneously went and rolled them up. Fa-yen said, "One gain, one
loss._"5
Don't think! Respond instantly! Don't say a word unless it's right,
Don't make a move that isn't intuitive. And above all, don't analyze.
_
Yun-men [862/4-949] asked a monk, "Where have you come here from?" The
monk said, "From Hsi-ch'an." Yun-men said, "What words are being
offered at Hsi-ch'an these days?" The monk stretched out his hands.
Yun-men struck him. The monk said, "I haven't finished talking." Yun-
men then extended his own hands. The monk was silent, so Yun-men struck
him._6
You weren't there. You're not the monk. But now you've got to do
something to show the master you grasp what went on in that exchange.
What was spontaneous to the older masters you must grasp in a
secondhand, systematized situation. And if you can't answer the koan
right (it should be stressed, incidentally, there is not necessarily a
fixed answer), you had best go and meditate, try to grasp it
nonintellectually, and return tomorrow to try again.
Off you go to meditate on "Mu" or "One gain, one loss," and the mental
tension starts building. Even though you know you aren't supposed to,
you analyze it intellectually from every angle. But that just heightens
your exasperation. Then suddenly one day something dawns on you.
Elated, you go to the master. You yell at him, or bark like a dog, or
kick his staff, or stand on your hands, or recite a poem, or declare,
"The cypress tree in the courtyard," or perhaps you just remain silent.
He will know (intuitively) if you have broken through the bonds of
reason, if you have transcended the intellect.
There's nothing quite like the koan in the literature of the world:
historical episodes that have to be relived intuitively and responded
to. As Ruth F. Sasaki notes, "Collections of 'old cases,' as the koans
were sometimes called, as well as attempts to put the koans into a
fixed form and to systematize them to some extent, were already being
made by the middle of the tenth century. We also find a few masters
giving their own alternate answers to some of the old koans and
occasionally appending verses to them. In many cases these alternate
answers and verses ultimately became attached to the original koans and
were handled as koans supplementary to them."7 Ironically, koans became
so useful, indeed essential, in the perpetuation of Ch'an that they
soon were revered as texts. Collections of the better koans appeared,
and next came accretions of supporting commentaries--when the whole
point was supposed to be circumventing reliance on words! But
commentaries always seemed to develop spontaneously out of Ch'an.
Today two major collections of koans are generally used by students of
Zen. These are the Mumonkan (to use the more familiar Japanese name)
and the Hekiganroku (again the Japanese name) or _Blue Cliff Record_.8
Masters may work a student through both these collections as he travels
the road to enlightenment, with a new koan being assigned after each
previous one has been successfully resolved.
The _Blue Cliff Record _was the first of the two collections. It began
as a grouping of one hundred kung-an by a master named Hsueh-tou
Ch'ung-hsien (980-1052) of the school of Yun-men. This master also
attached a small poem to each koan, intended to direct the student
toward its meaning. The book enjoyed sizable circulation throughout the
latter part of the eleventh century, and sometime thereafter a Lin-chi
master named Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in (1063-1135) decided to embellish it by
adding an introduction to each koan and a long-winded commentary on
both the koan and the poem supplied by the previous collector. (In the
case of the poem we now have commentary on commentary--the ultimate
achievement of the theologian's art! However, masters today often omit
Yuan-wu's commentaries, giving their own interpretation instead.9) The
commentator, Yuan-wu, was the teacher of Ta-hui, the dynamic master of
the Lin-chi lineage whom we will meet here.
The Mumonkan, a shorter work, was assembled in 1228 by the Ch'an monk
Wu-men Hui-k'ai (1183-1260) and consists of forty-eight koans, together
with an explanatory comment and a verse. Some of the koans in the
Mumonkan also appear in the _Blue Cliff Record_. The Mumonkan is
usually preferred in the Japanese summer, since its koans are briefer
and less fatiguing.10
The koan was an invention of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279), an era of
consolidation in the Chinese empire after the demise of the T'ang and
passage of a war-torn interlude known as the Five Dynasties (907-60).
Although Sung Ch'an seemed to be booming, Buddhism in general continued
the decline that began with the Great Persecution of 845. For example,
the number of registered monks dropped from around 400,000 in 1021 to
approximately half that number a scant half-century later.11 But the
monks who did come probably had higher education than previously, for
the Sung educational system was the world's best at the time. Colleges
were established nationwide, not just in the sophisticated metropolitan
areas, and scholarship flourished. Whether this was good for Ch'an is
not a simple question. The hardy rural monks who had passed beyond the
Buddhist scriptures made Ch'an what it was. Could the powers of the
antirational be preserved in an atmosphere where the greatest respect
was reserved for those who spent years memorizing the Chinese classics?
The answer to this was to rest with the koan.
The Ch'an master Ta-hui (1089-1163), who perfected the koan technique,
was rumored to be a reincarnation of Lin-chi. Born in Anhwei province,
located about halfway between the older capitals of the north and the
Ch'an centers in the south, he was said to be both pious and
precocious, becoming a devoted monk at age seventeen while assiduously
reading and absorbing the teachings of the five houses.12 At age
nineteen, he began his obligatory travels, roaming from master to
master. One of his first teachers reportedly interviewed him on the
koans in the collection now known as the _Blue Cliff Record_, but he
did so by not speaking a word and thereby forcing Ta-hui to work them
out for himself. Ta-hui also experimented with the Ts'ao-tung
teachings, but early on began to question the straitlaced, quietistic
approach of that house. He finally was directed to the Szechuan teacher
Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in of the Lin-chi school, beginning the association that
would move him to the forefront of the struggle to save Ch'an via the
koan.
Ta-hui experienced his first enlightenment under Yuan-wu, in the
master's temple in the Northern Sung capital of Pien-liang. As the
story is reported:
_One day when Yuan-wu had taken the high seat in the lecture hall, he
said: "A monk asked Yun-men: 'From whence come all the buddhas?' Yun-
men answered: 'The East Mountain walks over the water.' But if I were
asked, I would not answer that way. 'From whence come all the buddhas?'
A fragrant breeze comes of itself from the south, and in the palace
pavilion a refreshing coolness stirs." At these words [Ta-hui] suddenly
attained enlightenment.13
_
After this he grew in experience and wisdom, eventually taking over
many temple duties from Yuan-wu. He soon became a part of the Ch'an
establishment in the north and in 1126 was even presented with an
official robe and title from a minister.
Then suddenly, in the midst of this tranquillity, outside forces
intervened to change dramatically the course of Chinese history. For
many years previous, China had been threatened by nomadic peoples from
the north and west, peoples whom the Chinese haughtily identified as
"barbarians." The Sung emperors, cloistered gentlemen in the worst
sense of the term, had maintained peace in their slowly shrinking
domain by buying off belligerent neighbors and occasionally even ceding
border territories. They thought their troubles finally might be easing
somewhat when their hostile neighbors were overwhelmed by a new warring
tribe from Manchuria. But after a series of humiliating incidents, the
Chinese found themselves with merely a new enemy, this time more
powerful than any before. China was at last on the verge of being
overwhelmed, something it had forestalled for many centuries. Even the
invention of gunpowder, which the Chinese now used to fire rocket-
propelled arrows, could not save them. Before long the barbarians
marched on the capital, and after some years of Chinese attempts at
appeasement, the invaders carried off the emperor and his entire court
to Manchuria. The year was 1127, which marked the end of the Chinese
dynasty now known as the Northern Sung (960-1127).
After this disheartening setback a son of the former emperor moved
south and set up a new capital in the coastal city of Hangchow, whose
charms the Chinese were fond of comparing
favorably with heaven (in the refrain, "Heaven above; Hangchow below").
This new regime, known as the Southern Sung (1127-1279), witnessed yet
another transformation of Ch'an. Among other things, Southern Ch'an
came to resemble eighth-century Northern Ch'an, in its close
association with the court and the intelligentsia.
When political discord forced the Northern Sung government to flee
south, the master Yuan-wu was assigned a monastery in the southern
province of Kiangsi by the emperor, and Ta-hui accompanied him there,
again as head monk. After four years, Ta-hui again decided to migrate--
this time alone--to Szechuan and there to build a secluded hermitage.
After another move he was summoned in 1137 by the prime minister,
himself also a former pupil of Yuan-wu, to come and establish a temple
near the new southern capital of Hangchow. Before long he had collected
almost two thousand disciples and was becoming known as the
reincarnation of Lin-chi, possibly because he was giving new life to
the Lin-chi sect. But then his politics got him in trouble and he was
banished for almost fifteen years to various remote outposts, during
which time he began to write extensively.14 Finally, in 1158, he was
ordered back to Hangchow to take over his old temple. Since by then old
age was encroaching, he was permitted to retire at this temple and live
off imperial patronage. It is said that his pupils swelled to seventeen
hundred when he returned and that when he died in 1163 he left ninety-
four enlightened heirs.15
Ta-hui is regarded today as the great champion of the koan method, and
he was celebrated during his life for a running disagreement he had
with the Ts'ao-tung (later Soto) school. In a sense, this dispute drew
the distinctions that still divide Zen into two camps. The issue seems
to have boiled down to the matter of what one does with one's mind
while meditating. The Ts'ao-tung masters advocated what they called
Silent Illumination (_mo-chao_) Ch'an, which Ta-hui preferred to call
Silent Illumination Heterodox (_mo-chao-hsieh_) Ch'an. The Ts'ao-tung
master Cheng-chueh, with whom he argued, believed that enlightenment
could be achieved through sitting motionless and slowly bringing
tranquillity and empty nonattachment to the mind. The koans were
recognized to be useful in preserving the original spirit of Ch'an, but
their brain-fatiguing convolutions were not permitted to disturb the
mental repose of meditation. Ta-hui, in contrast, believed that this
silent meditation lacked the dynamism so essential to the sudden
experience of enlightenment. His own approach to enlightenment came to
be called Introspecting-the-Koan (_k'an-hua_) Ch'an, in which
meditation focused on a koan.16
Another of Ta-hui's objections to the Silent Illumination school seems
to have been its natural drift toward quietism, toward the divorcing of
men from the world of affairs. This he believed led nowhere and was
merely renouncing humanity rather than illuminating it.
_These days there's a breed of shaven-headed outsiders [i.e., rival
masters] whose own eyes are not clear, who just teach people to stop
and rest and play dead. . . . They teach people to "keep the mind
still," to "forget feelings" according to circumstances, to practice
"silent illumination." . . . To say that when one has put things to
rest to the point that he is unawares and unknowing, like earth, wood,
tile, or stone, this is not unknowing silence--this is a view of wrongly
taking too literally words that were (only) expedient means to free
bonds.17
_He seemed to be counseling never to forget that meditation is only a
means, not an end. Instead Ta-hui advocated meditating deeper and ever
deeper into a koan, focusing on the words until they "lose their
flavor." Then finally the bottom falls out of the bucket and
enlightenment hits you. This "Introspecting the Koan" form of Ch'an
(called Kanna Zen by the Japanese) became the standard for the Rinzai
sect, whose students were encouraged to meditate on a koan until it
gradually infiltrated the mind. As one commentator has explained, "The
essential is to immerse oneself patiently and wholeheartedly in the
koan, with unwavering attention. One must not be looking for an answer
but looking at the koan. The 'answer,' if it comes, will come of its
own accord."18 As described by Ta-hui:
_Just steadily go on with your koan every moment of your life. . . .
Whether walking or sitting, let your attention be fixed upon it without
interruption. When you begin to find it entirely devoid of flavor, the
final moment is approaching: do not let it slip out of your grasp. When
all of a sudden something flashes out in your mind, its light will
illumine the entire universe, and you will see the spiritual land of
the Enlightened Ones. . . .19
_
The important thing is to concentrate totally on a koan. This
concentration need not necessarily be confined to meditation, as Ta-hui
illustrates using one of the more celebrated one-word statements of
Yun-men.
_A monk asked Yun-Men, "What is Buddha?" Yun-Men said, "A dry piece of
shit." Just bring up this saying. . . .Don't ask to draw realization
from the words or try in your confusion to assess and explain. . . .
Just take your confused unhappy mind and shift it onto "A dry piece of
shit." Once you hold it there, then the mind . . . will naturally no
longer operate. When you become aware that it's not operating, don't be
afraid of falling into emptiness. . . . In the conduct of your daily
activities, just always let go and make yourself vast and expansive.
Whether you're in quiet or noisy places, constantly arouse yourself
with the saying "A dry piece of shit." As the days and months come and
go, of itself your potential will be purified and ripen. Above all you
must not arouse any external doubts besides: when your doubts about "A
dry piece of shit" are smashed, then at once doubts numerous as the
sands of the Ganges are all smashed.20
_
Although Ta-hui was a strong advocate of the koan, he was staunchly
against its being used in a literary sense. Whenever a student starts
analyzing koans intellectually, comparing one against another, trying
to understand rationally how they affect his nonrational intelligence,
he misses the whole point. The only way it can work is if it is fresh.
Only then does it elicit a response from our spontaneous intelligence,
our intuitive mind.
But the Sung trend toward intellectualism was almost irresistible. The
prestige of the Chinese "gentleman"--who could quote the ancient poets,
compose verse himself, and analyze enlightenment--was the great nemesis
of Ch'an.
_Gentlemen of affairs who study the path often understand rationally
without getting to the reality. Without discussion and thought they are
at a loss, with no place to put their hands and feet--they won't believe
that where there is no place to put one's hands and feet is really a
good situation. They just want to get there in their minds by thinking
and in their mouths to understand by talking--they scarcely realize
they've already gone wrong.21
_
Equally bad was the Ch'an student who memorized koans rather than
trying to understand them intuitively.
_A gentleman reads widely in many books basically in order to augment
his innate knowledge. Instead, you have taken to memorizing the words
of the ancients, accumulating them in
your breast, making this your task, depending on them for something to
take hold of in conversation. You are far from knowing the intent of
the sages in expounding the teachings. This is what is called counting
the treasure of others all day long without having half a cent of your
own.22
_Ta-hui rightly recognized in such scholarship an impending destruction
of Ch'an's innate vigor. At one point, in desperation, he even
destroyed the original printing blocks for the best-known koan
collection of the time, the _Blue Cliff Record _compiled by his master,
Yuan-wu.23 But the trend continued nonetheless.
Ch'an was not over yet, however. It turns out that the sect did not
continue to fly apart and diversify as might be suspected, but rather
it actually consolidated. Although the Kuei-yang and Fa-yen houses
fizzled comparatively quickly, the Yun-men lasted considerably longer,
with an identifiable line of transmission lasting virtually throughout
the Sung Dynasty. The Ts'ao-tung house languished for a while, but with
Silent Illumination Ch'an it came back strongly during the Sung
Dynasty. Lin-chi split into two factions in the early eleventh century,
when two pupils of the master Ch'u-yuan (986-1036) decided to go their
own way, One of these masters, known as Huang-lung Hui-nan (1002-1069),
started a school which subsequently was transmitted to Japan by the
Japanese master Eisai, where it became known as Oryo Zen. However, this
school did not last long in China or Japan, becoming moribund after a
few generations. The other disciple of Ch'u-yuan was a master named
Yang-ch'i Fang-hui (992-1049), whose school (known in Japanese as Yogi
Zen) eventually became the only school of Chinese Ch'an, absorbing all
other sects when the faith went into its final decline after the Sung.
Ta-hui was part of this school, and it was the branch of the Lin-chi
sect that eventually took hold in Japan.
In closing our journey through Chinese Ch'an we must note that the
faith continued on strongly through the Sung largely because the
government began selling ordinations for its own profit. Ch'an also
continued to flourish during the Mongol-dominated Yuan Dynasty (1279-
1309), with many priests from Japan coming to China for study. During
the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), it merged with another school of
Buddhism, the Pure Land Salvationist sect, and changed drastically.
Although Ming-style Chinese Ch'an still persists today, mainly outside
China, its practice bears scant resemblance to the original teachings.
For the practice of the classical Ch'an described here we must now turn
to Japan.