PART IV

ZEN IN JAPAN

. . . in which Ch'an is imported to Japan by traditional Buddhists

disillusioned with the spiritual decadence of existing Japanese sects.

Through a fortuitous association with the rising military class, Ch'an

is eventually elevated to the most influential religion of Japan.

Before long, however, it evolves into a political and cultural rather

than a spiritual force. Although some Japanese attempt to restore

Ch'an's original vigor by deliberately attacking its "High Church"

institutions, few Japanese Zen teachers respect its original teachings

and practice. Japanese teachers contribute little to the Ch'an (Zen)

experience until finally, in the eighteenth century, a spiritual leader

appears who not only restores the original vitality of the faith, but

goes on to refine the koan practice and revolutionize the relationship

of Zen to the common people. This inspired teacher, Hakuin, creates

modern Zen.

Chapter Fifteen

EISAI:

THE FIRST JAPANESE MASTER

There is a twelfth-century story that the first Japanese monk who

journeyed to China to study Ch'an returned home to find a summons from

the Japanese court. There, in a meeting reminiscent of the Chinese

sovereign Wu and the Indian Bodhidharma some seven hundred years

before, Japan's emperor commanded him to describe the teachings of this

strange new cult. The bemused monk (remembered by the name Kakua)

replied with nothing more than a melody on his flute, leaving the court

flabbergasted.1 But what more ideal expression of China's wordless

doctrine?

As in the China entered by Bodhidharma, medieval Japan already knew the

teachings of Buddhism. In fact, the Japanese ruling classes had been

Buddhist for half a millennium before Ch'an officially came to their

attention. However, contacts with China were suspended midway during

this time, leaving Japanese Buddhists out of touch with the many

changes in China--the most significant being Ch'an's rise to the

dominant Buddhist sect.2 Consequently the Japanese had heard almost

nothing about this sect when contacts resumed in the twelfth century.

To their amazement they discovered that Chinese Buddhism had become

Ch'an. The story of Ch'an's transplant in Japan is also the story of

its preservation, since it was destined to wither away in China.

Perhaps we should review briefly how traditional Buddhism got to Japan

in the first place. During the sixth century, about the time of

Bodhidharma, a statue of the Buddha and some sutras were transmitted to

Japan as a gift/bribe from a Korean monarch seeking military aid. He

claimed Buddhism was very powerful although difficult to understand.

Not all Japanese, however, were overjoyed with the appearance of a new

faith. The least pleased were those employed by the existing religion,

the Japanese cult of Shinto, and they successfully discredited Buddhism

for several decades. But a number of court intrigues were underway at

the time, and one faction got the idea that Buddhism would be helpful

in undermining the Shinto-based ruling clique. Eventually this new

faction triumphed, and by the middle of the seventh century, the

Japanese were constructing Buddhist temples and pagodas.3

Other imports connected with these early mainland contacts were Chinese

writing and the Chinese style of government. The Japanese even

recreated the T'ang capital of Ch'ang-an, consecrated at the beginning

of the eighth century as Nara, their first real city. The growing

Buddhist establishment soon overwhelmed Nara with a host of sects and

temples, culminating in 752 with the unveiling of a bronze meditating

Buddha larger than any statue in the world.

Japan was now awash in thirdhand Buddhism, as Chinese missionaries

patronizingly expounded Sanskrit scriptures they themselves only

vaguely understood. Buddhism's reputation for powerful magic soon

demoralized the simple religion of Shinto, with its unpretentious

shrines and rites, and this benign nature reverence was increasingly

pushed into the background. The impact of Buddhism became so

overwhelming that the alarmed emperor finally abandoned Nara entirely

to the Buddhists, and at the close of the eighth century set up a new

capital in central Japan, known today as Kyoto.

The emperor also decided to discredit the Nara Buddhists on their own

terms, sending to China for new, competing sects. Back came emissaries

with two new schools, which soon assumed dominance of Japanese

Buddhism. The first of these was Tendai, named after the Chinese T'ien-

t'ai school. Its teachings centered on the Lotus Sutra, which taught

that the human Buddha personified a universal spirit, evidence of the

oneness permeating all things. The Tendai school was installed on Mt.

Hiei, in the outskirts of Kyoto, giving birth to an establishment

eventually to number several thousand buildings. The monks on Mt. Hiei

became the authority on Buddhist matters in Japan for several centuries

thereafter, and later they also began meddling in affairs of state,

sometimes even resorting to arms. Tendai was, and perhaps to some

degree still is, a faith for the fortunate few. It did not stress an

idealized hereafter, since it served a class--the idle aristocracy--

perfectly comfortable in the present world. In any case, it became the

major Japanese Buddhist sect during the Heian era (794-1185), a time of

aristocratic rule.

The other important, and also aristocratic, version of Buddhism

preceding Zen was called Shingon, from the Chinese school Chen-yen, a

magical-mystery sect thriving on secrecy and esoteric symbolism. It

appealed less to the intellect than did Tendai and more to the taste

for entertainment among the bored aristocrats. Although Shingon

monasteries often were situated in remote mountainous areas, the

intrigue of their engaging ceremonies (featuring efflorescent

iconography, chants, and complex liturgies) and their evocative

mandalas (geometrical paintings full of symbolism) made this sect a

theatrical success. This so-called Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon grew so

popular that the sober Tendai sect was obliged to start adding

ritualistic complexity into its own practices.4

The Japanese government broke off relations with China less than a

hundred years after the founding of Kyoto, around the middle of the

ninth century. From then until the mid-twelfth century mainland

contacts virtually ceased, and consequently both Japanese culture and

Japanese Buddhism gradually evolved away from their Chinese models. The

Japanese aristocracy became obsessed with aesthetics, finery, and

refined lovemaking accompanied by poetry, perfumes, and flowers.5 They

distilled the vigorous T'ang culture to a refined essence, rather like

extracting a delicate liqueur from a stout potion.

The Buddhist church also grew decadent, even as it grew ever more

powerful and ominous. The priesthood became the appointment of last

resort for otherwise unemployable courtiers, and indeed Buddhism

finally degenerated largely into an entertainment for the ruling class,

whose members were amused and diverted by its rites. This carefree

aristocracy also allowed increasing amounts of wealth and land to slip

into the hands of corrupt religious establishments. For their own part,

the Buddhists began forming armies of monks to protect their new

wealth, and they eventually went on to engage in inter-temple wars and

threaten the civil government.

During this time, the Japanese aristocracy preserved its privileged

position through the unwise policy of using an emerging military class

to maintain order. These professional soldiers seem to have arisen from

the aristocacy itself. Japanese emperors had a large number of women at

their disposal, through whom they scattered a host of progeny, not all

of which could be maintained idle in Kyoto. A number of these were sent

to the provinces, where they were to govern untamed outlying areas.

This continued until one day the court in Kyoto awoke to find that

Japan was in fact controlled by these rural clans and their mounted

warriors, the samurai.6

In the middle of the twelfth century, the samurai effectively seized

Japan, and their strongman invented for himself the title of _shogun_,

proceeding to institute what became almost eight centuries of unbroken

warrior rule. The age of the common man had arrived, and one of the

_shogun's _first acts was to transfer the government away from

aristocratic Kyoto, whose sophisticated society made him uncomfortable,

to a warrior camp called Kamakura, near the site of modern Tokyo. The

rule of Japan passed from perfumed, poetry-writing aesthetes to fierce,

often illiterate swordsmen.

Coincident with this coup, the decadence and irrelevance of traditional

Buddhism had begun to weigh heavily upon a new group of spiritual

reformers. Before long Tendai and Shingon were challenged by new faiths

recognizing the existence and spiritual needs of the common people. One

form this reformation took was the appearance of new sects providing

spiritual comfort to the masses and the possibility of eternal

salvation through some simple act, usually the repetition of a sacred

chant. One, and later two, such sects (Jodo and Jodo Shin) focused on

the Buddhist figure Amida, whose Paradise or "Pure Land" in the

hereafter was open to all those calling upon his name (by chanting a

sort of Buddhist "Hail Mary" called the _nembutsu_, "Praise to Amida

Buddha"). Another simplified sect preached a fundamentalist return to

the Lotus Sutra and was led by a firebrand named Nichiren, who also

created a chant for his largely illiterate followers. A formula

guaranteeing Paradise had particular appeal to the samurai, whose day-

to-day existence was dangerous and uncertain. The scandalized Tendai

monks vigorously opposed this home-grown populist movement,

occasionally even burning down temples to discourage its growth. But

the Pure Land and Nichiren sects continued to flourish, since the

common people finally had a Buddhism all their own.

There were others, however, who believed that the aristocratic sects

could be reformed from within--by importing them afresh from China, from

the source. These reformers hoped that Buddhism in China had maintained

its integrity and discipline during the several centuries of

separation. And by fortunate coincidence, Japanese contacts with the

mainland were being reopened, making it again allowable to undertake

the perilous sea voyage to China. But when the first twelfth-century

Japanese pilgrims reached the mainland, they were stunned to find that

traditional Buddhism had been almost completely supplanted by Ch'an.

Consequently, the Japanese pilgrims returning from China perforce

returned with Zen, since little else remained. However, Zen was not

originally brought back to replace traditional Buddhism, but rather as

a stimulant to restore the rigor that had drained out of monastic life,

including formal meditation and respect or discipline.7

Credit for the introduction of Lin-chi Zen (called Rinzai) in Japan is

traditionally given to the aristocratic priest and traveler Myoan Eisai

(1141-1215).8 He began his career as a young monk in the Tendai complex

near Kyoto, but in the summer of 1168 he accompanied a Shingon priest

on a trip to China, largely to sightsee and to visit the home of the

T'ien-t'ai sect as a pilgrim. However, the T'ien-t'ai school must have

been a mere shadow of its former self by this time, and naturally

enough Eisai became familiar with Ch'an. But he was hardly a firebrand

for Zen, for when he returned to Japan he continued practice of

traditional Buddhism.

Some twenty years later, in 1187, Eisai again journeyed to China, this

time planning a pilgrimage on to India and the Buddhist holy places.

But the Chinese refused him permission to travel beyond their borders,

leaving Eisai no choice but to study there. He finally attached himself

to an aging Ch'an monk on Mt. T'ien-t'ai and managed to receive the

seal of enlightenment before returning to Japan in 1191, quite probably

the first Japanese ever certified by a Chinese Ch'an master. He was

not, however, totally committed to Zen. His Ch'an teacher was also

occupied with other Buddhist schools, and what Eisai brought back was a

Buddhist cocktail blended from several different traditions.9 But he did

proceed to build a temple to the Huang-lung (Japanese Oryo) branch of

the Lin-chi sect on the southernmost Japanese island, Kyushu (the

location nearest China), in the provincial town of Hakata. Almost as

important, he also brought back the tea plant (whose brew was used in

China to keep drowsy monks awake during meditation), thereby

instituting the long marriage of Zen and tea.

Although his provincial temple went unchallenged, later attempts to

introduce this new sect into Kyoto, the stronghold of traditional

Buddhism, met fierce resistance from the establishment, particularly

Tendai. But Eisai contended that Zen was a useful sect and that the

government would reap practical benefits from its protection. His

spirited defense of Zen, entitled "Propagation of Zen for the

Protection of the Country," argued that its encouragement would be good

for Japanese Buddhism and therefore good for Japan.10

_As in India, so in China its teaching has attracted followers and

disciples in great numbers. It propagates the Truth as the ancient

Buddha did, with the robe of authentic transmission passing from one

man to the next. In the matter of religious discipline, it practices

the genuine method of the sages of old. Thus the Truth it teaches, both

in substance and appearance, perfects the relationships of master and

disciple. In its rules of action and discipline, there is no confusion

of right and wrong. . . . Studying it, one discovers the key to all

forms of Buddhism; practicing it, one's life is brought to fulfillment

in the attainment of enlightenment. Outwardly it favors discipline over

doctrine, inwardly it brings the Highest Inner Wisdom. This is what the

Zen sect stands for.11

_

He also pointed out how un-Japanese it would be to deny Zen a hearing:

Japan has been open-minded in the past, why should she reject a new

faith now?

_In our country the [emperor] shines in splendor and the influence of

his virtuous wisdom spreads far and wide. Emissaries from the distant

lands of South and Central Asia pay their respects to his court. Lay

ministers conduct the affairs of government; priests and monks spread

abroad religious truth. Even the truths of the Four Hindu Vedas are not

neglected. Why then reject the five schools of Zen Buddhism?12

_

Eisai was the classic tactician, knowing well when to fight and when to

retire, and he decided in 1199 on a diversionary retreat to Kamakura,

leaving behind the hostile, competitive atmosphere of aristocratic

Kyoto. Through his political connections, he managed to get installed

as head of a new temple in Kamakura, beginning Zen's long association

with the Japanese warrior class.

Eisai seems to have done well in Kamakura, for not long after he

arrived, the current strongman gave him financing for a Zen temple in

Kyoto, named Kennin-ji and completed in 1205. Eisai returned the favor

by assisting in the repair of temples ravaged by the recent wars. It

was reportedly for a later, hard-drinking ruler that Eisai composed his

second classic work, "Drink Tea and Prolong Life," which championed the

medicinal properties of this exotic Chinese beverage, declaring it a

restorative that tuned up the body and strengthened the heart.

_In the great country of China they drink tea, as a result of which

there is no heart trouble and people live long lives. Our country is

full of sickly-looking, skinny persons, and this is simply because we

do not drink tea. Whenever one is in poor spirits, one should drink

tea. This will put the heart in order and dispel all illness. When the

heart is vigorous, then even if the other organs are ailing, no great

pain will be felt. . . . The heart is the sovereign of the five organs,

tea is the chief of the bitter foods, and bitter is the chief of the

tastes. For this reason the heart loves bitter things, and when it is

doing well all the other organs are properly regulated. . . . When,

however, the whole body feels weak, devitalized, and depressed, it is a

sign that the heart is ailing. Drink lots of tea, and one's energy and

spirits will be restored to full strength.13

_

This first Zen teacher was certainly no Lin-chi. He was merely a Tendai

priest who imported Lin-chi's sect from China hoping to bring

discipline to his school; he established an ecumenical monastery at

which both Zen and esoteric Tendai practices were taught; he consorted

with leaders whose place was owed to a military coup d'etat; and he

appeared to advocate Zen on transparently practical, sometimes almost

political, grounds. He compromised with the existing cults to the end,

even refusing to lend aid to other, more pure-minded advocates of Ch'an

who had risen in Kyoto in the meantime.14 But Eisai was a colorful

figure whom history has chosen to remember as the founder of Zen in

Japan, as well as (perhaps equally important) the father of the cult of

tea.

Eisai ended his days as abbot of the Kyoto temple of Kennin-ji and

leader of a small Zen community that was careful not to quarrel with

the powers of Tendai and Shingon, which also had altars in the temple.

Eisai's "Zen" began in Japan as a minor infusion of Buddhism's original

discipline, but through an accommodation with the warrior

establishment, he accidentally planted the seeds of Ch'an in fertile

soil. Gradually the number of Zen practitioners grew, as more and more

of the samurai recognized in Zen a practical philosophy that accorded

well with their needs. As Paul Varley has explained: "Zen . . .

stresses cultivation of the intuitive faculties and places a high

premium on discipline and self-control. It rejects rational decision-

making as artificial and delusory, and insists that action must come

from emotion. As such, Zen proved particularly congenial to the

medieval samurai, who lived with violence and imminent death and who

sought to develop such things as 'spontaneity of conduct' and a

'tranquility of heart' to meet the rigours of his profession. Under the

influence of Zen, later samurai theorists especially asserted that the

true warrior must be constantly prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice

of his life in the service of his lord--without a moment's reflection or

conscious consideration."15

It can only be ironic that what began in China as a school of

meditation, then became an iconoclastic movement using koans to beat

down the analytical faculties finally emerged (in an amalgam with other

teachings) in Japan as a psychological mainstay for the soldiers of a

military dictatorship. There was, however, another Japanese school of

Zen that introduced its practice in a form more closely resembling

original Ch'an. This was the movement started by Dogen, whose life we

may now examine.

Chapter Sixteen

DOGEN:

FATHER OF JAPANESE SOTO ZEN

The Soto master Dogen (1200-53) is probably the most revered figure in

all Japanese Zen. Yet until recently he has been comparatively unknown

abroad, perhaps because that great popularizer of Zen in the West, D.

T. Suzuki, followed the Rinzai school and managed to essentially ignore

Dogen throughout his voluminous writings. But it was Dogen who first

insisted on intensive meditation, who produced the first Japanese

writings explaining Zen practice, and who constructed the first real

Zen monastery in Japan, establishing a set of monastic rules still

observed. Moreover, the strength of his character has inspired many Zen

masters to follow. Indeed, it is hard to contradict the scholar

Dumoulin, who declared him "the strongest and most original thinker

that Japan has so far produced."1

Born January 2 of the year 1200 an illegitimate son of a noble Fujiwara

mother and a princely father, Dogen's circumstances from the start were

aristocratic.2 Around him swirled the literary life of the court, the

powerful centuries-old position of the Fujiwara, and the refined

decadence of ancient Kyoto. Although his father died when he was two,

his privileged education continued at the hands of his mother and half-

brother. He most certainly learned to read and write classical Chinese,

as well as to versify and debate--all skills that he would one day put

to extensive use. His poetic sensitivity (something traditionally

prized by the Japanese above logic and precision of thought) was

encouraged by all he met in the hothouse atmosphere of ancient Kyoto.

This idyllic, protected life was shattered at age seven with the sudden

death of his mother. But she set the course of his life when, at the

last, she bade him become a monk and reach out to suffering mankind. A

popular tradition has it that at his mother's funeral Dogen sensed in

the rising incense the impermanence of all things. After the shock of

his mother's death he was adopted by an uncle as family heir and set on

the way to a reluctant career in statecraft. But as he approached age

twelve, the time when a formal ceremony would signify his entry into

the male circle of aristocracy, his reservations overwhelmed him and he

slipped away to visit another uncle, a priest living in the foothills

of Mt. Hiei. When Dogen begged to be allowed to turn his back on the

aristocratic world of Kyoto and fulfill his mother's dying wish by

becoming a monk the family was dismayed. But finally they relented, and

he was ordained the following year as a Tendai brother on Mt. Hiei.

Already a scholar of the Chinese classics, he now turned to the

literature of Tendai Buddhism. But soon he was snagged on a problem

that has haunted theologians East and West for many centuries. In

Christian terms it is the Calvinist question of whether man is already

saved by predestination or whether he must earn his salvation. Dogen

formulated this in a Buddhist context as follows:

_As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism,

they maintain that man is endowed with the Dharma-nature by birth. If

this is the case, why had the Buddhas of all ages--undoubtedly in

possession of enlightenment--to seek enlightenment and engage in

spiritual practice_?3

In other words, if man already has the Buddha nature, why must he

struggle to realize it by arduous disciplines? Conversely, if the

Buddha nature must be acquired, how can it be inherent in all things,

as was taught?

This perplexing paradox, which no one in Japan's Tendai "Vatican" on

Mt. Hiei could resolve, finally drove Dogen wandering in search of

other teachers. He initially stopped at Eisai's temple, Kennin-ji, long

enough to be taught the basics of Rinzai Zen practice, but then he

traveled on. Eventually, though, he returned to Kennin-ji, and in 1217,

began Zen study under Eisai's disciple, Myozen (1184-1225). Of his

relationship with this Rinzai master he later declared:

_Ever since I awakened to the Bodhi-mind and sought the supreme Truth I

made many visits to Buddhist masters throughout the country. It was

thus that I happened to meet the Venerable Myozen at Kennin-ji. Nine

years quickly passed as I studied the Way under him. During that period

I had the opportunity to learn from him, to some extent, the training

methods of the Rinzai Zen sect. To the Venerable Myozen, leading

disciple of my late master Eisai, was rightly transmitted the highest

supreme Law and he was unparalleled among his fellow disciples in

learning and virtue.4

_Dogen may have been impressed as much by the legend of Eisai as by the

shouting and beating of the Rinzai sect, for he often sprinkled stories

about Eisai through his writings and sermons thereafter.

But Dogen still could not find contentment, even with the Rinzai he

received at Kennin-ji, and at age twenty-three he resolved to go to

China and experience Ch'an teachings firsthand. So in the spring of

1223 he and Myozen shipped out for China, intending to visit Buddhist

establishments there. (Another reason for his hasty decision to go to

China for study may have been a series of political upheavals involving

armed monks, which resulted in some of his high-placed relations being

banished--while a series of executions took place.)5

After a rough but speedy voyage across the East China Sea, they arrived

at Ming-chou, down the coast from the Sung capital of Hangchow. Myozen

could not wait and headed straight for the Ch'an complex on Mt. T'ien-

t'ung. However, the more cautious Dogen chose to stay aboard ship until

midsummer, easing himself into Chinese life slowly. But even there he

experienced an example of Ch'an fervor and devotion that impressed him

deeply, if only because it was so different from what he had seen in

Japan. This lesson was at the hands of a sixty-year-old Chinese cook

from a Ch'an monastery who visited the ship to purchase some Japanese

mushrooms. Dogen became involved in an animated conversation with the

old monk and, since his monastery was over ten miles away, out of

courtesy invited him to stay the night on board ship. However, the old

tenzo monk (one in charge of monastery meals) insisted on returning,

saying duty called. But, Dogen pressed, surely there must be others who

could cook in such a large monastery, and besides cooking was hardly

the point of Zen. As Dogen later recalled his own words:

_"Venerable sir! Why don't you do_ zazen _[Zen meditation] or study the

koan of ancient masters? What is the use of working so hard as a tenzo

monk?"

On hearing my remarks, he broke into laughter and said, "Good

foreigner! You seem to be ignorant of the true training and meaning of

Buddhism." In a moment, ashamed and surprised at his remark, I said to

him, "What are they?"

"If you understand the true meaning of your question, you will have

already realized the true meaning of Buddhism," he answered. At that

time, however, I was unable to understand what he meant.6_

Such were the exchanges between Japanese Buddhist scholars and Ch'an

monastery cooks in the early thirteenth century.

In midsummer of 1223, Dogen finally moved ashore and entered the temple

on Mt. T'ien-t'ung called Ching-te-ssu. His intense study brought no

seal of enlightenment, but it did engender severe disappointment with

the standards of Ch'an monasteries in China. Although the school that

Dogen found was a branch of Lin-chi traceable back to the koan master

Ta-hui, different from the fading school Eisai had encountered, Dogen

later would denounce impartially the general run of all Ch'an masters

he met in China.

_Although there are in China a great number of those who profess

themselves to be the descendants of the Buddhas and patriarchs, there

are few who study truth and accordingly there are few who teach truth.

. . . Thus those people who have not the slightest idea of what the

great Way of the Buddhas and patriarchs is now become the masters of

monks. . . . Reciting a few words of Lin-chi and Yun-men they take them

for the whole truth of Buddhism. If Buddhism had been exhausted by a

few words of Lin-chi and Yun-men, it could not have survived till

today.7

_

After studying for two years while simultaneously nosing about other

nearby monasteries, Dogen finally decided to travel, hoping others of

the "five houses" had maintained discipline. (He also seems to have

experienced some discrimination as a foreigner in China.) But the

farther he went, the more despondent he became; nowhere in China could

he find a teacher worthy to succeed the ancient masters. He finally

resolved to abandon China and return to Japan.

But at this moment fate took a turn that--in retrospect--had enormous

importance for the future of Japanese Buddhism. A monk he met on the

road told him that T'ien-t'ung now had a new

abbot, a truly enlightened master namd Ju-ching (1163-1228). Dogen

returned to see and was received warmly, being invited by Ju-ching to

ignore ceremony and approach him as an equal. The twenty-five-year-old

Japanese monk was elated, and settled down at last to undertake the

study he had come to China for. The master Ju-ching became Dogen's

ideal of what a Zen teacher should be, and the habits--perhaps even the

eccentricities--of this aging teacher were translated by Dogen into the

model for monks in Japan.

Ju-ching was, above all things, uncompromising in his advocacy of

meditation or _zazen_. He might even have challenged Bodhidharma for

the title of its all-time practitioner, and it was from Ju-ching's

Ch'an (which may also have included koan study) that Dogen took his

cue. Although Ch'an was still widespread, Ju-ching seems to have been

the only remaining advocate of intensive meditation in China, and a

chance intersection of history brought this teaching to Japan.

Significantly, he was one of the few Ts'ao-tung masters ever to lead

the important T'ien-t'ung monastery, traditionally headed by a member

of the Lin-chi school. Ju-ching was a model master: strict but kindly;

simple in habits, diet, dress; immune to the attractions of court

recognition; and an uncompromising advocate of virtually round-the-

clock meditation.

But he never asked anything of his monks he did not also demand of

himself, even when advanced in years. He would strike nodding monks to

refresh their attention, while lamenting that age had so diminished the

strength in his arm it was eroding his ability to create good monks.

Ju-ching would meditate until eleven in the evening and then be up

again by two-thirty or three the next morning, back at _zazen_. He

frequently developed sores on his backside from such perpetual sitting,

but nothing deterred him. He even declared the pain made him love

_zazen _all the more.

The story of Dogen's final enlightenment at the hands of Ju-ching is a

classic of Japanese Zen. In the meditation hall one early morning all

the monks were sitting in meditation when the man next to Dogen dozed

off--a common enough occurrence in early-morning sessions. But when Ju-

ching came by on a routine inspection and saw the sleeping monk, he was

for some reason particularly rankled and roared out, "_Zazen _means the

dropping away of mind and body! What will you get by sleeping?" Dogen,

sitting nearby, was at first startled, but then an indescribable calm,

an ecstatic joy washed over him. Could it be that this was the moment

he had been hoping for? Could it be that the fruit had been ready to

fall from the tree, with this just the shake needed?

Dogen rushed to Ju-ching's room afterward and burned incense, to

signify his enlightenment experience. Throwing himself at the master's

feet, he declared, "I have experienced the dropping away of mind and

body."

Ju-ching immediately recognized his enlightenment to be genuine (modern

masters reportedly can discern a novice's state merely by the way he

rings a gong) and he replied, "You have indeed dropped body and mind."

"But wait a minute," Dogen cautioned. "Don't sanction me so easily. How

do you really know I've achieved enlightenment?"

To which Ju-ching replied simply, "Body and mind have dropped away."

Dogen bowed in acknowledgment of his acknowledgment. And thus, in May

1225, was the greatest Zen teacher in Japan enlightened. In the fall

Ju-ching conferred upon Dogen the seal of patriarchal succession of his

line of the Ts'ao-tung sect.8

Dogen stayed on for two more years studying under Ju-ching, but finally

he decided to return again to Japan. When they parted, Ju-ching gave

his Japanese protege the patriarchal robe, his own portrait (called

_chinso_, a symbol of transmission), and bade him farewell. So did

Dogen return to Japan in the fall of 1227, taking with him the koan

collection _Blue Cliff Record_, which he copied his last night in

China. But he also brought the fire of a powerful idea, pure

meditation, that formed the basis for the Japanese Soto school of Zen.

Dogen returned to Eisai's old temple of Kennin-ji, where he proceeded

to write the minor classic _A Universal Recommendation for Zazen_,

introducing the idea of intense meditation to his countrymen.

_You should pay attention to the fact that even the Buddha Sakyamuni

had to practice_ zazen _for six years. It is also said that Bodhidharma

had to do _zazen _at Shao-lin temple for nine years in order to

transmit the Buddha-mind. Since these ancient sages were so diligent,

how can present-day trainees do without the practice of _zazen_? You

should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and

reflect on yourself. When you do so, your body and mind will naturally

fall away, and your original Buddha-nature will appear.9

_

It was the opening shot in a campaign to make pure Zen the meaningful

alternative to the decadent traditional Buddhism of the aristocracy and

the new Salvationist sect of Pure Land. But first the Japanese had to

be taught how to meditate, so he wrote a meditation "handbook" that

explained exactly how and where to undertake this traditional Buddhist

practice. His directions are worth quoting at length.

_Now, in doing _zazen _it is desirable to have a quiet room. You should

be temperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive

relationships. Setting everything aside, think neither of good nor

evil, right nor wrong. Thus, having stopped the various functions of

your mind, give up the idea of becoming a Buddha. This holds true not

only for _zazen _but for all your daily actions.

Usually a thick square mat is put on the floor where you sit and a

round cushion on top of that. You may sit in either the full or half

lotus position. In the former, first put your right foot on your left

thigh and then your left foot on your right thigh. In the latter, only

put your left foot on the right thigh. Your clothing should be worn

loosely but neatly. Next, put your right hand on your left foot and

your left palm on the right palm, the tips of the thumbs lightly

touching. Sit upright, leaning to neither left nor right, front nor

back. Your ears should be on the same plane as your shoulders and your

nose in line with your navel. Your tongue should be placed against the

roof of your mouth and your lips and teeth closed firmly. With your

eyes kept continuously open, breathe quietly through your nostrils.

Finally, having regulated your body and mind in this way, take a deep

breath, sway your body to left and right, then sit firmly as a rock.

Think of nonthinking. How is this done? By thinking beyond thinking and

nonthinking. This is the very basis of _zazen_._10

This first little essay was meant to provide Japan a taste of the real

Zen he had experienced in China, and it was the beginning of an

astounding literary output. Dogen asserted that since the Buddha had

meditated and Bodhidharma had meditated, the most valuable thing to do

is meditate. Not surprisingly, he received a cold response from the

other schools in Kyoto, both the Tendai sects and the other "Zen"

teachers who, like Eisai, taught a "syncretic" Zen of compromise with

establishment Buddhism. His rigid doctrine was socially awkward for the

syncretic Zen monks at Kennin-ji--who seasoned their practice with

chants and esoteric ceremonies--and Dogen finally decided to spare them

further embarrassment by retiring to a mountain retreat.

Off he went to another temple, An'yoin, where he began to elaborate on

the role of meditation in Zen practice, writing another essay, entitled

"Bendowa" or "Lecture on Training," designed to provide a more

dialectical defense for zazen. Written in the form of eighteen

questions and answers, the "Lecture on Training" was intended to

further justify the intense meditation he had described earlier. This

essay later became the initial section of a massive book today known as

the _Shobogenzo _(_Treasure of Knowledge Regarding the True Dharma_),

which was guarded as a secret treasure of the Soto school for many

centuries.

_Question: . . . For most people the natural way to enlightenment is to

read the scriptures and recite the nembutsu [Praise to Amida Buddha].

Since you do nothing more than sit cross-legged, how can this mere

sitting be a means of gaining enlightenment?

Answer: . . . Of what use is it to read the scriptures and recite the

_nembutsu_? It is useless to imagine that the merits of Buddhism come

merely from using one's tongue or voice; if you think such things

embrace all of Buddhism, the Truth is a long way from you. You should

only read the scriptures so as to learn that the Buddha was teaching

the necessity of gradual and sudden training and that from this you can

realise enlightenment; do not read them so as to make a show of wisdom

with useless intellection. . . . Just to continually repeat the

_nembutsu_ is equally useless, for it is a frog who croaks both day and

night in some field. . . . They who do nothing . . . more than study

the scriptures . . . never understand this, so just stop it and thereby

cure your delusions and doubts. Just follow the teachings of a true

master and, through the power of _Zazen_, find the utterly joyful

enlightenment of Buddha.11

_

It is not surprising to find Dogen firm in the belief that meditation

is superior to the practices of two competing movements: the

traditional sutra veneration of the Tendai sect and the Pure Land

schools' chanting of the nembutsu to Amida Buddha. But what about the

Rinzai Zen teaching that enlightenment is sudden and cannot be induced

by gradual practice? He next attacks this position:

_Question: Both in India and China, from the beginning of time to the

present day, some Zen teachers have been enlightened by such things as

the sound of stones striking bamboos, whilst the color of plum blossoms

cleared the minds of others. The [Buddha] was enlightened at the sight

of the morning star, whilst [his follower] Ananda understood the Truth

through seeing a stick fall. As well as these, many Zen teachers of the

five schools after the Sixth Patriarch were enlightened by only so much

as a word. Did all of them practise _Zazen_?

Answer: From olden times down to the present day, all who were ever

enlightened, either by colors or sounds, practised _Zazen _without

_Zazen_ and became instantaneously enlightened.12_

What exactly is he saying here? It would seem that he is convoluting

the early teaching of the Southern sect, which proposed that

"meditation" is a mind process that might also be duplicated by other

means. Dogen seems to be arguing that zazen is efficacious since all

who became enlightened were really "meditating" in daily life, whether

they realized it or not. The Southern school claimed that _dhyana_

could be anything and therefore it seemed ancillary; Dogen claims it

could be anything and therefore it is essential.

Dogen also came back to his original doctrinal dilemma, the question

that had sent him wandering from teacher to teacher in Japan while

still a youth: Why strive for enlightenment if all creatures are

Buddhas to begin with? He finally felt qualified to address his own

quandary.

_Question: There are those who say that one has only to understand that

this mind itself is the Buddha in order to understand Buddhism, and

that there is no need to recite the scriptures or undergo bodily

training. If you understand that Buddhism is inherent in yourself, you

are already fully enlightened and there is no need to seek for anything

further from anywhere. If this is so, is there any sense in taking the

trouble to practice _Zazen_?_

_Answer: This is a very grievous mistake, and even if it should be true

and the sages should teach it, it is impossible for you to understand

it. If you would truly study Buddhism, you must transcend all opinions

of subject and object. If it is possible to be enlightened simply by

knowing that the self is, in its self-nature, the Buddha, then there

was no need for Shakyamuni to try so diligently to teach the Way.1

_Whether this answer resolves the paradox will be left to the judgment

of others. But for all his intensities and eccentricities, Dogen was

certainly a powerful new thinker, clearly the strongest dialectician in

the history of Japanese Zen. He was also a magnetic personality who

attracted many followers, and by 1233 he had so outgrown the space at

An'yoin that a larger temple was imperative (which became available

thanks to his aristocratic connections). His next move was to Kosho-ji,

a temple near Kyoto, where he spent the succeeding ten years in intense

literary creativity, where he constructed the first truly independent

Zen monastery in Japan, and where he found a worthy disciple, Koun Ejo

(1198-1280), who served as head monk and ultimately as his successor.

It was here, beginning in 1233, that Dogen finally recreated Chinese

Ch'an totally in Japan, right down to an architectural replica of a

Sung-style monastery and an uncompromising discipline reminiscent of

his old Chinese master Ju-ching.

After settling in at Kosho-ji he began, in late 1235, a fundraising

drive for the purpose of building the first Zen-style monks' hall

(_sodo_) in Japan. He believed that this building, viewed by the

lawgiver Po-chang Huai-hai as the heart of a Ch'an monstery, was

essential if he were to effectively teach meditation. The doors would

be open to all, since the onetime aristocrat Dogen was now very much a

man of the people, welcoming rich and poor, monks and laymen, men and

women.14

When the meditation hall opened in 1236, Dogen signaled the occasion by

posting a set of rules for behavior reminiscent of Huai-hai's laws set

down in eighth-century China. A quick skim of these rules tells much

about the character of the master Dogen.

_No monk shall be admitted to this meditation hall unless he has an

earnest desire for the Way and a strong determination not to seek fame

and profit. . . . All monks in this hall should try to live in harmony

with one another, just as milk blends well with water. . . . You should

not walk about in the outside world; but if unavoidable, it is

permissible to do so once a month. . . . Keep the supervisor of this

hall informed of your whereabouts at all times. . . .Never speak ill of

others nor find fault with them. . . . Never loiter in the hall. . . .

Wear only robes of plain material. . . . Never enter the hall drunk

with wine. . . . Never disturb the training of other monks by inviting

outsiders, lay or clerical, into the hall. . . .15

_Dogen maintained this first pure Zen monastery for a decade, during

which time he composed forty more sections of his classic Shobogenzo.

And during this time the tree of Zen took root in Japanese soil firmly

and surely.

But things could not go smoothly forever. Dogen's powerful friends at

court protected him as long as they could, but eventually his

popularity became too much for the jealous Tendai monks on Mt. Hiei to

bear. To fight their censure he appealed to the emperor, claiming (as

had Eisai before him) that Zen was good for Japan. But the other

schools immediately filed opposing briefs with the emperor and the

court, culminating in a judiciary proceeding with distinguished clerics

being convened to hear both sides. As might have been expected they

ruled against Dogen, criticizing him for being obsessed with _zazen

_and ignoring the sutras, etc. It probably was this political setback

that persuaded him to quit the Kyoto vicinity in 1243 and move to the

provinces, where he could teach in peace.16

He camped out in various small Tendai monasteries (where he wrote

another twenty-nine chapters of the _Shobogenzo_) until his final

temple, called Eihei-ji, or Eternal Peace, was completed in the

mountains of present-day Fukui prefecture. This site became the center

of Soto Zen in Japan, the principal monastery of the sect. Dogen

himself was approaching elder statesmanhood, and in 1247 he was

summoned to the warrior headquarters of Kamakura by none other than the

most powerful man in Japan, the warrior Hojo Tokiyori. The ruler wanted

to learn about Zen, and Dogen correctly perceived it would be unhealthy

to refuse the invitation.

The warriors in Kamakura would most likely have been familiar with the

syncretic Rinzai Zen of Eisai, which focused on the use of the koan.

For his own part, Dogen did not reject the koan out of hand (he left a

collection of three hundred); rather he judged it a device intended to

create a momentary glimpse of satori, or enlightenment, whose real

value was mainly as a metaphor for the enlightenment experience--an

experience he believed could be realized in full only through gradual

practice.

_In the pursuit of the Way [Buddhism] the prime essential is sitting

(_zazen_). . . . By reflecting upon various "public-cases" (koan) and

dialogues of the patriarchs, one may perhaps get the sense of them but

it will only result in one's being led astray from the way of the

Buddha, our founder. Just to pass the time in sitting straight, without

any thought of acquisition, without any sense of achieving

enlightenment--this is the way of the Founder. It is true that our

predecessors recommended both the koan and sitting, but it was the

sitting that they particularly insisted upon. There have been some who

attained enlightenment through the test of the koan, but the true cause

of their enlightenment was the merit and effectiveness of sitting.

Truly the merit lies in the sitting.17

_

Dogen spent the winter of 1247-48 in Kamakura teaching meditation, and

was in turn offered the post of abbot in a new Zen monastery being

built for the warrior capital. But Dogen politely declined, perhaps

believing the Salvationist sects and the syncretic Zen of Eisai were

still too strong among the samurai for his pure meditation to catch

hold.18 Or possibly he sensed his health was beginning to fail and he

wanted to retire to his beloved mountain monastery, where the politics

of Kyoto and Kamakura could not reach.

Maybe Dogen's many nights of intense meditation in heat and cold had

taken their toll, or the long hours of writing and rewriting his manual

of Zen had sapped his strength. In any case, his health deteriorated

rapidly after Kamakura until finally, in 1253, all realized that the

end was near. He appointed the faithful head monk Ejo his successor at

Eihei-ji, and on the insistence of his disciples was then taken to

Kyoto for medical care. However, nothing could be done, and on August

28 he said farewell, dying in the grand tradition--sitting in _zazen_.

In the long run, Dogen seems the one we should acknowledge as the true

founder of Zen in Japan; pure Zen first had to be introduced before it

could grow. But at the time of Dogen's death it was not at all obvious

that Soto Zen, or any Zen for that matter, would ever survive to become

an independent sect in Japan.19 Perhaps Dogen felt this too, for his

later writings became increasingly strident in their denunciation of

the Salvationist sects and the syncretic Rinzai schools. He thought of

himself as above sectarianism, claiming that _zazen _was not a sect but

rather an expression of pure Buddhism. And perhaps it was after all

only an accident that the teacher who had taught him to meditate

happened to be a member of the Ts'ao-tung school.

After Dogen's death, his small community persevered in the mountains,

isolated and at first preserving his teaching. But

eventually internal disputes pulled the community apart, and the temple

fell inactive for a time. Furthermore, his teaching of intensive

meditation was soon diluted by the introduction of rituals from the

esoteric schools of traditional Buddhism. In this new form it began to

proselytize and spread outward, particularly in provincial areas, where

its simplicity appealed to common folk.20 It also welcomed women,

something not necessarily stressed in all the Buddhist sects. Although

Soto was by this time pretty much a thing of the past in China, with

the last recognized Chinese Soto master dying about a century after

Dogen, the school prospered in Japan, where today it has three

followers for every one of Rinzai.

Ch'an still had Rinzai masters in China, however, and in the next phase

of Zen they would start emigrating to teach the Japanese in Kamakura.

The result was that Soto became the low-key home-grown Zen, while

Rinzai became a vehicle for importing Chinese culture to the warrior

class. It is to this dynamic period of warrior Rinzai Zen that we must

now look for the next great masters.

Chapter Seventeen

IKKYU:

ZEN ECCENTRIC

The earliest Japanese masters brought Ch'an from China in the hope that

its discipline would revitalize traditional Buddhism. Since Eisai's

temple was the first to include Ch'an practice, he has received credit

for founding Japanese Rinzai Zen. History, however, has glorified

matters somewhat, for in fact Eisai was little more than a Tendai

priest who dabbled a bit in Ch'an practice and enjoyed a gift for

advancing himself with the Kamakura warlords. Nor was Dogen inspired to

establish the Soto sect in Japan. He too was merely a reformer who

chanced across a Chinese Soto master devoted to meditation. It was the

powerful discipline of meditation that Dogen sought to introduce into

Japan, not a sectarian branch of Zen. Only later did Dogen's movement

become a proselytizing Zen sect. These and other thirteenth-century

Japanese reformers imported Ch'an for the simple reason that it was the

purest expression of Buddhism left in China. During the early era Zen

focused on Kyoto and Kamakura and was mainly a reformation within the

Tendai school. The Japanese understanding of Ch'an was hesitant and

inconclusive--to the point that few Japanese of the mid-thirteenth

century actually realized a new form of Buddhism was in the making.1

Over the next century and a half, however, a revolution began, as Zen

at first gradually and then precipitously became the preoccupation of

Japan's ruling class. The Zen explosion came about via a combination of

circumstances. We have seen that the warrior ruler Hojo Tokiyori (1227-

63) was interested in the school and offered Dogen a temple in

Kamakura, an invitation Dogen refused. However, in 1246 an emigre Ch'an

master from the Chinese mainland named Lan-ch'i (1212-78) appeared in

Japan uninvited, having heard of Japanese interest in Ch'an. He went

first to Kyoto, where he found Zen still subject to hostile

sectarianism, and then to Kamakura, where he managed in 1249 to meet

Tokiyori. The Japanese strongman was delighted and proceeded to have

the temple of another sect converted to a Zen establishment, making

Lan-ch'i abbot. Shortly after, Tokiyori completed construction of a

Sung-style Zen monastery in Kamakura, again putting Lan-ch'i in charge.

This Chinese monk, merely one of many in his native China, had become

head of the leading Zen temple in Japan. When word got back, a host of

enterprising Chinese clerics began pouring into the island nation

seeking their fortune.2

Thus began the next phase of early Japanese Zen, fueled by the invasion

of Chinese Ch'an monks. This movement occupied the remainder of the

thirteenth century and was spurred along by unsettled conditions in

China--namely the imminent fall of the Southern Sung Dynasty to the

Mongols and a concurrent power struggle within Ch'an itself, which

induced monks from the less powerful establishments to seek greener

pastures.3 In 1263 a senior Ch'an cleric named Wu-an (1197-1276) arrived

in Kamakura and was also made an abbot by Tokiyori.4 The first monk,

Lan-ch'i, thereupon moved to Kyoto and began proselytizing in the old

capital. Wu-an subsequently certified Tokiyori with a seal of

enlightenment, making the military strongman of Japan an acknowledged

Ch'an master. Tokiyori's interest in Zen did not go unnoticed by the

warriors around him, and his advocacy, combined with the influx of

Chinese monks appearing to teach, initiated the Zen bandwagon in

Kamakura.

Tokiyori died in 1263, and his young son Tokimune (1251--84), who came

to power five years later, initially showed no interest in Zen

practice. But he was still in his teens in 1268 when there appeared in

Japan envoys from Kublai Khan demanding tribute. The Mongols were at

that moment completing their sack of China, and Japan seemed the next

step. Undeterred, the Japanese answered all Mongol demands with haughty

insults, with the not-unexpected result that in 1274 Kublai launched an

invasion fleet. Although his ships foundered in a fortuitous streak of

bad weather, the Japanese knew that there would be more. It was then

that Tokimune began strengthening his discipline through Zen meditation

and toughening his instincts with koans. He studied under a newly

arrived Chinese master whose limited Japanese necessitated their

communicating through a translator. (When the enlightened Chinese found

cause to strike his all-powerful student, he prudently pummeled the

interpreter instead.)5 The samurai also began to take an interest in

Zen, which naturally appealed to the warrior mentality because of its

emphasis on discipline, on experience over education, and on a rough-

and-tumble practice including debates with a master and blows for the

loser--all congenial to men of simple, unschooled tastes. For their own

part, the perceptive Chinese missionaries, hampered by the language

barrier, rendered Zen as simplistic as possible to help the faith

compete with the Salvationist sects among the often illiterate

warriors.

In 1281 the Mongols launched another invasion force, this time 100,000

men strong, but they were held off several weeks by the steel-nerved

samurai until a typhoon (later named the Kamikaze or "Divine Wind")

providentially sank the fleet. The extent to which Zen training aided

this victory can be debated, but the courage of Tokimune and his

soldiers undoubtedly benefited from its rigorous discipline. The

Japanese ruler himself gave Zen heavy credit and immediately began

building a commemorative Zen monastery in Kamakura.

By the time of Tokimuni's premature death in 1284, Rinzai Zen had been

effectively established as the faith of the Kamakura rulers. His

successor continued the development of Zen establishments, supported by

new Chinese masters who also began teaching Chinese culture

(calligraphy, literature, ink painting, philosophy) to the Kamakura

warriors along with their Zen. Since the faith was definitely beginning

to boom, the government prudently published a list of restrictions for

Zen monasteries, including an abolition of arms (a traditional problem

with the other sects) and a limit on the number of pretty boys

(novices) that could be quartered in a compound to tempt the monks. The

maximum number of monks in each monastery also was prescribed, and

severe rules were established governing discipline. Out of this era in

the late thirteenth century evolved an organization of Zen temples in

Kyoto and Kamakura based on the Sung Chinese model of five main

monasteries (called the "five mountains" or _gozan_) and a network of

ten officially recognized subsidiary temples. Furthermore, Chinese

culture became so fashionable in Kamakura that collections of Sung art

began appearing among the illiterate provincial warriors--an early

harbinger of the Japanese evolution of Zen from asceticism to

aesthetics.6

The creation of the _gozan _system at the end of the thirteenth century

gave Zen a formal role in the religious structure of Japan. Zen was now

fashionable and had powerful friends, a perfect

combination to foster growth and influence. On the sometimes pointed

urging of the government, temples from other sects were converted to

Zen establishments by local authorities throughout Japan.7 The court and

aristocracy in Kyoto also began taking an interest in pure, Sung-style

Rinzai. Temples were built in Kyoto (or converted from other sects),

and even the cloistered emperors began to meditate (perhaps searching

less for enlightenment than for the rumored occult powers). When the

Kamakura regime collapsed in the mid-fourteenth century and warriors of

the newly ascendent Ashikaga clan returned the seat of government to

Kyoto, the old capital was already well acquainted with Zen's political

importance. However, although Rinzai Zen had made much visible headway

in Japan--the ruling classes increasingly meditated on koans, and

Chinese monks operated new Sung-style monasteries--the depth of

understanding seems disappointingly superficial overall. The _gozan

_system soon turned so political, as monasteries competed for official

favor, that before long establishment Zen was almost devoid of

spiritual content. In many ways, Japanese Zen became decadent almost

from the start. The immense prestige of imported Chinese art and ideas,

together with the powerful role of the Zen clerics as virtually the

only group sufficiently educated to oversee relations with the

continent, meant that early on, Zen's cultural role became as telling

as its spiritual place.

Perhaps the condition of Zen is best illustrated by noting that the

most famous priest of the era, Muso Soseki (1275-1351), was actually a

powerful political figure. This Zen prelate, who never visited China,

came to prominence when he served first an ill-fated emperor--

subsequently deposed--and later the Ashikaga warrior who deposed him.

Muso was instrumental in the Japanese government's establishment of

regular trade with the mainland. He was also responsible for a revision

of the _gozan _administrative system, establishing (in 1338) official

Zen temples in all sixty-six provinces of Japan and spreading the power

base of the faith. Although Muso is today honored as an important

Japanese master, he actually preferred a "syncretic" Zen intermingled

with esoteric rites and apparently understood very little of real Zen.

A prototype for many Zen leaders to come, he was a scholar,

aesthetician, and architect of some of the great cultural monuments in

Kyoto, personally designing several of the capital's finest temples and

landscape gardens.

Thus by the mid-fourteenth century Zen had become hardly more than an

umbrella for the import of Chinese technology, art,

and philosophy.8 The monks were, by Muso's own admission, more often

than not "shaven-headed laymen" who came to Zen to learn painting and

to write a stilted form of Chinese verse as part of a _gozan _literary

movement. The overall situation has been well summarized by Philip

Yampolsky: "The monks in temples were all poets and literary figures..

. . [T]he use of koans, particularly those derived from the [_Blue

Cliff Record_], became a literary and educational device rather than a

method for the practice of Zen."9 He further notes that ". . . with the

_gozan _system frozen in a bureaucratic mold, priests with

administrative talents gained in ascendency. In the headquarters

temples men interested in literary pursuits withdrew completely from

temple affairs and devoted themselves exclusively to literature. To be

sure, priests gave lectures and continued to write commentaries. But

the _gozan _priests seemed to concern themselves more and more with

trivialities. By the mid-fifteenth century Zen teaching had virtually

disappeared in the temples, and the priests devoted themselves mainly

to ceremonial and administrative duties."10 Authentic Zen practice had

become almost completely emasculated, overshadowed by the rise of a

Zen-inspired cultural movement far outstripping Chinese prototypes.

The political convolutions of fourteenth-century Japan, as well as the

organizational shenanigans of the official Rinzai Zen sect, need not

detain us further.11 We need only note that the _gozan _system, which so

effectively gave Zen an official presence throughout Japan, also meant

that the institution present was Zen in name only. Significantly,

however, a few major monasteries elected not to participate in the

official system. One of the most important was the Daitoku-ji in Kyoto,

which managed, by not becoming part of the establishment, to maintain

some authenticity in its practice. And out of the Daitoku-ji tradition

there came from time to time a few Zen monks who still understood what

Zen was supposed to be about, who understood it was more than painting,

gardens, poetry, and power. Perhaps the most celebrated of these

iconoclastic throwbacks to authentic Zen was the legendary Ikkyu Sojun

(1394-1481).

The master Ikkyu, a breath of fresh air in the stifling, hypocritical

world of institutionalized Zen, seems almost a reincarnation of the

early Ch'an masters of the T'ang.12 However, his penchant for drinking

and womanizing is more reminiscent of the Taoists than the Buddhists.

Historical information on Ikkyu and his writings is spread among

various documents of uneven reliability. The major source is a pious

chronicle allegedly compiled by his disciple Bokusai from firsthand

information. Whereas this document has the virtue of being

contemporaneous with his life, it has the drawback of being abbreviated

and selectively edited to omit unflattering facts. Then there is a

collection of tales from the Tokugawa era (1615-1868) which are heavily

embellished when not totally apocryphal. The picaresque character

created in the Tokugawa Tales led one commentator to liken Ikkyu to the

fabulous Sufi philosopher-vagabond Nasrudin, who also became a vehicle

to transmit folk wisdom.13 These tales seem to have developed around

Ikkyu simply because his devil-may-care attitude, combined with his

antischolarly pose, made him a perfect peg on which to hang all sorts

of didactic (not to mention Rabelaisian) anecdotes. Finally, there is a

vast body of his own poetry and prose, as well as a collection of

calligraphy now widely admired for its spontaneity and power.

Bokusai's chronicle identifies Ikkyu's mother as a lady-in-waiting at

the imperial palace of Emperor Gokomatsu, who chose from time to time

to "show her favor." When she was discovered to be with child, the

empress had her sent away, charging that she was sympathetic to a

competing political faction. Consequently, the master Ikkyu was born in

the house of a commoner on New Year's Day of the year 1394, the natural

son of an emperor and a daughter of the warrior class.

At age five his mother made him acolyte in a Zen monastery, a move some

suggest was for his physical safety, lest the shogun decide to do away

with this emperor's son as a potential threat. His schooling in this

_gozan _era was aristocratic and classical, founded on Chinese

literature and the Buddhist sutras. By age eleven he was studying the

Vimalakirti Sutra and by thirteen he was intensively reading and

writing Chinese poetry. One of his works, written at age fifteen and

entitled "Spring Finery," demonstrates a delicate sensibility

reminiscent of John Keats:

_How many passions cling to this wanderer's sleeves?

Multitudes of falling blossoms mark the passion of Heaven and Earth.

A perfumed breeze across my pillow; Am I asleep or awake?

Here and now melt into an indistinct Spring dream.14

_

The poet here has returned from a walk only to find the perfume of

flowers clinging to his clothes, confusing his sense of reality and

place. It recalls Keats' nightingale--"Fled is that music:--Do I

wake or sleep?" In this early poem we catch a glimpse of the sensualist

Ikkyu would one day become.

At age eighteen he became a novice to a reclusive monk of the Myoshin-

ji branch of Zen in Kyoto; but when his mentor died two years later he

wandered for a time disconsolate and suicide-prone. Then at twenty-two

he decided to try for an interview with Kaso Soton (1352-1428), the

Daitoku-ji-trained master known to be the sternest teacher in Japan. As

was traditional, the master at first shut him out and refused an

audience. Ikkyu resolved to wait outside until death, "taking the dew

for his roof and the grasses for his bed." He slept at night under an

empty boat and stood all day in front of Kaso's retreat. After Kaso

repeatedly failed to discourage him, even once dousing him with water,

the master relented and invited Ikkyu in for an interview. They were

made for each other and for many years thereafter Ikkyu and Kaso

"pursued deep matters tirelessly."

Ikkyu came to revere Kaso, probably one of the few authentic masters of

the age, and he stayed to serve this teacher for almost a decade, even

though life with Kaso was arduous. Since they lived near a major lake,

Ikkyu would each night meditate in a borrowed fisherman's boat until

dawn. When his purse "went flat," he would journey to the capital and

sell incense or cheap clothing to poor housewives--afterwards returning

to the monastery in the same straw sandals, hat, and cloak.15 After

three years Kaso gave him the Zen name Ikkyu, a recognition of his

progress.

Ikkyu's enlightenment occurred in his twenty-sixth year when, while

meditating in the boat, he was startled by the cry of a crow. He rushed

back at dawn and reported this to his master.

Kaso responded, "You have reached the stage of an _arhat _[one who has

overcome ego], but not that of a Master, novice."

Ikkyu replied, "Then I'm perfectly happy as an _arhat _and don't need

to be a Master."

Kaso responded, "Well, then, you really are a Master after all."16

Although it was customary for monks to receive a certificate from their

master attesting to their enlightenment, the matter of Ikkyu's

certificate is problematical. He himself refused to give out

certificates, and he is depicted in Bokusai's chronicle as periodically

taking out his own and requesting it be destroyed by his disciples--

after which it seemed to miraculously appear again several years later.

The quantity of invention and accretion attached to Ikkyu's

disappearing certificate has fostered speculation that he never, in

fact, actually received a seal.

In any case, he probably would have destroyed his own seal of

enlightenment in later years. His life grew progressively more

unconventional with time, just the opposite of most. Beginning as a

classicist in the finest Kyoto tradition, he had gone on to become a

spiritual recluse in the mountains under a harsh meditation master.

After all this training he then took the road, becoming a wandering

monk in the traditional T'ang mode.

Well, almost in the traditional mode. He seemed to wander into brothels

and wine shops almost as often as into Zen temples. He consorted with

high and low, merchant and commoner, male and female. Our record of

these explorations, both geographic and social, is in his writings,

particularly his poetry. He also harbored a vendetta against the

complacency and corruption of Japanese Zen and its masters,

particularly the new abbot of Daitoku-ji, an older man named Yoso who

had once been a fellow disciple of his beloved Kaso.

When Ikkyu was forty-six he was invited by Yoso to head a subtemple in

the Daitoku-ji compound. He accepted, much to the delight of his

admirers, who began bringing the temple donations in gratitude.

However, after only ten days Ikkyu concluded that Daitoku-ji too had

become more concerned with ceremony than with the preservation of Zen,

and he wrote a famous protest poem as a parting gesture--claiming he

could find more of Zen in the meat, drink, and sex traditionally

forbidden Buddhists.

_For ten days in this temple my mind's been in turmoil,

My feet are entangled in endless red tape.

If some day you get around to looking for me,

Try the fish-shop, the wine parlor, or the brothel.17

_

Ikkyu's attack on the commercialization of Zen was not without cause.

The scholar Jan Covell observes that in Ikkyu's time, "Rinzai Zen had

sunk to a low point and enlightenment was 'sold,' particularly by those

temples associated with the Shogunate. Zen temples also made money in

sake-brewing and through usury. In the mid-fifteenth century one Zen

temple, Shokoku-ji, furnished all the advisers to the Shogunate's

government and received most of the bribes. The imperial-sanctioned

temple of Daitoku-ji was only on the fringe of this corruption, but

Ikkyu felt he could not criticize it enough."18

Ironically, Ikkyu also attacked the writing of "Zen" poetry--in his

poems. He was really attacking the literary _gozan _movement, the

preoccupation of monks who forsook Zen to concentrate on producing

forgettable verse in formal Chinese. They put their poetry before,

indeed in place of, Zen practice. Ikkyu used his poetry (later

collected as the "Crazy Cloud Poems" or _Kyoun-shu_) as a means of

expressing his enlightenment, as well as his criticism of the

establishment. It also, as often as not, celebrated sensual over

spiritual pleasures.

Whereas the T'ang masters created illogic and struggled with intuitive

transmission, Ikkyu cheerfully gave in to the existential life of the

senses. In the introduction to one poem he told a parable explaining

his priorities.

_

Once upon a time there was an old woman who supported a retired hermit

for some twenty years. For a long time, she sent a young girl to serve

his food. One day she told the girl to throw her arms around the monk

and ask him how he felt. When the girl did so, the monk told her, "I am

like a withered tree propped up against a cold boulder after three

winters without warmth." The girl went back to the old woman and made

her report. "Twenty years wasted feeding a phony layman!" exclaimed the

woman. Then she ran him off and burnt his hut to the ground.

The grandmotherly old woman tried to give that rascal a ladder.

To provide the pure monk with a nice bride.

If tonight I were to be made such a proposition,

The withered willow would put forth new spring growth.19_

A particularly lyrical exploration of sensuality is found in a poem

entitled "A Woman's [Body] has the Fragrance of Narcissus," which

celebrates the essence of sexuality.

_One should gaze long at [the fairy] hill then ascend it.

Midnight on the Jade bed amid [Autumn] dreams

A flower opening beneath the thrust of the plum branch.

Rocking gently between the fairy's thighs.20_

Ikkyu's amours seem to have produced a number of natural progeny. In

fact, there is the legend that one of Ikkyu's most devoted followers, a

monk named Jotei, was in fact his illegitimate son. According to the

Tokugawa Tales, there was a once-rich fan

maker in Sakai whose business had declined to the point that he had to

sell his shop and stand on the streetcorner hawking fans. Then one day

Ikkyu came by carrying some fans decorated with his own famous

calligraphy and asked the man to take them on commission. Naturally

they all sold immediately and, by subsequent merchandising of Ikkyu's

works, the man's business eventually was restored. In gratitude he

granted Ikkyu his daughter, from which union sprang Ikkyu's natural

son, Jotei.

This story is questionable but it does illustrate the reputation Ikkyu

enjoyed, both as artist and lover. Furthermore, he wrote touching and

suspiciously fatherly poems to a little girl named Shoko.

_Watching this four-year-old girl sing and dance,

I feel the pull of ties that are hard to dismiss,

Forgetting my duties I slip into freedom.

Master Abbot, whose Zen is this_?21_

_

When Ikkyu was in his seventies, during the disastrous civil conflict

known as the Onin war, he had a love affair with a forty-year-old

temple attendant named Mori. On languid afternoons she would play the

Japanese _koto _or harp and he the wistful-sounding _shakuhachi_, a

long bamboo flute sometimes carried by monks as a weapon. This late-

life love affair occasioned a number of erotic poems, including one

that claims her restoration of his virility (called by the Chinese

euphemism "jade stalk") cheered his disciples.

_How is my hand like Mori's hand?

Self confidence is the vassal, Freedom the master.

When I am ill she cures the jade stalk

And brings joy back to my followers.22

_

Ikkyu also left a number of prose fables and sermons that portray a

more sober personality than does his often iconoclastic verse. One

classic work, written in 1457 and called "Skeletons," has become a Zen

classic. In the section given below he explores the Buddhist idea of

the Void and nothingness:

_Let me tell you something. Human birth is analogous to striking up a

fire--the father is flint, the mother is stone and the child is the

spark. Once the spark touches a lamp wick it continues to exist through

the "secondary support" of the fuel until that is exhausted. Then it

flickers out. The lovemaking of the parents is the equivalent of

striking the spark. Since the parents too have "no beginning," in the

end they, too, will flicker out. Everything grows out of empty space

from which all forms derive. If one lets go the forms then he reaches

what is called the "original ground." But since all sentient beings

come from nothingness we can use even the term "original ground" only

as a temporary tag.23

_

It seems unfortunate that Ikkyu's prose is not better known today.24 In

fact the best-known accounts of Ikkyu are the apocryphal tales that

attached to him during the Tokugawa era. A typical episode is the

following, entitled "Ikkyu Does Magic," in which the picaresque Zen-man

uses his natural resources to thwart the bluster of a haughty priest

from one of the scholarly aristocratic sects--just the thing guaranteed

to please the common man.

Once Ikkyu was taking the Yodo no Kawase ferry on his way to Sakai.

There was a _yamabushi _[mountain ascetic of Esoteric Buddhism] on

board who began to question him.

_"Hey, Your Reverence, what sect are you?"

"I belong to the Zen sect," replied Ikkyu.

"I don't suppose your sect has miracles the way our sect does?"

"No, actually we have lots of miracles. But if it's miracles, why don't

you show the sort of miracles that your people have?"

"Well," said the _yamabushi_, "By virtue of my magic powers I can pray

up Fudo [a fierce guardian deity of Buddhism] before your very eyes and

make him stand right there on the prow of the boat."

And, with the beads of his rosary the man began to invoke first Kongo

and then Seitaka [Esoteric Buddhist deities]. At this, all the

passengers began to look back and forth wondering what was going to

happen. Then, just as he had said, there on the prow of the boat, the

form of Fudo appeared surrounded by a halo of dancing flames.

Then the _yamabushi _made a ferocious face and told him, "You'd all

better offer him a prayer." This made the other passengers very uneasy--

all that is but Ikkyu, who was completely unruffled.

"Well," spat out the _yamabushi_, "How about you, Zen monk? How are you

going to deal with my miracle?"

"By producing a miracle of my own. From my very body I will cause water

to issue forth and extinguish the flames of your Fudo. You'd better

start your prayers up again." And Ikkyu began to pee mightily all over

the flames until at last the _yamabushi's _magic was counteracted and

the entire image melted away. Thereupon the passengers on the boat all

bowed to Ikkyu for his wonderful display.25_

Ironically, the real-life Ikkyu spent his twilight years restoring

Daitoku-ji after its destruction (along with the rest of Kyoto) from

the ten-year Onin war (1467-77), by taking over the temple and using

his contacts in the merchant community to raise funds. He had over a

hundred disciples at this time, a popularity that saddened him since

earlier (and, he thought, more deserving) masters had had many fewer

followers. Thus in the last decade of his life he finally exchanged his

straw sandals and reed hat for the robes of a prestigious abbot over a

major monastery. His own ambivalence on this he confessed in a poem:

_Fifty years a rustic wanderer,

Now mortified in purple robes.26

_

Ikkyu's contributions to Zen culture are also significant. He helped

inspire the secular Zen ritual known today as the tea ceremony, by

encouraging the man today remembered as its founder. He also supported

one of the best-known dramatists of the No theater and was himself a

master calligrapher, an art closely akin to painting in the Far East

and regarded by many as even more demanding.27 He even created a soybean

dish (_natto_) now a staple of Zen monastic cuisine.

But as his biographer James Sanford has pointed out, the real life of

this truly great Japanese master has all but eluded us. His poetry is

in classical Chinese and virtually unknown; his prose lies largely

unread; and the Tokugawa legend of Ikkyu is almost entirely apocryphal.

This last travesty has extended even to fictionalizing his role as a

child at the monastery; there is now a popular television cartoon

series in Japan about the irrepressible acolyte Ikkyu. Sanford

speculates that his attraction for contemporary Japanese is that, in

the legend of Ikkyu, "it is possible for the modern Japanese mind to

re-discover 'native' examples of, and justification for, individualism--

a term and concept whose full assimilation into modern Japanese culture

has for over fifty years been blocked by a legacy of residual Neo-

Confucian norms left over from [Japan's repressive past]."28

It does seem true that the Zen-man Ikkyu represents a safety valve in

Japanese society, both then and now. He brought the impulsive candor of

Zen to the world of affairs, demonstrating by example that after

enlightenment it is necessary to return to a world where mountains are

again mountains, rivers again rivers. And by rejecting official "Zen,"

Ikkyu may well have been the most Zenlike of all Japanese masters.

Chapter Eighteen

HAKUIN:

JAPANESE MASTER OF THE KOAN

The closing era of the Japanese middle ages, in the decades following

Ikkyu's death, is now known as the Century of the Country at War. Japan

became a land of quarreling fiefdoms, and Zen, too, drifted for want of

leadership and inspiration. The eventual reunification of the country

late in the sixteenth century was led by a brutal military strategist

named Oda Nobunaga (1534-82). As part of his takeover he obliterated

the militaristic Buddhist complex on Mt. Hiei by one day simply

slaughtering all its monks and burning the establishment to the ground,

thereby ending permanently the real influence of Buddhism in Japanese

politics. Nobunaga was succeeded by an even more accomplished

militarist, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), who brought to the shogunate

a flair for diplomacy and cunning compromise. Hideyoshi solidified

Japan only to have yet another warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616),

maneuver its rule into the hands of his own family--inaugurating the two

and a half centuries of totalitarian isolationism known today as the

Tokugawa era (1615-1868). He also moved the capital to the city whose

modern name is Tokyo, at last leaving historic Kyoto in repose.

Under the Tokugawa a new middle class of urban merchants and craftsmen

arose, and with it came a version of Zen for common people, with

masters who could touch the concerns of the working class. Among these

beloved masters must certainly be remembered the monk Takuan (1573-

1645) from Ikkyu's rebuilt Daitoku-ji temple, who introduced Zen

teachings to this new audience, and the wandering teacher Bankei (1622-

93), whose kindly, mystical interpretation of oneness through _zazen

_earned him wide fame. Overall, however, Rinzai Zen remained

spiritually dormant until the middle of the Tokugawa era, when there

appeared one of the most truly inspired Zen teachers of all time.

The master Hakuin (1686-1769) was born as Sugiyama Iwajiro in Hara, a

small village at the base of Mt. Fuji. He was the youngest of five

children in a family of modest means, an origin that may have helped

him understand the concerns of the poor. As he tells his story, he was

seven or eight when his mother took him to hear a priest from the

Salvationist Nichiren sect preach on the tormenting Buddhist hells. He

was terrified and secretly began day and night reciting the Lotus Sutra

(which claims to protect from the perils of fire or water those who

chant the proper incantation). The fear of hell, with its boiling

caldrons, so permeated his young mind that he even became leary of the

traditional Japanese bath, then often taken in a round tub fired from

the bottom with wood. He claimed this fear of the bath finally

convinced him to become a monk.

_One day when I was taking a bath with my mother, she asked that the

water be made hotter and had the maid add wood to the fire. Gradually

my skin began to prickle with the heat and the iron bath-cauldron began

to rumble. Suddenly I recalled the descriptions of the hells that I had

heard and I let out a cry of terror that resounded through the

neighborhood.

From this time on I determined to myself that I would leave home to

become a monk. To this my parents would not consent, yet I went

constantly to the temple to recite the sutras. . . .1_

But after several years of study and chanting, he was dismayed to find

he still felt pain (when he tested himself one day with a hot poker).

He resolved to intensify his devotion and at age fifteen he entered a

local Zen temple (against his parents' wishes) and was ordained as a

monk. Hakuin pursued his study of the Lotus Sutra, the primary

scripture venerated at this temple (an illustration of how far Japanese

Zen had traveled from its tradition of meditation and koans), but after

a year he concluded it was just another book, no different from the

Confucian classics. He therefore began to drift from temple to temple

until, at nineteen, he experienced another spiritual crisis. In a book

of religious biographies he came across the story of the Chinese monk

Yen-t'ou (828-87), who had been attacked and murdered by bandits,

causing him to emit screams heard a full three miles away. Hakuin was

plunged into depression.

_I wondered why such an enlightened monk was unable to escape the

swords of thieves. If such a thing could happen to a man who was like a

unicorn or phoenix among monks, a dragon in the sea of Buddhism, how

was I to escape the staves of the demons of hell after I died? What use

was there in studying Zen_?2

He thereupon took up his staff and set out as an itinerant seeker, only

to meet disappointment after disappointment--until finally he decided to

put his future in the hands of chance. One day as the abbot of a temple

was airing its library outside, Hakuin decided to select a book at

random and let it decide his fate. He picked a volume of biographies of

Chinese Ch'an worthies and opening it read of an eleventh-century Lin-

chi master who kept awake in meditation by boring into his own thigh

with a wood drill. The story galvanized Hakuin, and he vowed to pursue

Zen training until enlightenment was his.

Hakuin claims that at age twenty-four he had his first really moving

satori experience. He was in a temple in Niigata prefecture, meditating

on the "Mu" koan (Q: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature? A: "Mu!"), and so

intense was his concentration that he even forgot sleeping and eating.

Then one day . . .

_

Suddenly a great doubt manifested itself before me. It was as though I

were frozen solid in the midst of an ice sheet extending tens of

thousands of miles. A purity filled my breast and I could neither go

forward nor retreat. To all intents and purposes I was out of my mind

and the _Mu _alone remained. Although I sat in the Lecture Hall and

listened to the Master's lecture, it was as though I were hearing a

discussion from a distance outside the hall. At times it felt as though

I were floating through the air.

This state lasted for several days. Then I chanced to hear the sound of

the temple bell and I was suddenly transformed. It was as if a sheet of

ice had been smashed or a jade tower had fallen with a crash.3_

Elated with his transformation, he immediately trekked back to an

earlier master and presented a verse for approval. The master, however,

was not impressed.

_The Master, holding my verse up in his left hand, said to me: "This

verse is what you have learned from study. Now show me what your

intuition has to say," and he held out his right hand.

I replied: "If there were something intuitive that I could show you,

I'd vomit it out," and I made a gagging sound.

The Master said: "How do you understand Chao-chou's _Mu_?"

I replied: "What sort of place does _Mu _have that one can attach arms

and legs to it?"

The Master twisted my nose with his fingers and said: "Here's some

place to attach arms and legs." I was nonplussed and the Master gave a

hearty laugh.4

_

Again and again he tried to extract a seal from this master, but always

in vain. One of these fruitless exchanges even left him lying in a mud

puddle.

_One evening the Master sat cooling himself on the veranda. Again I

brought him a verse I had written. "Delusions and fancies," the Master

said. I shouted his words back at him in a loud voice, whereupon the

Master seized me and rained twenty or thirty blows with his fists on

me, and then pushed me off the veranda.

This was on the fourth day of the fifth month after a long spell of

rain. I lay stretched out in the mud as though dead, scarcely breathing

and almost unconscious. I could not move; meanwhile the Master sat on

the veranda roaring with laughter.5

_

He finally despaired of receiving the seal of enlightenment from this

teacher, although he did have further spiritual experiences under the

man's rigorous guidance--experiences Hakuin interpreted, perhaps

rightly, as _satori_. Feeling wanderlust he again took to the road,

everywhere experiencing increasingly deep _satori_. In southern Ise he

was enlightened when suddenly swamped in a downpour. Near Osaka he was

further enlightened one evening in a temple monks' hall by the sound of

falling snow. In Gifu prefecture he had an even deeper experience

during walking meditation in a monks' hall. He also had a mental and

physical collapse about this time, no doubt resulting from the strain

of his intensive asceticism. After his father's death in 1716, he

studied in Kyoto for a time, but the next year he returned to the

Shoin-ji temple near his original home at Hara. Weary of life at

thirty-two, he still was undecided about his future. Back at the temple

where he had started, he no longer had any idea of what to do. Then a

revelation appeared:

_One night in a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple

robe made of silk. When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy,

and on examining them I found an old mirror, five or six inches in

diameter, in each sleeve. The reflection from the mirror in the right

sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. My own mind, mountains

and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. . . . After

this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my

own face. For the first time I understood the meaning of the saying,

"The [enlightened spirit] sees the Buddha-nature within his eye._"6_

_

With this dream he finally achieved full _satori_. He resolved that the

old ramshackle temple would be his final home. He had found

enlightenment there and there he would stay, his own master at last.

And sure enough, Hakuin never moved again. Instead, the people of

Japan--high and low--came to see him. His simple country temple became a

magnet for monks and laymen seeking real Zen. By force of his own

character, and most certainly without his conscious intention, he

gradually became the leading religious figure in Japan. By the end of

his life he had brought the koan practice back to a central place in

Zen and had effectively created modern Rinzai.

Hakuin was the legitimate heir of the Chinese koan master Ta-hui, and

the first teacher since to actually expand the philosophical dimensions

of Zen. It will be recalled that Ta-hui advocated "Introspecting-the-

Koan" meditation, called _k'an-hua _Ch'an in Chinese and Kanna Zen in

Japanese, which he put forth in opposition to the "Silent Illumination"

meditation of the Soto school. Hakuin himself claimed that he first

tried the quietistic approach of tranquil meditation (albeit on a

koan), but he was unable to clear his mind of all distractions.

_When I was young the content of my koan meditation was poor. I was

convinced that absolute tranquility of the source of the mind was the

Buddha Way. Thus I despised activity and was fond of quietude. I would

always seek out some dark and gloomy place and engage in dead sitting.

Trivial and mundane matters pressed against my chest and a fire mounted

in my heart. I was unable to enter wholeheartedly into the active

practice of Zen.7

_

Thus Hakuin concluded that merely following Ta-hui's injunction to

meditate on a koan was not the entire answer. He then decided the only

way that Zen could be linked meaningfully to daily life was if a

practitioner could actually meditate while going about daily affairs.

This idea was rather radical, although it probably would not have

unduly disturbed the T'ang masters. Hakuin was again extending both the

definition of enlightenment, as it intersects with the real world, and

the means of its realization. He was saying to meditate on a koan in

such a manner that you can continue your daily life but be oblivious to

its distractions. He invoked the Chinese masters to support the idea.

_The Zen Master Ta-hui has said that meditation in the midst of

activity is immeasurably superior to the quietistic approach. . . .

What is most worthy of respect is a pure koan meditation that neither

knows nor is conscious of the two aspects, the quiet and the active.

This is why it has been said that the true practicing monk walks but

does not know he is walking, sits but does not know he is sitting.8

_

Hakuin redefined meditation to include a physically active aspect as

well as merely a quiet, sitting aspect. And under this new definition

anyone, even laymen, could meditate at any time, in any place. Hakuin

did not exclude sitting in meditation; he tried to broaden the

definition to include the kind of thing he believed would really

produce meaningful enlightenment. In addition, meditation in action

takes away the excuse of most laymen for not practicing introspection--

and what is more, it brings respect from others.

_Do not say that worldly affairs and pressures of business leave you no

time to study Zen under a Master, and that the confusions of daily life

make it difficult for you to continue your meditation. Everyone must

realize that for the true practicing monk there are no worldly cares or

worries. Supposing a man accidentally drops two or three gold coins in

a crowded street swarming with people. Does he forget about the money

because all eyes are upon him? ... A person who concentrates solely on

meditation amid the press and worries of everyday life will be like the

man who has dropped the gold coins and devotes himself to seeking them.

Who will not rejoice in such a person_?9

Hakuin realized that meditating in the middle of distractions was

initially more difficult--with fewer short-term rewards--than sitting

quietly alone. However, if you want to make the heightened awareness of

Zen a part of your life, then you must meditate in daily life from the

very first. Just as you cannot learn to swim in the ocean by sitting in

a tub, you cannot relate your Zen to the world's pressures, stress, and

tensions if it is forever sheltered in silent, lonely isolation. If

this is difficult at first, persevere and look toward the ultimate

rewards.

_

Frequently you may feel that you are getting nowhere with practice in

the midst of activity, whereas the quietistic approach brings

unexpected results. Yet rest assured that those who use the quietistic

approach can never hope to enter into meditation in the midst of

activity. Should by chance a person who uses this approach enter into

the dusts and confusions of the world of activity, even the power of

ordinary understanding which he had seemingly attained will be entirely

lost. Drained of all vitality, he will be inferior to any mediocre,

talentless person. The most trivial matters will upset him, an

inordinate cowardice will afflict his mind, and he will frequently

behave in a mean and base manner. What can you call accomplished about

a man like this_?10

Quietistic meditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices

it will turn out to be just as insecure and petty as someone not

enlightened at all. What is equally important, "leisure-time"

meditation that separates our spiritual life from our activities is

merely hiding from reality. You cannot come home from the job and

suddenly turn on a meditation experience. He cites the case of someone

who excuses himself to meditate, but who is then so harried and tense

it does no good.

_Even should there be such a thing as . . . reaching a state where the

great illumination is released by means of dead sitting and silent

illumination . . . people are so involved in the numerous duties of

their household affairs that they have scarcely a moment in which to

practice concentrated meditation. What they do then is to plead illness

and, neglecting their duties and casting aside responsibilities for

their family affairs, they shut themselves up in a room for several

days, lock the door, arrange several cushions in a pile, set up a stick

of incense, and proceed to sit. Yet, because they are exhausted by

ordinary worldly cares, they sit in meditation for one minute and fall

asleep for a hundred, and during the little bit of meditation that they

manage to accomplish, their minds are beset by countless delusions.11

_

But what is worse, these people then blame their careers, assuming they

need more isolation. But this is like the aspiring ocean swimmer in the

tub mistakenly desiring less water.

_[They] furrow their brows, draw together their eyebrows, and before

one knows it they are crying out: "Our official duties interfere with

our practice of the Way; our careers prevent our Zen meditation. It

would be better to resign from office, discard our seals, go to some

place beside the water or under the trees where all is peaceful and

quiet and no one is about, there in our own way to practice _dhyana

_contemplation, and escape from the endless cycle of suffering." How

mistaken these people are_!12

Having determined meditation in the midst of activity is the only

meaningful practice, he next addressed the question of how to go about

it. He explained that we can do it by making our activities into

meditation.

_What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing,

swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil

and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong,

into one single koan.13

_

He gave an example of how to change the implements of daily living into

a Buddhist metaphor, in this case by a warrior's making his clothes,

sword, and saddle into a meditation hall of the mind.

_Make your skirt and upper garments into the seven- or nine- striped

monks' robe; make your two-edged sword into your resting board or desk.

Make your saddle your sitting cushion; make the mountains, rivers, and

great earth the sitting platform; make the whole universe your own

personal meditation cave. . . . Thrusting forth the courageous mind

derived from faith, combine it with the true practice of

introspection.14

_

If meditation bears no relationship to life, what good is it? It is

merely self-centered gratification. This he condemned, pointing out

that if everyone did nothing but meditate on his own inner concerns,

society at large would fall apart. And ultimately Zen would be blamed.

Furthermore, this inner-directed preoccupation with self-awareness is

bad Zen.

Hakuin similarly taught that a Zen which ignored society was hollow and

meaningless, and its monks of no use to anybody. He was particularly

stern with conventional Zen students, who were content in their own

enlightenment and ignored the needs of others. "Meditation in action"

for the monk meant the same as for a layman, with one significant

difference. Whereas the layman could bring meditation to his obligatory

life of affairs, the monk must bring the life of the world to his

meditation. Just to hide and meditate on your own original nature

produces inadequate enlightenment, while also shutting you off from any

chance to help other people, other sentient beings. The ancient masters

knew, said Hakuin, that a person truly enlightened could travel through

the world and not be distracted by the so-called five desires (wealth,

fame, food, sleep, and sex). The enlightened being is aware of, but not

enticed by, sensual gratification.

_The Third Patriarch [Seng-ts'an, d. 606] has said: "If one wishes to

gain true intimacy with enlightenment, one must not shun the objects of

the senses." He does not mean here that one is to delight in the

objects of the senses but, just as the wings of a waterfowl do not get

wet even when it enters the water, one must establish a mind that will

continue a true koan meditation without interruption, neither clinging

to nor rejecting the objects of the senses.15

_

But Hakuin asked something of a Zen novice even more difficult than

that asked by the Chinese masters of old--who merely demanded that a

monk reject the world, turn his back, and shut out its distractions. In

contrast, Hakuin insists that he meditate while out in the world,

actively immersing himself in its attractions. The older Ch'an masters

advised a monk to ignore the world, to treat it merely as a backdrop to

his preoccupation with inner awareness; Hakuin says to test your

meditation outside, since otherwise it serves for nothing. And today

Rinzai monks are expected to silently meditate during all activities,

including working in the yard of the monastery, harvesting vegetables,

or even walking through the town for their formal begging.

Hakuin not only redefined meditation, he also revitalized koan practice

among full-time Zen monks and ultimately brought on a renaissance of

Rinzai Zen itself. He formalized the idea of several stages of

enlightenment (based on his own experience of increasingly deep satori)

as well as a practice that supported this growth. But most of all

Hakuin was dismayed by what he considered to be the complete

misunderstanding of koan practice in Japan. Monks had memorized so many

anecdotes about the ancient Chinese masters that they thought they

could signify the resolution of a koan by some insincere theatrics.

_[0]f the monks who move about like clouds and water, eight or nine out

of ten will boast loudly that they have not the slightest doubt about

the essential meaning of any of the seventeen hundred koans that have

been handed down. . . . If you test them with one of these koans, some

will raise their fists, others will shout "_katsu_," but most of them

will strike the floor with their hands. If you press them just a little

bit, you will find that they have in no way seen into their own

natures, have no learning whatsoever, and are only illiterate, boorish,

sightless men.16

_

Hakuin breathed new life back into koan theory. For instance, he seems

the first Japanese master to take a psychological interest in the koan

and its workings. He believed a koan should engender a "great doubt" in

the mind of a novice, and through this great doubt lead him to the

first enlightenment or _kensho_.17 Initially he had advocated the "Mu"

koan for beginners, but late in life he came up with the famous "What

is the sound of one hand clapping?"18 As he described this koan in a

letter to a laywoman:

_What is the Sound of the Single Hand? When you clap together both

hands a sharp sound is heard; when you raise the one hand there is

neither sound nor smell. . . .

This is something that can by no means be heard with the ear. If

conceptions and discriminations are not mixed within it and it is quite

apart from seeing, hearing, perceiving, and knowing, and if, while

walking, standing, sitting, and reclining, you proceed

straightforwardly without interruption in the study of this koan, then

in the place where reason is exhausted and words are ended, you will

suddenly . . . break down the cave of ignorance.. . . At this time the

basis of mind, consciousness, and emotion is suddenly shattered.19

_

But this is not the end; rather it is the beginning. After a disciple

has penetrated this koan, he receives koans of increasing difficulty.

From Hakuin's own experience he knew that _satori _experiences could be

repeated and could become ever deeper and more meaningful. Although he

himself never chose to overtly systematize and categorize koans, his

heirs did not hesitate to do so, creating the structure that is modern

Rinzai Zen.

How did Zen finally emerge, after all the centuries and the

convolutions? As Hakuin's descendants taught Zen, a monk entering the

monastery was assigned a koan chosen by the master. He was expected to

meditate on this koan until his _kensho_, his first glimmer of satori,

which might require two to three years. After this a new phase of study

began. The monk was then expected to work his way through a program of

koans, requiring as much as a decade more, after which he might

meditate on his own, in seclusion, for a time longer.20

The master worked with monks individually (a practice reputedly left

over from the time when Chinese-speaking masters had to communicate in

writing) via a face-to-face interview (_senzen_) reminiscent of a

Marine Corps drill instructor harassing a recruit. The monk would bow

to the master, seat himself, and

submit his attempt at resolution of the koan. The master might either

acknowledge his insight, give him some oblique guidance, or simply

greet him with stony silence and ring for the next recruit--signifying

an unsatisfactory answer.

Hakuin made his disciples meditate; he made them struggle through koan

after koan; he made monastic discipline as rigorous as possible; and he

taught that it is not enough merely to be interested in yourself and

your own enlightenment. But he insisted that if you follow all his

teachings, if you meditate the right way and work through increasingly

difficult koans, you too can find the enlightenment he found, an

enlightenment that expressed itself in an enormous physical vitality.

_Even though I am past seventy now my vitality is ten times as great as

it was when I was thirty or forty. My mind and body are strong and I

never have the feeling that I absolutely must lie down to rest. Should

I want to I find no difficulty in refraining from sleep for two, three,

or even seven days, without suffering any decline in my mental powers.

I am surrounded by three- to five-hundred demanding students, and even

though I lecture on the scriptures or on the collections of the

Masters' sayings for thirty to fifty days in a row, it does not exhaust

me.21

_

Hakuin was a prolific writer and always aware of his audience. For his

lay followers, he wrote in simple Japanese and related his teachings to

the needs and limitations of secular life. For his monk disciples he

wrote in a more scholarly style. And finally, we have many long elegant

letters composed for various dignitaries of government and the

aristocracy.

He also was an artist of note, producing some of the most powerful Zen-

style paintings of any Japanese. Like his writings, these works are

vigorous, impulsive, and dynamic. He seems to have been an inspiration

for many later Zen artists, including Sengai (1750-1837) and the Zen

poet Ryokan (1758-1831).22

Hakuin died in his sleep at age eighty-three. During his life he had

reestablished Rinzai Zen in Japan in a form fully as rigorous as ever

practiced in the monasteries of T'ang and Sung China, and he had

simultaneously discovered a way this Zen could be made accessible to

laymen, through meditation in activity. Whereas previous Japanese

teachers had let koan practice atrophy in order to attract a greater

number of followers, Hakuin simultaneously made Zen both more authentic

and more popular. His genius thereby saved traditional Zen in its

classical form, while at last making it accessible and meaningful in

modern life.

Chapter Nineteen

REFLECTIONS

What is the resilience of Zen that has allowed it to survive and

flourish over all the centuries, even though frequently at odds

philosophically with its milieu? And why have the insights of obscure

rural teachers from the Chinese and Japanese Middle Ages remained

pertinent to much of modern life in the West? On the other hand, why

has there been a consistent criticism of Zen (from early China to the

present day) condemning it as a retreat from reality--or worse, a

preoccupation with self amidst a world that calls for social

conscience?

These questions are complex, but they should be acknowledged in any

inquiry into Zen thought. They are also matters of opinion: those

wishing to see Zen as unwholesome are fixed in their critical views,

just as those committed to Zen practice are unshakably steadfast. What

follows is also opinion, even though an attempt has been made to

maintain balance.

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE IN ZEN

A distinguished modern Zen master was once asked if Zen followers

looked only inward, with no concern for others. He replied that in Zen

the distinction between oneself and the world was the first thing to be

dissolved. Consequently, mere self-love is impossible; it resolves

naturally into a love of all things. Stated in this way, Zen teachings

become, in a twinkling, a profound moral philosophy. Where there is no

distinction between the universe and ourselves, the very concept of the

ego is inappropriate. We cannot think of ourselves without

simultaneously thinking of others. Zen is not, therefore, an obsession

with the self, but rather an obsession with the universe, with all

things--from nature to the social betterment of all. Although Zen

initially forces a novice to focus on his own mind, this is only to

enable him or her to attain the insight to merge with all things, great

and small. True Zen introspection eventually must lead to the

dissolution of the self. When this occurs, we no longer need the

chiding of a Golden Rule.

It is fair to question whether this particular view of social

conscience, which might be described as more "passive" than "active,"

adequately refutes the charge of "me-ism" in Zen. But perhaps less is

sometimes more in the long run. There is no great history of Zen

charity, but then there have been few if any bloody Zen Crusades and

little of the religious persecution so common to Western moral systems.

Perhaps the humanism in Zen takes a gentler, less flamboyant form. In

the scales of harm and help it seems as noble as any of the world's

other spiritual practices.

ZEN AND CREATIVITY

Zen gained from Taoism the insight that total reliance on logical

thought stifles the human mind. Logic, they found, is best suited to

analyzing and categorizing--functions today increasingly delegated to

the computer. Whereas the logical mode of thought can only manipulate

the world view of given paradigm, intuition can inspire genuine

creativity, since it is not shackled by the nagging analytical mind,

which often serves only to intimidate imaginative thought. Zen

struggled relentlessly to deflate the pomposity of man's rationality,

thereby releasing the potential of intuition. Although much research

has arisen in recent times to pursue the same effect--from

"brainstorming" to drugs--Zen challenged the problem many centuries ago,

and its powerful tools of meditation and the koans still taunt our

modern shortcuts.

ZEN AND MIND RESEARCH

That Zen ideas should find a place in psychoanalysis is not surprising.

Meditation has long been used to still the distraught mind. Japanese

researchers have studied the effects of meditation on brain activity

for many years, and now similar studies are also underway in the West.

The connection between Zen "enlightenment" and a heightened state of

"consciousness" has been examined by psychologists as diverse as Erich

Fromm and Robert Ornstein. But perhaps most significantly, our recent

research in the hemispheric specialization of the brain--which suggests

our left hemisphere is the seat of language and rationality while the

right dominates intuition and creativity-- appears to validate

centuries-old Zen insights into the dichotomy of thought. Zen

"research" on the mind's complementary modes may well light the path to

a fuller understanding of the diverse powers of the human mind.

ZEN AND THE ARTS

At times the ancient Chinese and Japanese art forms influenced by Zen

seem actually to anticipate many of the aesthetic principles we now

call "modern." Sixteenth-century Zen ceramics could easily pass as

creations of a contemporary potter, and ancient Chinese and Japanese

inks and calligraphies recall the modern monochrome avant-garde. Zen

stone gardens at times seem pure abstract expressionism, and the Zen-

influenced landscape gardens of Japan can manipulate our perception

using tricks only recently understood in the West. Japanese haiku

poetry and No drama, created under Zen influence, anticipate our modern

distrust of language; and contemporary architecture often echoes

traditional Japanese design--with its preference for clean lines, open

spaces, emphasis on natural materials, simplicity, and the integration

of house and garden.

Aesthetic ideals emerging from Zen art focus heavily on naturalness, on

the emphasis of man's relation to nature. The Zen artists, as do many

moderns, liked a sense of the materials and process of creation to come

through in a work. But there is a subtle difference. The Zen artists

frequently included in their works devices to ensure that the message

reached the viewer. For example, Zen ceramics are always intended to

force us to experience them directly and without analysis. The trick

was to make the surface seem curiously imperfect, almost as though the

artist were careless in the application of a finish, leaving it uneven

and rough. At times the glaze seems still in the process of flowing

over a piece, uneven and marred by ashes and lumps. There is no sense

of "prettiness": instead they feel old and marred by long use. But the

artist consciously is forcing us to experience the piece for itself,

not as just another item in the category of bowl. We are led into the

process of creation, and our awareness of the piece is heightened--just

as an unfinished painting beckons us to pick up a brush, This device of

drawing us into involvement, common to Zen arts from haiku to ink

painting, is one of the great insights of Zen creativity, and it is

something we in the West are only now learning to use effectively.

ZEN AND PERCEPTION

One of the major insights of Zen is that the world should be perceived

directly, not as an array of embodied names. As noted, the Zen arts

reinforce this attitude by deliberately thwarting verbal or analytical

appreciation. We are forced to approach them with our logical faculties

in abeyance. This insistence on direct perception is one of the

greatest gifts of Zen. No other major system of thought champions this

insight so clearly and forthrightly. Zen would have our perception of

the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal. By experiencing

nature directly, and by thinking in pure ideas rather than with

"internalized speech," we can immeasurably enrich our existence. The

dawn, the flower, the breeze are now experienced more exquisitely--in

their full reality. Zen worked hard to debunk the mysterious power we

mistakenly ascribe to names and concepts, since the Zen masters knew

these serve only to separate us from life. Shutting off the constant

babble in our head is difficult, but the richness of experience and

imagery that emerges is astounding. It is as though a screen between us

and our surroundings has suddenly dropped away, putting us in touch

with the universe.

THE ZEN LIFE

The heart of Zen is practice, "sitting," physical discipline. For those

wishing to experience Zen rather than merely speculate about it, there

is no other way. Koans can be studied, but without the guidance of

practice under a master, they are hardly more than an intellectual

exercise. Only in formal meditation can there be the real beginning of

understanding. Zen philosophy, and all that can be transmitted in

words, is an abomination to those who really understand. There's no

escaping the Taoist adage, "Those who speak do not know, those who know

do not speak." Words can point the way, but the path must be traveled

in silence.

* * *

NOTES

PREFACE TO ZEN

1. Chang Chung-yuan, Tao: A New Way of Thinking (New York: Perennial

Library, 1977), p. 4.

2. Ibid., p. 6.

3. Ibid., p. 50.

4. Ibid., p. 145.

5. Ibid., p. 153.

6. Quoted in Max Kaltenmark, Lao Tzu and Taoism (Stanford, Calif.:

Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 20.

7. Burton Watson, Introduction to The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 7.

8. Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (Garden City, N.

Y.: Doubleday, undated reprint of 1939 edition), p. 15.

9. Gai-fu Feng and Jane English, trans., Chuang Tsu (New York: Vintage

Books, 1974), p. 55.

10. Ibid. 309

11. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, Sources of

Chinese Tradition, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960),

p. 240.

12. Ibid., pp. 243-244.

13. Quoted by Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New

York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1948), p. 230.

14. Quoted in ibid., p. 235.

15. D. Howard Smith, Chinese Religions (New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1968), p. 106.

16. Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning

(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), pp. 159-60.

17. Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1959), p. 63.

18. Walter Liebenthal, Chao Lun: The Treatises of Seng-chao (Hong Kong:

hong Kong University Press, 1968), p. 62.

242 / NOTES 10, 11)1(1,, pp. fifi f)7.

20. Helnrich Dumoulin, A History of Zen Badtihism (Boston: Beacon Press,

1000), |i. 60,

21. Quoted by Fung Yu Ian, Short History of (Chinese Philosophy, p, 252,

1. BODHIDHARMA: FIRST PATRIARCH OF ZEN

2.

1. Translated by D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series

(New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 1 79. This is a translation of a

passage from the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp compiled in

1004 by Tao-yuan. A simpler version of the story can be found in the

original source document, the Further Biographies of Eminent Priests

(Hsu kao-seng chuan), prepared around the year 645 by Tao hsuan, and

translated In Cat's Yawn, published by the First Zen Institute of

America, New York, 194 7. The story is repeated also in the Ch'uan fg-

pao chi, prepared ca, 700 10 by Tu Fei,

2. The fact that this episode does not appear in the earliest story of

Bodhidharma's life makes one skeptical about its authenticity. It is

known that Emperor Wu welcomed another famous Indian missionary,

Paramartha, who landed in Canton in 540 (Smith, Chinese Religions, p.

120). This monk espoused the Idealistic school of Buddhism, which was

at odds with the school of Ch'an. It seems possible that the story of

Bodhidharma's meeting was constructed to counter the prestige that Wu's

Interest undoubtedly gave the Idealistic school.

3. The Buddhist concept of Merit might be likened to a spiritual

savings account, Merit accrues on the record of one's good deeds and

provides several forms of reward in this world and the next, The Idea

that good deeds do not engender Merit seems to have been pioneered by

Tao-sheng (ca, 360 434), the Chinese originator of the idea of Sudden

Enlightenment, "Emptiness" is, of course, the teaching of the Middle

Path of Nagarjuna, The implication that Emperor Wu was startled by this

concept is worth a raised eyebrow, Sunyata or "emptiness" was hardly

unknown In the Buddhist schools of the time.

This whole story is suspect, being first found In the Ch'uan fa-pao chi

of Tu Fei (ca. 700 10), but not in the earlier biography, the Hsu kao-

seng chuan (Further Biographies of Eminent Priests I, compiled by Tao-

hsuan around 645, There is, incidentally, another competing story of a

monk named Bodhidharma in China, He was described as a Persian and was

reported in Yang I Isuan-chih's Buddhist Monasteries In Loyang (Lo-yang

Ch'leh-lan-chi), written In 547, to have been associated with the Yung-

ning monastery, which would have been possible only between the years

516 and 528. This Persian figure apparently claimed to be 150 years in

age, and he most probably came to China via the trading port of Canton

used by Persians. This fact has been used by some to cast doubt on the

more accepted story of a South Indian monk named Bodhidharma arriving

at Canton between 520 and 525. Perhaps a legendary Persian was

transformed into a legendary Indian by the _Dhyana_ school, or perhaps

it was a different individual.

4. This is the conclusion of the leading Zen scholar today, Philip

Yampolsky, in The Platform Sutra of The Sixth Patriarch (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 10.

5. English translations of various versions of this essay may be found

In Cat's Yawn by the First Zen Institute of America; In I). T, Suzuki,

Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series; and in John C. H. Wu, The Golden

Age of Zen (Taipei: United Publishing Center, 1907). Concerning this

essay, Philip Yampolsky (private communication) has noted, "Whereas a

version exists In The Transmission of the Lamp, various texts have been

found in the Tun-huang documents and elsewhere, so that a more complete

version is available. It is considered authentic,"

6. Suzuki, Essays in Ann Buddhism, First Series, p. 180.

7. Ibid., pp. 180-81.

8. This point is enlarged considerably in an essay attributed to

Bodhidharma but most likely apocryphal, which Is translated In D. T,

Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (New York: Samuel Weiser,

Inc., 1971) pp. 24-30,

9. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p. 181.

10. Suzuki, Ibid.

11. Wu, Golden Age of Zen, pp. 40 50.

12. Ibid., p. 50.

13. Ibid., p. 50.

14. Suzuki translates the passage from the Vajrasamadhi Sutra in

Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, pp. 183-84. Portions are as

follows: "Said the Buddha: The two entrances are 'Entrance by Reason'

and 'Entrance by Conduct,' 'Entrance by Reason' means to have a deep

faith in that all sentient beings are identical in essence with the

true nature which is neither unity nor multiplicity; only it is

beclouded by external objects, The nature in itself neither departs nor

comes. When a man in singleness of thought abides in chueh-kuan, he

will clearly see into the Buddha-nature, of which we cannot say whether

it exists or exists not, and in which there is neither selfhood nor

otherness. . . ." Suzuki translates the term chueh-kuan as being

"awakened" or "enlightened,"

15. Hu Shih, "The Development of Zen Buddhism in China," Chinese Social

and Political Science Review, 15,4 (January 1932), p. 483, Philip

Yampolsky (private communication) has questioned this generalization of

Hu Shih, noting, "There were few practicing 'Zen' Buddhists, but other

Chinese Buddhists probably meditated seriously, although not

exclusively."

16. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p, 186.

17. See Hu Shih, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," p. 482: "But

the whole system of _dhyana_ practice, even in its concise form as

presented in the translated manuals, was not fully understood by the

Chinese Buddhists. . . . The best proof of this is the following

quotation from Hui-chiao, the scholarly historian of Buddhism and

author of the first series of Buddhist Biographies which was finished

in 519. In his general summary of the biographies of practitioners of

_dhyana_, Hui-chiao said: 'But the apparent utility of _dhyana_ lies in

the attainment of magic powers. . .'.'"

18. Suzuki (Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p. 191), points out,

"Nagarjuna says in his famous commentary on the Prajnaparamita sutra,

'Moral conduct is the skin, meditation is the flesh, the higher

understanding is the bone, and the mind subtle and good is the marrow.'

" Since this commentary must have been common knowledge, the interest

in Bodhidharma's alleged exchange with his disciples lies in his

recasting of a common coinage.

19. From the Ch'uan fa-pao chi (ca. 700-10) of Tu Fei, as described by

Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriach. This story happens

to parallel closely the posthumous capers ascribed to certain famous

religious Taoists of the age.

20. Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism, p. 72.

21. Hu Shih, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," p. 52.

22.

2. HUI-K'O: SECOND PATRIARCH OF ZEN

1. Translated in Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, p.190.

2. He is well documented in Tao-hsuan's Hsu kao-seng chuan or Further

Biographies of Eminent Priests (A.D. 645). Selected portions of this

biography are related in Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth

Patriarch; and Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, which form

the basis for much of the historical information reported here. Other

useful sources are Dumoulin, History of Zen Buddhism; and Chou Hsiang-

kuang, _Dhyana_ Buddhism in China (Allahabad, India: Indo-Chinese

Literature Publications, 1960).