XI

The state of mind in which all traces of conceptual consciousness are

wiped out is called by the Christian mystics poverty, and Tauler’s

definition is: “Absolute poverty is thine when thou canst not remember

whether anybody has ever owed thee or been indebted to thee for

anything; just as all things will be forgotten by thee in the last

journey of death.”

The Zen masters are more poetic and positive in their expression of

the feeling of poverty, they do not make a direct reference to things

worldly. Sings Mumon (Wu-mên)[7.37]:

“Hundreds of spring flowers; the autumnal moon;

A refreshing summer breeze; winter snow:

Free thy mind of all idle thoughts,

And for thee how enjoyable every season is!”

Or according to Shuan (Shou-an)[7.38]:

“At Nantai I sit quietly with an incense burning,

One day of rapture, all things are forgotten,

Not that mind is stopped and thoughts are put away,

But that there is really nothing to disturb my serenity.”

This is not to convey the idea that he is idly sitting and doing

nothing particularly; or that he has nothing else to do but to enjoy

the cherry-blossoms fragrant in the morning sun, or the lonely moon

white and silvery: he may be in the midst of work, teaching pupils,

reading the Sutras, sweeping and farming as all the masters have done,

and yet his own mind is filled with transcendental happiness and

quietude. He is living in God as Christians may say. All hankerings of

the heart have departed, there are no idle thoughts clogging the flow

of life-activity, and thus he is empty and poverty-stricken. As he is

poverty-stricken, he knows how to enjoy the “spring flowers’’ and the

“autumnal moon.” When worldly riches are amassed in his heart, there

is no room left there for such celestial enjoyments. The Zen masters

are wont of speaking positively about their contentment and unworldly

riches. Instead of saying that they are empty-handed, they talk of the

natural sufficiency of things about them. Yogi (Yang-ch‘i), however,

refers to his deserted habitation where he found himself to be residing

as keeper. One day he ascended the lecturing chair in the Hall and

began to recite his own verse[7.39]:

“My dwelling is now here at Yogi; the walls and roof, how

weather-beaten!

The whole floor is covered white with snow crystal,

Shivering down the neck, I am filled with thoughts.”

After a pause he added the fourth line:

“How I recall the ancient masters whose habitat was no better than the

shade of a tree!”

Kyōgen (Hsiang-yen)[7.40] is more direct apparently in his allusion to

poverty:

“My last year’s poverty was not poverty enough,

My poverty this year is poverty indeed;

In my poverty last year there was room for a gimlet’s point,

But this year even the gimlet is gone.”

Later, a master called Koboku Gen (K‘u-mu Yüan)[7.41] commented on this

song of poverty by Kyōgen in the following verse:

“‘Neither a gimlet’s point nor the room for it,’ some sing; but this

is not yet real poverty:

As long as one is conscious of having nothing, there still remains

the guardian of poverty.

I am lately poverty-stricken in all conscience,

For from the very beginning I do not see even the one that is poor.”

Ummon was not poverty-stricken, but lean and emaciated; for when a

monk asked him what were the special features of his school, the

master answered, “My skin is dry and my bones are sticking out.”

Corpulence and opulence have never been associated with spirituality,

at least in the East. As a matter of fact, they are not inconsistent

ideas; but the amassing of wealth under our economic conditions has

always resulted in producing characters that do not go very well with

our ideals of saintliness. Perhaps our too emphatic protest against

materialism has done this. Thus not to have anything, even wisdom and

virtue, has been made the object of Buddhist life, though this does not

mean that it despises them. In despising there is in a large measure

something impure, not thoroughly purgated; as true Bodhisattvas are

even above purity and virtuousness, how much more so they would be

above such petty weaknesses of human being! When the Buddhists are thus

cleansed of all these, they will truly be poverty-stricken and thin and

transparent.

The aim of Zen discipline is to attain to the state of “non-attainment”

(_cittaṁ nopalabhyate_) as is technically expressed. All knowledge

is an acquisition and accumulation, whereas Zen proposes to deprive

one of all one’s possessions. The spirit is to make one poor and

humble—thoroughly cleansed of inner impurities. Learning, on the

contrary, makes one rich and arrogant. Because learning is earning,

the more learned, the richer, and therefore “in much wisdom is much

grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” It is

after all “vanity and a striving after wind.” Zen will heartily

endorse this too. Says Laotzŭ, “Scholars gain everyday while the

Taoists lose everyday.”[f152] The consummation of this kind of

loss is “non-attainment,” which is poverty. Poverty in another word

is emptiness, śūnyatā. When the spirit is all purged of its filth

accumulated from time immemorial, it stands naked, with no raiments,

with no trappings. It is now empty, free, genuine assuming its native

authority. And there is a joy in this, not that kind of joy which is

liable to be upset by its counterpart, grief, but an absolute joy

which is “the gift of God,” which makes a man “enjoy good in all his

labour,” and from which nothing can be taken, to which nothing can be

put, but which shall stay for ever. Non-attainment, therefore, in Zen

is positive conception, and not merely privative. The Buddhist modes of

thinking are sometimes different from those of the West, and Christian

readers are often taken aback at the idea of emptiness and at the too

unconditioned assertion of idealism. Singularly, however, all the

mystics, Buddhist or no, agree in their idea of poverty being the end

of their spiritual development.

In Christianity, we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that

in Him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have even this

last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why

Zen followers advise us not to linger even where the Buddha is and to

pass quickly away where he is not. All the training of the monk in the

Zendo, in theory as well as in practice, is based in the notion of

“meritless deed.” Poetically, this idea is expressed as follows:

“The bamboo shadows are sweeping the stairs,

But no dust is stirred:

The moonlight penetrates deep in the bottom of the pool,

But no trace is left in the water.”

When this is expressed in the more Indian and technical terms of the

_Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra_, it is as follows:

“Habit-energy is not separated from mind, nor is it together with mind;

though enveloped in habit-energy, mind has no marks of difference.

“Habit-energy which is like a soiled garment produced by manovijñāna,

keeps mind from shining forth, though mind itself is a robe of the

utmost purity.

“I state that the ālaya is like empty space, which is neither

existent nor non-existent; for the ālaya has nothing to do with being

or no-being.

“Through the transformation of manovijñāna, mind is cleansed of

foulness, it is enlightened as it now thoroughly understands all

things:—this I preach.”[f153]