Zen: Direct Pointing

Posted 2/2/20 | Updated 7/4/20

Rocks

The Zen way of teaching is to demonstrate Reality rather than to talk about it, or, if words are used at all, to avoid formally religious terminology and conceptual statements.

When Zen speaks it expresses Reality, not with logical explanations and doctrines but with everyday conversation, or with statements that upset the normal conceptual mode of thinking so violently that they appear as utter nonsense.

Because Zen desires to get rid of concepts, to shatter the rigid frames in which we try to possess life, it employs a thoroughgoing iconoclasm. At the same time, Zen as a formal religious cult reads the scriptures, uses images and ceremonies, and sometimes breaks down far enough to include sermons and explanations. But it is just the preservation of this formal aspect of religion which makes the informal and iconoclastic such a puzzling and effective contrast, a truth which Western reformers and iconoclasts have never appreciated.

The greater part of Zen literature consists of mondo, of brief dialogues between masters and pupils, which illustrate its peculiar method of instruction, pointing to the real now without interposing ideas and notions about it. Here, for example, is the way in which Zen deals with the problem of non-duality, concerning which Indian Buddhism has composed so many volumes of intricate explanation.

A monk asked Dosan, "How do we escape the heat when summer comes and the cold when winter is here?"

The master said, "Why not go where there is no summer, no winter?"

"Where is such a place?"

"When the cold season comes, one is thoroughly chilled; when the hot summer is here, one swelters."

As to escaping from Samsara, the world of opposites and everyday consciousness, to Nirvana, the realm of absolute unity and peace, Zen has this to say:

Bokuju was once asked, "We have to dress and eat every day, and how can we escape from all that?"

The master replied, "We dress; we eat."

"I do not understand."

"If you do not understand, put on your dress and eat your food."

Or again:

"Pray show me the way to deliverance."

"Who has ever put you in bondage?"

"Nobody."

"If so, why should you ask for deliverance?"

Another master deals with this question rather more explicitly, but we must be careful that he does not fool us:

Hui-hai was asked, "How can one attain the Great Nirvana?"

"Have no karma that works for transmigration."¹

"What is the karma for transmigration?"

"To seek after the Great Nirvana, to abandon the defiled and take to the undefiled, to assert that there is something attainable and something realizable, not
to be free from the teaching of opposites — this is the karma that works for transmigration."

"How can one be emancipated?"

"No bondage from the very first, and what is the use of seeking emancipation? Act as you will, go on as you feel — without second thought. This is the incomparable way."

Hui-hai's final remark must not, however, give the impression that Zen is just living lazily and fatuously in the present and taking life as it comes. If this be used as a formula for grasping the reality of Zen, the whole point is missed. A master was asked, "What is the Tao?" "Walk on!" he shouted. Thus whenever you think you have the right idea of Zen, drop it and walk on.

More and more we shall see that the essence of Zen is simply the giving up of any attempt to grasp life in ideational or emotional forms. It involves a thoroughgoing acceptance of life and experience just as it is at any given moment, which, whether we know it or not, is precisely what our basic, mirror-like consciousness is doing all the time. Passion, anger, elation, depression, ideas of good and evil, mine and yours — these are varying forms taken by our feelings and thoughts, whereas the essence of Mind, the essential consciousness, is ever formless, free, and pure. "The perfect man," said Chuang-tzu, "employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives, but does not keep."

At the same time, this must not lead us to form the concept of a pure and unchanging consciousness separate and apart from the changing forms of thoughts and things. The point is not at all to reject phenomena and cling to the Absolute, because the very nature of the Absolute, of the essential Mind, is non-clinging. As soon as we conceive a formless Self or mind-essence underlying and distinct from the changing contents of experience, we are denying the very nature of that Self. For its nature is not to separate itself from anything, not to stand apart from experience but to accept and identify itself with it. Its very life and power consist in a perpetual self-abandonment to its varied experiences, an identification of itself with its changing forms, which in Christian language would be called the divine love. Nor must it be thought that we have to make the pure Mind perform this act of self-abandonment; it does it by itself all the time, in us and through us, whether we wish it or not.

This, then, is why Hui-neng constantly insisted that the only difference between an ordinary man and a Buddha, an enlightened one, is that the latter knows he is a Buddha whereas the former does not. When asked, "What is enlightenment?" a master replied, "Your everyday mind." "When a thought moves," wrote Kaku-an, "another follows, and then another — an endless train of thoughts is thus awakened. Through enlightenment all this turns into truth." In reality the enlightened consciousness is not different from our ordinary everyday consciousness; to seek it as something over and above our mind as it is at this moment is immediately to set up a dualism. We thrust realization from us in the very act of regarding it as something to be attained. This seeming paradox is aptly expressed by Ma-tsu:

In the Tao there is nothing to discipline oneself in. If there is any discipline in it, the completion of such discipline means the destruction of the Tao. But if there is no discipline whatever in the Tao, one remains an ignoramus.

It is only through seeking enlightenment that we find there is no need to seek. He goes on:

One thought follows another without interruption; the preceding one does not wait for the succeeding; each one is self-contained and quiescent. This is called the "Meditation of the Ocean-stamp," in which are included all things, like the ocean where all the rivers however different in size empty themselves.²

Whether we know it or not, the "ocean" of pure consciousness perfectly accepts the stream of our thoughts and impressions all the time. At every instant we are in complete harmony with the Tao, but an apparent discord arises when, through a wrong use of memory and anticipation, we allow past and future experiences to conflict with the present. In the words of Emerson:

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence … But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.³

But between the unconscious harmony of the rose and the conscious harmony of the perfect man lies the illusion of self-consciousness, separation, and discord, wherein we strive blindly for what in truth we have never lost. Yet this itself is no more an actual loss of the Tao than the disappearance of the rose in winter is a violation of its natural and proper life. The bloom is forgotten and the seed goes underground. "Unless a grain of corn falls into the earth and dies," said Jesus, "it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." In spiritual development there must always be the middle stage wherein by apparent loss, by seeking and striving, we become conscious of the harmony that is our unconscious possession all along.

Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters.⁴

The ignoramus, the primitive "simple" man, accepts life for what it is, just as it comes. The "seeker," however, looks for the God, the Reality, the absolute and eternal consciousness behind life, regarding the images of ordinary experience as a distracting illusion. But the perfect man, consciously one with the Tao, again accepts life for just what it is.

T'an asked a student, "What were you before you became a monk?"

"I used to be a cowherd."

"How do you look after the cattle?"

"I go out with them early in the morning and come home when it grows dark."

"Splendid is your ignorance!"

Zen is spiritual freedom or spiritual poverty, that is, the liberation of our true nature (Buddha-nature or essence of Mind) from the burden of those fixed ideas and feelings about Reality which we accumulate through fear — the fear that life will run away from us. "Scholars," said Lao-tzu, "gain every day; but Taoists lose every day." Or in the words of Jesus, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven … Blessed are the pure [i.e., naked and free] in heart, for they shall see God." Such poverty and freedom are expressed in this poem from the Mumon-kan:⁵

Hundreds of spring-flowers; the autumn moon; A fresh summer breeze; winter snow: Free your mind from idle thoughts, And for you any season is a good season.

But again, we must "walk on" even from spiritual poverty if this be used as a means to grasp the truth of Zen. Chao-chu was asked, "What would you say to one who comes to you with nothing?" "Throw it away!"

These mondo may seem puzzling to the uninitiated, but in fact there is nothing obscure or hidden about them. The truth which they indicate is, however, of such radical simplicity and self-evidence that our complex and burdened minds find it hard to see.

It is so clear that it takes long to see. You must know that the fire which you are seeking Is the fire in your own lantern, And that your rice has been cooked from the very beginning.⁶

Or, as Pai-chang said when asked how to find Reality, "It is very much like looking for an ox when you are riding on one."

Kozankoku, a Confucian, came to Kwaido to ask about the hidden teaching of Zen. Kwaido said, "There is a passage in the text you are so thoroughly familiar with, which fitly describes the teaching of Zen. Did not Confucius declare, 'Do you think I am holding something back from you, O my disciples? Indeed, I have held nothing back from you.'"

Kozankoku could not understand this, and vainly pressed the master for a further explanation. But later, when they were walking together in the mountains, they
passed a bush of wild laurel.

"Do you smell it?" asked Kwaido.

"Yes."

"There, I have kept nothing back from you!"

It would be fatal, however, to interpret this in a sentimentally pantheistic sense, as if Kwaido were saying that the smell of the wild laurel is the Tao. No such conceptualism enters here. Pantheism, deism, theism, monism, dualism - all these are intellectual forms which must fail to grasp the living Reality. But when this has been thoroughly understood, intellectual forms may be used again without captivating the mind.

Strictly speaking, Zen does not have a method for awakening our minds to Reality, unless it may be called a "method of no-method." A method, a technique for discovering Reality implies an attempt to grasp it, and this, according to Zen, is as misleading and unnecessary as "putting legs on a snake" or "adding frost over snow." In the words of Lin-chi:

The true man who has an insight into Reality...gives himself up to all manners of situations in which he finds himself in obedience to his past karma. He appears in whatever garments are ready for him to put on. As it is desired of him either to move or to sit quietly, he moves or sits. He has not a thought of running after Buddhahood. He is free from such pinings. Why is it so with him? Says an ancient sage, "When the Buddha is sought after, he is the cause of transmigration."⁷

Footnotes

Karma (literally, action) is the law of causality, and thus the phrase "karma that works for transmigration" means the kind of action which has the effect of binding the agent to Samsara, where, according to general Buddhist belief, man is born again and again into the world until he realizes Nirvana.
Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism, pp. 126-127.
Essays, First Series. "Self-Reliance."
Ch'ing-yuan, in Suzuki, Essays in Zen, vol. 1, p. 12.
The Mumon-kan (Chinese, Wu-men Kwan) or "No Gate Barrier" is a standard collection of mondo with brief comments and poems about each. In the verse quoted here "idle thoughts" are fixed concepts.
Mumon-kan, vii. I am indebted for this translation to the Ven. Sokei-an Sasaki, late abbot of Jofuku-in.
Trans. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, vol. iii, pp. 32-33. A free rendering of the original Chinese. Buddhahood is the state of enlightenment or awakening, or the immediate knowledge of Reality. Buddha is often used as a synonym for Reality.

Zen

Zen by Alan Watts

Alan W. Watts was a British-born American philosopher, writer, speaker, and counterculture hero, best known as an interpreter of Asian philosophies for a Western audience. more

The Momentous Harmony

The Cultural Effects of Zen

Direct Pointing