A monk, Seizei, eagerly asked Master Sōzan, “I am solitary and poor. I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous.”
San said, “Venerable1 Zei!”
“Yes, Master!” replied Zei.
San said, “You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips.”
Seizei is obsequious in tone, but what is his real intention? Sōzan has the penetrating eye and thoroughly discerns the monk’s state of mind. Be that as it may, just tell me, where and how has Venerable Zei drunk the wine?
Poor like Hantan,
Of a spirit like Kōu,
Though they cannot sustain themselves,
They dare to compete with each other for wealth.
Sōzan Honjaku was born in 839 A.D. and died in 901 at the age of sixty-two. A disciple of Master Tōzan Ryōkai, he was one of the greatest masters of the Sōtō sect, which was named after these two masters.
We know almost nothing about the life of Seizei, but we gather from this story that he was an excellent Zen monk indeed.
The words of Seizei, “I am solitary and poor. I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous,” contain a deep meaning regarding our essential nature. Solitary and poor. Alone and destitute. How true! Every one of us is solitary, for everyone is the only one in the whole universe. One with the whole universe. At the same time, every one of us is extremely poor, for as I repeatedly tell you, in our essential nature there is nothing. There is neither subject nor object. There is nothing to be seen, to be touched, to be handled. It has no form, no color, no weight, no place to stay. In other words, our essential nature is totally void.
On the other hand, this void has limitless treasures. It can see, it can hear, it can cry, it can laugh, run, and eat. In a word, it is limitless. Emptiness and limitlessness are characteristics of our essential nature.
Seizei knows all this, of course, and still he says to Sōzan, “I am alone and destitute. Please help me to become prosperous.” He is trying to examine Sōzan’s state of consciousness or to fathom the depth of his realization. Discerning his intention, Sōzan calls out, “Venerable Zei!” Seizei replied, “Yes, Master!” Sōzan tells him, “You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips.”
Hakka wine was the best wine in ancient China. Produced by the Hakka family, it was of such high quality that their name became famous throughout the country.
As you know, the answer “Yes, Master!” is a perfect manifestation of the essential nature. What Sōzan means is, “You are perfect just like that. You are using your essential nature fully. Is there any defect in it? No. You have everything from the very beginning. What more do you want?”
“Seizei is obsequious in tone, but what is his real intention? Sōzan has the penetrating eye and thoroughly discerns the monk’s state of mind. Be that as it may, just tell me, where and how has Venerable Zei drunk the wine?”
Seizei says, “I am solitary and poor.” He seems to be very humble, but what is the real meaning behind his words? He is trying to examine Sōzan. Sōzan has the enlightened eye and thoroughly discerns Seizei’s state of consciousness and his secret intention. He says, therefore, “You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine.” Where and how did Seizei drink the best wine to the full? It was, of course, when he answered, “Yes, Master!” to Sōzan’s call. That is, the perfect appearance of his essential nature. He has drunk fully of the wine.
Poor like Hantan,
Of a spirit like Kōu,
Though they cannot sustain themselves,
They dare to compete with each other for wealth.
Hantan is the name of a man who lived in second-century China. He wanted to become a prefect, but the illness of his mother prevented it. He became, instead, a fortune-teller, and like many of the fortune-tellers in Japan, he was apparently unable to use his powers to make money for himself. Hantan lived in great poverty. It is said that his family never knew the taste of millet and that his wife and children lived in a small pushcart as he pursued his itinerant life, with only the trees as a roof over their heads at night.
Kōu was a Chinese warrior hero in the third century B.C. His spectacular career was eventually brought to an end by his defeat at the hands of Ryūhō, the founder of the Han dynasty. He was, nevertheless, famous for his courage and bravery. His splendid horse, Sui, also seemed to have caught his master’s fighting spirit. Kōu’s romance with his beautiful mistress, Gu, is a well-known chapter in Chinese history. It is said that when defeated and in imminent danger of death, Kōu threw a party at which he sang the following song, which later became quite famous:
Strength to drive through a mountain,
Spirit to cover the whole earth!
Yet the time is unfavorable,
Sui wants to advance no more;
Gu, oh, Gu! What shall I do with you!
Sōzan and Seizei are extremely poor (in their consciousness)—just like Hantan. They are truly void in their mind and as brave as Kōu in their spirit. Their inner world is as vast as space, and the two of them are competing for the wealth of this inner world. There is an interesting Japanese haiku which says:
At the end of the year,
I don’t even have a piece of straw
To strangle myself with.
In my opinion, the writer of these lines is still rich enough. He has much wealth, for he possesses a consciousness of “I” or “myself.” I wish he would throw away this consciousness of “I” too!
You should know that poverty is the best condition for proceeding along the way of Zen because, in most instances, wealth prevents us from being sufficiently serious to practice Zen. It is said that people in the Buddhist heavens do not practice zazen because they have almost no life problems. Feeling continually satisfied, they do not possess the will to attain enlightenment and therefore become caught in the karmic cycle of the six realms. They are unable to free themselves from the law of causation.
I cannot help thinking that rich people in this world are in the same situation. From the Zen point of view, you should be grateful for your poverty.
Yōka Daishi says in his Song of Enlightenment (Shōdōka):
The sons of Shakyamuni are known to be poor,
But the poverty is of the body;
Their spiritual life knows no poverty.
Though the poverty-stricken body is wrapped in rags,
The spirit holds within itself an invaluable treasure.
That invaluable treasure is never impaired,
However much one uses it,
And beings are thereby benefitted ungrudgingly,
As required by the occasion;
The triple body and fourfold wisdom are perfected within it.
The eightfold emancipation and sixfold miraculous powers are impressed on it.
The triple body,2 fourfold wisdom,3 eightfold emancipation,4 and sixfold miraculous powers5 are terms in Buddhist philosophy. Their basic meaning is simply the wonderful manifold activity of our essential nature, which is why Yōka Daishi can say, “Poverty is of the body; the spiritual life knows no poverty.”
1. “Venerable” is used here to translate shari (ajari in full form, acarya in Sanskrit), an honorific title for the monk who leads the disciples, correcting their manners and deeds.
2. The Dharmakaya (Dharma body), the Sambhogakaya (Reward body), the Nirmanakaya (Corresponding body).
3. The fourfold wisdoms are: The wisdom of the great round mirror; the wisdom of identity; the wisdom of perceiving the phenomenal world clearly; the wisdom of doing works.
4. The eight kinds of emancipation are: liberation when subjective desire arises, by examination of the object, or all things, and realization of their filthiness; liberation when no subjective desire arises by still meditating as above; liberation by concentration on the pure to the realization of a permanent state of freedom from all desire; liberation in realization of the infinity of space or the immaterial; liberation in realization of infinite knowledge; liberation in realization of nothingness or nowhereness; liberation in the state of mind where there is neither thought nor absence of thought; liberation by means of a state of mind in which there is final extinction of both sensation and consciousness. (Taken from A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms [Soothill & Hodous—Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.].)
5. These are psychic powers such as the heavenly eye, the heavenly ear, knowing another’s thoughts, and so forth.