Part II
Looking Back into Earlier Centuries of the Common Era
Words and speech are only thinking, and thinking means suffering. You must throw them all into the garbage!
Zen Master Seung Sahn (1927–2004)
5
A Glimpse of “Just This” in Tang Dynasty China (618–907)
As the two men part, his young disciple says, When someone asks me to describe my master’s truth, how shall I answer?
Master Yunyan pauses, then finally says, “Just this is it.”1
This disciple is Dongshan Liangjie (807–869). He is important because he later co-founded a major school of Ch’an called Caodong in China and Soto in Japan. However, young Dongshan remained perplexed for a long time after he and his master parted. What had Master Yunyan meant when he said, “Just this is it”? The monk could never understand.
But then one day Dongshan happened to be crossing a stream. Suddenly, he glimpsed his own reflection in the water. Triggered into an enlightened state, he finally realized what his master’s “just this” had implied. Following the convention of that era, he then composed his enlightenment poem. [ZBR: 434–435] Its last line tried to condense the inexpressible essence of this sudden awakening. This poetic realization of reality translates as the phrase “to merge with thusness.”
The commentary to this dialogue2 adds some clarification to what is implied by “just this” and “thusness.” For example, it mentions the Huayan school of Buddhism that had emerged earlier during the Sui Dynasty (581–618). One of its sayings was, “Inner reality is already complete in itself; when words are born, inner reality is lost.”
The early Ch’an school associated with Bodhidharma also asserted that one could never understand the actual flash of insight-wisdom by using words or letters found in the ancient scriptures. [SI: 202] That is why this brief chapter, like chapters 1 and 4, simply leaves hints that point to the need for direct experience.3 Chapter 6 draws on other Zen lore from the Tang Dynasty that points to the same conclusion.