2

THE POISONOUS LEAVINGS OF PAST MASTERS

Priest Ch’ien-feng addressed his assembly:

“This Dharma-body has three kinds of sickness and two kinds of light. Can any of you clarify that?”

Yün-men came forward and said, “Why doesn’t the fellow inside the hermitage know what’s going on outside?”

Ch’ien-feng roared with laughter.

“Your student still has his doubts,” Yün-men said.

“What are you thinking of?” said Ch’ien-feng.

“That’s for you to clarify,” said Yün-men.

“If you’re like that,” Ch’ien-feng said, “I’d say you’re home free.”¹

Anyone who wants to read old Hsi-keng’s Records must first penetrate these words spoken by Zen masters Ch’ien-feng and Yün-men. If you can grasp the meaning of the dialogue that passed between these two great Zen masters, you are free to say, “I have seen old Hsi-keng face to face. I have penetrated the hidden depths.”

If, on the other hand, you cannot grasp it, even though you master the secrets of Zen’s Five Houses and Seven Schools and penetrate the inner meaning of all seventeen hundred koans, your understanding will be nothing but empty theory. Lifeless learning. It will be no use to you whatsoever.

As for the various practices modern-day students have fallen into, such as writing down idle, nonsensical speculations they hear from their deadbeat teachers, or copying notes that others have made, pasting such notes as cribs in the margins of Zen texts, glibly passing information of this kind around to others, embellished for good measure with arbitrary observations of their own—need I mention how useless those pastimes are?

During the last century, a Chinese priest named Yüan-hsien Yung-chiao [active during the Ch’ung-chen period, 1628–1644, of the Ming dynasty] offered an interpretation of this dialogue, but his comments are so far off the mark they not only misconstrue Ch’ien-feng’s meaning, they are a gross insult to Yün-men as well.

Today’s priests will take one of the verse comments Hsi-keng wrote on this dialogue, throw in a few of Yung-chiao’s remarks randomly, and then use it when they give Zen lectures in their temples. With that, they assume they have pronounced the final word on the subject. They will even commit their comments to paper, and pass them to their monks. These students, whose eyes are still unopened, have no idea that what they are being given is a load of stinking filth that will bury their true spirit, a dangerous weapon that will wreak mortal injury upon the vital wisdom that is within them.

Yet monks scramble over one another to get their hands on these notes. They make copies of them, treasure them, keep them a dark secret, and never let others near them. They transfer the comments onto small slips of paper and paste them as glosses into the printed pages of Zen writings, ridiculously supposing that it will help them to understand the true meaning of the text.

One of these slips of paper that I happened to see was inscribed as follows:

In the fourth chapter of a collection of Zen records titled Ch’an-yü nei-chi is a Dharma talk [fusetsu] the Ming priest Yung-chiao gave to his assembly during the December practice session:

Ch’ien-feng says that the Dharma-body has three kinds of sickness and two kinds of light; he also says that there is an opening through which to pass beyond these obstructions. Now, even if I have to lose my eyebrows for doing it, I’m going to explain the true meaning of Ch’ien-feng’s words to you.²

As a rule, mountains, streams, the great earth, light and darkness, form and emptiness, and all the other myriad phenomena obstruct your vision and are, as such, impediments to the Dharma-body. That is the first of the sicknesses Ch’ien-feng refers to.

When you go on to realize the emptiness of all things and begin dimly to discern the true principle of the Dharma-body, but are unable to leave your attachment to the Dharma behind—that is the second sickness.

When you are able to bore through and attain the Dharma-body, but you realize upon investigating it anew that there is no way to grasp hold of it, no way to postulate it or to indicate it to others, attachment to the Dharma still remains. That is the third sickness.

The first sickness is a kind of light that doesn’t penetrate freely. The second and third sicknesses are likewise a kind of light; it doesn’t penetrate with unobstructed freedom either.

When a student has bored his way through the opening mentioned, he is beyond these obstructions and is able to see clearly the three sicknesses and two lights, with no need for even the slightest bit of further effort.

Complete nonsense! Discriminatory drivel of the first water. When I read that, my hands involuntarily closed the book. Doubting my own eyes, I shut them and sat there, utterly appalled. How could anyone believe such feeble remarks are capable of clarifying the ultimate principle of Zen?

Yün-men said, “Why doesn’t the fellow inside the hermitage know what’s going on outside?” What principle does that expound? How are you going to annotate it? Don’t for a moment think: “I’ve penetrated Ch’ien-feng’s meaning, but I can’t understand what Yün-men means.” The utterances exchanged between these two great and worthy old teachers are a pair of peerless swords slanting upward into the sky. They are the sharp fangs of a ferocious tiger, the trunk of the elephant king, the milk of the lion, a poison drum, the tail of the Chen-bird, a world-ending conflagration. If you falter before them, have the slightest doubt about them, you will find that you are standing alone on a vast moor littered with white skulls. Utterances like these are the fangs and claws of the Dharma cave, divine amulets that rob you of your life. Truly, they stand as timeless examples for all who dwell in the groves of Zen.

I have heard Yung-chiao praised as an outstanding teacher of Sōtō Zen. A direct heir of Master Wu-ming Hui-ching of Shou-ch’ang-ssu Temple, he is said to have achieved great success in reviving the essentials of master Tung-shan’s teaching, and in breathing new life into the true spirit of the Sixth Patriarch’s Zen. He has been called one of the dragons of his age, the mere mention of whose name makes people sit up straight in solemn reverence.

If all this is correct, how are we to account for the wild and woefully inadequate utterances we have just read? If the Ch’an-yü nei-chi is really from Yung-chiao’s own hand, his Zen attainment was of a highly dubious nature. Maybe he wasn’t to blame. Perhaps someone else, some irresponsible priests, inserted their own notions surreptitiously into Yung-chiao’s work, hoping to gain credit for them by passing them off as those of an eminent priest.

In any case, anyone who would try to palm off discriminatory delusions of this ilk as the final reaches of the Zen Way could never have encountered either old Ch’ien-feng or the great master Yün-men, not even in his dreams. He doesn’t deserve to be called a teacher of men. He should never imagine that he “has no need for the slightest bit of further effort.” However many thousands, ten of thousands, even millions of bits of further effort he chose to expend, it would all be in vain.

In the past, for uttering just two false words—“don’t fall”—a man plunged into the cave-black darkness of a wild fox existence for five hundred lives.³ Make no mistake about it: once a teacher allows even a single erroneous comment to pass from his lips and blinds students engaged in exploring the Zen depths, his fate is sealed. He has committed a sin of a blacker dye than causing blood to flow from the bodies of all the buddhas in the ten directions.

When I make these statements, don’t think I’m just indulging in idle criticism, or that I’m motivated by self-interest. The only reason I do it is because I hate to see these false, deluded views spread, gain currency, and obstruct later generations of students in their progress toward enlightenment. They are a foul influence that pollutes the true and original essence of the ancients, withers the Zen groves and parches the life from the Zen gardens. What could go through the minds of such men?

It is said that the Zen gardens in China went to seed during the Ming dynasty, so that the true customs and style of the school were choked off completely. I can believe it. Here in our own country the Zen school is on its last legs as well. Truly, it is a horrifying situation.

I want you patricians penetrating Zen’s hidden depths to know that these words of instruction Ch’ien-feng addresses to his monks are very difficult—difficult in the extreme. You should never think otherwise. Don’t be lapping at fox slobber like this mess that Yung-chiao spewed before you just now. Just concentrate yourselves steadily and singlemindedly on gnawing your way into Ch’ien-feng’s words. Suddenly, unexpectedly, your teeth will sink in. Your body will pour with cold sweat. At that instant it will all become clear. You will see the infinite compassion contained in Ch’ien-feng’s instructions. You will grasp the timeless sublimity of Yün-men’s response. You will fully comprehend the essential truth that Hsi-keng captures in his verse. You will know Yung-chiao’s explanations for the tissue of absurdities they are and find that you are in total agreement with the verdict I have pronounced on them. What a thrilling moment it will be!

One of the virtuous teachers of the past said:

Today even a seasoned monk who has experienced the initial stages of realization and has traveled around to study under different teachers will, unless he runs up against the devious, villainous methods of a genuine master, remain firmly entrenched within his own arbitrary views. He may apply himself single-mindedly to pursuing the Way, may keep at it until everything, even his aspiration and all thought for his own well-being, is forgotten, and then continue on reverently, sifting and refining as he goes. But he only succeeds in clothing himself in cherished ideas of his own making, filthy, clinging garments that he will find impossible to strip away. Once the time and conditions are right for him to start teaching others, when he engages them in direct eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, he discovers that he is unable to respond to their thrusts with the easy, spontaneous freedom of a true teacher. This is because he has until now gone along savoring the fruits of his attainment, and his teachers and others have always treated him with kindness and respect. When he encounters students face to face and tries to put his attainment to work, the words just do not come.⁴

This remonstrance seems to have been directed expressly at the kind of false teacher I have been talking about.

From the Zen people of today, who are content to sit quietly submerged at the bottom of their “ponds of tranquil water,” you often hear this: “Don’t introspect koans. Koans are quagmires. They will suck your self-nature under. Have nothing to do with written words either. Those are a complicated tangle of vines that will grab hold of your vital spirit and choke the life from it.”

Don’t believe that for a minute! What kind of “self-nature” is it that can be “sucked under”? Is it like one of those yams or chestnuts you bury under the cooking coals? Any “vital spirit” that can be “grabbed and choked off is equally dubious. Is it like when a rabbit or fox gets caught in a snare? Where in the world do they find these things? The back shelves of some old country store? Wherever, it must be a very strange place.

No doubt about it, these are the miserable wretches Zen priest Ch’ang-sha said “confound the illusory working of their own minds for ultimate truth.” They’re like that great king master Ying-an T’an-hua talked about, who lives alone inside an old shrine deep in the mountains, never putting any of his wisdom to use.

But the day will surely come when they will be confronted by a fearless monk who is ready to give his life for the Dharma. He will push a tough old koan under one of their noses. Face to face, he will demand, “What does this mean?”

At that instant, do you think the teacher will be able to croak out that line about koans being “quagmires”? Will he be able to say, “Oh, they’re a tangle of vines”? No. He will be at an utter loss, unable to spit out any decent response at all. He may try to reply with anger, but it won’t have any conviction behind it. Or he may break out and cry, but he won’t be able to cry himself out of his difficulties either.

At present, this country is infested with a race of smooth-tongued, worldly-wise Zen teachers who feed their students a ration of utter nonsense. “Why do you suppose buddha-patriarchs through the ages were so mortally afraid of words and letters?” they ask you. “It is,” they answer you,

because words and letters are a coast of jagged cliffs constantly lashed by a vast ocean of poison ready to swallow up your wisdom, drown the very life from it. Giving students stories and episodes from the Zen past and having them try to penetrate their meaning is a practice that did not start until after the school had branched out into the Five Houses and Seven Schools. It was an expedient teaching method, employed provisionally. It doesn’t represent the ultimate reaches of the buddha-patriarchs.

An incorrigible pack of skin-headed mules has ridden teachings like these to a position of dominance in the world of Zen. Unable to distinguish master from servant, jades from common stones, they gather together and sit. Rows of sleepy inanimate lumps. They hug themselves, self-satisfied, imagining they are paragons of the Zen tradition, belittling the buddha-patriarchs of the past and treating their fellow priests with contempt. While true celestial phoenixes linger starving in the shadows, a hateful flock of owls and ravens, comfortable and full-bellied, rule the roost.

But without the eye of kenshō, they won’t be able to use a single drop of the knowledge they gain. When they die, they will fall straight into hell. Hence I say to them: “If upon becoming a Buddhist monk you do not penetrate the Buddha’s truth, turn in your black robe. Give back all the donations you’ve received! Be a layman again!

Don’t you realize that every syllable contained in the Buddhist canon—all five thousand and forty-eight scrolls of it—is a rocky cliff that juts out into deadly, poison-filled seas? Don’t you know that each of the twenty-eight buddhas and six Buddhist saints is a body of virulent poison that rises in monstrous waves, blackening the skies, swallowing the radiance of the sun and moon, extinguishing the light of the stars and planets?⁵

It is there, as clear and stark as it could be. It stares you right in the face. But none of you is awake to see it. You are like an owl venturing into the light of day, gazing around with eyes wide open, but unable to see a mountain towering in front of it. It isn’t because the mountain bears a grudge against owls and wants to avoid them. The responsibility lies with the owl alone.

You might cover your ears with your hands, or cover your eyes with a blindfold, or try some other means to avoid the poisonous fumes. But you can’t escape the clouds that sail in the sky, the streams that tumble down the hillsides. You can’t escape the falling autumn leaves and scattering spring flowers.

You could even enlist the services of a swift-winged Yaksha demon. By plying him with the best of food and drink and crossing his paw with gold, you might persuade him to take you on his back for a few quick circumnavigations of the globe. But you would still be unable to find so much as a thimbleful of earth where you could hide.

I eagerly await the appearance of just one dimwit of a monk (or even half such a monk), richly endowed with a natural stock of spiritual power and kindled within by a raging religious fire, who will fling himself unhesitatingly into the midst of this poison and instantly perish into the Great Death. Rising from that Death, he will arm himself with a calabash of gigantic size and roam the great earth seeking out true and genuine monks.⁶ Wherever he encounters one, he will spit in his fist, flex his muscles, fill his calabash with deadly poison, and fling a dipperful over the monk. Drenched from head to foot, that monk too will be forced to surrender his life. What a splendid sight to behold!

The teaching Zen priests today are busily imparting to their students sounds something like this:

Don’t misdirect your effort by chasing around looking for something outside yourself. All you have to do is to concentrate on being thoughtless and doing nothing whatever. No practice. No realization. Doing nothing, the state of no-mind, is the direct path to sudden realization. No practice, no realization, is the true principle—things as they really are. The enlightened buddhas of the ten directions have called this supreme, unparalleled, right awakening.

People hear this teaching and try to follow it. Choking off their aspirations, sweeping their minds clean of delusive thoughts, they dedicate themselves to doing nothing but keeping their minds complete blanks, blissfully unaware that they are, in the process, doing and thinking a great deal.

When a person who has not experienced kenshō reads the Buddhist scriptures, questions his teachers and fellow monks about Buddhism, or engages in religious disciplines, it is all unenlightened activity, and it demonstrates abundantly that he is still trapped within samsara. He tries constantly to remain detached in thought and deed, but all the while his thoughts and deeds remain attached. He endeavors to be doing nothing all day long, and all day long he is busily doing.

But let this same person experience kenshō, and everything changes. Now, though he is constantly thinking and acting, it is all totally free and unattached. Although he is engaged in activity around the clock, that activity is, as such, nonactivity. This great change is the result of kenshō. It is like snakes and cows drinking water from the same cistern: it becomes deadly venom in one and milk in the other.

Bodhidharma spoke of this in his Essay on the Dharma Pulse:

If someone without kenshō makes a constant effort to keep his thoughts free and unattached, not only is he a great fool, he also commits a serious transgression against the Dharma. He winds up in the passive indifference of empty emptiness, no more capable of distinguishing good from bad than a drunken man. If you want to put the Dharma of nonactivity into practice, you must put an end to all your thought-attachments by breaking through into kenshō. Unless you have kenshō, you can never expect to attain a state of nondoing.⁷

Zen master Ch’ang-tsung Chao-chüeh of Tung-lin, a Dharma heir of master Huang-lung Hui-nan, used to tell his students:⁸ “Senior priests Hui-t’ang and Hsin-ching, fellow students of mine under master Huang-lung, were only able to penetrate our late teacher’s Zen. They were unable to attain his Way.” Master Ta-hui said:

Chao-chüeh said that because, for him, attaining the Way meant remaining as he was and doing nothing all the time—keeping thoughts, views, and the like from arising in his mind, instead of seeking beyond that for wondrous enlightenment. He constructed a teaching out of the Dharma gate of kenshō, the true sudden enlightenment of buddha-patriarchs such as Te-shan, Lin-chi, Tung-shan, Ts’ao-shan, and Yün-men. He took what the Shurangama Sutra says about mountains and rivers and the great earth all being manifestations that appear within the inconceivable clarity of the true mind, and rendered it into words devoid of substance—they were mere constructions erected in his head. In fabricating his Zen from profound utterances and wondrous teachings of Zen masters of the past, he blackened the good name of these Dharma ancestors—and he robbed later generations of students of their eyes and ears. Not a drop of real blood flowed beneath his skin. His eyes possessed not a shred of strength. He and men like him infallibly get things turned upside down. Then they forge on, totally unaware, into ever-deeper ignorance. What a pitiful spectacle they are!⁹

In The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment we read that “people in the latter day of the Dharma, including even those who aspire to attain the Buddha Way, should not be made to seek enlightenment, for if they do they will only wind up amassing stores of knowledge and deepening their self-made delusions.”

In the same sutra: “In the latter day, even if sentient beings seek help from a good teacher, they still end up learning false views. Because of this, they are never able to attain right enlightenment. This is a proven recipe for heresy. It is the fault of the false teachers, not the fault of the sentient beings who go to them for help.”

Surely these statements from a sutra, preached from the mouth of the Buddha, are not just empty words?

It was this very question that prompted priest Hsin-ching to declare in an informal discourse (shōsan) to his monks:

These days priests everywhere latch on to phrases such as “everyday mind is the Way,” and set them up as some sort of ultimate principle. You hear that “Heaven is heaven,” “Earth is earth,” “Mountains are mountains,” “Streams are streams,” “Monks are monks,” “Lay people are lay people.” They tell you that long months last thirty days and short ones last twenty-nine. The fact of the matter is, not a single one of them is able to stand on his own two legs. They flit about like disembodied spirits, clinging to trees, leaning on plants and grasses. Unawakened, blinded by ignorance, they plod their blinkered one-track ways.

Confront one of them and suddenly ask, “Why does this hand of mine resemble a buddha’s hand?” and he says, “But that’s your hand.”

Ask him, “How is it my foot is just like a donkey’s?” “That’s your foot,” he retorts.

“Each person has his own circumstances of birth. What are yours, senior priest?” “I am so and so,” he responds. “I’m from such and such province.”¹⁰

Now what kind of answers are those? They proceed from a mistaken understanding that should never be allowed. But these people still insist that all you have to do is make yourself one-track like them and remain that way through thick and thin. This, they assure you, is attainment of the final state of complete tranquillity. Everything is settled. Everything is understood. Nothing doubting. Nothing seeking. There is no questioning at all. They refuse to venture a single step beyond this, terrified that they might stumble and fall into a hole or ditch. They tread the long pilgrimage of human life as if blind from birth, grasping their staff with a clutch of death, refusing to venture forward an inch unless they have it along to prop them up.

Priest Hui-t’ang told his students: “Go to Mount Lu [where Chao-chüeh’s temple was located] and plant yourselves firmly within the realm of nondoing.”

But Chao-chüeh’s descendants have all disappeared. It is truly regrettable, but now his line is deader than last night’s ashes.

Zen master Nan-t’ang Yüan-ching said, “You must see your own nature (kenshō) as clearly and unmistakably as you see the palm of your hand, and all things are a familiar ground of peace and stability.”

I want to impress all patricians who probe the secret depths—great men all—with the need to put your innate power to work for you as vigorously and relentlessly as you can. The moment your kenshō is perfectly clear, throw it aside and dedicate yourself to boring through the difficult-to-pass (nantō) koans. Once you are beyond those barriers you will understand exactly what the Buddha meant when he said that a buddha can see the buddha-nature with his own eyes as distinctly as you see a fruit lying in the palm of your hand.

Once you penetrate to see the ultimate meaning of the patriarchal teachers, you will be armed for the first time with the fangs and claws of the Dharma cave. You will sport the divine, life-usurping talisman. You will enter into the realm of the buddhas, stroll leisurely through the realms where evil demons dwell, pulling out nails, wrenching free wedges, dispersing great clouds of compassion as you go, practicing the great Dharma giving, and rendering immense benefit to the monks who come to you from the four quarters.

But you will still be the same old monk you always were. You won’t be doing anything out of the ordinary. Your eyes will stare out from your face from the same location as before. Your nose will be where it always was. Yet now you will be the genuine article, an authentic descendant of the buddhas and patriarchs, to whom you will have fully repaid that incalculable debt of gratitude which you owe them.

You will be at liberty to spend your days free from the clutches of circumstance. You will drink tea when it is given; eat rice when it is served. Doing and nondoing will be firmly in your grasp. Not even the buddha-patriarchs will be able to touch you. You’ll be a true monk, worth alms of millions in gold.

If, on the other hand, you follow the trend of the times, when you enter the dark cave of unknowing in the eighth consciousness,¹¹ you will start bragging about what you have achieved. You will go around telling everyone how enlightened you are. You will accept, under false pretenses, the veneration and charity of others, and wind up being one of those arrogant creatures who declares he has attained realization when he has not.

Is that the course you choose to follow? If so, a horrifying fate awaits you. Every grain of rice that you have received as a donation will turn into a red-hot particle of iron or a burning grain of sand. Each drop of water you have received will become a speck of molten bronze or boiling excrement. Each thread of the cloth you have accepted will fuse to your body like a flaming wire net or a suit of white-hot chain.

How sad! You have your heads shaved, you put on a black robe, because you hope to free yourselves from the press of birth and death. Then you make the mistake of falling under the spell of a false teacher and you spend the rest of your lives as irresponsible, no-account priests. Nor will it end there. When you finally breathe your last and depart this life, because you will not have learned from the terrible torments you have undergone in your previous existences, you will go right back to your old home in the three evil paths of transmigration. With your Buddhist surplice still hanging around your shoulders, you will fall into the depths of hell and suffer endless torments. You will remain trapped in the cycle of rebirth until your karmic accounts have been settled in full. You can see, then, that nothing is more terrifying than to fall victim to the delusions a false teacher serves up to you.

Once long ago a group of seven wise sisters was walking through a graveyard on the outskirts of Rajagriha in India. One of the sisters pointed to a corpse and said to the others, “There is a man’s body. Where has the man gone?”

“What!!” another said in disbelief. “What did you say!” With this, the sisters all realized the truth and were instantly enlightened.

Indra, Lord of the Devas, was moved to shower a rain of flowers down upon them. “Tell me,” he said to them, “if there is anything that any of you holy ladies desire; I will see that you have it as long as I am here.”¹²

Today’s irresponsible Zennists should take a hard look at this story. If their refusal to have anything to do with words is valid, the realization these ladies attained long ago must have been false. But why would the Lord of Devas have spoken to them as he did if their realization was not genuine?

In response to Indra’s offer, one of the sisters said, “None of us lack the four basic necessities of life. We possess the seven rare treasures as well.¹³ But there are three things we desire from you. Please give us a tree without roots; some land where there is neither light nor shade; and a mountain valley where a shout does not echo.”

“Ask anything else, ladies,” replied Indra, “I will gladly provide it. But to be truthful, I just don’t have those things to give you.”

“If you don’t have them,” said the woman, “how can you possibly expect to help others liberate themselves?” Indra finally took the young women to visit the Buddha.

Do you see what that wise young woman said? “If you don’t have them, how do you expect to save others?” Compare that with the fellows today who shrink back cringing, quaking with fear, when someone confronts them with a dash or two of poison. How infinitely superior she is—the difference between a crown and an old shoe is not nearly so great.

You monks set out on your religious quest with fire in your blood. You go through great difficulties, suffer untold hardships, as you bore into the secret depths of Zen. Isn’t it all because you intend at some later date to do great work by bringing the benefits of salvation to your fellow beings? What about you? Don’t you think you’d be lacking if you couldn’t come up with these three things?

When the Buddha learned why Indra had come, he said, “As far as that’s concerned, Indra, none of the arhats in my assembly has the slightest clue either. It takes a great bodhisattva to grasp it.”

Why did the Buddha utter these words, instead of quaking and quivering with fear? Or do you suppose he was unaware of the deadly poison contained in the woman’s utterance?

Try to fathom the Buddha’s intent here. Don’t you think he was hoping to make Indra realize the true meaning of the young woman’s words? To enable him to leap directly beyond the gradual steps of four attainments and three ranks and arrive at the stage of the great bodhisattvas?

The Buddha said, “I have the treasure of the true Dharma eye, the exquisite mind of nirvana, the Dharma gate of the true formless form. This I entrust to you, Kashyapa.”

This is another statement most people get totally wrong. Years ago, when I was studying with old Shōju, he would give me a koan to work on, and then he would push me and hound me ruthlessly. When I produced a response, he would reward it with a rain of blows from his staff. Thanks to that, I was able to break through and come up with an answer. But I still really wasn’t there. I was like a man out at sea gazing at a tree on a distant cliff.

I left home to become a Buddhist monk when I was fourteen. I became discouraged before even a year was out. My head had been shaved smooth, I wore a black robe, but I hadn’t seen any sign of the Dharma’s marvelous working. I happened to hear that The Lotus Sutra was the king of all the scriptures the Buddha had preached. It was supposed to contain the essential meaning of all the buddhas. I got hold of a copy and read it through. But when I had finished, I closed it with a heavy sigh. “This,” I told myself, “is nothing but a collection of simple tales about cause and effect. True, mention is made of there being ‘only one absolute vehicle,’ and of ‘the changeless, unconditioned tranquillity of all dharmas,’ but on the whole it is what Lin-chi dismissed as ‘mere verbal prescriptions for relieving the world’s ills.’¹⁴ I’m not going to find what I’m looking for here.”

I was deeply disillusioned. I didn’t get over it for quite some time. Meanwhile, I lived as the priest of a small temple. I reached forty, the age when one is not supposed to be bothered any longer by doubts. One night, I decided to take another look at The Lotus Sutra. I got out my only lamp, turned up the wick, and began to read it once again. I read as far as the third chapter, the one on parables. Then, just like that, all the lingering doubts and uncertainties vanished from my mind. They suddenly ceased to exist. The reason for the Lotus’s reputation as the “king of sutras” was now revealed to me with blinding clarity. Teardrops began cascading down my face like two strings of beads—they came like beans pouring from a ruptured sack. A loud involuntary cry burst from the depths of my being and I began sobbing uncontrollably. And as I did, I knew without any doubt that what I had realized in all those satoris I had experienced, what I had grasped in my understanding of those koans I had passed—had all been totally mistaken. I was finally able to penetrate the source of the free, enlightened activity that informed Shōju’s daily life. I also knew beyond doubt that the tongue in the World-honored One’s mouth moved with complete and unrestricted freedom. I realized I richly deserved a good thirty hard blows of the staff, just like Lin-chi!

Long ago, Ananda asked Kashyapa, “Apart from the transmission robe of gold brocade, what Dharma did the World-honored One entrust to you?”

“Ananda,” replied Kashyapa, “go and take down the banner at the gate.”

To penetrate to an understanding of these words uttered by Kashyapa is extremely difficult. They are like angry bolts of lightning striking against a granite cliff, tearing it apart. They send sages of the three ranks scattering in panic, they strike terror into the hearts of those of the four attainments. Yet the sightless, shave-pated bonzes inhabiting today’s temples expatiate knowingly on them: “The banner at the gate, raised to announce a preaching, stands for what is intermediate and prior to the ultimate principle. Taking down the banner means the Great Matter is achieved.” This is an excellent example of the kind of commonplace understanding produced from deluded thinking. It’s like when blind men attempt to distinguish colors.

First Zen patriarch Bodhidharma’s injunction to “cease all external involvements without; avoid seeking internal peace within,” is likewise frequently explained and interpreted on a level of ordinary discriminatory reasoning.

At the end of his life, Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen after Bodhidharma, was asked by one of his disciples: “You will leave us soon. How long will it be before you come back to us?”

He replied, “Leaves fall and return to the roots. When they appear again, they are silent.”

Terrifying! A bottomless pit, ten thousand leagues wide, filled with a sea of intense black flame. Here even the gods and demons cannot hope to complete their lives. The whole world is truly the “lotus-blue eye of the Zen monk.” We must be very careful not to throw sand in it.

Yet the know-it-all dunces in positions of power today declare smugly: “Roots refers to the Sixth Patriarch’s native place in Hsin-chou. The silence of the leaves points to the original field of tranquility, where no coming or going, no inside or outside, obtains.”

Pffuph! Blind comments. Lifeless, perverted understanding. I get sick to my stomach every time I see or hear such rubbish. It makes you want to vomit.

They asked the Sixth Patriarch, “Who have you entrusted with your Dharma?” He answered, “Take a net and snare it at the top of Ta-yü Peak.”

Chen-bird feathers! Wolf liver! Cat heads! Fox drool!¹⁵ All brothed up in a large pot and thrown right under your nose. How will you get your teeth into that? Let no one ever say the Sixth Patriarch doesn’t have any poison.

The great teacher Nan-yüeh said, “Suppose an ox is pulling a cart, and the cart doesn’t move. Should you hit the cart? Or should you hit the ox?”¹⁶

Nan-yüeh’s words are also filled with poison of the most virulent kind. Yet these modern exegetes insist on applying their deluded reasoning to them: “The cart stands for the body or substance. The ox stands for something intermediate, neither this nor that.” They certainly make it sound plausible.

When they hear Master Ma-tsu’s “Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha,” they tell you that it is “the body of one’s proper subtle radiance that is prior to the onset of all the illnesses of mind.” And they expect you to swallow it! You could take a conventional explanation like this, knead it up with some good rice, and stick it out under the trees for a thousand days without getting even a crow to fly by for a second look.