4

THE DIFFICULTY OF REPAYING THE DEBT TO THE BUDDHAS AND THE PATRIARCHS

Buddha means “one who is awakened.”¹ Once you have awakened, your own mind itself is buddha. By seeking outside yourself for a buddha invested with form, you set yourself forward as a foolish, misguided man. It is like a person who wants to catch a fish. He must start by looking in the water, because fish live in water and are not found apart from it. If a person wants to find buddha, he must look into his own mind, because it is there, and nowhere else, that buddha exists.

Question: “In that case, what can I do to become awakened to my own mind?”

What is that which asks such a question? Is it your mind? Is it your original nature? Is it some kind of spirit or demon? Is it inside you? Outside you? Is it somewhere intermediate? Is it blue, yellow, red, or white?

This is something you must investigate and clarify for yourself. You must investigate it whether you are standing or sitting, speaking or silent, when you are eating your rice or drinking your tea. You must keep at it with total, single-minded devotion. And never, whatever you do, look in sutras or in commentaries for an answer, or seek it in the words you hear a teacher speak.

When all the effort you can muster has been exhausted and you have reached a total impasse, and you are like the cat at the rathole, like the mother hen warming her egg, it will suddenly come and you will break free. The phoenix will get through the golden net. The crane will fly clear of the cage.

But even if no breakthrough occurs until your dying day and you spend twenty or thirty years in vain without ever seeing into your true nature, I want your solemn pledge that you will never turn for spiritual support to those tales that you hear the down-and-out old men and washed-out old women peddling everywhere today. If you do, they will stick to your hide, they will cling to your bones, you will never be free of them. And as for your chances with the patriarchs’ difficult-to-pass koans, the less said about them the better, because they will be totally beyond your grasp.

Hence a priest of former times, Kao-feng Yüan-miao, said, “A person who commits himself to the practice of Zen must be equipped with three essentials. A great root of faith. A great ball of doubt. A great tenacity of purpose. Lacking any one of them, he is like a tripod with only two legs.”²

By “great root of faith” is meant the belief that each and every person has an essential self-nature he can see into, and the belief in a principle by which this self-nature can be fully penetrated. Even though you attain this belief, you cannot break through and penetrate to total awakening unless feelings of fundamental doubt arise as you work on the difficult-to-pass [nantō] koans. And even if these doubts build up, and crystallize, and you yourself become a “great doubting mass,” you will be unable to break that doubting mass apart unless you constantly bore into those koans with a great, burning tenacity of purpose.

Thus it is said that it takes three long kalpas for lazy and inattentive sentient beings to attain nirvana, while for the fearless and stouthearted, buddhahood comes in a single instant of thought. What you must do is to concentrate single-mindedly on bringing all your native potential into play. The practice of Zen is like making a fire by friction. The essential thing as you rub wood against stone is to apply continuous, all-out effort. If you stop when you see the first sign ofsmoke, you will never get even a flicker of fire, even though you keep rubbing away for two or three kalpas.

Only a few hundred yards from here is a beach. Suppose someone is bothered because he has never tasted sea water and decides to sample some. He sets out in the direction of the beach, but before he has gone a hundred paces he stops and comes back. He starts out again, but this time he returns after he has taken only ten steps. He will never get to know the taste of sea water that way, will he? But if he keeps going straight ahead without turning back, even if he lives far inland in a landlocked province such as Shinano, Kai, Hida, or Mino, he will eventually reach the sea. By dipping his finger in the water and tasting it, he will know instantly the taste of sea water the world over, because it is of course the same everywhere, in India, China, the southern sea or the northern sea.

Those Dharma patricians who explore the secret depths are like this too. They go straight forward, boring into their own minds with unbroken effort, never letting up or retreating. Then the breakthrough suddenly comes, and with that they penetrate their own nature, the nature of others, the nature of sentient beings, the nature of the evil passions and of enlightenment, the nature of the buddhanature, the god nature, the bodhisattva nature, the sentient-being nature, the nonsentient-being nature, the craving-ghost nature, the contentious-spirit nature, the beast nature—they are all of them seen in a single instant of thought. The great matter of their religious quest is completely and utterly resolved. There is nothing left. They are free of birth and death. What a thrilling moment it is!

It is with great respect and deep reverence that I urge all you superior seekers who investigate the secret depths to be as earnest in penetrating and clarifying the self as you would be putting out a fire on top of your head; to be as assiduous in boring through your doubt as you would be seeking a lost article of incalculable worth; to be as hostile toward the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs as you would be toward a person who had just slain both your parents. Anyone belonging to the school of Zen who does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koans must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest type, a person who would throw away the greatest asset he has. Hence Kao-feng also said, “At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment. . . . A full measure of doubt will become a full measure of enlightenment.”

Don’t think the commitments and pressing duties of secular life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. Don’t think your mind is so crowded with confused thoughts you would be incapable of devoting yourself single-mindedly to Zen practice. Suppose a man was in a busy marketplace, pushing his way down a narrow street in a dense crowd, and some gold coins happened to drop out of his pocket into the dirt. Do you imagine he would just leave them there, forget about them, and continue on his way because of where he was? Do you think someone would leave the gold pieces behind because he was in a congested place or because the coins were lying in the dirt? Of course not. He would be down there pushing and shoving as much as he had to, frantically turning everything upside down, with tears in his eyes. His mind wouldn’t rest until he had recovered them. Yet what are a few pieces of gold set against the priceless jewel found in the headdresses of kings, that way of inconceivable being that exists within your own mind?³ Could a jewel of such worth be attained easily, without effort?

There once was a denizen of the Eastern Sea, Redfin Carp by name, who was endowed with an indomitable spirit and an upright character. Redfin Carp was a figure of immense stature among his fellow fish. He was constantly bemoaning the fate of his comrades. “How many untold millions of my brethren proudly dwell in the vast ocean deeps. They entrust themselves to its boundless silver waves, glide up and down among the swells, and sport in the seaweed and kelp. Yet countless of them are taken by baited hooks and caught in nets. They wind up on chopping blocks, where they are sliced and cooked to fill the bellies of those in the human world. Their bones are cast away and left to mingle in the dust and mire. Their heads are thrown to the stray dogs. Some are dried or salted for inland markets. Exposed in stalls and shopfronts for all to see. Not a single one finishes out his natural span. How sad is the life of a fish!”

Amid these sad musings there was a great welling of spirit in Redfin Carp’s breast. He pledged a solemn vow. “I shall swim beyond the Dragon Gates.⁴ I shall brave the perilous bolts of fire and lightning. I shall transcend the estate of ordinary fish and achieve a place among the order of sacred dragons. I shall rid myself forever of the terrible suffering to which my race is heir, expunge every trace of our shame and humiliation.”

Waiting until the third day of the third month, when the peach blossoms are in flower and the river is full, he made his way to the entrance of the Yü Barrier. Then, with a flick of his tail, Redfin Carp swam forth.

You men have never laid eyes on the awesome torrent of water that rolls through the Dragon Gates. It falls all the way from the summits of the far-off Kunlun Range with tremendous force. There are wild, thousand-foot waves that rush down through gorges towering to dizzying heights on either side, carrying away whole hillsides as they go. Angry bolts of thunder beat down with a deafening roar. Moaning whirlwinds whip up poisonous mists and funnels of noisome vapor spitting flashing forks of lightning. The mountain spirits are stunned into senselessness; the river spirits turn limp with fright. Just a drop of this water will shatter the carapace of the giant tortoise, it will break the bones of the giant whale.

It was into this maelstrom that Redfin Carp, his splendid goldenred scales girded to the full, his steely teeth thrumming like drums, made a direct all-out assault. Ah! Golden Carp! Golden Carp! You might have led an ordinary life out in the boundless ocean. It teems with lesser fish. You would not have gone hungry. Then why? What made you embark on this wild and bitter struggle? What was waiting for you up beyond the Barrier?

Suddenly, after being seared by cliff-shattering bolts of lightning, after being battered by heaven-scorching blasts of thunderfire, his scaly armor burnt from head to tail, his fins singed through, Redfin Carp perished into the Great Death and rose again as a divine dragon—a supreme lord of the waters. Now, with the thunder god at his head and the fire god at his rear, flanked right and left by the gods of rain and wind, he moves abroad with the clouds in one hand and the mists in the other, bringing new life to the tender young shoots withering in long-parched desert lands, keeping the true Dharma safe amid the defilements of the degenerate world.

Had he been content to pass his life like a lame turtle or blind tortoise, feeding on winkles and tiny shrimps, not even all the effort Vasuki, Manasvi, and the other Dragon Kings might muster on his behalf could have done him any good. He could never have achieved the great success that he did.

What do I mean by “blind tortoise”? One of the current crop of sightless, irresponsible bungler-priests who regard the koan as nonessential, and the Zen interview (sanzen) as the master’s expedient means. While even such men are not totally devoid of understanding, they are clearly standing outside the gates, whence they peer fecklessly in, mouthing words like, “Self-nature is naturally pure, the mind-source is deep as an ocean. There is no samsaric existence to cast aside, there is no nirvana to be sought. It is a sheer and profound stillness, a transparent mass of boundless emptiness. It is here that is found the great treasure inherent in all people. How could anything be lacking?”

Ah, how plausible it sounds! All too plausible. Unfortunately, the words they speak do not possess even a shred of strength in practical application. These people are like snails. The moment anything approaches, they draw in their horns and come to a standstill. They are like lame turtles; they pull in their legs, heads, and tails at the slightest contact and hide inside their shells. How can any spiritual energy emerge from such an attitude? If they chance to encounter an authentic monk and are subjected to a sharp verbal attack, they react like Master Yang’s pet stork who, when the time came to perform, couldn’t even move his neck.⁵ There’s no difference between them and the fish who lie helpless on the chopping block, dying ten thousand deaths in their one life, their fate—whether they are to be sliced and served up raw, or carved into fillets and roasted over hot coals—entirely in the hands of others. And throughout their ordeal they haven’t even the strength to cry out. Can people of this kind be true descendants of the great Bodhidharma? They assure you that there is “nothing lacking.” But are they happy? Are their minds free of care?

Genuine monks who negotiated the Way in the past flung themselves and everything they owned into their masters’ white-hot forges without a thought for their own lives or well-being. Once their minds were turned to the Way, they too, like Redfin Carp, gathered all their strength and courage and strove until they broke beyond the Dragon Gates. Thereafter, in whatever situation, under whatever circumstance, they functioned with total self-dependence and perfect, unattached freedom. What intense joy and gratification they must have enjoyed. It is these people you must emulate, not the stork. Not those turtles and snails.

And what are “sacred dragons”? Those vital patriarchs of the past, absolutely genuine and true, who committed themselves solely and şingle-mindedly to the authentic practice of Zen. Ah, you are human beings, aren’t you? If you let yourselves be outdone by a fish, you might just as well be dead already!

There is yet another type of obstructive demon you often run up against, the ones who teach their followers:

If you want to attain mastery in the Buddha Way you must, to begin with, empty your mind of birth and death. Both samsara and nirvana exist because the mind gives rise to them. The same for the heavens and hells; not one of them exists unless the mind produces them. Hence there is one and one thing only for you to do: make your minds completely empty.

Falling right into step, students set out to empty their minds, make them utter blanks. The trouble is, though they try everything they know, emptying this way, emptying that way, working away at it for months, even years, they find it is like trying to sweep mist away by flailing at it with a pole, or trying to stem the flow of a river by blocking it with outstretched arms. The only result is greater confusion.

Suppose, for example, that a wealthy man mistakenly hires a master thief of the greatest skill and cunning to guard his house. After watching his granaries, treasures, and the rest of his fortune dwindle by the day, he orders the thief to seize several suspicious servants and to interrogate them around the clock until they confess. Family members are worried sick. Relations between husband and wife are severely strained. Yet their fortune goes on mysteriously shrinking. And it all happens because of the mistake the man had made in the beginning, in employing and placing his complete trust in a thief.

The lesson to be learned from this is that the very attempts to banish birth and death from your mind are, in themselves, a sure sign that birth and death is in full progress.

In the Shurangama Sutra the Buddha says, “From the beginningless been lost to you. Because of that you have been transmigrating through the cycle of birth and death.” This is explained in a commentary on the sutra:

The word thief is used to describe the manner in which the merits of the Dharma resource have been taken from you. Being deluded and thus unaware of this situation, you mistakenly regard this thief as something true and changeless and entrust your most valuable possessions to him in the belief he is your legitimate heir. Instead you bring about your own downfall, and reduce yourself to the wretchedness and poverty of being forever separated from the Dharma treasure.⁶

If you really want to empty your mind of birth and death, what you should do is tackle one of the totally impregnable, hard-to-pass koans. When you merge suddenly with the basic root of life and everything ceases to exist, you will know for the first time the profound meaning contained in the great master Yung-chia’s words, “Do not brush illusions away, do not seek the truth of enlightenment.”⁷

Zen master Ta-hui said, “At the present time, the Evil One’s influence is strong and the Dharma is weak. The great majority of people regard ‘reverting to tranquility and living within it’ as the ultimate attainment.”⁸ He also said:

A race of sham Zennists has appeared in recent years who consider sitting with dropped eyelids and closed mouths and letting illusory thoughts spin through their minds to be the attainment of a marvelous state that surpasses human understanding. They regard it as the realm of primal buddhahood “existing prior to the timeless beginning.” And if they do open their mouths and utter so much as a syllable, they immediately tell you that they have fallen out of that marvelous realm. They believe this to be the most fundamental state it is possible to attain. Satori is a mere side issue—“a twig or branch.” Such people are completely mistaken from the time they take their first step along the Way.⁹

These people who ally themselves with the devil are present in great numbers today as well. To them I say, “Never mind for now about what you consider ‘nonessential side issues.’ Tell me about yourown fundamental matter, the one you hide away treasuring so zealously. What is it like? Is it a piece of solid emptiness fixed firmly in the ground somewhere—like a post for tethering mules and horses? Or maybe it’s a deep hole filled with a sheer black silence? Whatever it is, it makes my flesh creep.”

It is also a good example of what is called falling into fixed views. It deceives a great many of the foolish and ignorant of the world. It’s an ancient dwelling place of evil spirits, an old badger’s den, a pitfall that traps people and buries them alive. Although you kept treasuring and defending it till the end of time, it would still be just a fragment of an old coffin. It also goes by the name of “dark cave of the eighth Alaya consciousness.”¹⁰ The ancients suffered through a great many hardships as they wandered in arduous pursuit of the truth. It was all for the sole purpose of getting themselves free of just such stinking old nests as these.

Once a person is able to achieve true single-mindedness in his practice and smash apart the old nest of Alaya consciousness into which he has settled, the Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom immediately appears, the other three great Wisdoms start to function, and the all-embracing Fivefold Eye opens wide.

If, on the other hand, he allows himself to be seduced by these latter-day devils into hunkering down inside an old nest and making himself at home there, turning it into a private treasure chamber and spending all his time dusting and polishing it, sweeping and brushing it clean, what can he hope to achieve? Absolutely nothing. Basically, it is a piece of the eighth consciousness, the same eighth consciousness that enters the womb of a donkey and enters the belly of a horse. So I urgently exhort you to do everything you can, strive with all your strength, to strike down into that dark cave and smash your way open into freedom.

On that day long ago when the World-honored One attained his great awakening and clothed himself in the precious celestial robe to expound the true heart of the extensive Flower Garland Sutra, he preached for three whole weeks to an audience that listened, without comprehending, as though they were deaf and dumb.”¹¹ Thereupon, in order to make salvation accessible to people of mediocre and inferior capacity, he erected a temporary resting place for them to use on the way to ultimate attainment. He called this provisional abode a “phantom dwelling.” After that, Shakyamuni did his best to destroy this abode by preaching against it from within the Buddhist order; Layman Vimalakirti attempted to do the same by inveighing against it from without. They even likened those who attach to it, the adherents of the Two Vehicles [those who are content just to listen to the Buddha’s teaching and those who remain satisfied to enjoy their own private realization] to “suppurating old polecats.” But in the end they were between them unable to eradicate that dwelling place at its source in the Alaya consciousness.

Gradually, the foster children spawned by adherents of the Two Vehicles multiplied. Slowly and imperceptibly they spread throughout India and the western regions. In time, even China was filled with them. There, venerable masters like Tz’u-ming, Hsin-ching, Yüan-wu, and Ta-hui set their jaws, clenched their teeth, and strove valiantly to root them out, but even for them it was like trying to drive off a wily old rat by clapping your hands. He disappears over here, but he reappears over there, always lurking somewhere, furtively disparaging the true, untransmittable style of the patriarchal teachers. How lamentable!

In Japan, during the Jōkyū (1219–1221), Katei (1235–1237), Karyaku (1326–1328), and Kembu (1334–1335) eras, twenty-four wise Zen sages entrusted their lives to the perilous whale-backed eastern seas, cast themselves bodily into the tiger’s den, in order to transmit the difficult-to-believe methods of our authentic tradition. They fervently desired to fix the sun of wisdom permanently in the highest branches of the Divine Mulberry; to hang a precious Dharma lamp that would illuminate forever the dark hamlets of the Dragonfly Provinces.¹² How could any of them have foreseen that their transmission would be slandered and maligned by these quietistic pseudo-Zennists and that in less than three hundred years the Zen they had transmitted would be lying in the dust? Would have no more life in it than last night’s ashes? Nothing could be more distressing than to witness the wasting away of the true Dharma in a degenerate age like this.

On the other hand, if a single person of superior capacity commits himself to the authentic pursuit of the Way and through sustained effort under the guidance of a true teacher fills with the power of sheer single-mindedness, then his normal processes of thought, perception, consciousness, and emotion will cease, he will reach the limits of words and reason. He will resemble an utter fool, as everything, including his erstwhile determination to pursue the Way, disappears and his breath itself hangs almost suspended. At that point, what a pity that a Buddhist teacher, one who is supposed to act as his “great and good friend,” should be unaware that this is the occasion when the tortoise shell is about to crack, the phoenix about to break free of its egg; should not know that these are all favorable signs seen in those poised on the threshold of enlightenment, should be stirred by grandmotherly kindness and immediately give in to tender, effeminate feelings of compassion for the student and begin straight off explaining to him the reason for this and the principle for that, drawing him down into the abode of delusory surmise, pushing him over into the cave of intellectual understanding, and then taking a phony winter melon seal and certifying his enlightenment with the pronouncement, “You are like this. I am like this too. Preserve it carefully.”¹³ Ah! Ah! It’s up to them if they want to preserve it. The trouble is, they are still as far from the patriarchal groves as earth is from heaven. What are to all appearances acts of kindness on the part of a teacher helping a student are, in fact, doings that will bring about his doom. For his part, the student, nodding with satisfaction and without an inkling of the mortal injury he has incurred, prances and frisks about wagging his tail, proud in the knowledge: “Now I have grasped the secret of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West.”

How are such students to know they haven’t made it past any of the patriarchs’ Barriers? That the thorny forests of Zen are much, much deeper than they can even conceive? What a terrible shame for people of marvelous gifts, unexcelled capacity, who have it in them to become great beams and pillars of the house of Zen, to succumb to these corrupting winds and to spend the rest of their lives in a half-waking, half-drunk state, no different from the dull and witless type of people who never get around to doubting their way through anything! Is it any wonder that the groves of Zen are so barren of real men? A person who attachs to half-truths of this kind believing them to be essential and ultimate will probably not even know that he has fallen into the unfortunate category of “withered buds and shriveled seeds.”

Long ago, when Zen master Nan-yüeh sat in front of Ma-tsu’s hermitage and began polishing a tile, he did so because of his desire to make Ma-tsu grasp his true meaning. When teachers of the past left phrases behind them, difficult-to-penetrate koans that would strip students’ minds of their chronic inclination to attach to things, they did it because they wanted to kick over that comfortable old nesting place in the Alaya consciousness. Hence a master of the past said, “I made the mistake of burrowing into an old jackal hole for over thirty years myself; it’s no mystery to me why so many students do the same.¹⁴

There’s no doubt about it, the practice of Zen is a formidable undertaking.

In his later years, the Zen master Fa-yen enjoyed strolling the south corridor of his temple on Mount Wu-tsu. One day he saw a visiting monk pass by reading a book. He took it from him and, glancing through it, came to a passage that caught his attention:

Most Zen students today are able to reach a state of serenity in which their minds and bodies are no longer troubled by afflicting passions, and their attachment to past and future is cut away so that each instant contains all time. There they stop and abide contently like censers lying useless and forgotten in an ancient cemetery, cold and lifeless with nothing to break the silence but the sobbing of the dead spirits. Assuming this to be the ultimate Zen has to offer them, they are unaware that what they consider an unsurpassed realm is in fact obstructing their true self so that true knowing and seeing cannot appear and the radiant light of extraordinary spiritual power jinzū) cannot shine free.”¹⁵

Fa-yen closed the book and, raising his arms in a gesture of self-reproach for his ignorance, exclaimed, “Extraordinary! Here is a true teacher! How well he expresses the essence of the Zen school!”

He hurried to the quarters of his student Yüan-wu, who was serving as head monk, calling out to him, “It’s extraordinary! Really and truly extraordinary!” He placed the book in Yüan-wu’s hands and had him read it too. Then Dharma father and Dharma son, unable to contain their joy, acclaimed the author with the most enthusiastic praise.

When Ta-hui went to study under Zen master Yüan-wu for the first time, he had already decided on a course of action. “By the endof the ninety-day summer retreat,” he declared to himself, “if Yiianwu has affirmed my understanding like all the other teachers I’ve been to, I’m going to write a treatise debunking Zen.”

Ta-hui, did you really think Yüan-wu wouldn’t be able to see through the fundamental matter you secretly treasured? If you had persisted in clinging to it like that, revering it and cherishing it for the rest of your life, how could the great “Reviler of Heaven” ever have emerged?

Fortunately, however, a poisonous breeze blowing from the south snuffed Ta-hui’s life out at its roots, cutting away past and future.¹⁶ When it happened, his teacher Yüan-wu said, “What you’ve accomplished is not easy. But you’ve merely finished killing your self. You’re not capable of coming back to life and raising doubts about the words and phrases of the ancients. Your ailment is a serious one. You know the saying, ‘Release your hold on the edge of the precipice. Die, and then be reborn’? You must believe in those words.”

Later, upon hearing Yüan-wu say, “What happens when the tree falls and the wisteria withers? The same thing happens.” Ta-hui suddenly achieved great enlightenment. When Yüan-wu tested him with several koans, he passed them easily.¹⁷

Ta-hui rose to become abbot of the Ching-shan monastery, the most important in the land, with a thousand resident monks. As he supervised this sterling collection of dragons and elephants he was like a hungry eagle gazing down on a covey of rabbits. We should feel honored to have a man of such profound attainment among the teachers of our school. Yet, as we have seen, there are some who consider such attainment unimportant—a nonessential “side issue.” What they themselves regard as essential, and secretly cherish, is so worthless that even if you set it out together with a million pieces of gold, you would find no takers.

Yüan-wu said,

After the ancients had once achieved awakening, they went off and lived in thatched huts or caves, boiling wild vegetable roots in broken-legged pots to sustain them. They weren’t interested in making names for themselves or in rising to positions of power. Being perfectly free from all ties whatever, they left turning words for their descendants because they wanted to repay their profound debt to the Buddha-patriarchs.¹⁸

The priest Wan-an Tao-yen wrote a verse comment on the koan Nan-ch’üan on the Mountain:

Lying on a pillow of coral, his eyes filled with tears—

Partly because he likes you, partly because he resents you.

When these lines came to Ta-hui’s notice, he immediately ordered his attendant to take down the practice schedules (giving his monks a day of rest), saying, “With this single turning word Wan-an has amply requited his debt to the buddhas.”¹⁹

Most priests furnish their altars with lamps and incense holders; they set out offerings of tea, flowers and sweets; they prostrate themselves before it over and over, and perform various other religious practices around the clock; some even inflict burns on their fingers, arms, and bodies. But none of that repays even a tenth of the debt they owe the buddhas. How, then, is it possible for a single couplet from an old poem, cutting away complicating entanglements, to immediately repay that debt—and repay it in full? This question is by no means an idle or trivial one. Ta-hui was the Dragon Gate of his age, a towering shade tree who provided shelter for over seventeen hundred students. Do you suppose a man of his stature would utter such words frivolously?

The priest Pa-ling had three turning words.²⁰ His teacher, the great Zen master Yün-men, told his disciples, “When I die, hold no funeral observances of any kind. Instead, I want each of you to take up these three turning words.”

Now do you really believe that the reason a great patriarch such as Yün-men urged students to engage in what these people call “nonessentials” was simply because he happened to prefer them over funeral offerings of flowers, sweets, and rare foods?

Yüan-wu declared: If one of my monks came to me and said, “If there is essentially no moving forward to satori and no moving backward to the everyday world, what’s the use of practicing Zen?” I’d just tell them, “I see you’re down inside that pitchdark hole living with the other dead souls.”²¹ What a pitiful sight!

Yüan-wu said:

Many people like to cite the sayings of the Buddhist sages or a phrase from the sutras such as “ordinary speech, subtle speech—itall comes from the same ultimate source,” persuaded that they really understand the meaning. If any of you here is operating under such an assumption, he’d be well advised to give up Zen altogether. He can devote his life to scholarship and become a celebrated exegete.

Nowadays you often hear people say, “There’s essentially no such thing as satori. The gate or teaching of satori was established as a way of making this fact known to people.” If that’s the way you think, you’re like a flea attached to the body of a lion, sustaining itself by drinking its life blood. Don’t you know what the ancient worthy said: “If the source is not deep, the stream will not be long; if the wisdom is not great, the discernment will not be far-reaching”? If the Buddha’s Dharma was a teaching that had been created or fabricated as they say, how could it have survived to the present day?

Ch’ang-sha Ching-ts’en sent a monk to the priest Tung-ssu Ju-huí, who was, like his teacher Nan-ch’üan, a disciple of Ma-tsu. The monk asked Ju-huí, “What was it like after you met Nan-ch’üan?” Ju-huí was silent.

“What was it like before you met Nan-ch’üan?” he asked. “No different from after I met him,” said Ju-huí. The monk returned to Ch’ang-sha and gave him Ju-huí’s response. Ch’ang-sha expressed his own thoughts in a verse:

Perched motionless at the tip of a hundred-foot pole

The man has attainment, but he hasn’t made it real.

He must advance one more step beyond the tip,

Reveal his whole body in the ten directions.

Afterward, San-sheng Hui-jan sent a senior monk named Hsiu to ask Ch’ang-sha some questions. “When Nan-ch’üan passed away, where did he go?” said Hsiu.²² “When Shih-t’ou was just a young monk, he visited the Sixth Patriarch,” said Ch’ang-sha.

“I’m not asking about when Shih-t’ou was a young monk,” replied Hsiu. “I want to know where Nan-ch’üan went when he died.” “Investigate him thoroughly,” said Ch’ang-sha.²³

“You’re like a noble old pine tree towering thousands of feet in the winter sky,” said Hsiu. “You’re not like a bamboo shoot springing straight up through the rocks.” Ch’ang-sha was silent. “Thank you for your answers,” said Hsiu. Ch’ang-sha was still silent.

Hsiu returned to San-sheng and told him about his meeting with Ch’ang-sha. “If that’s the way Ch’ang-sha is,” said San-sheng, “he’s a good seven steps ahead of Lin-chi.”

Now both Lin-chi and Ch’ang-sha are beyond question genuine dragons of the buddha ocean. They are the celestial phoenix and fabulous unicorn that frequent the Zen gardens of the patriarchs. There is no one comparable to them. Having far transcended all forms and appearances, they move slowly or move quickly in response to changing conditions, like huge masses of blazing fire, like iron stakes burning at white heat. Neither gods nor demons can perceive their traces; neither devils nor non-Buddhists can perceive their activity. Who could conceive their limits? Who could discern any difference between them?

Yet when San-sheng, who was himself a direct Dharma heir of Lin-chi, heard what Ch’ang-sha had said, he praised him as being superior to his own teacher! How can words be so awesomely difficult? You must understand, however, that contained within what is to you a mass of entangling verbal complications there is a small but wondrous something that is able to work miracles.

When Zen master Shih-shuang passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Chiu-feng Tao-ch’ien, who had previously served as the master’s attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, “The master often told us to ‘cease all activity,’ to ‘do nothing whatever,’ to ‘become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,’ to ‘become a bolt of fine white silk,’ to ‘become dead ashes inside a censer in a forgotten old graveyard,’ to ‘become so that this very instant is ten thousand years.’

“What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren’t the man for the job.”

“His words,” said the head monk, “refer to the essential oneness of all things.” “You have failed to understand the master’s meaning,” said Chiu-feng.

“Get some incense ready,” replied the head monk. “If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns down, it will mean I grasped the master’s meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not.

Chiu-feng lit a stick of incense and, before it had burned down, the head monk had ceased breathing. Patting the lifeless man on the back, Chiu-feng said, “Other monks have died while seated; some of them have died while standing. But you proved just now that you could not have seen the master’s meaning even in your dreams.”

Often those who approach the end of their lives having devoted themselves single-mindedly to the practice of the Way will regard the solitude of their final hours, sitting in the light of a solitary lamp, as the last great and difficult barrier of their religious quest, and as the smoke from the incense burns down, they move quietly and calmly into death, without ever having uttered an authentic Zen phrase of any kind. It is they whom Chiu-feng is patting on the back when he says, “You haven’t grasped your late master’s meaning.” You should reflect deeply on those words.

Once Zen master Yün-chü of Hung-chou had an attendant take a pair of trousers to a monk who was living by himself in a grass hut. The monk refused the trousers. He explained that “he already had the pair he was born with.” When Yün-chü was informed of the monk’s reply, he sent the attendant back to ask the question, “What did you wear prior to your birth?” The monk could give no answer. Later, when the monk died and his body was cremated, relics were found among his ashes.²⁴ When these were shown to Yün-chü, he said, “I’d much rather have had one phrase from him in response to the question I asked when he was alive than ten bushels of relics from a dead man.”

The relics that are sometimes found among the ashes of virtuous priests are said to be produced as a natural result of the great merit they achieved in previous lives through meditation and wisdom. Whenever a relic is discovered after a cremation, even if it is only the size of a grain of millet or a mustard seed, crowds of people—men and women, young and old, priests and laity—rush to see it. They crowd around to marvel at it and worship it with expressions of deep veneration. Yet Yün-chü declares that even ten bushels of such relics would not be worth a single phrase uttered while the monk was alive. What is this “one phrase” that it could be even more esteemed than a genuine Buddhist relic that everyone venerates so deeply? This question baffled me for a long time.

After the priest P’o-an Tsu-hsien had retired to the Tzu-fu-yüan Temple, he was invited to the monastery at Mount Ching by the abbot Meng-an Yüan-ts’ung, who appointed him to the post of head monk. Among the brotherhood at the monastery was a man of penetrating insight known as senior monk Pao. He always came when the abbot or head monk was receiving students, and by seizing the slightest opening and turning aside their thrusts with a sudden lightning attack, he invariably got the best of them.

One day, Pao came in while P’o-an was in his chambers receiving students. P’o-an was quoting a passage from The Treatise of the Precious Treasury, “Within heaven and earth, in the midst of the universe, there is here . . .”²⁵ Pao was about to say something, but before he did, P’o-an promptly slapped him and drove him out of the room.

Actually, Pao had intended to interject a comment the moment P’o-an had finished the quotation, but P’o-an had anticipated him. Pao was convinced that P’o-an was deliberately out to humiliate him, and after he left P’o-an’s room he returned to his place in the meditation hall, sat down, and expired. When his body was cremated, villagers from the neighboring areas found some relics among his ashes. They took them and presented them to P’o-an. P’o-an held them up and said, “Senior Monk Pao, even if ten bushels of these had turned up among your ashes, I’d still set them aside. I just wanted that one turning word while you were alive!” With that, he dashed the relics against the ground. They turned out to be nothing but tiny bits of pus and blood.

An ancient worthy wrote,

Of the seventeen hundred eminent masters included in The Records of the Lamp, relics were found among the ashes of only fourteen; they were recovered from only a handful of the eighty priests mentioned in The Biographies of Monks from the Groves of Zen. More importantly, we in our school regard only two things as essential: thorough attainment of self-realization and thorough mastery in instructing others. That means being armed with the fangs and claws that spur students onward, dissolving their attachments and breaking their chains. Buddhists also call this “transmitting the Dharma, ferrying people to the other shore.” Everything else is unimportant.²⁶

The teachers of our Zen school have in their possession moves and maneuvers that are hard to believe, hard to understand, hard to penetrate, and hard to realize. They can take someone whose mind seems dead, devoid of consciousness, and transform him into a bright-eyed monk of awesome vitality. These methods we call the fangs and claws of the Dharma cave. It is like when an old tiger gives a long, blood-curdling roar and emerges from the forest; he throws such mortal fear into the rabbits, foxes, badgers, and their kind that they wobble around helplessly on rubbery knees, their livers petrified, their eyes fixed in glassy stares, piddling and shitting involuntarily. Why do they react that way? Because the tiger is armed with claws of steel and a set of shining golden fangs like a forest of razor-sharp swords. Without those weapons, tigers would be no different from other animals.

Hence these words by a Zen master of the past: “In the first year of the Chien-chung era (1101), I obtained at the quarters of a now-deceased friend a copy of Zen master Tung-shan Shou-ch’u’s recorded sayings, compiled by his disciple Fu-yen Liang-ya. It contained words and phrases of great subtlety and profundity—the veritable claws and fangs of the Dharma cave.”²⁷

At the start of the Chien-tao era (1165–1174), when Hsia-tao Hui-yüan was abbot at the Kuo-ch’ing-ssu Temple, he happened to see a verse tribute that Huo-an Shih-t’i had dedicated to an image of the Bodhisattva Kannon.

He doesn’t stay settled within his primal being,

And brings confusion to people the world over;

Gazing up at him, worshipping him with reverence,

They all have eyes, yet still they cannot see him.

The natural beauties of Ch’ang-an are timeless,

Why must people blindly grope along its walls?

Hsia-tao was beside himself with joy. “I had no idea there was someone of such ability among Master Shui-an’s followers,” he exclaimed. He had a search made and finally located Huo-an at the Chiang-hsin-ssu Temple. There, in the presence of a large gathering of people, he begged Huo-an to come and serve as his head monk.²⁸

Often I hear people say how hard it is to judge others correctly. It was difficult even for the sages of olden times. Yet here is Master Hsia-tao, praising a man after reading only a few lines of verse he had written, then asking him to become head monk of his temple! Could it really have been as easy as that? Perhaps Hsia-tao was acting with undue haste. Or, perhaps there really is something in those lines of verse. These are questions that deserve our closest scrutiny.

Zen master Shui-an Shih-i of Ching-tz’u-yüan Temple, speaking to students in his chambers, said, “The western barbarian has no beard.” One of the monks went to Huo-an Shih-t’i and told him what Shui-an had said. “A starving dog will eat cotton wool,” declared Huo-an, “even if it’s rotten.”

The monk withdrew, then went back and reported Huo-an’s words to Shui-an. “The man who uttered that is capable of teaching an assembly of five hundred monks,” said Shuí-an.

When T’ou-tzu Ta-tung of Shu-chou heard someone quote Zen master Ta-sui’s words, “It goes along,” he lit some incense, made a deep bow in the direction of Ta-sui’s temple, and said, “An old buddha has appeared in Western Shu.”²⁹

See how a clear-sighted Zen master is able to perceive everything at a single glance without the slightest error? Just like the famous mirror of the Chin Emperor which reflected all one’s vital organs.

Once when Tung-shan Hsiao-ts’ung had just started training under Zen master Wen-chu Ying-hsin, Wen-chu posed the following question to instruct his monks: “Straight hooks catch black dragons. Bent hooks catch frogs and earthworms. Has anyone hooked a dragon?” There was a longish pause, then Wen-chu said, “This is a waste of time. The tortoise hair grows longer by the minute.” At those words, Hsiao-ts’ung had a sudden realization.³⁰

Later, while Hsiao-ts’ung was at Mount Yün-chü serving as keeper of lamps, he heard a visiting monk say that the Great Sage of Ssu-chou (an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Kannon) had recently made an appearance in Yang-chou.³¹ The monk then asked, “What do you think the Great Sage is up to, appearing in Yang-chou like that?” Hsiao-ts’ung replied, “Even a man of superior attainments has a love of wealth, but he knows the proper way to get it.”³²

Later the same monk reported Hsiao-ts’ung’s words to Hsiang An-chu of Lotus Peak. “The descendants of Yün-men are still alive and prospering!” exclaimed Hsiang in astonishment. Although it was late at night, he lit an offering of incense and made deep bows in the direction of Mount Yün-chü.

I have read about Hsiang An-chu. He was a Dharma son of Feng-hsien Tao-shen. A Dharma grandson of Yün-men himself. The sharpness of his Zen activity was unexcelled. He tested it on people for over twenty years, but never found anyone who could stand up to his thrusts. Even if all the buddhas in the ten directions appeared from their countless buddha-lands, emitting boundless radiance, exercising inconceivable powers, employing the eight marvelous virtues inherent in their voices and their four kinds of unhindered eloquence, and preached the Dharma so that it fell like rain, this hard-nosed old saddlehorn of a bonze wouldn’t have even turned to look. But now he hears a few words that slipped from Hsiao-ts’ung’s mouth and immediately he lights incense and prostrates himself in the direction of Hsiao-ts’ung’s temple. Why? What can it mean? The words Hsiao-ts’ung uttered are found in the Confucian Analects.³³ Hsiang must have known them. Yet when he heard them he was bowled over in amazement. He went into transports of joy. Had he taken leave of his senses? Could it be that he was just stupid? Or, on the other hand, perhaps there is something here that we should greatly value. Certainly, it is a matter for us to deeply ponder.

Once while Zen master Fo-yen Ch’ing-yüan was serving at the Lung-men-ssu Temple one of the monks was bitten by a snake. The master took the incident up as he was teaching in his chambers.³⁴ “How could a monk of the Dragon Gate (Lung-men) allow himself to be bitten by a snake?” he asked. None of the comments the monks offered were acceptable to Fo-yen. Then Kao-an Shan-wu said, “He displayed all the marks of the great man that he is.” The master immediately nodded his affirmation.³⁵

When Kao-an’s words came to the notice of Zen master Yüan-wu K’o-ch’in at the Chao-chüeh-ssu Temple, he declared in admiration, “If there’s someone like that at Lung-men-ssu, the paths of the East Mountain aren’t desolate yet.”³⁶

Can anyone tell me what Yüan-wu means by desolate? Is he describing a state of barrenness, a condition of adversity? Or is he referring to the absence of noise and activity caused by crowds of people?

I’ve read that “the Buddha’s Dharma consists in doing what is right and proper, not in prosperity.”³⁷ So even if a temple were filled with several hundred blind eggplants and gourds [monks] consuming buckets of white rice set before them like hungry wolves or ravenous silkworms, and they were subjected to rigorous discipline, twelve-hour days of zazen without rest, if none of those monks were truly committed to the Way, Yüan-wu would no doubt consider that temple to be barren, in a state of hardship and adversity. But if there was even half a monk, and he was sitting, doggedly doing zazen with his knees bent crookedly and chin pulled in, it wouldn’t matter if he were living in a tiny old room with leaky roofs and sodden floors in some dirty, remote back street. If he were single-mindedly committed to penetrating the truth, I guarantee you Yüan-wu would regard that place as rich and flourishing.

This would suggest that what the ancients regarded as lonely and desolate would be considered thriving prosperity by people today, and what people today regard as thriving prosperity would have been considered lonely and desolate by the ancients. How can our school have fallen into such grievous decline?