9. Practical Instructions Regarding the Koan Exercise

The following are some of the practical suggestions that have been given by Zen masters of various ages, regarding the koan exercise; and from them we can gather what a koan is expected to do towards the development of Zen consciousness, and also what tendency the koan exercise has come to manifest as time goes on. As we will see later on, the growth of the koan exercise caused a new movement among the Zen masters of the Ming dynasty to connect it with the Nembutsu,¹ that is, the recitation of the Buddha-name. This was owing to the presence of a common denominator between the psychological mechanism of the koan exercise and the recitation of the Buddha-name. (The subject will be given special treatment later on.)

A Zen master of Huang-po Shan, probably of early Sung, gives the following instruction in the study of Zen:

'O you brother-monks! You may talk glibly and perhaps intelligently about Zen, about Tao, and scoff at the Buddhas and patriarchs; but when the day comes to reckon up all your accounts, your lip-Zen will be of no avail. Thus far you have been beguiling others, but today you will find that you have been beguiling yourselves. O you brother-monks! While still strong and healthy in body try to have real understanding as to what Zen is. After all it is not such a difficult thing to take hold of the lock; but simply because you have not made up your minds to die in the last ditch, if you do not find a way to realization, you say, "It is too difficult; it is beyond my power." It is absurd! If you are really men of will, you will find out what your koan means. A monk once asked Chao-chou, "Has a dog the Buddha-nature?" to which the master answered, "Wu!" Now devote yourselves to this koan and try to find its meaning. Devote yourselves to it day and night, whether sitting or lying, whether walking or standing; devote yourselves to its solution during the entire course of the twelve periods. Even when dressing or taking meals, or attending to your natural wants, have your every thought fixed on the koan. Make resolute efforts to keep it always before your mind. Days pass, years roll on, but in the fullness of time when your mind is so attuned and recollected there will be a sudden awakening within yourselves—an awakening into the mentality of the Buddhas and the patriarchs. You will then, for the first time, and wherever you may go, never again be beguiled by a Zen master.'²

I-an Chen of Fo-chi monastery gives this advice:

'The old saying runs, "When there is enough faith, there is enough doubt which is a great spirit of inquiry, and when there is a great spirit of inquiry there is an illumination.' Have everything thoroughly poured out that has accumulated in your mind—learning, hearing, false understanding, clever or witty sayings, the so-called truth of Zen, Buddha's teachings, self-conceit, arrogance, etc. Concentrate yourself on the koan, of which you have not yet had a penetrating comprehension. That is to say, cross your legs firmly, erect your spinal column straight, and paying no attention to the periods of the day, keep up your concentration until you grow unaware of your whereabouts, east, west, south, north, as if you were a living corpse.

'The mind moves in response to the outside world and when it is touched it knows. The time will come when all thoughts cease to stir and there will be no working of consciousness. It is then that all of a sudden you smash your brain to pieces and for the first time realize that the truth is in your own possession from the very beginning. Would not this be great satisfaction to you in your daily life?'

Tai-hui was a great koan advocate of the twelfth century. One of his favourite koans was Chao-chou's 'Wu!', but he had also one of his own. He used to carry a short bamboo stick which he held forth before an assembly of monks, and said: 'If you call this a stick, you affirm; if you call it not a stick, you negate. Beyond affirmation and negation what would you call it?' In the following extract from his sermons titled Tai-hui Pu-shuo, compiled by T'su-ching, 1190, he gives still another koan to his gardener-monk, Ching-kuang.

'The truth (dharma) is not to be mastered by mere seeing, hearing, and thinking. If it is, it is no more than the seeing, hearing, and thinking; it is not at all seeking after the truth itself. For the truth is not in what you hear from others or learn through the understanding. Now keep yourself away from what you have seen, heard, and thought, and see what you have within yourself. Emptiness only, nothingness, which eludes your grasp and to which you cannot fix your thought. Why? Because this is the abode where the senses can never reach. If this abode were within the reach of your sense it would be something you could think of, something you could have a glimpse of; it would then be something subject to the law of birth and death.

'The main thing is to shut off all your sense-organs and make your consciousness like a block of wood. When this block of wood suddenly starts up and makes a noise, that is the moment you feel like a lion roaming about freely with nobody disturbing him, or like an elephant that crosses a stream not minding its swift current. At that moment there is no fidgeting, nothing doing, just this and no more. Says P'ing-t'ien the Elder:

'"The celestial radiance undimmed,
The norm lasting for ever more;
For him who entereth this gate,
No reasoning, no learning."

'You should know that it is through your seeing, hearing, and thinking¹ that you enter upon the path, and it is also through the seeing, hearing, and thinking that you are prevented from entering. Why? Let you be furnished with the double-bladed sword that destroys and resuscitates life where you have your seeing, hearing, and thinking, and you will be able to make good use of the seeing, hearing, and thinking. But if the sword that cuts both ways, that destroys as well as resuscitates, is missing, your seeing, hearing, and thinking will be a great stumbling-block, which will cause you to prostrate again and again on the ground. Your truth-eye will be completely blinded; you will be walking in complete darkness not knowing how to be free and independent. If you want, however, to be the free master of yourself by doing away with your seeing, hearing, and thinking, stop your hankering monkey-like mind from doing mischief; keep it quietly under control; keep your mind firmly collected regardless of what you are doing—sitting or lying, standing or walking, remaining silent or talking; keep your mind like a line stretched taut; do not let it slip out of your hand. Just as soon as it slips out of your control you will find it in the service of the seeing, hearing, and thinking. In such a case is there any remedy? What remedy is applicable here?

'A monk asked Yün-mên, "Who is the Buddha?" "The dried-up dirt-cleaner." This is the remedy; whether you are walking or sitting or lying, let your mind be perpetually fixed on this "dirt-cleaner". The time will come when your mind will suddenly come to a stop like an old rat who finds himself in a cul-de-sac. Then there will be a plunging into the unknown with the cry, "Ah, this!" When this cry is uttered you have discovered yourself. You find at the same time that all the teachings of the ancient worthies expounded in the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Taoist Scriptures, and the Confucian Classics, are no more than commentaries upon your own sudden cry, "Ah, this!"'

Tai-hui was never tired of impressing upon his disciples the importance of having satori which goes beyond language and reasoning and which bursts out in one's consciousness by overstepping the limits of consciousness. His letters and sermons are filled with advice and instructions directed towards this end. I quote one or two of them. That he was so insistent on this point proves that Zen in his day was degenerating to a form of mere quietism on the one hand and on the other to the intellectual analysis of the koans left by the old masters.

'The study of Zen must end in satori.¹ It is like a holiday race-boat which is ordinarily put away in some quiet corner, but which is designed for winning a regatta. This has been the case with all the ancient masters of Zen, for we know that Zen is really won only when we have satori. You have to have satori somehow, but you will never get what you want by trying to be quiet with yourself, by sitting like a dead man. Why? Does not one of the patriarchs say that when you attempt to gain quietness by suppressing activity your quietness will all the more be susceptible to disturbance? However earnestly you may try to quiet your confused mind, the result will be altogether contrary to what you expect to realize so long as your reasoning habit continues.

'Abandon, therefore, this reasoning habit; have the two characters, "birth" and "death", pasted on your forehead, and fix your attention exclusively on the following koan, as if you were oppressed under the obligation of a very heavy debt. Think of the koan regardless of what you are doing, regardless of what time of the day it is, day or night. A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has a dog the Buddha-nature, or not?" Said Chou, "Wu!" Collect your thoughts upon this "Wu!" and see what is contained in it. As your concentration goes on you will find the koan altogether devoid of taste, that is, without any intellectual clue whereby to fathom its content. Yet in the meantime you may have a feeling of joy stealing into your heart, which, however, is soon followed by another feeling, this time a feeling of disquietude. Paying no attention to this interweaving of emotions, exert yourself to go ahead with the koan, when you will become aware that you have pushed yourself like the old rat into a blind alley. A turning back will then be necessary, but this can never be accomplished by the weak-minded, who are ever faltering and hesitating.'

In another place Tai-hui says: 'Just steadily go on with your koan every moment of your life. If a thought rises, do not attempt to suppress it by conscious effort; only renew the attempt to keep the koan before the mind. Whether walking or sitting, let your attention be fixed upon it without interruption. When you begin to find it entirely devoid of flavour, the final moment is approaching; do not let it slip out of your grasp. When all of a sudden something flashes out in your mind, its light will illumine the entire universe, and you will see the spiritual land of the Enlightened Ones fully revealed at the point of a single hair, and the great wheel of the Dharma revolving in a single grain of dust.'¹

K'ung-ku Ching-hung² has a similar advice for monks. He says:

'Chao-chou's "Wu!", before you have penetrated into its meaning, is like a silver mountain or an iron wall [against which you stand nonplussed]. But as you go on with"Wu!" day after day trying to get into its content, and do not give even a moment's rest to yourself, the supreme moment will inevitably come upon you, just as a flood makes its own channel; and then you will see that the iron wall and the silver mountain were not, after all, very formidable. The main point is not to put any reliance on learning, but to put a stop to all hankering, and to exert yourself to the utmost to solve the great problem of birth and death. Do not waste your time by merely thinking of" Wu!" as if you were no more than a simpleton, make no attempt to give a false solution to it by means of speculation and imagination. Resolutely put yourself, heart and soul, into the unravelling of the problem of "Wu!" When suddenly, as you let go of your hold, there comes a grand overturning of the whole system of consciousness, and for the first time you realize in a most luminous manner what all this finally comes to.'

The author of The Mirror for Zen Students³ confirms all that has already been quoted, and describes fully the psychology of the koan exercise.

'What is required of Zen devotees is to see into the phrase¹ that liveth and not into the one which is dead. Try to search for the sense of the koan you have, putting your whole mental strength into the task like the mother-hen sitting on her eggs, like a cat trying to catch a rat, like a hungry one eagerly looking everywhere for food, like a thirsty one seeking for water, like a child thinking of its mother. If you exert yourself as seriously and as desperately as that, the time will surely come when the sense of the koan will dawn upon you.

'There are three factors making for success in the study of Zen: (i) great faith, (2) great resolution, and (3) great spirit of inquiry. When any one of these is lacking it is like a cauldron with a broken leg, it limps. At all moments of your life, regardless of what you are doing, exert yourself to see into the meaning of Chao-chou's "Wu". Keep the koan always before your mind and never release the spirit of inquiry. As the inquiry goes on steadily and uninterruptedly you will come to see that there is no intellectual clue in the koan, that it is altogether devoid of sense as you ordinarily understand that word, that it is entirely flat, devoid of taste, has nothing appetizing about it, and that you are beginning to have a certain feeling of uneasiness and impatience. When you come to this state it is the moment for you to cast aside the scabbard, throw yourself down into the abyss, and by so doing lay a foundation for Buddhahood.

'Do not think that the meaning of the koan is at the moment of your holding it up for solution; do not reason about it or exercise your imagination over it; do not wait for satori to come over you by clearing your mind of its confused ideas; only collect yourself on the unintelligibility of the koan over which the mind evidently has no control.¹ You will finally find yourself like an old rat getting into the furthest corner of the barn where it suddenly perceives by veering clear round the way of escape. To measure the koan by an intellectual standard, as you ordinarily do with other things, to live your life up and down in the stream of birth and death, to be always assailed by feelings of fear, worry, and uncertainty, all this is owing to your imagination and calculating mind. You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves. Do not waste time asking how to do it, just put your whole soul into the business. It is like a mosquito biting at an iron bull; at the very moment the iron absolutely rejects your frail proboscis, you for once forget yourself, you penetrate, and the work is done.'

Sufficient authorities have now been quoted to show where lies the function of the koan in bringing about what is known as satori, and also to show what the Zen master had in mind when he first began to exercise the minds of his disciples towards the maturing of their Zen consciousness. In the way of summary I conclude this part of the present chapter with a passage from the writings of Hakuin, who is father of the modern Japanese Rinzai school of Zen. In this we will see how the psychology of Zen has been going on without much change for more than a thousand years, since the days of Hui-nêng and his Chinese followers.

'If you want to get at the unadulterated truth of egoless-ness, you must once for all let go your hold and fall over the precipice, when you will rise again newly awakened and in full possession of the four virtues of eternity, bliss, freedom, and purity, which belong to the real ego. What does it mean to let go of your hold on the precipice? Suppose a man has wandered out among the remote mountains, where no one else has ever ventured. He comes to the edge of a precipice unfathomably deep, the rugged rock covered with moss is extremely slippery, giving him no sure foothold; he can neither advance nor retreat, death is looking at him in the face. His only hope lies in holding on to the vine which his hands have grasped; his very life depends on his holding on to it. If he should by carelessness let go his hold, his body would be thrown down to the abyss and crushed to pieces, bones and all.

'It is the same with the student of Zen. When he grapples with a koan single-handedly he will come to see that he has reached the limit of his mental tension, and he is brought to a standstill. Like the man hanging over the precipice he is completely at a loss what to do next. Except for occasional feelings of uneasiness and despair, it is like death itself. All of a sudden he finds his mind and body wiped out of existence, together with the koan. This is what is known as "letting go your hold". As you become awakened from the stupor and regain your breath it is like drinking water and knowing for yourself that it is cold. It will be a joy inexpressible.'

Footnotes

1 Nien-fo.

2 From the Zenkwan Sakushin ('Breaking Through the Zen Frontier Gate').

1 (Drista-Śruta-mata-yñāta). Abbreviated for 'the seen, heard, thought and known'.

1 Wu-ju.

1 Tai-hui's passages are taken from a collection of his letters, sermons, discourses, and sayings known as his Pu-shao, Tü-lu, and Shu. He was very well acquainted with the Avatamsaka (or Gandavyūha), and there are many allusions by him to its teachings, as we find in this last sentence here.

2 Still living in 1466.

3 Compiled by T'ui-yin, a Korean Zen master of the Ming era (A.D. 1368-1650). The book appeared in 1579.

1 That is, chü. The Zen masters generally distinguish two kinds of chii; the live one and the dead one. By the 'live chii' are meant such statements as give no clues whatever to their rational interpretations but put an end to the functioning of the empirical consciousness; whereas the 'dead chü' are those that lend themselves to logical or philosophical treatment and therefore that can be learned from others and committed to memory. This according to T'ui-yin.

1 In some of the Appendices I have given more advice regarding the Zen Yogin's attitude towards the koan, which afford interesting and illuminating materials for the psychological student of Zen consciousness. T'ui-yin cautions his koan students on the following ten points: (i) Do not calculate according to your imagination; (2) Let not your attention be drawn where the master raises his eyebrows or twinkles his eyes; (3) Do not try to extract meaning from the way the koan is worded; (4) Do not try to demonstrate on the words; (5) Do not think that the sense of the koan is to be grasped where it is held out as an object of thought; (6) Do not take Zen for a state of mere passivity; (7) Do not judge the koan with the dualistic standard of yu (asti) and wu (nāsti); (8) Do not take the koan as pointing to absolute emptiness; (9) Do not ratiocinate on the koan; and (10) Do not keep your mind in the attitude of waiting for satori to turn up. The koan exercise is confused with so-called meditation, but from all these warnings given by an old master regarding the exercise it is evident that Zen is not an exercise in meditation or in passivity. If Zen is to be properly understood by its students, Eastern and Western, this characteristic aspect of it must be fully comprehended. Zen has its definite object, which is 'to open our minds to satori' as we say, and in order to bring about this state of consciousness a koan is held out before the mental eye, not to meditate on, nor to keep the mind in a state of receptivity, but to use the koan as a kind of pole with which to leap over the stream of relativity to the other side of the Absolute. And the unique feature of Zen Buddhism is that all this is accomplished without resorting to such religious conceptions as sin, faith, God, grace, salvation, a future life, etc.