A Life of Rinzai by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Master Rinzai (Lin Chi, died 866 AD) was undoubtedly a tough character. The transmission from Obaku (Huang Po), described in the previous biography in this series, appears to be full of violence and mayhem. First Obaku administers sixty blows to his hapless charge, then chases Rinzai out. Later, Rinzai returns and slaps Obaku, with the comment, “There really isn’t much to Master Obaku’s Zen!” The two giants of Ch’an (Zen in China) seem to be constantly squaring up like two boxers intent on flattening each other.

In later years when Rinzai was a fully-realized master, he had an encounter with Tokusan in similar style. On hearing that this master would instruct his monks and say: “Whether you can speak or not, either way thirty blows,” Rinzai told Rakuho: “Go and ask him why the one who understands gets thirty blows…When he starts to beat you, grab his stick, hit him back, and see what he will do.”

Rakuho did as he was bid, then returned to Rinzai with the news that when he had hit Tokusan, the master immediately retired to his quarters.

“So far I have suspected that fellow,” mused Rinzai, “but since it has happened like this, do you for yourself now see Tokusan?” When Rakuho hesitated, Master Rinzai hit him.

The nub of this story seems to be the egolessness, or otherwise, of Tokusan. But why should there be such a welter of blows? It has a certain entertainment value, but is it religion?

Zen arose out of Buddhism because the Chinese eye spotted what it saw as a major weakness in the Indian Buddhist system. The flaw was a tendency to formularisation. As in other religions, the basic principles, intended to help the novice towards understanding, had lost their original force. Now they were just familiar phrases for chanting and disputation. What had once contained a powerful meaning for unlocking the truth had “degraded” to mantra, a repetitious, magical formula for inducing a trance-like state, which might have its uses in other contexts, but not in this one. The very sound of well-loved passages from the scriptures produced in the hearer a soothing reassurance, a warm, self-satisfied glow that made him feel good…and spiritual. The Christian Church has the same problem today when trying to change from the old known texts to modern versions in the vernacular. A storm of protest from traditionalists greets every textual alteration as if the very doctrine were at stake. The feel good factor is a strong motivator in popular religion, which is often a branch of the entertainment industry.

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A Life of Huang Po by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

The question of the void and man’s relationship with it appears again and again in Huang Po’s doctrine. The following story involves his biographer P’ei Hsui.

P’ei Hsui: (recognizing a picture of a famous monk on
the wall) I see his likeness, but where is he himself?
The monk with him remained silent.
P’ei Hsui: But there are Zen monks here, are there not?
Monk: Yes, there is One.
Later P’ei Hsui related this conversation to Huang Po.
Huang Po: P’ei Hsui! Where are you?
P’ei Hsui (realizing that no reply was possible): Please
enter the hall and continue with your teaching.

To suggest that there are two of anything was anathema in this particular training establishment. Also, that points in space could be distinguished from the whole was equally so. Where are we, then? Yes, we are here, but we are also the All. Therefore no coherent reply is possible without fracturing the truth. It should be remembered that an enlightened master always spoke from the Absolute realm, even if he was not permanently there. He was not dismissing the world of particulars in which we find ourselves, merely trying to wrest the pupil’s consciousness into an equally Absolute way of seeing things.

Our original mind, viewed from the highest level, is “devoid of any atom of objectivity”. Huang Po describes it as “void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy — and that is all”. This “skylike mind” is the ground on which is built consciousness, the world, the universe, individuality. It is the underpinning of everything we know and are. We should “Enter deeply into it by awakening to it…That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.”

This pure mind, the source of everything, shines
forever and on all with the brilliance of its own
perfection. But the people of the world do not awake
to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels
and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing,
feeling and knowing, they do not perceive the
spiritual brilliance of the source-substance.

To discriminate between good and evil is to show attachment to form. Rather than spending aeons trying to obtain merits, or good karma, it is better to achieve sudden realization of the original mind. But to think that this mind is either mind or no-mind is to express the inexpressible in conceptual terms, something that Huang Po always severely reproached. He asked for a silent understanding only. Buddhas and “wriggling creatures,” (for example, worms) “are of one substance and do not differ.” If concepts could be annihilated in a moment of insight, the source-substance “would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds.” This is the supreme way to Buddhahood: to awaken suddenly to a realisation that one’s own mind is the Buddha-mind. To be a Buddha is to manifest “from thought-instant to thought-instant, NO FORM; from thought-instant to thought-instant, NO ACTIVITY.” And this does not represent death, but deathlessness, which is a positive living reality.

Huang Po was also dismissive of scientists and their practices. He castigated them for trying to measure everything in the void, yard by yard, inch by inch, when all phenomena are “devoid of distinctions of form”. Phenomena, he stressed, belong to the ever-peaceful ground which lies beyond the world of the transformations of form. They are, he said, “coexistent with space and one with reality”. In this regard one could say, with Hui Neng, that “there has never been a single thing.” His advice to scientists and those who seek truth by painstaking measurement and analysis, is that they must enter it “with the suddenness of a knife-thrust”. His school could only teach them to understand their original mind.

An Indian Vedantist said: “One cannot hope to measure the universe and study the phenomena. It is impossible. For the objects are mental creations; it is like trying to stamp with one’s foot on the head of one’s shadow; the farther one moves the farther goes the shadow’s head.”

Moreover, said Huang Po, when the moment of enlightenment comes, “do not think in terms of understanding, not understanding or not not-understanding.…” For these cannot be grasped. Enlightenment when grasped is indeed grasped, “but he who grasps it is no more conscious of having done so than someone ignorant of it is conscious of his failure.” Here he means that, during the nirvanic experience, consciousness is separated from bodily awareness completely, so the moment remains ungraspable by the sequential mind, even though the process trickles down into the available memory after the event.

Those who seek to grasp it by special means, techniques, environments (retreats &c), texts, or doctrines, or even through their own sensory apparatus, are no better than wooden dolls, says the master. One must not attempt to seek Buddhahood, for this is to use the Buddha (which you already are) to search for the Buddha. This would never end after thousands of rebirths or ten thousand aeons. The answer lies in, “No listening, no knowing, no sound, no track, no trace — make yourselves thus,” says Huang Po, “and you will be scarcely less than neighbours of Bodhidharma!”

The document of P’ei Hsui records that the master passed away on the Huang Po mountain during the T’ai Chung Reign (847-859 AD) of the T’ang Dynasty. “The Emperor bestowed upon him the posthumous title of The Zen Master Who Destroys All Limitations.” His memorial pagoda was known as The Tower of Spacious Karma.

Huang Po summed up his doctrine in a poem written for P’ei Hsui, who had served him so well during his lifetime. The verse emphasises again the need for the insight of prajna in the transmission of the truth and that he has no time for “idlers” — intellectuals and academics:

Mind is a mighty ocean, a sea which knows no bounds.
Words are but a scarlet lotus to cure the lesser ills.
Though there be times of leisure when my hands both lie at rest,
‘Tis not to welcome idlers that I raise them to my breast.

Next: The Life of Rinzai (Lin Chi) founder of Rinzai Zen.

A Life of Huang Po by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Huang Po thought the world was generally in decline (it was ever thus), and that Zen students of his day were not at all concerned with the Original Mind.

“Let your mind be like the vacuity of space,” he would enjoin them, “like a chip of dead wood and a piece of stone, like cold ashes and burnt-out coal.” Then he added a mischievous note, “Otherwise some day you will surely be taken to task by the old man of the other world…” One day Huang Po was going out for a walk. Handing him his hat a monk said:

Monk: You are enormously big, but your hat is none too large for you, is it?

Huang Po: That may be so, but the entire cosmos is readily covered underneath.

Monk: And what about me?

Huang Po put the hat on and walked off.

Here is the atom, in this case the master’s head, which contains within it the entire cosmos. The monk’s concern to include his own head shows his lack of understanding. His question obviously does not merit a reply. But by not resorting to an intellectual explanation, Huang Po is acting directly out of the Buddha-mind. This is standard Zen practice.

A similar non-dual interpenetration, here over time, is implied by Ma Tsu (Huang Po’s teacher) in his reply to a monk’s question:

“What was the mind of Bodhidharma when he came from the West?”

“What is your mind this moment?” answered the master. Ma Tsu would sometimes make the statement that, “your everyday thought is the Tao.” In a non-dual reality what else could it be?

Today, nostalgia or aversion to events of the past, or planning or longing for the future, make up a great deal of our mental furniture. Twenty-five year olds are advised to take out a pension plan. The fashion industry creates a yearning for a particular decade: the sixties or the forties. Old films remind us of better days. Now we have digital cameras to recreate our personal past and of those we care for. People, places and events can be brought up on a screen with extraordinary realism. Futurologists and astrolgers look into tomorrow for us, diverting us from the present moment. By fixing the past and fixing the future we allow ourselves to look away from the present moment, rendering it tenuous and transient. Dogen reminds us that, “When we have no aversion or longing, only then do we reach the heart of the Buddha.”

When asked why his disciples were so happy, the Buddha said: “They do not repent of the past, nor do they brood over the future. They live in the present. Therefore they are radiant. By brooding over the future and repenting the past, fools dry up like green reeds cut and left out in the sun.”

The simplicity of this is often beyond the complex machinations of the intellect, which specialises in mental time travel. Huang Po’s students sometimes had the same problem. When told that “Mind is the Buddha”, one asked, what sort of mind do you mean, the ordinary mind or the enlightened one? Huang Po replied, “Where on earth do you keep your ‘ordinary mind’ and your ‘enlightened mind’?” The student remained sceptical. The master said: “If you would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and enlightened, you would find that there is no other Buddha than the Buddha in your own mind. When Bodhidharma came from the West he just pointed out that the substance of which all men are made is the Buddha.” That is, Buddha-mind.

Huang Po’s followers continued to misunderstand by holding onto their concepts of ordinary and the like, thoughts which “gallop about like horses”.

So I tell you, mind is the Buddha. As soon as
thought or sensation arises, you fall into a dualism.
Beginningless time and the present moment are the same.

This and that do not exist. And just to comprehend this matter is to realise “complete and unexcelled enlightenment”. Since beginningless time and the present moment are the same, there is obviously no point in repenting over the past or brooding over the future. The timeless present moment contains it all, and to live in the present is to live “radiantly” as a disciple of the Buddha.

Go to Part 5.

A Life of Huang Po by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

A demonstration of Huang Po’s fearlessness is given in one of P’ei Hsiu’s anecdotes. His master was attending an assembly at the Bureau of the Imperial Salt Commissioners in the presence of the Emperor. The Son of Heaven noticed Huang Po make three bows before a statue of the Buddha and asked him what he expected to gain from this — the Emperor must have been aware of his general teaching that all rituals are a waste of time since all is the Buddha-mind. Huang Po replied that it was his custom to show respect in this way. But the Imperial grandee insisted on a doctrinal answer: “What purpose does it serve?” he persisted. Whereupon Huang Po slapped him. “You are uncouth,” cried the Emperor. “What!” rejoined the master, “you are making a distinction between uncouth and refined?” And another slap landed on the Imperial visage. It is reported that the Emperor withdrew in the face of this onslaught and Huang Po went on his way unmolested — a remarkable fact, indeed for the times.

It follows from this that Huang Po’s teaching is also a deathless doctrine. In a non-dual world there is no such thing as death — where would we go? There is only the continuous transformation of the swirling cloud of forms which is the working of the great Buddha-mind. As Dogen has it (see Chapter 5): “Because there is Buddha in birth and death, there is no birth and death.” That is, the unborn mind produces the born from itself, but remains in essence unborn. Difficult as it is to grasp discursively, the nirvanic experience reveals this process explicity. Zen is not making it up.

Huang Po’s philosophy begins and ends with the Original Mind and his students’ response to it.

The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no
distinction between the Buddha and sentient things…
sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek
externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they
lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the
Buddha and using mind to grasp mind.

The physicist Stephen Hawking’s statement that he could understand how the universe could exist, but not why it would want to exist, gives us a flavour of this. Where religions, and even science, shade into mysticism, all distinctions between them disappear.

The so-called esoteric doctrine, supposedly kept veiled from the purview of ordinary folk who might not be expected to understand, is none other than this basic insight into the nature of reality, often cloaked in a mess of unnecessary occultism — jargon designed to raise the status of those who practise it. The great masters like Huang Po, however, have nothing to hide and dismiss the esoteric as the creation of the dissembling intellect. “The greater the master, the simpler his technique.” We shall have occasion to observe this epigram in action in chapter 6 when considering the life and work of Bankei.

Although in Huang Po’s monastery everything was laid out freely on the table, so to speak, there were monks who did not grasp the truth as effortlessly as they would have wished. This was usually not because the aspirants were too simple, but rather because they were over-intellectual. Huang Po would tell them that he had no thing to offer them. They should not seek for insight or search for enlightenment. Instead they should follow four simple injunctions:

1. Make yourself unreceptive to sensations arising from the external world of forms.
2. Pay no heed to distinctions between one phenomenon and another.
3. Do not distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant sensations.
4. Avoid “mulling things over” in the mind.
As these are four of the skandhas, representing the “individuality” of a person, we are on firm Buddhist ground here. Quite often when Zen masters received pupils of various levels of intractability, they would fall back on traditional methods of the lore. Thus, iconoclasm was only for the highest “kindling” among their followers, and the Hua Yen system of five stages to enlightenment was widely in use.

Having said that, however, Huang Po never held back on the summit of his teaching. “…the realisation of the One Mind may come after a shorter or a longer period. There are those who, upon hearing this teaching, rid themselves of conceptual thought in a flash. There are others who do this after…passing through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva’s Progress. But whether they transcend conceptual thought by a longer or a shorter way, the result is a state of BEING…” It is true that there is nothing to attain, he says, no pious practising and no action of realisation. “Moreover,” he emphasises, “whether you accomplish your aim in a single flash…or after going through the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva’s Progress, the achievement will be the same; for this state of being entails no degrees…” And again, “The ever-existent Buddha is not a Buddha of form or attachment. To practise the six paramitas and a myriad similar practices with the intention of becoming a Buddha thereby is to advance by stages, but the ever-existent Buddha is not a Buddha of stages.” Here he means that realisation comes suddenly, and usually unexpectedly, when the consciousness simply flips into the nirvanic condition and things are seen as they are.

All the qualities typified by the great Bodhisattvas
are inherent in men and are not to be separated from
the One Mind. Awake to it, and it is there. You students
of the Way who do not awake to this in your own minds,
and who are attached to appearances or who seek for
something objective outside your own minds, have all
turned your backs on the Way.

In the 20th Century, Ramana Maharshi, whose Advaita Vedanta is quite close to Zen, has said the same thing: “Mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness: give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.”

Go to Part 4.