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.

Buddha-nature
The intention of the Buddha, however, was not to make people feel comfortable and secure, but to shake them out of their complacency and force a reassessment of the world in the light of the Buddha-nature. This meant inducing a lot of bodily and mental anguish in the aspirant. He never intended his followers to sit around discussing the Twelve-Point Chain of Causation, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Signs of Being or the Ten Stages in the Progress of a Bodhisattva. He asked them to confront themselves directly, with soul-shattering insight, to look at the absolute centre of themselves without shrinking from the truth. It is a bravura performance indeed when a student achieves this measure and comes through into the light of the Buddha-mind.

Such a one was Rinzai. His violence, and Huang Po’s, now becomes more explicable. When the intellect picks up the truth and starts to conceptualise (kill) it, that concept is best slaughtered with a sharp blow, thought the master. An unexpected whack with a fly-whisk on a mesmerised student’s head brings him back to reality like nothing else does. For strange though it may seem, sudden pain, or shock, transcends the intellect and can liberate the spirit. This is why suffering is the spiritual forge of all religions, and why the samurai warriors adopted Zen training methods when they were introduced to Japan. Western New Agers suffer from the same problem when seeking a romanticised spiritualism.

That a similar doctrine could be used to condone violence in society, war-like activities, or the deliberate subjugation of people through grinding poverty is a danger we must be aware of, especially when methods which were developed only for a spiritual training environment are generally imposed by politically-minded individuals. Those who derive pleasure from gratuitous violence are not walking the Way of the Buddha; and Zen, whatever its antecedents and methods, is very much a Buddhist path. The sound of a stone on bamboo, the wafting scent of spring flowers, or a sudden blow are all real, and have been enlightening factors to many a Zen novice. Thinking about them is not. When Zen is at its fiercest, it is precisely at its most honest and direct.

There is no place of rest in this world, said Rinzai. “It is like a house on fire. This is not a place for you to stay long. The murderous demon of impermanence strikes in a single instant, without choosing between high or low, old and young.”

Students, he thought, were too busy running this way and that, hounded by circumstance. “You cannot find deliverance thus. But if you can stop your mind from its ceaseless running…you will not be different from the Buddha and the patriarchs.” He would then introduce the Buddha personally to his students.

“Do you want to know the Buddha?” He is none other than the one who is sat here listening. Get to know this listener, he would say. “He is the original source of all the Buddhas. Knowing him, wherever you are is home.”

This is reminiscent of Bankei’s living in the unborn Buddha-mind. Like Hui Neng and Huang Po before him, Rinzai emphasised the need for genuine insight (prajna):

If you have genuine insight, birth and death will not
affect you, and you will be free to come and go. Nor
do you need to look for worthiness; it will arise
of itself. Followers of the Way, the old masters had
ways of making men. Do not let yourselves be deluded by
anyone; this is all I teach.

If you want to make use of insight, he would continue, “then use it right now without delay or doubt”.

Here Rinzai is daring his audience to know the truth. He is challenging them to have the courage to make the leap of insight which is the prelude to enlightenment. Then, anticipating Bankei some eight hundred years later, he highlights the formless unborn:

Your physical body…cannot understand the Dharma you
are listening to; nor can your spleen, stomach, liver
or gall; nor can the empty space. Who then can understand
the Dharma and can listen to it? The one here before your
very eyes, brilliantly clear and shining without any form
— there he is who can understand the Dharma you are
listening to. If you can really grasp this, you are
not different from the Buddha and the patriarchs.
Ceaselessly he is right here, conspicuously present.

Go to Part 2.