Andrew Cohen’s weekly email quotation this week looks at the problem of choice and its link with the personal ego. Only alignment with the Authentic Self liberates our freedom of choice, Cohen cogently argues.

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The Liberation of Choice
When any one of us is deeply identified with the limited and separate self sense that is ego, our experience of the power of choice does not feel free. One feels very much like a victim, a prisoner of one’s own emotional, psychological, and conceptual world. In the ego, there is a very fixed, unconscious, and habit-driven relationship to experience, which makes it appear as if there is no freedom of choice. But when we discover the evolutionary impulse, which is our own Authentic Self, something very important occurs. When our miraculous capacity to choose becomes liberated to a significant degree from the ego’s narrow world, we become capable of expressing enlightenment through action. Eventually, if we go far enough in our own higher development, in our spiritual evolution, our capacity to choose will become profoundly aligned with the first cause, the god principle, the energy and intelligence behind the initial choice to become. And when your power of choice begins to align itself with the creative impulse in this way, then your own deepest heart-felt spiritual aspiration and desire to evolve becomes one with the original intention to create the universe. And you begin to see that the next step in evolution has everything to do with conscious choice.

Andrew Cohen

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

The “True Man of the Way” has been defined in almost Taoist terms : “When the Dharma is truly, fully, and existentially … understood, we find that there is nothing wanting in this life as we live it. Everything and anything we need is here with us and in us. One who has actually experienced this is called a man of buji.”

In The Record of Rinzai, the man of buji, here rendered as the True Man of the Way is produced as an exemplar to the students :

Followers of the Way, you fail to conceive the
emptiness of (past, present and future), this is
the obstacle that blocks you. Not so the True Man of
the Way who…lets things follow their own course. He
dresses himself as is fitting; when he wants to go,
he goes; when he wants to stay, he stays. Not even
for a fraction of a moment does he aspire to Buddhahood.

Then Rinzai berates the “bald heads” in his audience for not following the True Man :

Venerable ones, time is precious! Yet you run about
hither and thither, studying Zen, learning the Way,
chasing names and phrases, seeking the Buddha and
patriarchs and good teachers, full of arbitrary
judgements. Do not commit such errors…You each have
a father and mother. So what more do you seek? Turn
round and look into yourselves.

The two most influential schools of Zen, which have come down to us in Japan, via China, are Rinzai and Soto. The Soto school was called, mo-chao Zen, or “silently illumined” Zen — this is dealt with more fully in the next chapter; and the Rinzai school, k’an-hua Zen, or “observing the anecdote”. A later master, Hakuin, codified the koan system for the Rinzai school as we know it today.

The Rinzai school was brought to Japan in 1191 by a Japanese monk, Eisai. It predated Soto by over thirty years and obtained royal patronage for establishments in Kamakura and Kyoto.

Despite the successes of the newly introduced schools, this was in fact the second flowering of Buddhism in Japan, which had received other lines from around 550.

Soon the two sects found their own niches in society: the Rinzai school became known as “Zen for the General” (somewhat unfairly perhaps), or Aristocratic Zen, and Soto as “Zen for the farmer”. In modern Japan, Soto is the bigger of the two schools, both being outnumbered by the Amida sects, a devotional form of Buddhism, often known as Pure Land Buddhism.

The cult of Bushido, or the “Way of Warriors”, was developed from the Rinzai teachings and, as Edward Conze puts it, “this close association with the soldier class is one of the more astonishing transformations of Buddhism.” Certainly it indicates as nothing else does the immense flexibility and vitality of the peaceful doctrine of the Buddha, with its principle of ahimsa — no harm. That it could be so transformed as to provide a training method for some of the most fearsome fighters the world has ever known is curious to say the least.

However, in partial mitigation it should also be borne in mind that these soldiers were also among the most honourable, and any defect found in themselves would result in a horrendous ritual self-disembowelment. Strange indeed are the events that occur when men of the world, with sophisticated ambitions, take up a spiritual doctrine for their own purposes.

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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.