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

In The Flower Garland Sutra there is a description of the masters of enlightenment, or Bodhisattvas, who come into the world to bring others to spiritual knowledge. Described in this version as “enlightening beings”, they are often not what they seem :

Some appear in the form of mendicants, some in the
form of priests, some in bodies adorned head to foot
with particular emblematic signs, some in the form of
scholars, scientists, doctors; some in the form of
merchants, some in the form of ascetics, some in the
form of entertainers, some in the form of pietists, some
in the form of bearers of all kinds of arts and crafts
— they are seen to have come, in their various guises, to
all villages, cities, towns, communities, districts, and
nations … (They) are lamps shedding light
on the knowledge of all beings … for the purpose of
leading people to perfection.

Hui Neng (638-713 CE), the sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism was clearly an enlightening being. Apparently illiterate, born into poverty because of the exile and death of his father, rising to be patriarch from the lowly position of rice pounder in a monastery kitchen, he founded the Zen that we know today.

Zen Buddhism is a poet’s path. Although its objectives are beyond words and concepts, yet words are among the skilful means it uses to take the voyager to the other shore, despite its hard-won reputation as a “scripture without words”. It is perhaps no coincidence that Zen is steeped in the evocative poetry of China and Japan, and that many of the scriptures are expressed in verse or canticle. No doubt this made memorizing simpler, but it also adds an additional dimension to the meaning of the texts. For example, a Zen poem is regarded as successful if it awakens in us a direct perception of a timeless moment.

The old pond.
A frog jumps in.
Plop!

The onomatopoeic “plop” gives us a shock of recognition. Indeed, the English translation here is probably better than the Japanese original (Mizu-no oto! — “watersound”) As a poem, in English terms, it is a bit deficient because it doesn’t seem to say anything. But for just an instant we are at the pondside and our discursive tendency retreats before the truth of a real Zen experience. It is a moment of “mindfulness”, the central method of zazen and Buddhist insight meditation. Fittingly, the story of Hui Neng’s rise to prominence begins with two poems :

Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
Our mind a mirror bright.
We wipe and polish them every day,
To let no dust alight.

This was written secretly at dead of night on the wall of Tung Ch’an monastery by Shen Hsui, the leading candidate for the mantle of the fifth Patriarch who was approaching death.

The master, sensing who had written it, summoned the author and told him, “Your stanza shows that you have not yet realised the essence of mind (Buddha-mind). So far you have reached the “door of enlightenment”, but you have not yet entered it … To attain supreme enlightenment, one must be able to know spontaneously one’s own nature, or Buddha-mind, which is neither created nor can it be annihilated.”

The layman, Hui Neng, who worked in the granary and kitchens, felt he could do better. He persuaded a visiting official to write his stanza on the corridor wall :

Since there is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor sign of a mirror bright,
And because no object ever was,
Where can the dust alight?

Read the rest of this entry »

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

A later, highly significant master, whose name looms large in Zen history, is the aristocratic priest, Dogen (1200-1253), renowned for introducing the Soto Zen school into Japan, but whose greatest achievement, paradoxically, is in the realm of words, his monumental collection of essays, the Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.

Dogen was an extremely well-read man and something of an infant prodigy. By the age of seven he had devoured the major Confucian classics, and by nine, the complex psychological literature of Southern Buddhism. Unlike the T’ang masters, who revelled in their anti-literacy, Dogen was more of a contemplative kind, a thinker who nevertheless transcended his own thought processes. He is perhaps an ideal example for Westerners, as against the poor and apparently illiterate Hui Neng whose early experiences can only be simulated nowadays in the Third World.

It was the death of Dogen’s mother when he was eight that precipitated his first interest in Buddhism. It is said that as he watched the smoke rising from the incense stick that burnt by the body, he felt directly the transience of all existence. His loneliness drew him towards seeking an explanation for this cruel evanescence, one that satisfied his deepest sense of being, not just a form of words.

Even then he must have been acquainted with the Buddhist notion of annica, impermanence, change. Now he had first-hand knowledge of the principle in his own life. Not surprisingly perhaps it was the phrase, “shedding body and mind”, which was an important catalyst in his realization at the age of twenty-eight. At the moment of his enlightenment Dogen exclaimed: “There is no body and no mind.”

According to a spiritual heir of Dogen, Soto master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1905-1971): “all his being in that moment became a flashing into the vast phenomenal world, a flashing which included everything, which covered everything, and which had immense quality in it; all the phenomenal world was included within it, an absolute independent existence. That was his enlightenment.”

His experience was that he had shed body and mind, but still existed — as skylike mind. Suzuki continues: “Because you think you have body or mind, you have lonely feelings, but when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, you become very strong, and your existence becomes very meaningful.”

Suzuki Roshi, former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, distinguishes between “little mind”, which is associated with body-mind, and “big mind”, which is everything: Buddha-mind, Buddha-nature. When, during enlightenment we align with big mind, little mind is seen to be just an expression of big mind; clouds scudding across a vast blue sky.

Dogen’s views on enlightenment are generally well-known and much quoted in the literature. Like many a good writer he had the knack of creating memorable phrases, and in this he has been well served by his translators.

“To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.” That is, to forget little mind. And in similar vein: “When one leaves the Way to the Way, one attains the Way.” Or again, on the “unattainability” of attainment: ”to consider attaining such a thing, one must be such a person; already being such a person, why trouble about such a thing?” Here he is playing around with the notion of suchness, allowing it to penetrate into his phraseology with great exuberance.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Read Part 1

Another disciple was concerned about his wandering mind. He could not concentrate on the Unborn all the time without his mind sloping off to other thoughts. Bankei insisted, however, that he was never separated from the Buddha-mind. If you were, he said, you would not be asking this question now. Your mind is not really somewhere else. It is just that you have not yet learned correctly about it. You do not know your own self. Instead of just dwelling in it, you change and distort it into other things. When you are in this state, your mind is at a low level of efficiency and you cannot absorb information or function at your maximum potential. You are not absent-minded, just tying up part of your mind by making it do things which it would not normally do.

The psychological aspect in Bankei’s teaching is paramount. This is because he laid so much stress on practice and actually living in the Unborn. Theory, theology and metaphysics take a back seat in the exposition of Unborn Zen. Even the psychology is narrowed down and sharply focused: “Your self-partiality is at the root of all illusions. There aren’t any illusions when you don’t have this preference for yourself.” And, of course, without illusions one lives in the Unborn as an enlightened Buddha.

The Buddha-mind has wonderful illuminative wisdom, he constantly taught. All past experiences and actions are fully reflected in it. It is good spiritual practice, therefore, not to fix onto these reflecting images. If you do, you are creating illusion. Originally, these thoughts had no substance, so the prudent way of dealing with them is to ignore them, whether they are rising or stopping. Then, no matter how many thoughts there are, it is the same as if none had arisen. The tyranny of memory and past conditioning is broken, and with it, neurotic behaviour patterns and other psychological problems.

Brushing off thoughts which arise is just like
washing off blood with blood. We remain impure because
of being washed with blood, even when the blood that
was first there has gone — and if we continue in this
way the impurity never departs. This is from ignorance
of the mind’s unborn, unvanishing, and unconfused
nature. If we take second thoughts (normal thinking)
or an effective reality, we keep going on and on
around the wheel of birth and death. You should
realise that such thought is just a temporary mental
construction, and not try to hold or to reject it.

A close examination of most religions reveals a hefty weight of self-partiality, myth, and dubious authority; so much so that the underlying impulse to reveal God/the Unborn is lost in a welter of forms and ceremonies. The absolute makes an appearance only in distorted or anthropomorphic terms, rarely in its suchness.

The impression left after a reading of Bankei’s talks is that of religion, philosophy, and psychology, merged and distilled down to the finest essence, until all that remains is the bare, ungarnished truth of the non-dual Unborn, fully revealed in the consciousness of each individual.

The conscious act of steadfastly being in the Unborn, is the basis of many Japanese art-forms and activities, including Zen archery, flower arranging, landscaping and gardening, the tea ceremony and brush drawing and calligraphy. The practitioner, by concentrating his mind, submerges himself in the Unborn, where the seer, the seeing and the seen, subject and object, dissolve one into the other and into effortless, non-dual activity.

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, who trained in the Rinzai Zen school, wrote this about Japanese artistic expression: “How does a painter get into the spirit of the (subject)? The secret is to become the (subject) itself…The discipline consists in studying the (subject to be painted) inwardly with his mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centred contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the emptiness or suchness (of the subject)…and transform himself into the (subject) itself.”

The result is an elegant, artless performance, devoid of ego and self-partiality, in which the Buddha-mind expresses itself with perfection as the True Man of the Way.

Bankei always claimed that he was the only master to give proof that the Unborn Buddha-mind was, as he declared, the sole ground of human consciousness.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Bankei’s main objective now was to have his enlightenment confirmed by other advanced Zen masters. His own master, Umpo, commented that the experience was the marrow of Bodhidharma’s bones, but Bankei wanted more than that.

His travels took him to Nagasaki, where the Chinese priest, Dosha Chogen had been installed in a temple. Dosha, who always retained the respect of Bankei, was impressed by the young man. He had certainly penetrated to the Self, he agreed. “But you still have to clarify the matter beyond, which is the essence of our school.”

Bankei was nonplussed at this news. He had thought that his satori was the final opening of truth. In time, he came to accept what Dosha said and stayed on at the temple for further post-enlightenment training, much to the discomfiture of the other monks who felt he was receiving preferential treatment. However, within a year Bankei “clarified the matter beyond” while meditating in the zendo early one morning.

When he approached Dosha with the tidings, one of those curious Zen set-pieces took place, which are mystifying to the unenlightened mind. Bankei picked up a brush and wrote, in Chinese — for Dosha could speak no Japanese — “What is the ultimate matter of Zen?”

Dosha then brushed, “What matter?” To which Bankei just extended his arms. When Dosha again picked up the brush, Bankei grabbed it and flung it away. Following this apparent display of bad manners, he stood up, swung his deep Chinese sleeves and left. We can be sure that Dosha was well pleased.

Read the rest of this entry »