Tuning Fork
Strike and resound
A single perfect note
Against which
Our poor play is practiced.
The texts are ancient
Thoughts in a case
Replaced by the
Younger and fresher.
This tuning fork
Centuries old.
Bring me a gadget
A gizmo
To give me my pitch.
Ah but
The warm simple beauty
Of the vibrating metal
Is the practice
Before the practice.
“It’s not for me to say.”
One of the keynotes of Buddhism and Zen is nondiscrimination, that is, not getting trapped by thinking this is better and that’s worse, this is right and that’s wrong. This doesn’t mean that things aren’t by their nature or manufacture different or preferable, or that you can’t or shouldn’t recognize that. It’s just that clinging to that difference is unhelpful and can be the source of unnecessary conflict.
In the wake of some typically silly arguments, I have an idea for a way to remind myself of this, since it can be so easily forgotten in the heat of the moment.
Confronted by the endless opportunities to offer an opinion, to counter another’s opinion, or just to show off how smart and discerning one thinks one is, consider just reciting this, silently or out loud:
“It’s not for me to say.”
This isn’t a magical mantra, but it is meaningful. Of course, if someone asks for the quickest directions, or how to best cook something, or where to live, you will be welcome to offer your practical knowledge and expertise, if you have those. But often, when the difference of opinion is of no consequence, or of less consequence than the conflict is worth, having no opinion can be the best way.
It may be for someone else to say. But not me.
Practices
Our practices grow ragged
From disuse
Or irregularity.
Don’t fret.
There they are
Patient for our return.
Once a day
Once a year
Once in a lifetime.
Always ready and waiting.
While I often write about Zen and Buddhism in this blog, I have never suggested a “where to begin” book. There are a lot of reasons for this, but that’s for another time.
(For those who might be interested, a leading Buddhist publication did a survey of where its readers did get started, and the overwhelming first book was Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, pretty clearly the most popular book on Zen in English. It is also where I got started.)
A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings (1988), compiled and translated by Soiku Shigematsu, is something different and special. (His first book, A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (1981), is sadly out of print, but you can find a PDF if you go fishing in the Web sea.)
Shigematsu does a lovely job of explaining the text in his excellent Introduction. I actually suggest you not read the Introduction, at least not at first. Robert Aitken Roshi (author of another popular introduction to Zen) offers an appreciative Foreword. You can initially skip that too.
Instead, just browse anywhere in this collection of nearly 800 poem-like sayings. Anywhere. Don’t think of these as Zen. Don’t even think of these as poems. Don’t care about who said it or wrote it.
I am not even going to offer a sample saying, because it would not do the collection justice. Just get it and read in it, a few seconds at a time. You may or may not learn or find out anything about yourself, your life, other people’s lives, the world, the universe, or Zen. Does that really matter?
You may think of yourself as clever. Or half-clever. Other people may think so too.
Be stupid!
That’s the advice from Bankei (1622-1693), a Zen master I’ve written about before.
Thousands of people came from all over Japan to hear Bankei speak. Ordinary people who came to hear really extraordinary messages from a very wise man. Such as: Be stupid!
“I tell my students and those of you coming regularly here to the temple: ‘Be stupid!’ Because you’ve got the dynamic function of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, even if you get rid of discriminative understanding, you won’t be foolish. So, all of you, from here on, be stupid! Even if you’re stupid, when you’re hungry, you’ll ask for something to eat, when you’re thirsty, you’ll ask for some tea; when it gets warm, you’ll put on thin, light clothes, and when it’s cold, you’ll put on more clothes. As far as your activities of today are concerned, you’re not lacking a thing!
“With people who are clever, there are sure to be a great many shortcomings. To have transcended those clever people whom all the world holds in great esteem is what’s meant by ‘stupidity.’ There’s really nothing wrong with being a blockhead!
“When people say that someone is a clever fellow, I ask to meet him, and when I do and we have a chance to talk, it looks to me as if people in the world are praising an awful lot of foolishness. The fact is that those clever people acclaimed by the world are, from the start, deluded by their own cleverness. . .The true man’s ideal is to show kindness to those who are foolish and help those who are evil. To be recognized as a good man by the people of the world is precisely what makes being born a human being worthwhile. How can it be any good to earn yourself the reputation of a wicked person?
“So when you go back to your homes and meet your old acquaintances, you should have them wondering about you all: ‘How did Bankei teach them Buddhism, anyway? Why, they’ve come back even more stupid than before they left!’
“What I’m talking about isn’t the stupidity of stupidity and understanding. That which transcends stupidity and understanding is what I mean by stupidity!
From Bankei Zen: Translations from the Record of Bankei, Peter Haskel
Also:
Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei, Norman Waddell
When I arrive at my hotel room, I find a very modern coffee machine. Very smart. It tells me to place the coffee pod in its holder. Close the lid. Another lid opens to accept water. Pour in water and close that lid. Place the cup on the pedestal, which it then knows is in place. Press the brew button. And in a matter of seconds, hot coffee.
But what if I just want hot water? Then I have to outsmart it. When it directs me to place the coffee pod in its holder, I don’t. I just pretend. I put the water in the tank, put the cup in place, and proceed as if what I want, what I am expecting, is a cup of coffee. What it gives me instead, what I want instead, is simply a cup of hot water. Which I can then use for any of the things you can do with hot water. Such as making a cup of tea with a teabag.
The machine is smart. Or I am smart. The machine is stupid. Or I am stupid.
Have a cup of tea.
Zhaozhou’s Cup of Tea
(Koan 233 of Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans)
MAIN CASE
Zhaozhou asked a newly arrived monk, “Have you been here before?”
The monk said, “Yes, I have been here.”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
Later he asked another monk, “Have you been here before?”
The monk said, “No, I haven’t been here.”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
The monastery director then asked Zhaozhou, “Aside from the one who has been here, why did you say ‘Have a cup of tea’ to the one who had not been here?”
Zhaozhou said, “Director.”
The director responded, “Yes?”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
COMMENTARY
In the real truth, there is no other thing that is present. In worldly truth, the ten thousand things are always present. We should clearly understand that real truth and worldly truth are nondual and that this, in and of itself, is the highest meaning of the holy truths.
The monastery director was lost in the differences between the two monks, so Zhaozhou moved in all directions at once to help him see it. If you go to the words to understand this, you will miss it. If, however, you see into it directly, it will be like the bottom falling out of a bucket. Nothing remains. How do you see into it directly? Have a cup of tea.
Four Walls
Four walls
Three doors
One window
One ceiling
One floor.
How simple
How deep.
Walls layered
And filled.
Behind two doors
Filled too.
One door
Is different.
Goes out
Comes in.
Out there
The same.
In here
The same.
But not.
Hermitage has been in and on my mind. While not exactly a hermitage, the poem above describes the room in which I write.
When I first started reading Thomas Merton, I learned about his building a hermitage on the grounds of the Kentucky abbey where he lived. Merton was a sublime conundrum, who committed himself to relative silence and disciplined orthodoxy as a monk, yet whose spirit (the Spirit) would not allow him to be quiet and stop exploring. So he wrote and discovered. Thank goodness for us.
Sandokai is a famous poem by the Chinese Ch’an (Zen) Master Shitou Xiqian (700-790), who is known in Japanese as Sekito Kisen. I have long been reading and studying this, as have many Zen students. Of all the essential texts available, there are few more concisely powerful than Sandokai.
There is another poem by Sekito that is a little less known, but equally compelling. It is a description of his hermitage, a grass hut. There, he tells us, is nothing and everything.
Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage
by Shitou Xiqian
I’ve built a grass hut where there’s nothing of value.
After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.
When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.
Now it’s been lived in – covered by weeds.
The person in the hut lives here calmly,
Not stuck to inside, outside, or in between.
Places worldly people live, he doesn’t live.
Realms worldly people love, he doesn’t love.
Though the hut is small, it includes the entire world.
In ten square feet, an old man illumines forms and their nature.
A Great Vehicle bodhisattva trusts without doubt.
The middling or lowly can’t help wondering;
Will this hut perish or not?
Perishable or not, the original master is present,
not dwelling south or north, east or west.
Firmly based on steadiness, it can’t be surpassed.
A shining window below the green pines –
Jade palaces or vermilion towers can’t compare with it.
Just sitting with head covered, all things are at rest.
Thus, this mountain monk doesn’t understand at all.
Living here he no longer works to get free.
Who would proudly arrange seats, trying to entice guests?
Turn around the light to shine within, then just return.
The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from.
Meet the ancestral teachers, be familiar with their instruction,
Bind grasses to build a hut, and don’t give up.
Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely.
Open your hands and walk, innocent.
Thousands of words, myriad interpretations,
Are only to free you from obstructions.
If you want to know the undying person in the hut,
Don’t separate from this skin bag here and now.
(from Taigen Daniel Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field)
Sitting
Mat on floor
Cushion on mat
Ass on cushion
Legs crossed.
As far from the center of the world
As could be.
Morning Star
There is so much to learn.
Continue to learn that
There is nothing to learn.
But this.
What does it matter, the new year, the old year?
I stretch out my legs and all alone have a quiet sleep
Don’t tell me the monks aren’t getting their instruction
Here and there the nightingale is singing: the highest Zen!
-Zen Master Bankei (1622-1693)
You don’t have be Zenish to appreciate Bankei or his New Year message.
Bankei was mostly forgotten until the 1940s, when he was rescued “from the obscurity of two and a half centuries of near-total neglect.”
This is understandable. While he was trained and respected in traditional Zen disciplines, his iconoclastic conclusion was that the teaching could be reduced to a single concept that didn’t involve those practices. He preached this to thousands of ordinary people who weren’t involved in more rigorous and formal practice:
“Unlike the other masters everywhere, in my teaching I don’t set up any particular object, such as realizing enlightenment or studying koans. Nor do I rely on the words of the buddhas and patriarchs. I just point things out directly, so there’s nothing to hold onto, and that’s why no one will readily accept [what I teach]. To begin with, those who are wise and learned are obstructed by their own cleverness and calculation, so for them it’s impossible to accept. On the other hand, there are lots of ignorant women who can neither read nor write, who haven’t any special ability and can’t be pushed on to become Zen masters, but possess a truly heartfelt realization and don’t engage in intellectualizing.”
Is it any wonder that conventional teachers might be resistant and challenged enough to leave Bankei behind?
We will not leave Bankei behind. This year, he says, stretch your legs out, have a quiet sleep, listen to the nightingale singing. It is the only instruction you need.
Happy New Year.
Bob Schwartz 