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Case 20 The Man of Great Strength                   
 
Shõgen Oshõ asked, "Why is it that a man of great strength does not lift his legs?"
And he also said, "It is not the tongue he speaks with."
 
Mumon's Comment
It must be said that Shõgen shows us all his stomach and intestines.
But alas, no one can appreciate him!
And even if someone could appreciate him, let him come to me, and I'll beat him severely.
Why?
If you want to find pure gold, you must see it through fire.
 
Mumon's Verse 
    Lifting his leg, he kicks up the Scented Ocean;
    Lowering his head, he looks down on the fourth Dhyana heaven.
    There is no space vast enough for his body--
    Now, somebody write the last line here.
 


          In Zen we talk a lot about discovering the True Self  While Shakyamuni taught that we have no permanent individual self (non-atman) in Zen we have redefined the self and ask students of Zen to discover the True Self.  This is not in contradiction with Shakyamini's original teachings but rather a rewording of the essence of Buddhism which we owe to the 6th Zen Patriarch Hui Neng.  Infact this rewording is a natural outcome of the enlightenment experience which we can see in Shakyamuni's own choice of names.  Upon his initial enlightenment experience he changed his name from Sidhartha to Buddha meaning Awakened One.  This was an expression of the deep awakeness of the enlightenment experience.  Not only is consciousness deeply awakened in all its senses but there is also an awakening to a new understanding.  In this understanding there is the understanding that with one's own enlightenment all beings and the whole Universe are enlightened.
          Later he changed his name from Buddha to Tathagata meaning That Which Comes and Goes.  This is a very strange name.  The Tathagata taught that all things are in constant change.  Nothing is permanent.  And that things come and go according to causes and conditions (the process of cause and effect).  It seems that the Tathagata defined himself as this very process we call reality.  He didn't see himself as separate from this ephemeral reality we are all part of.  So THIS is our True Self.  This is just not how most of us think of things.  
          Last night after the sitting at the Moonwater Dojo the discussion went in the direction of how an enlightened person thinks of himself.   We are reading a wonderful book on Japanese Pure Land Buddhism with its emphasis on love within the enlightenment experience One person brought up the fact that in meditation she practices being a disinterested observer and that this is very different from the emotional intimacy with the world that an enlightened person seems to experience.  I have read books and talked to practitioners who say that the essence of practice is to find and cultivate this disinterested observer that is not attached to the comings and goings in the world around them.  They think of this disinterested observer as the true self.  They think that the piece of mind of this non-attachment as enlightenment.  With the authority I have from my experience and my lineage as a teacher I have to say that this understanding is wrong.  What is wrong is that whoever thinks like this has not taken meditation to its full depth, has not experienced kensho.  They still see that inner observer as separate from the world around them.
          In the deepest meditation even the inner observer disappears.  One becomes literally lost in the practice.  It becomes black.  But you won't know it because you will just think that the meditation period went really fast.  Actually it is not black, it is filled with all the sights and sounds of the world around.  It is just not being noted in memory.  This is fundamentally different then sleep or dreaming because in sleep or dreaming awareness is turned off and cut off from sensation.  But in the deepest meditation one looses ones self in awareness.  This is called the Fourth Dhyana Heaven.
          For those of you who know something about the Theravada tradition the Fourth Dhyana might be familiar as the Fourth Jhana.  This meditative stage is characterized by no thought and perfect equanimity.  It is no different from what we in other parts of the Buddhist tradition call samadhi.  Jhana is just the Pali pronunciation of the Sanskrit word Dhyana which was transformed into the word Zen in the long trip from India to Japan.  In the Theravada path which is much more thoroughly mapped then anything is mapped  in Zen the Fourth Jhana is the gateway to the deep insight we call Enlightenment.  It is not itself the place of insight, there is no thought in the Fourth Jhana but it must be passed through and looked back upon immediately.

 Lowering his head, he looks down on the fourth Dhyana heaven.
    There is no space vast enough for his body--

​This is where insight arises.  This is where one experiences the True Self whose body is as vast as space and beyond.  No separation!  If we experience this and understand this then we are free to say all sorts of crazy things and become a zen master.

A man of great strength does not lift his legs nor does he speak with a tongue.  No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue...

         The purification of the human mind is like the purification of gold.  We heat it under a fire melt it down and pour off the impurities.  Again and again we enter the fourth dhyana heaven pour off the impurities of ego reveal the luster of the True Self.  We do this again and again so not a speck of ego is remains though in fact a human life is just too short to totally complete the task.  But it doesn't matter, our foibles are just Buddha's foibles and we laugh.

The last line:
​shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Case 19 Nansen's "Ordinary Mind Is the Way"                          
 
Jõshû asked Nansen, "What is the Way?"
"Ordinary mind is the Way," Nansen replied
"Shall I try to seek after it?" Jõshû asked.
"If you try for it, you will become separated from it," responded Nansen.
"How can I know the Way unless I try for it?" persisted Jõshû.
Nansen said, "The Way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing.
Knowing is delusion; not knowing is confusion.
When you have really reached the true Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space.
How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?"
With these words, Jõshû came to a sudden realization.

Mumon's Comment
Nansen dissolved and melted away before Jõshû's question, and could not offer a plausible explanation.
Even though Jõshû comes to a realization, he must delve into it for another thirty years before he can fully understand it.
 
Mumon's Verse
    The spring flowers, the autumn moon;
    Summer breezes, winter snow.
    If useless things do not clutter your mind,
   You have the best days of your life.


          Do not use "Ordinary Mind Is the Way" as an excuse for not disciplining your mind and practicing lazy zazen.  And yes I have heard this expression as just such an excuse.  If "ordinary mind" referred to the ordinary day to day mind of most of us then what need would we have for zazen?  Why would we work so hard to solve koans?  The whole edifice of practice comes crashing down.
          Mumon obviously didn't believe Ordinary Mind to be so simple because ha our minds are not simple and that is the problem.  The great way is not difficult for  those who have no prejudices, who do not think constantly of likes and dislikes, whose mind is not cluttered.  But for most of us our ordinary mind is cluttered with prejudices of right and wrong, likes and dislikes, and other useless things, and we are not happy.  Instead can we find happiness simply in what the world presents to us, in what is ordinary but is also magical, " The spring flowers, the autumn moon; Summer breezes, winter snow."  It took the great Joshu 30 years to cultivate this sort ordinary of mind.
          Bodhidharma defined zazen as not to be attached to the external and not to be moved by the internal.  This is a recommendation not just for zazen but our daily life as well. This is the way of ordinary mind.  Not to be attached to the external means: Greet the world with a certain easiness of mind which appreciates being alive and the beauty and joy of life but also is well aware that things are always changing. Don't be attached to things being any certain way or not being any certain way.  Don't try to possess and accumulate things.  Be straight froward and honest.  To not be moved by the internal means: Don't get carried away by your own thoughts and emotions.  Drop habitual thought and emotional patterns.  Be unattached to any thoughts and emotions that appear and not to add further unnecessary thoughts and emotions. Remain mindful, clear and focussed.  Make this your Ordinary Mind.  It is not so ordinary.
           
  

​Case 18 Tõzan's "Masagin"                        
 
A monk asked Tõzan, "What is Buddha?"
Tõzan replied, "Masagin!" [three pounds of flax].
 
Mumon's Comment
Old Tõzan attained the poor Zen of a clam. He opened the two halves of the shell a little and exposed all the liver and intestines inside.
But tell me, how do you see Tõzan?
 
Mumon's Verse 
 "Three pounds of flax" came sweeping along;
 Close were the words, but closer was the meaning.
 Those who argue about right and wrong
 Are those enslaved by right and wrong.

          "Three pounds of flax,"  A simple but improbable answer.  Maybe Tozan had just measured out three pounds of flax.  We cannot know but somehow it came to his mind and he just spit it out.  My friend and local translator Red Pine  (Bill Porter) once told me that in China Zen monasteries were often placed in somewhat remote valleys so  that they could be self sufficient through farming.  It is likely that flax was a crop that was grown at the monastery.
          When I was a student of Sasaki Roshi he often gave his students koans that were of the general form "How do you experience (or manifest) Buddha ..." through an experience or some activity.  He asked me three koans of this form.  The first step in answering these koans was to understand what Buddha is or at least what Sazaki meant by Buddha.  Contemplating this word buddha can create all sorts of trouble for the Zen student.  Like all words it tends to trap one in dualistic thought.  Some Zen teachers even say that to name "it" Buddha or anything else is to defile "it."  But Sasaki did name it as does in this koan.
          Shakyamuni called himself the Buddha because it meant "awakened one."  How does that meaning fit into this koan?  We might think of the monk's question as, What is it to be awakened?  But this doesn't quite fit because in one case buddha is being used an a pronoun and in the other case as a noun.  Maybe this difference is of little importance if we truly understand what it is to be Buddha through experience.  Experience is always of paramount importance if we are to truly understand anything is Zen.  And remember we are on koan 18 so that usually the student working on this koan has had some deep experiences.  Most important is Kensho, all the rest is commentary.  But the commentary is still important and koans often have the purpose of clarifying certain points.
          In Zen we clear our minds through Zazen and when functioning we try to engage ourselves fully body and mind letting no stray thoughts interrupt our concentration.  Many of us think of this approach to life as Zen.  This is our practice.  But also we should not attach to Zen practice as something special.  Even three pounds of flax is Buddha let alone 7 billion people who live on this planet as well as all the insects and all the other animals and all the plants and mountains and lakes and oceans and planets and stars and the space inbetween.  What is not Buddha?  So we practice Zen and as we practice Zen, Buddha is also practicing Zen.
            One of the most salient aspects of deep samadhi and kensho is to experience non-duality.  Yet because the whole process of practice and  getting to the experience of non-duality involves quieting that part of the mind that speaks with language and even turning off conscious awareness it is quite common to go into deep samadhi and then return to a more normal state of mind without clarifying anything let alone the experiencing of non-duality. That is exactly why we have koans.  We practice with the intention to clarify our understanding,  We watch our own minds in deep samadhi so that we can clarify a completely new way of seeing the world.  To clarify Non-Duality is to clarify our Universal nature.  It is to see the Universal in every thing around us and in all the activity of the world.  It is this vision of the world that makes Buddhism a religion.  It is the grace of this perspective that relieves our existential suffering and allows us to feel at home in the world no matter what happens.  Whether we call the Universal, God or Buddha or Alla it does not matter.  Once we have clarified the Universal the dualistic nature of words is no longer an obstacle and we can use them freely.  So now what is Buddha?
          When I sit a sesshin, sitting long hours of zazen and chanting when I am not sitting I am constantly practicing cutting of my thoughts.  Eventually I reach the point where I go several minutes between thoughts.  And then I see the world not as a multiplicity of things but as a single being.  And one of the few verbal thoughts I will have is to name it Buddha, probably because of my training with Sasaki Roshi. ( After all these many years of training to some extent this vision of the world is available at any time, and the understanding it engendered is with me all the time,) I call the Non-Dual not an it but a being because it is not static but functioning.  And I see its functioning not as impersonal but as very personal.  It functions with the compassion that takes care of people.  And it functions with the intent of realizing itself and occasionally actually doing so. We might think that this is just people taking care of people and that the Universe functions impersonally.  But when you see from the perspective of the Non-Dual, Buddha, you see the compassion and intent in its functioning.  This does not mean in any way that Buddha has to live up to our human desires and our human sense of right and wrong.  It does not even mean that in the long run Buddha will take care of humanity and it does not mean suicide for humanity through environmental degradation or nuclear holocaust is not possible. The Non-Dual does not function like the "personal" view of God that is common in many religions.  The Non-Dual is not an individual being but is Being Itself.  It functions as a whole without division and yet this Whole functions through its inseparable constituents through process internal to itself, what we in Buddhism call Interdependent Origination or more commonly cause and effect.  In other words our compassion as humans is the functioning of the Buddha, and is the compassion of the Buddha. All our desires and activity is the desire and activity of the Buddha.  There is nothing separable from the Buddha. And then when we look at the whole thing,  what Martin Luther King called "the arch of history we see compassion functioning on a larger scale.  We find solace in this view in the dissolution of our individual being into the larger Being Itself in which there is no birth or death, and no existential suffering.
        
 Quite a mouthful.  

          I want to comment on a couple mistakes that I think are common in the Zen community.  One, Buddha is often thought to mean the clear awake mind we experience after much meditation.  To think of Buddha this way without a larger understanding is to still be caught in a personal or individual perspective.  In other words the small self is still at the center of this perspective.  The other mistake is to think of  non-duality as the quality of our state of mind - that clear mind- or the nature of our activity, in other words activity that is done without dualist thoughts.  This is also a small self perspective.  To think of buddha and non-duality this way is to confuse the nature of Zen practice with the result of a strong dedicated practice, the kensho experience and a deep  understanding of the Non-Dual. There are no boundaries to Buddha.  Without a clear intention to go both deeper in meditation and understanding neither is likely to be experienced.  This is not about just putting your time on the pillow