Case 22 Kashyapa's "Knock Down the Flagpole"                   
 
Ananda asked Kashyapa, "The World-honored One gave you the golden robe; did he give you anything else.
"Ananda!" cried Kashyapa.
"Yes, sir!" answered Ananda.
"Knock down the flagpole at the gate," said Kashyapa.
 
Mumon's Comment
If you can give a turning word at this point, you will see that the meeting at Mount Grdhrakuta is still solemnly continuing.
If not, then this is what Vipasyin Buddha worried about from remote ages; up to now he has still not acquired the essence.
 
Mumon's Verse 
 Tell me—question or answer—which was more intimate?
 Many have knit their brows over this;
 Elder brother calls, younger brother answers, and they betray the family secret.
 They had a special spring, not one of yin and yang.
 
         Ananda was a younger cousin of the Buddha who joined the sangha some years after the Buddha started teaching.  The Buddha recognized that Ananda had a remarkable memory and could repeat word for word everything that he had heard.  Because of this the Buddha made Ananda his attendant so that he would be present at all the Buddha's talks and privately even repeated the old talks to him.  When the Buddha died after 50 years of teaching Ananda had in his memory all the talks the Buddha gave during his whole teaching career.
          After the Buddha's death the elders of the Sangha who were recognized as enlightened gathered for a conference to determind how the Buddha's sangha which already spread across Northern India was to move forward.  They wanted to compile his teachings to make sure they were not lost but the problem was Ananda who had all the teachings in his head was not invited to the conference because he was not enlightened.
           Ananda understood this and resolved to become enlightened so he sat down in meditation.  The story goes that he sat a day and a night and then in the morning he encountered Maha Kashyapa and the exchange we read hear occurred.  After Kashyapa told Ananda "Knock down the flagpole at the gate," Ananda had a deep enlightenment experience and was then invited to the Conference of Elders.
             Why did this simple statement "Knock down the flagpole at the gate," have such a profound effect?  I have many Zen friends who have studied with one or more of that wave of Japanese Zen teachers who came here in the 1960-70's and now have been practicing for many many years but few have had a true enlightenment experience.  Why?  In some cases I think it is because they revered their teacher so much that they have developed a case of guru adoration and this adoration is used to give themselves a feeling of specialness.  In others words it was used to strengthen the individual's ego.  Sometimes this reverence extends to written or recorded words which are then studied as though if they the students could only grasp the deep meaning of the words then the wisdom of the teacher will be conferred upon them.  I can imagine that Ananda was similarly attached to the Buddha and was filled with pride that he had been the Buddha's attendant and confidant, and nobody else knew as much of the Buddha's teachings.  It was this attachment and pride that had become Ananda's barrier.  This was Ananda's flagpole and it needed to come down.
          We all have a flag pole of sorts in front of our senses.  We call it our "ego" but what does that really mean.  I usually tell people it is our idea of an individual self.  This is true, but it is not just a simple idea but rather a cluster of thoughts and feelings that effects our whole way of thinking and feeling. When we react to perceived insult that is our ego.  The deep emotional scars that we carry with us are part of our ego.  The drive we feel for self gratification and pride is also part of ego.  The stories we are constantly telling of ourselves and others, in our heads, are part of ego.  Even the way we see the world as divided into individual things and beings, likes and dislikes, holy and profane, is part of ego.  The ego is a huge mass of thoughts conscious and subconscious interconnected into a whole way of thinking and perceiving,and not easy to transcend.  But, slowly we chip away at this mass through sitting and other practices.  Through sitting we bring to the surface subconscious components and deal with them. Through sitting and other practices such as mantra recitation we de-energize the habit energy of this mass.  And then when we are ready with it will take just a little something,  maybe something our teacher tells us, or the sound of a stone hitting a larger rock, or a bird chirp, or hit with the kiosaku stick, just about anything and we will wake up and see everything clearly for what it is and what we are. 
          The Dharma gate is nothing but our six senses, the sixth being our ability to understand.  This gate is usually closed to us because our mind is so filled with that huge mass of ego thought that we never perceive anything clearly for what it is.  I know you are rebelling when you read this and thinking something like, "When I see a tree I see a tree.  What more is there for me to see."  My response to this is that to see a tree as a tree is not to see completely clearly.  It is to carry the assumption of multiplicity, and individuality into perception.  It is to add thought onto perception by adding name and much more. It is to see things through the lens of subject-object dualism. We are usually thinking so much as we perceive things that we actually dull our perceptions a bit.  If a person really quiets the mind through meditation then perceptions will actually be experienced as brighter and clearer. 
          If we don't carry the assumption of our own individuality into perception then the observer disappears, the lens of subject-object dualism is gone, and the perception in that moment becomes the whole universe.  With a quiet mind if our eyes focus on an individual thing then that thing is simply empty.  It is form it is phenomena it is nothing else.  If we open our eyes wide with a quiet mind there is no differentiation.  All that is in the realm of perception becomes a single thing.  No longer do we see trees and houses and people as separate things separated by empty space but rather as a single thing with the space around it all as the body of that single thing.  And then in a moment of insight we recognize that we are not separate from that single thing but rather contained within that single body and  that is our True Self.  
          This insight into the True Self doesn't necessarily happen exactly like this. And even though our meditation might at times have sufficient depth, deep attachment to dualistic understanding of things often prevents insight into our True Self.  But when we finally recognize the True Self there is no going back.  Our understanding of everything changes.  For Ananda after almost 50 years of practice that flagpole of ego still stood in the way of insight but then with one moment of letting it drop he stepped through the gate and everything changed.

Case 21 Unmon's "Kanshiketsu"                         
 

A monk asked Unmon, "What is Buddha?"
Unmon replied, "Kanshiketsu!" [A dry shit-stick.]
 
Mumon's Comment
Unmon was too poor to prepare plain food, too busy to speak from notes.
He hurriedly took up shiketsu to support the Way.
The decline of Buddhism was thus foreshadowed.
 
Mumon's Verse
      Lightning flashing,
      Sparks shooting;
      A moment's blinking,
      Missed forever.

Note: The translations I have used of the Mumonkan, except for a few cases at the beginning of this project are by the late Zen master Katsuki Sekida (Two Zen Classics 26-137)

          This week at the Monday sangha sit one of the participants read a teshio delivered by Sasaki Roshi around 2000.  I practiced with Sasaki Roshi in the early 80's but I have several friends who practiced with him much more recently, in the  years up to his death in 2014, and they told me that the usual theme of his talks was a teaching he had on how we manifest in this world as zero, plus or minus.  It seemed an unusual teaching, like nothing I heard from other teachers or read in the literature.  It also was different from what I remembered hearing from him when I practiced with him.  I had become somewhat sceptical of this teaching not because I considered it wrong but because no one I spoke to seemed to understand it. But then I heard this teshio and he talked about understanding how we come into being and how we manifest as the Dharma Activity.  I thought this interesting so I thought I would comment on it in this blog.  And in the way that one can turn any discussion of true Zen understanding coming from one persoective into an understanding from another perspective I will comment on this koan 
          To begin, Zen is about our experience not about measurable physical reality.  There is a relationship but we are not talking physics.  Most important in Zen practice is to understand how the "I am", the concept of self and experience of having a self  manifests.  We can study this intellectually by reading various theories on how this happens and we can of course intuitively agree with one of these theories.  In buddhism there is a lot of talk and literature on how the "I am" comes into being that goes right back to Shakyamuni with his teaching on non-atman (no self).  Fundimental to Buddhism is the belief that there is no permanent enduring self, and what we think of as the self is just a temporary thought.  Some people read this and they think "yes it makes sense and they become Buddhists,  Not so with others.  But to understand no self as an idea is not enough for a Zen practitioner. No self must be experienced and understood from this experience.  A purely intellectual understanding will have little effect on one but an experienced understanding will have a great transformative effect. 
          Shakyamuni Buddha laid out an understanding of how the self comes into being in the Twelve Fold  Chain of Interdependent Origination.

1. Ignorance(Pali: Avijjā)
2. Mental formations/volitions(Pali: Saṅkhāra Sanskrit: Saṃskāra)
3. Status consciousness(Pali: Viññāṇa)
4. "Name" and "Form"(Pali: Nāmarūpa)
5. The six senses(Pali: Saḷāyatana)
6. Contact(Pali: Phassa)
7. Feelings(Pali: Vedanā)
8. Cravings/longings/desires(Pali: Taṇhā)
9. Clinging to(Pali: Upādāna)
10. Generation of factors for rebirth(Pali: Bhava)
11. Birth(Pali: Jāti)
12. All the sufferings(Pali: Jarāmaraṇa)
(From Wikipedia)

Many people think this chain is a description of how reincarnation works through the individual's many lives but I think Shakyamuni was getting at something else.  This is a description of how the idea of a self is reincarnated moment to moment in our thoughts.  It can also be viewed as a habit of our thoughts to be again and again reforming the idea of an individual self  The practice of zazen can then be seen as a way that we break the chain again and again so that the habit energy of this chain of thought is dissipated.  In this way we can resolve that original ignorance and experience the Non-Dual.  We can look at this and see how different forms of meditation break the chain in different places.  In the very deepest meditation mental formations don't even arise.  Personally in my meditation practice I often sit with a consciousness having arisen (stage 3) but then without having form or name arise (stage 4).  Typical instructions for meditation often tell the practitioner to allow thoughts and feelings to arise but then not attach to these thoughts and feelings.  This is cutting the chain between links 8 and 9.  In general the deeper the meditation the earlier this chain is cut.  In the deepest meditation not even consciousness arises.  There is complete absorption and it is black.  This is true Zero
          In this Zen understanding we come into being again as a thought.  This process is happening so fast that we cannot even be aware of it and we seem to have a continuous sense of self.  We have no cognizance of no-self.  This process is happening so fast and so often that we are locked into a certain understanding and it becomes very difficult to see the the world in any other way. It become very difficult to resolve that original ignorance which is the first link in the chain.  If we slow down this whole process through zazen we can observe the birth of consciousness out of Zero and with this birth the whole world is born with our sense of self.  The first time I had a window into this process was some 37 years ago after around 10 days of continuous meditation.  I was sitting in meditation early one morning and I observed consciousness awaken with the sound of each bird call.  It was like consciousness was flashing on and off.  And then with one particularly loud bird call and large flash this understanding emerged that for that moment when the bird call sounded the whole Universe in consciousness was that sound and there was no "I" in it and then there was this understanding how the "I" emerged as a thought.  Fundamentally there is no "I", no individuality.  All that is is the One the Non-Dual in inseparable activity.
          Shakyamuni made an interesting observation.  He said that every time we have a thought a karmic seed is created for the repetition of that thought.  In the language of modern cognitive science every thought is a pathway and that every time we repeat that thought we energetically strengthen that pathway.  This is the nature of thought habits.  To break our thought habits we need a prolonged period without the thought, which will drain the pathway of it's energy.  This is why it is so important to practice Zazen not just for an hour or so every day but for long periods of continuous practice.  Only through long periods of continuous practice will the practice really deepen.  But if you put in the effort then in a single moment of awakening even a shit stick will be Buddha