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Title: Zen Anarchy
Author: Max Cafard
Date: 2006
Language: en
Topics: buddhism, religion, Zen
Source: Retrieved on August 14, 2009 from http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=3503&lang=fr

Max Cafard

Zen Anarchy

Zen anarchy? What could that be? Some new variations on the koans, those

classic proto-dadaist Zen “riddles”?

What is the Sound of One Hand making a Clenched Fist?

If you see a Black Flag waving on the Flagpole, what moves? Does the

flag move? Does the wind move? Does the revolutionary movement move?

What is your original nature — before May ‘68, before the Spanish

Revolution, before the Paris Commune?

Somehow this doesn’t seem quite right. And in fact, it’s unnecessary.

From the beginning, Zen was more anarchic than anarchism. We can take it

on its own terms. Just so you don’t think I’m making it all up, I’ll

cite some of the greatest and most highly-respected (and respectfully

ridiculed) figures in the history of Zen, including Hui-Neng (638–713),

the Sixth Patriarch, Lin-Chi (d. 867), the founder of the Rinzai school,

Mumon (1183–1260), the Rinzai master who assembled one of the most

famous collections of koans, Dogen (1200–1253), the founder of Soto, the

second major school, and Hakuin (1685–1768), the great Zen master, poet

and artist who revitalized Zen practice.

I. Smashing States of Consciousness

This is what all the great teachers show: Zen is the practice of anarchy

(an-arche) in the strictest and most super-orthodox sense. It rejects

all “arches” or principles — supposedly transcendent sources of truth

and reality, which are really no more than fixed ideas, mental habits

and prejudices that help create the illusion of dominating reality.

These “principles” are not mere innocuous ideas. They are Imperialistic

Principalities that intrude their sovereign power into our very minds

and spirits. As anti-statist as we may try to be, our efforts will come

to little if our state of mind is a mind of state. Zen helps us dispose

of the clutter of authoritarian ideological garbage that automatically

collects in our normal, well-adjusted mind, so that we become free to

experience and appreciate the world, nature, and the “Ten Thousand

Things,” the myriad beings around us, rather than just using them as

fuel for our ill-fated egoistic cravings.

Zen is also the strictest and most super-orthodox form of Buddhism — and

at the same time the most iconoclastic, revolutionary and anarchistic

one. The roots of Zen go back to the beginnings of the Buddhist

tradition — not to any founding sacred documents or to any succession of

infallible authorities, but to the experience that started the

tradition: the anarchic mind! Forget the “ism” of Buddhism. It’s not

ultimately about doctrines and beliefs. The “Buddha” that it’s named

after means simply the awakened mind or somebody, anyolebody, who

happens to “have” that kind of mind. And Zen (or Ch’an, in Chinese)

means simply meditation, which is just allowing the mind to be free,

wild, awake, and aware. It’s not about the occasional or even regular

practice of certain standardized forms of activity (sitting and walking

meditation, koan practice, being inscrutable, trying to look

enlightened, etc.). Equating meditation with silent sitting is something

that Zen simply will not stand for! Zen is also intimately linked to the

absurd, but it can’t be reduced to doing and saying absurd things, as in

the popular caricature of Zen. Zen is not nihilism, but is (like all

Buddhism) the Middle Way between hopeless nihilism and rigid dogmatism

(does a dogmatist have a Buddha-nature?).

Original Minds

Zen is also the practice of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy. In

particular, the form called prasangika, the philosophical

anti-philosophy of the great Indian sage Nagarjuna (c. 150–250). It’s

said that the king of the Nagas, a race of superhuman serpent people,

appeared to Nagarjuna and gave him the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of

Wisdom) sutras. Western supernatural snakes are sneaky and deceive us

with dangerous knowledge, but Eastern ones are compassionate and help us

poor deluded humans gain a little wisdom. Awakened by the wisdom he

found in the sutras, Nagarjuna went on to demonstrate that all discourse

about the nature of reality is nonsense. Actually he showed that it is

nonsense, it isn’t nonsense, it both is and isn’t nonsense, and it

neither is nor isn’t nonsense. Then he showed that everything he just

showed isn’t true. Actually that it is true, it isn’t true, it both is

and isn’t true, and it neither is nor isn’t true. Then he showed that

all this stuff he just showed about truth is nonsense, etc. etc. We

could go on but you get the point. Zen practitioners got it, and decided

to create their own unique ways of using words and concepts to destroy

our illusions about words and concepts.

Going even further back in history, Zen’s origin can be traced back to

the time that Shakyamuni Buddha went to Bodhgaya, sat down under the

Bodhi Tree and invented meditation. Of course he didn’t really invent it

but that’s as good a point as any to mark its beginning and we have all

those fantastic statues to remind us of him sitting there. You can

almost hear the giant sucking sound as the void begins to swallow

everything up! Anyway, Zen is the meditation school, so its very name

points back to that experience.

Another event that’s sometimes seen as the origin of Zen (can’t

something have several origins?) is Shakyamuni Buddha’s famous Flower

Sermon at Vulture Peak. A huge throng assembled to hear his Buddhaship’s

profound words. Many of them must have been desperate for an infallible

guru to save them from all that angry karma snapping at their asses. But

all he did was silently hold up a flower before the teeming multitude.

(If you think this lousy article is a disappointment, imagine what they

thought!). But a single person, Kashyapa, smiled, showing that at least

one person got it. That there’s nothing to get! This could also be

looked upon as the point at which irony entered the history of thought,

a tradition carried on fiercely by Zen, but much neglected by later

deadly serious spiritual and political tendencies, including the most

radical and anarchistic ones.

How Empty Is It?

Most of the time when the Buddha did sermons he did talk, but he tended

to emphasize that all things — including his own words and concepts —

are empty. What he meant by that is that like everything else they’re

empty of “inherent being” or substantiality. They’re nothing but a lie

“in themselves.” The truth is always elsewhere — his words and

everything else can only be understood as inseparable parts of an

interrelated web. This web is often pictured as “The Jewel Net of

Indra,” an infinite expanse of gems, each one reflecting the light of

all the others. We distort the interconnectedness and interdetermination

of the entire infinitely — faceted Intergalactic Net when we abstract

separate objects and egos from it.

This is a very radical teaching. Blake had the same idea: that if the

doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is:

Infinite. The Heart Sutra, which is one of the most important Buddhist

texts and is recited daily in many monasteries, shows the revolutionary

implications of this idea of deep interrelatedness (dependent

origination or pratitya-samutpada), the idea that all things open into

the infinite.

This sutra says that all dharmas, the constituents of all beings, are

“marked with emptiness,” and that “in emptiness there is no form, nor

feeling, nor perception, nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear,

nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds, smalls, tastes, touchables

or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, ... No mind-consciousness

element; ... no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance ... no decay and

death, no extinction of decay and death... no suffering, no origination,

no stopping, no path... no cognition, no attainment and no

non-attainment.” [HS 91, 97, 113] It’s pretty much no nothing, and this

destroys the basis for everything, including all the most fundamental

tenets of Buddhism. The central teachings, the Four Noble Truths of

Suffering, the Cause of suffering, the Cure for suffering, and the Way

to effect the cure are all undermined, because here is no suffering, no

causality, no cessation, no way!

And Buddhism is all about the “awakened mind,” right? Tough luck: “no

mind!”

Have A Little Compassion

How depressing! Everything’s running on empty, all our goals are

pointless, and nothing we say communicates anything! But irony strikes

again. Realizing these limits is part of the therapy that we need to

escape the real suffering that comes from living in a

constantly-disappointing bad-dream world of illusion. A world in which

we pretend that what is empty is full, that we (unlike anybody else) can

literally do the impossible, and that our own personal ideas are a good

substitute for reality. Though neither our suffering nor the ego that we

think undergoes the suffering have “inherent existence,” there is a real

experience of suffering that hits us when we succumb to these illusions.

The dissatisfaction, hopelessness, anxiety and depression that follow

lead us to lash out angrily at the world, and to struggle desperately to

gain impossible control over it, so we end up inflicting even more

suffering on the humans, cats, dogs, door frames and other beings that

have the bad luck to stand in our way.

So what can we do? Shakyamuni Buddha once said that if you find someone

who has been wounded with a poison arrow, the most urgent thing is not

to find out who shot the arrow, what the bow was made of, who made the

arrow, etc. but to remove the goddam arrow! Every day we observe a world

of people walking around with arrows sticking out of their chests. We

look in the mirror and see an arrow protruding from our very own skull.

Lost in thought, on whatever irrelevantly exalted or distractingly

trashy level, we somehow forget to show a little compassion for others

or even ourselves and get to work on extracting those arrows.

Zen is about that compassionate action. It’s the way of negation, but

it’s also the most positive and practical path imaginable. According to

Hui-neng “the spirit of the Way means always behaving respectfully,

universally respecting and loving all creatures, without disdain.” [SH

91] If we open ourselves to really experiencing other beings and nature,

we can stop dominating and manipulating them, and begin to appreciate

and even love them. This bundless care for other beings is expressed in

the Shiguseigan or boddhisattva vow that’s recited at the end of zazen

(sitting) practice. It begins: “beings are countless; I vow to save them

all.” Cross my Heart Sutra and hope to neither be born nor die! If I

can’t save trillions, maybe I can at least save a few billion. Zen urges

us to aim our anti-arrows very high!

Living In Lotus Land

It should be clear now that Zen is not a form of mere escapism — in fact

it’s just the opposite. It does promise an escape — an escape from

suffering and the illusions that cause it. But it teaches that

liberation from illusion and suffering can only be achieved by a more

intense experience of the reality of the world and of nature. Zen, for

all its ascetic practices, revels in worldliness. It’s true to the

Buddhist teaching that Samsara, the crazy, bustling, dusty world of

constant change is itself Nirvana, the liberation that results from

complete awakening. Hui-neng says that “Seeking enlightenment apart from

the world/ Is like looking for crawfish tails on a nutria.” [SH 23,

slightly revised] Hakuin expresses the same idea when he says that “This

earth where we stand is the Pure Lotus Land,/ And this very body, the

body of Buddha!” [ZW] And contemporary Buddhist poet Gary Snyder says

that “the truly experienced person,” by which he means the truly

experiencing person, “delights in the ordinary.” [PW 153]

In a similar spirit, Hui-neng asks how the legacy of great masters

should be “demonstrated and transmitted?” This is pretty important,

because Zen is defined as the school of “direct transmission outside the

scriptures.” Hui-neng replies that “there is no demonstration or

transmission; it is only a matter of seeing nature, not a matter of

meditation or liberation... these two things are not Buddhism; Buddhism

is a non-dualistic teaching.” Not “transmitting something,” but seeing

nature. If we allow ourselves to really experience nature we find that

we are not just in it; we are it, though even to say that distorts what

we see. That old Jewish lens-grinder who worked so diligently to clarify

our sight expressed it accurately: “we” and “it” are both forms of

natura naturans, “nature naturing.”

Zen would add, “empty forms.”

Please Identify Yourself

Hakuin says that “it is with great respect and deep reverence that I

urge all of you superior seekers who investigate the secret depths to be

as earnest in penetrating and clarifying the self as you would be in

putting out a fire on top of your head.” [ET 3] I’m sure we’ve all been

in that situation and have probably not spent a lot of time weighing our

options. Hakuin’s urgent message about the self might really be phrased:

“Liar, liar, brain’s on fire!” It’s hard for us to face

self-non-knowledge.

Should we look for the true self, the real self, the authentic self?

Good luck! If you do it you’re in for a big (or more precisely, an

infinitely small) surprise. Hakuin says that “if we turn directly, and

prove our True Nature,/ That true Self is no-self,/ Our own Self is

no-self,/ We stand beyond ego and past clever words./ [ZW]

But if there is no self, why then does Buddhism, and even Zen itself,

sometimes talk of a self? According to Hui-neng it’s not because though

there is no “little self” there is a “Big Self.” It’s not because though

there is no “lower self,” there is still a “Higher Self.” He sticks with

the basic Buddhist view, “No Self” (anatta), but points out that “in

order to liberate people, the self is provisionally defined.” [SH 125]

We can give the self some slack for a while. In the end, though, we have

to shoot it down. Dogen puts it as follows: “To study the Buddha is to

study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the

self is to be actualized by myriad things.” [GK 36] This is from the

“Genjo Koan,” a brief text that is Dogen’s most famous one. We find our

self by forgetting the self.

Our enlightenment comes from everything we experience, the Ten Thousand

Things. Hit the road!

II. Killing the Buddha: Zen’s Assault on Authority

Some people think that the exalted place in Zen practice accorded to the

teacher or master proves that Zen is “authoritarian.” Not to mention

that the poor student sometimes gets whacked with a stick.

Sado-masochistic authorirtarianism, no less! No doubt Zen can decline

into a cult of personality, but it to the extent that it follows its own

path of the awakened mind, it is radically and uncompromisingly

anti-authoritarian and anarchistic. Neither Shakyamuni Buddha nor any

Buddha, Boddhisattva or arhat, much less any master, guru or teacher has

the least authority over anyone. As Shakyamuni himself said, we have to

“work out our own salvation with diligence” rather than relying on him

or anyone else as an authority. No gurus, no saviors. Hui-neng points

out that “scripture clearly says to take refuge in the Buddha in

oneself, not to take refuge in another Buddha,” [SH 40] and Hakuin

echoes this, saying, “Outside us, no Buddhas./ How near the Truth, yet

how far we seek!/ Like one in water crying, ‘I thirst.’” [ZW]

Open Road

The most sustained and most notorious Zen assault on all forms of

authority is found in Lin-Chi, the founder of Rinzai, the most overtly

anarchic branch of Zen. For Lin-Chi, “things like the Three Vehicles and

the twelve divisions of the scriptural teachings — they’re all so much

old toilet paper to wipe away filth. The Buddha is a phantom body, the

patriarchs are nothing but old monks... If you seek the Buddha, you’ll

be seized by the Buddha devil. If you seek the patriarchs, you’ll be

fettered by the patriarch devil. As long as you seek something it can

only lead to suffering. Better to do nothing.” [ZT 47] Doing nothing [wu

wei] is the famous Daoist concept for natural action, action in accord

with Dao, action in which we freely follow our own way and allow other

beings to do likewise. Zhuangzi, the great anarchic Daoist sage,

compared it to “riding on the wind.”

To do this, we have to free ourselves from our heavy load of karma, that

is, the mental formations, habits, prejudices, filters of experience

that are the poisonous legacy of our past egoistic strivings for

domination. A lot of the burden consists of images of external

authorities — gods and other higher beings, leaders and experts,

teachers and gurus, sacred scriptures and other revered documents — that

we use as panaceas to avoid confronting our own experience and solving

our own problems. Lin-Chi says “Get rid of all of them!” As Laozi (the

great donothingist) said, the wise person can travel very far without

taking along any baggage! (Maybe just a roll of old toilet paper!)

So then Zen says we should look away from the world and all external

authorities, and turn inward to find our source of authority? Far from

it! We need freedom from both internal and external authorities and

principles. After all, all those external authorities control us only

because they take on the form of a powerful image within our mind. So

Lin-Chi says, “Whether you’re facing inward or facing outward, whatever

you meet up with, just kill it! If you meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha.

If you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch. If you meet an arhat, kill

the arhat. If you meet your parents, kill your parents. If you meet your

kinfolk, kill your kinfolk. Then for the first time you will gain

emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely

anywhere you wish to go.” [ZT 52] If we kill all these dominating

authority-figures (images or figurations within consciousness), then we

can experience the reality behind the image, the reality of mind, the

reality of beings.

Lin-Chi exhorts the “Followers of the Way” not to “take the Buddha to be

some sort of ultimate goal. In my view he’s more like the hole in a

privy.” [ZT 76] This (like the toilet paper remark) is a typical Zen

comment, and should always be looked upon as is a form of highest

praise. The hole in the donut may be relatively useless, but some holes

serve a very important practical purpose. Lin-Chi is harsher with

boddhisattvas and arhats, who are dismissed as “all so many cangues and

chains, things for fettering people.” [ZT 76] The point may beto

emphasize the fact that only the free, awakened mind (“Buddha”) is

beyond being turned into a new source of subjection and bondage. The

Buddha is just the hole through which all the old shit (“die alte

Scheisse,” as someone called it) passes when we relieve ourselves of it.

So where should we look as our source of authority. To ourselves, of

course — and since there’s no self, that means we should look nowhere.

“Do you want to get to know the patriarchs and the Buddhas? They’re none

other than you, the people standing in front of me listening to this

lecture on the Dharma!” There’s a bit of irony in lecturing the Buddha

on the Dharma! But what’s really absurd is all these Buddhas running

around looking for gurus to give them the truth. “Students don’t have

enough faith in themselves, and so they rush around looking for

something outside themselves.” [ZT 23]

Nothing outside, nothing inside.

Stone Buddhas

Another reproach, similar to the charge of authoritarianism, that is

sometimes leveled against Zen is that it is ritualistic. Zen sometimes

appears ritualistic for the very good reason that it has a lot of

rituals. But it must also be seen as the most scathing attack on all

forms of ritualism. Hui-neng did the best job of demolishing this

distortion of Zen. For Zen, a central problem with rites and rituals is

that they easily fuel what Hui-neng calls the “religious ego”: the

condition of those “who understand and practice yet entertain a sense of

attainment, producing a self-image.” [SH 93] None, he says, can attain

“great liberation” as long as they cling to this ego that constantly

gazes at itself in a spiritual mirror, admiring all the layers of merit

collecting on the sacred self. A consciousness very similar to that of

the political militant who glories in possessing the correct line, the

sacred sectarian truth.

Hui-neng also shows how some people confuse sunyata, the emptiness of

all things, including the mind, with the need to turn the mind into a

vacant lot. They assume that when all the greater and lesser vehicles

are on the road, wheels turning, the parking lot of the mind is finally

vacant. But Hui-neng attacks this as the “wrong view” of those “deluded

people who sit quietly with empty minds, not thinking of anything

whatsoever, and claim this is greatness.” [SH 17] He doesn’t say that

this kind of practice is necessarily a bad thing, but rather that we

shouldn’t take it for “the essence of Zen” or as an occasion for great

spiritual pride at having the emptiest mind on the block. It’s a bit

like the well-rounded individuals who do a bit of hatha yoga at the Y,

but never suspect that there could be a yoga of diligent study,

compassionate action, and selfless devotion.

Hui-neng also notes the problem of making a fetish out of zazen or

sitting meditation. There are, he says, “confused people who sit in

meditation fanatically trying to get rid of illusion and do not learn

kindness, compassion, joyfulness, equanimity, wisdom, and expedient

skills.” These people are “like wood or stone, without any function,”

and “are called nonthinking.” [SH 93] Hakuin learned the same truth from

his “decrepit old teacher” Shoju Rojin, who said of the Zen monks of his

time: “What are you really like? I’ll tell you. Large sacks of rice,

fitted out in black robes.” [ET 15] Sort of like the dummies at the end

of “Zero for Conduct.”

Zen offers us a double-edged sword. One edge is the Buddha-killing edge

for slaying those Buddhas, patriarchs, traditions, rituals, and revered

texts that would enslave us for the name of our own liberation. The

other edge is the killing-Buddha edge that cuts in the opposite

direction. For those Buddhas, patriarchs, rituals and texts that might

enslave us, once slain with the uncutting sword of non-discrimination,

can help us annihilate everything else we hold dear.

Nothing is spared in this massacre — Lin-Chi, who said to “Kill the

Patriarch if you meet him on the road” was himself a patriarch.

III. The Koan: Entering the Jetstream

Let’s enter the weird world of Mondo Zendo. OK, so what is the sound of

one hand clapping? Struggling with such a koan (Japanese), kungan

(Chinese), or kongan (Korean) is central to Zen practice, particularly

in the Lin-Chi or Rinzai tradition, the lightening-mind school. It’s a

daunting task for the beginning student of Zen: hand to hand combat with

King Kongan, the million pound gorilla.

The Death of Dog

“A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have a Buddha Nature?” Joshu said,

“Mu!” This great Zen master didn’t seem to know that the correct

Buddhist answer is “yes,” since all sentient beings have a Buddha

Nature. Shibayama Roshi says that “although literally ‘Mu’ means No, in

this case it points to the incomparable satori which transcends both yes

and no, to the religious experience of the Truth one can attain when he

casts away his discriminating mind.” [ZC 21] But even as he betrays the

secret of Mu, Shibayama Roshi tricks the reader. For if “Mu” transcends

both yes and no, it will also transcend “any religious experience of the

Truth,” which it will brutally murder along with the various Buddhas and

Patriarchs that Shibayama says we slay with the Great Sword of Mu. And

when we cast away the discriminating mind, don’t we cast a

discriminating eye on everything we see, including the works of Mumon

and Shibayama Roshi?

Shibayama himself later says that while we are conceptualizing

“transcending both yes and no,” the “real ‘Mu’ is lost forever.” [ZC 22]

Another monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have a Buddha Nature?” Joshu said,

“U!” Yes! Had Joshiu then decided to come down on the side of spiritual

correctness? Not while the sound of “Mu” is still echoing in the

background.

Does a dog ever appear in this koan? Give it a bone!

The Resurrection of the Cat

At Nansen’s temple the monks of the East Hall and the monks of the West

Hall were arguing about a cat. The nature of their dispute has not been

passed down. But who knows? Maybe it was “Does a cat have a Buddha

nature?” Or perhaps even more pertinently, “Do mice have a Buddha

nature?” Anyhow, Nansen came in, held up the cat, and said “Say

something and I won’t kill the cat! If you can’t say anything, I’ll kill

it!” None of them could figure out what Nansen wanted them to say, so he

killed the cat. Apparently these monks were better at disputing how many

fleas can dance on the back of a cat than they were at acting. The next

evening, Joshu returned to the temple. Nansen greeted Joshu, telling him

what happened with to the poor cat (and to the really poor monks).

Nansen asked Joshu if he could have saved the cat. Joshu took off one of

his sandals, put it on his head, turned around and walked out. Nansen

said, “If you had been there, you would have saved the cat!”

Joshu’s action was a totally spontaneous, right? His lightening Zen mind

was not disturbed by mere logical reasoning. How Zen it is! Or was there

actually an underlying logic? The logic of reversal. To act by not

acting. To say something by saying nothing. The sandal’s place is

reversed, from the toe to the head. Things are turned heals over head.

Joshu puts Nansen in the place of the cat. Where was Nansen’s

compassion? Joshu puts himself in the place of Nansen, who has been

placed in the place of the cat. Mumon alludes to all these reversals:

“Had Joshu only been there,/He would have taken action,/ Had he snatched

the sword away,/ Nansen would have begged for his life.” [ZC 109]

Shibayama suggests that the monks were engaging in “speculative

religious arguments.” [ZC 110] Something similar to the speculative

political arguments of today, though with the internet, political monks

from east, west and every other direction can now join together to

dissect cats in a million different ways. Albert Low notes that it is

said that “the sword of prajna” that Nansen used to kill the cat is “a

sword that cuts not in two but in one.” [WG 112] Maybe it should be said

that it cuts into none! It’s the magical sword that uncuts!

The blade that uncuts us from the cat, and from everything else.

Yo Mama A Shit Stick

“The Buddha is a Shit Stick.” “Yo Mama a Shit Stick.” The one koan with

a clear solution. But Zen never lets us take the easy way out. Let us

investigate further.

“A monk asked Unmon, ‘What is Buddha?’ Unmon said, ‘A shit-stick!’

(Kan-shiketsu)” (161) There have been a lot of theories about the

intriguing question of the exact nature if this famous shit stick.

Shibayama says it may have been “a bamboo tool used in ancient China to

pick up and take away feces from the road.” [ZC 161] Apparently if you

meet the feces on the road you don’t kill it, you carry it away. Get the

picture? Catch bullshit at four. Serious Zen practice. Somebody has to

do it and very few are interested.

Shibayama says that “for Master Unmon, here, the whole universe was a

shit-stick.” [ZC 161] Right, we’ve all had days like that. But no, he

means that there is “no room for such an idle distinction as dirty and

clean.” [ZC 161] However, as true as this might be it’s also a bit too

obvious. Shibayama warns that the koan’s aim of awakening should never

be subordinated to the quest for a reasonable or ingenious response. On

the other hand, he adds that the shit-stick has “another role to play”

that can’t be overlooked: it “roots out any possible preoccupation in

the student’s mind such as ‘virtuous Buddha, inviolable holiness’ and

the like.” [ZC 162]

Whatever else it might be, the shit-stick is a cure for all kinds of

Holy Shit.

If It Ain’t Fixed, Break It

And nothing is fixed! The famous master Hyakujo wanted to find an abbot

for a monastery. He put a pitcher on the floor and asked what it was,

adding, “Don’t say it’s a pitcher.” Some of the smarter monks came up

with smart things to say. Then Isan the cook came up and kicked it over,

breaking it. Bingo! Isan got to be abbot. The moral of this story: The

urge to destroy a pitcher is a creative urge also. Which doesn’t mean

that we can achieve an awakened mind if we kick over a pitcher every

time we see one. It’s been done!

Commenting on this famous koan, Shibayama says that the “natural and

free working flowing out of true Zen spirituality” should never be

confused with “unusual or eccentric behavior with a stink of Zen.” (287)

Isn’t this true of all behavior that “reeks of anarchy.” How free from

arche is it really? Is it free from the arche of reactive rebellion? Is

it free from the arche of egoistic accumulation? Is it free from the

arche of self-righteousness?

The real problem is not how to kick over a pitcher, but how to tear down

that deceptive pitcher of the ego.

The Wisdom of Absurdity

So is it perfectly clear now? Do I have to draw a pitcher? If it’s not,

here are two more strong hints from some of our compassionate teachers.

Hui-neng, very early in the history of Zen, generously gives away much

of the secret of the “inscrutable” responses of Zen. Zen mind is

basically dialectic in action, training the mind to practice

spontaneously in ones everyday life what some philosophers have merely

written about. Notice that Hui-neng recommends an explicitly anarchic

method, that is, one that subverts principles: “If people question you

about principles, if they ask about being, reply with nonbeing; if they

ask about nonbeing, reply with being. If they ask about the ordinary,

reply with the holy; if they ask about the holy, reply with the

ordinary; the two paths are relative to each other, producing the

principle of the middle way.” [SH 72]

The first Western Zen master, Heraclitus, said much the same thing: “The

path up and the path down are one and the same.” So if they ask about

either path, the “opposite-way” response will show their identity.

Hui-neng might have added that if they ask about the middle way, reply

with the most radical extremes! So this is part of the sense behind the

nonsense. However as truly generous and compassionate as Hui-neng was,

he didn’t really give all that much away. He gave away free menus, but

he didn’t give away free food. For describing how it works is not the

same as releasing the spontaneity of consciousness that allows it to

work. It’s still up to us to work out our own spontaneity with

diligence.

Another helpful hint comes from contemporary Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

He says that “the response to the koan lies in the life of the

practitioner.” [ZK 57]. The koan is not a puzzle or riddle with one

correct answer that the student has to guess. The koan is aimed at

evoking, or provoking a certain state (or perhaps anti-state or

statelessness!) of consciousness. Thus of two responses that seem

formally identical one may be judged perfectly apt, another abysmally

wrong, the pretext for a compassionate whack on the head. The koan isn’t

a test question (fill in the blank mind?); it’s an opportunity to wake

up. Sometimes the sleeper doesn’t respond and needs a good dousing with

cold water.

The koan is this wakeup call. Wake up and live!

IV. Last Words

In many of the classic Buddhist and Zen texts it’s important to look at

the opening and closing words. Often the parts that seem at first to be

peripheral (dedications, salutations, etc.) convey some of the most

crucial messages in the entire work. Hakuin concludes his Zen 101 course

with two injunctions. First, he humbly begs his students to “overlook

once more an old man’s foolish grumblings.” And then he implores them to

“please take good care of yourselves.” Thus with his always focused,

ever-attentive mindfulness, Hakuin concludes with the essential

non-essence of Buddhism and Zen: non-attachment and compassion. [ET 103]

So go out and kill some Buddhas, and a have a really, really nice day!

References

Tanahashi, Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential of Zen Master Dogon

(Boston and London: Shambhala, 1999), pp. 35–39. [GK]

the Sokko-roku Kaien-fusetsu, translated by Norman Waddell (Boston and

London: Shambhala, 1994). [ET]

(New York: Grove Press, 1960). [MZ]

Zen Center (Rochester, NY: The Rochester Zen Center, N.D.)

www.digitalzendo.com

[ZW]

Heart Sutra, translation and commentary by Edward Conze (New York:

Vintage Books, 2001). [HS]

Commentary on the Diamond Sutra, translated by Thomas Cleary (Boston and

London: Shambhala, 1998). [SH]

Green (Boston: Shambhala, 1998). [RS]

Lin-Chi Lu. Translated by Burton Watson. (Boston and London: Shambhala,

1993). [ZT]

(Boston, Rutland VT, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Inc., 1995. [WG]

(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990). [PW]