40 YEARS OF THE DIAMOND SANGHA

This is a teisho to help commemorate forty years of the Diamond Sangha, and I suppose a backward look and a peep into the future might seem in order. Yet when I consider the occasion, I realize that we really don't have a beginning, and moreover even if the various sanghas and their network break up and our name is forgotten, we really won't have an end.

Of course, certain memories appear when I stop to reflect: Soen Rōshi salvaging clappers from a construction site near our first Koko An Zendo at Mo'omuku Place, and the thank-you card we all signed for Soen Rōshi after the first sesshin at the Kaloa Way zendo. On a whim, I drew an outline of Diamond Head on the top of the card (Diamond Head was visible in those days from our lanai), and wrote: "In grateful thanks from your students of the Diamond Sangha." "Oh," said the Rōshi, "That's a good name." I suppose that if someone sat me down with a tape recorder and asked questions, I could resurrect a great many other memories. I could evaluate where we stand as a sangha and a network and conjecture about the future. But all this would really not constitute a teisho. I'll leave those sectarian considerations to another time.

Today I should like to examine the nature of our practice. That is what really needs evaluating, not in quantitative terms, but in light of the perennial. As a keynote, I have chosen two cases from Zen literature, stories from the record of a poet who was also a master, Ta-lung Chih-hung (J. Dairyu Chiko). He is a relatively obscure figure. We only know that he lived deep in mountains of what is now Hunan province, probably in the ninth century, and that he was part of a far-flung community of teachers who were descended from Te-shan Hsôan-chien (J. Tokusan Senkan). He is remembered with just a few stories, but they offer a vivid sense of his character and realization. The first does not appear in our formal study, but is known to readers of Zen Dust:

A monk asked Ta-lung, "What is the 'minutely subtle?'"

Ta-lung said, "The breeze brings the voice of the water close to my pillow;

the moon carries the shadow of th mountain near to my couch."

The second is Case 82 of The Blue Cliff Record, a very similar story:

A monk asked Ta-lung: "The body of form perishes. What is the hard-and-fast Dharma body?"

Ta-lung said, "The mountain flowers bloom like brocade;

/ the river between the hills is blue as indigo."

Similar but not the same. I find the monk's question about the hard-and-fast Dharma body to be a little coarse. It was a black-and-white sort of query, and rather abstract. After all, is there any such thing as a hard-and-fast Dharma body? Ta-lung called the question into question, and showed the true world of the Dharma, with the ephemeral as the real and beauty as truth. Tao Yôan-ming would declare I am saying too much:

Plucking chrysanthemums along the east fence;

gazing in silence at the Southern Hills;

the birds flying home in pairs

through the soft mountain air of dusk--

in these things there is a deep meaning,

but when we are about to express it,

we suddenly forget the words.

There are many European and American poets who devote themselves to the deep meaning of natural phenomena--I suppose Wordsworth would be the one who first comes to mind. But there is an overlay of thought in almost all of Wordsworth's poetry, which eventually smothered it. It is John Clare who consistently sets forth the "the light of things" without a trace of explication.

Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain

And tittering tottering sideways he near got straight again

He stooped to get a worm and look'd up to catch a fly

And then he flew away e're his feathers they were dry

Little trotty wagtail he waddled in the mud

And left his little footmarks trample where he would

He waddled in the water pudge and waggle went his tail

And chirrupt up his wings to dry upon the garden rail

Little trotty wagtail you nimble all about

And in the dimping water pudge you waddle in and out

Your home is nigh at hand and in the warm pigsty

So little Master Wagtail I'll bid you a 'Goodbye'

Anne Barton relates how Wordsworth would walk with the family dog, declaiming his poems in a loud voice that frightened the cows to the distress of the farmers, while the dog enthusiastically routed birds and animals on their path. Little trotty wagtail would be long gone and never missed. Self- preoccupation does not give the wind and the stars and the wagtail a chance to make their case. Neither does the romantic cast of mind, so prevalent in Chinese poetry. Li-po is a prime example:

Athwart the yellow clouds of sunset, seeking their nests under the city wall,

The crows fly homeward. Caw! Caw! Caw! they cry among the branches.

At her loom sits weaving silk brocade, one like the Lady of Ch'in Ch'ôan;

Their voices come to her through the window with its curtains misty-blue.

She stays the shuttle, grieving, she thinks of her distant lord;

In the lonely, empty room, her tears fall like rain.

Even Tao Yôan-ming is self-preoccupied sometimes, worried about his health and his career, and finding solace in wine. Clare too shares his miseries with us in verse. But they never smothered the caw of the crows with romance. "Caw! Caw! Caw!" That would have been the message of any poem they might have titled "Crows Cawing at Nightfall."

Moreover, the monk who asked about the "minutely subtle" would probably not find noetic significance in Li-po's simile of a lady weeping about her distant lord. I imagine that he was an old-timer in the practice, in tune with a subtle teacher. He was also creative and unconventional, for his question is not the kind of stock query you find over and over in Ch'an literature. I do not find his term, "minutely subtle," wei-miao (mimyo) in my directory of major kōan collections, though it certainly is current in other Ch'an and Zen literature, and is the familiar "minutely subtle" in our gatha, "On Opening the Dharma."

The Dharma, incomparably profound and minutely subtle,

is rarely encountered, even in hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas;

we now can see it, listen to it, accept and hold it;

may we completely realize the Tathagata's true meaning.

This gatha is attributed to the Emperess Wu Tse-t'ien, who reigned from 685-704 and was a patron of the Hua-yen school of Buddhism. It was recited in all Chinese Buddhist schools down through the centuries, and is today the gatha that precedes the master's teishō both the Soto and Rinzai traditions. It seems likely that it was recited in Ta-lung's monastery, and the monk picked out the term for his inquiry, while his colleagues simply repeated the words by rote. Indeed, his question comes in the context of an extended mondo which included questions about the Buddha and the Sangha, so the effect was an exchange about the Three Jewels. "Minutely subtle" would be a metaphor for the Dharma which at the same time identifies its nature. Thus the monk would be asking, "What is this "'minutely subtle" Dharma?'"

Miura Isshu and Ruth Sasaki translate wei-miao as "the mysterious." This is all right, but it carries an occult overtone. D.T. Suzuki translates it as "exquisite." This too is all right, but it's a bit dainty. The Dharma is of this world and of the earth earthy, of the air airy, of the rain wet. "Minutely subtle" is the literal translation of wei-miao, and when in doubt that's the kind of translation I choose.

I imagine that the monk sensed what the "minutely subtle" might be, but wanted his teacher's view. His question was intimate; and Ta-lung's response presents the movement of intimacy. "The wind brings...The moon carries..." I dare say that his words did not seem a non-sequitur to the monk, whereas his response to the question about the hard-and-fast Dharma probably seemed out of left field, as Yôan-wu suggests in his T'ang period fashion. Poetical teachers will in time bring forth the poetry in their students.

This is the ore to be refined: from the crude to the subtle and beyond, from belittling to awe, from grim certainties to good-humored insecurity, and most of all from isolation to intimacy. When this refinement is our focus, exploitive teachers and exploitive systems are seen for what they are, and rejected, and the daily misunderstandings and disagreements that seem so important in the moment will fade away. It will be the shadow of the mountain, coming closer and yet closer as the moon sets at midnight, that will Ta-lung to our hearts "The myriad things advance and confirm the self."

Here is another example from Chinese poetry of nature advancing to the quiet one:

A cricket chirps and is silent;

The guttering lamp sinks and flares up again.

Outside the window, evening rain is heard.

It is the banana plant that speaks of it first.

First the sound of pattering on the banana leaves, then on the roof. Nearer and nearer, more and more intimate.

Robert Bly, in his astute study News from the Universe, traces a change in European and then American poetry from the cerebral that found nature defective and only human beings divine to the writings of European poets for whom human consciousness became transparent and the personality a frame for the integrity of nature to shine through. In this hall of honor we find William Blake, G*rard de Nerval, Friedrich Hâlderlin, Novalis, and Goethe, then such early twentieth century poets as Rilke, and the Americans Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and many others. Contemporary poets such as Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Thomas McGrath, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth and again many others carry this stream of intimacy further, drawing on their present-day surroundings in keeping with a newly found Eastern heritage, cultivating the left side of human awareness, and respecting what Bly calls "night intelligence." Here is an excerpt from Rexroth's "The Signature of All Things," which Bly places at the head of his selection of the most modern, which are, at the same time most closely in tune with Asian sensibility:

Deer are stamping in the glades,

Under the full July moon.

There is a smell of dry grass

In the air, and more faintly,

The scent of a far off skunk.

As I stand at the wood's edge,

Watching the darkness, listening

To the stillness, a small owl

Comes to the branch above me,

On wings more still than my breath.

When I turn my light on him,

His eyes glow like drops of iron,

And he perks his head at me

Like a curious kitten.

I have written earlier about my experience at San Juan Ridge, where Gary Snyder established the Ring of Bone Zendo so long ago. If I sat completely still for a long time, and came back to that same spot day after day and sat completely still, deer and smaller creatures would begin to show themselves to me, and even bring their young ones by.

Our contemporary culture mysteriously unfolds and makes possible such perennial experience, even in a setting of electronic seductions and diplomacy by the bomb. It appears here in new poetry, and there with newly introduced zazen. Rexroth did not come forth in the nineteenth century, the Diamond Sangha did not emerge until 1959.

Let's count our blessings. By a miracle of confluences you and I were born human beings. By a miracle of confluences we have encountered the Buddha Dharma. We have this chance to sit quietly day after day in the same place, to open the space for deer and other small creatures to confirm who and what we are, for the breeze to bring us the sound of the water to confirm us, for the moon to bring us the shadow of the mountain to confirm us.

The owl and the wind from the south and the moon convey the minutely subtle Dharma, they are themselves the minutely subtle Dharma, like the mountain flowers and the deep blue river. The sharp sound of the kyosaku on someone's shoulders, the surprise of the keisu as you arrange yourself for sūtras--these too are themselves the minutely subtle Dharma, advancing and confirming you.

This is not a matter of meditating on a precept. It is not a matter of entering the hara. It is not a matter of simply venerating the Buddha. It is a matter of establishing the space in quite a formal way. In the Zenrinkushu we find the lines:

Slant your cushion to hear the bell from I-ai Temple;

Roll up the blind to see the snow on Hsiang-lu Peak.

Poets from Alexander Pope to Robert Lowell have been oblivious to such a lesson, while John Clare and Kenneth Rexroth and many between and after have known it instinctively and cultivated it daily. It is a lesson for us as well. The Diamond Sangha offers a particular way to slant the cushion, and strong encouragement to roll up the blind. It is an exacting, yet quite natural path to the most important fact in the world: set forth beautifully in the Ts'ai-ken tan:

The chattering of birds and the humming of insects are secrets imparted to the heart-mind. There is not a petal of a flower or a blade of grass that does not configure the Way.

Note: This essay was first published in Mind Moon Circle, journal of the Sydney Zen Centre. Diacriticals, italics, and endnotes do not always survive the posting process.

-Robert Aitken - 2000

posted 2000.04.03

updated 2003.03.23

pau