SEEING INTO TRUE NATURE

A special transmission outside the sūtras,

not founded on words and letters,

directly pointing to the human mind,

seeing into nature and attaining Buddhahood.

These are the so-called Four Principles of the Zen sect, and are traditionally attributed to Bodhidharma, probably not correctly. The tenets do have ancient roots, however, and can be traced to a fifth or early sixth century commentary on the Nirvana Sūtra, slightly before Bodhidharma's time. The Nirvana Sūtra is associated with the T'ien-t'ai (Tendai) sect, and it was another six hundred years before the Four Principals appeared in their present form in a Zen text.

Questions remain. Dogen Zenji knew by his own experience that the Four Principles are not experientially authentic. In his usual trenchant manner, he declared that the essence of Buddhism has never been to see into one's own nature.

Turning an object and turning the mind is rejected by the

great sage. Explaining the mind and explaining true nature

is not agreeable to buddha ancestors. Seeing into mind and

seeing into true nature is the activity of people outside

the way. Set words and phrases are not the words of

liberation. There is something free from all of these

"Green mountains are always walking."

This is consummate freedom and is the hallmark of Zen, but it is freedom that arises from rigorous practice. It is not the indulgence of "anything goes." At the same time, explaining is not the way, at least not the Zen Buddhist way. The way involves jumps, not logical sequence. On reading that green mountains are always walking the logician will close the book.

Moreover, the way is not introspection. Some contemporary teachers go astray on this point and their instruction devolves into Jungian psychology or metta practices. Such disciplines can have important roles in the development of human maturity, and when appropriate the compassionate Zen teacher might refer students to good therapists or Vipassana teachers. But they won't learn much about peripatetic mountains.

Look at the following well-known case featuring Tung-shan Liang- chieh, venerated as the founder of the Tsao-tung (Soto) school:

A monk asked Tung-shan, "When cold and heat come, how can we avoid them?"

Tung-shan said, "Why not go where there is neither cold nor heat?"

The monk asked, "Where is there neither cold or heat?"

Tung-shan said, "When cold, let the cold kill you;

when hot, let the heat kill you."

Very clear. When it is cold, freeze to death. When it is hot, die of heat stroke. Didn't St. Paul or somebody like him say you must die to yourself? Die to the cold; die to the heat; die to the gecko, die to the thrush. But teachers shilly-shally on this point. Albert Low, teaching in Montreal in the line of Philip Kapleau, adds this parenthetical comment to Tung-shan's final riposte: "When you are cold, shiver, when you are hot, sweat!"

But Tung-shan didn't say that. He said "Die! Die!" Low then goes on to relegate Tung-shan's presentation to the realm of suffering, in fact the quotation heads his chapter on that subject.

Piffle. This case is not about suffering at all. It is not about understanding one's emotional reaction to pain. It's about temperature as one's great chance.

The story of Ma-tsu and Pai-chang taking a walk also involves pain, but again pain it not the main topic. The essential point centers on wild ducks and Pai-chang's realization (with a little help from Ma-tsu):

Ma-tsu and Pai-chang were taking a walk, and saw wild ducks

flying by.

"What is that?" asked Ma-tsu.

"Wild ducks," said Pai-chang.

"Where did they go?" asked the Ma-tsu.

"They flew away," answered Pai-chang. Ma-tsu twisted

Pai-chang's nose, and he cried out in pain.

"Why! They didn't fly away," said Ma-tsu.

The moral of both stories is only incidentally and superficially the way pain might prompt understanding. Tung-shan did not point to the human mind, nor did Ma-tsu. Pai-chang did not see into his true nature and attain Buddhahood. As D?gen says, "Set words and phrases are not the words of liberation." Moreover, in these and in all other genuine encounters they do not fit what really happens.

Another example would be the story about the Buddha looking out from beneath the Bodhi tree and noticing the Morning Star. Like his worthy successors who appeared a thousand and more years after his time, the Buddha certainly did not see into true nature and attain his Buddhahood. According to Mahayana tradition he exclaimed, "Now I see that all beings are the Tathāgata!" The star championed itself, and realizing this, the Buddha realized the other champions, and ultimately thought about his disciples and how they were probably dithering around in Benares and could benefit from his new understanding.

The star was certainly not some kind of trigger, as though the Old Founder's long maturation under the tree finally ripened, and with a glimpse of that pinpoint of light he broke through to Nirvana. Baloney! If I ever implied such a thing, it is still baloney.

Of course, settling into the practice is a requisite. Of course, inner quiet is a requisite. Of course, concentration is a requisite. "If you do not cut off the mind road, you will be like a ghost, clinging to bushes and grasses," as Wu-men has said. All this is the context, the frame, the temple of your work. But as Shaku Soen Zenji said, "Your body is not your body. It is part of the whole body of sentient beings." I presume to suggest to my teacher's teacher that it is part of the whole body of so- called insentient beings as well, including the green mountains.

William Stoever, professor of Liberal Studies at Western Washington University, had an interesting experience with a student that is relevant here:

Once, introducing "Buddhism" to a class, I went on as usual about Gautama Buddha's great discovery of the source of sorrow in the world, how to stop it; about the co-conditions of production (the causal theory of everyday experience); and about universal change, samasric ignorance, and the crucial doctrine of "no-self." Afterward, a student from Japan came up and said that he'd been in a Zen monastery for four years, and his roshi never said anything about any of that.

He didn't say anything about any of that, and yet we can be sure that he did. The Buddha's words underwent a sea change in the transition of his wisdom to China. The ultimately practical Chinese genius converted the descriptive to the presentational. The tradition got rewritten, but it remained tradition. Classical Buddhism says nothing about a star. "All beings are the Tathagata" are words placed in the Buddha's mouth a full fifteen hundred years after his time. The fundamentals remain, but they are seasoned. If that roshi said nothing about "No-self," you can be sure that he cautioned about forgetting the self:

To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be confirmed by the ten-thousand things.

This is "no-self" in the realm of scrubbing the kitchen floor. "Who is hearing the thrush? Who is hearing the gecko?" "What is Mu?" There you have the "co-conditions of production" to the max in the realm of putting away the mop.

So it goes. As Professor Stoever says, religion is "concretely embodied in the lives of people in particular times and places." Even Theravada Buddhism is not classical. It has its own evolution. Pace Sri Lanka. Pace Barre. Pace Buddhadasa.

Dogen's words too evolve in our own time. In his Genjokoan he enlarges on forgetting the self:

That the self advances and confirms the ten-thousand things is called delusion. That the ten-thousand things advance and confirm the self is realization.

We enlarge in turn. Naming things, identifying things, confirming things is "called delusion." Yet human culture is based on naming, and according to Judeo-Christian tradition the first human project was to name the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. We would not be what we are, Buddhist, Christian, or whatever, without advancing and confirming the ten-thousand things. However, for purposes of realizing what that "we" really is, Dogen says that going out to beings can be termed "delusion." The delusive assumption is that fundamentally there is an immutable self to go out.

There isn't. In facing Mu, Mu faces Mu. The green mountains parade along. I chant in the chorus of Benetictine monks in their cloister as I put on their CD. The ten-thousand things are all of them intimately involved, closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. Dogen didn't say all this, but I do.

-Robert Aitken 2001

posted 2000.04.03

updated 2004.02.27

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