SHIFTS AND CHANGES
Birthdays are occasions for recollection, reflection and anticipation. In this context the questions are, where do I come from as a Zen student? Where am I as a Zen student? Where am I going as a Zen student?
Ultimately I am a product of Dushun, Zhiyan and their colleagues in the eighth century Huayan school of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. The name Huayan means “Flower Garland” and is intended to suggest that the Huayan is the crowning glory of profound understanding.
The geniuses of the Huayan envisioned a dimension of interpenetration and mutual containment that ended up having a profound impact on all the schools of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. The Chan school was particularly affected. The earlier Buddhists were preoccupied with the bad karma they might earn if they broke the first precept to any extent, which meant that they couldn’t work at all for fear they would kill worms, ants, and even tinier brings. This meant that others had to break the precept for them. Compare the Chan view, informed by the Huayan that karma is interpenetrated by no karma.
A monk asked, “In cutting down plants, chopping wood, digging the earth and working the ground, do you think there would be any kind of retribution for wrong doing, or not?”
Baizhang said, “One cannot definitely say there is wrongdoing, nor can one definitely say there is no wrongdoing. The matter of whether there is wrongdoing or not lies in the person concerned—if he is affected by greed for anything, if he still has a grasping and rejecting mind and has not passed through the three stages, this person can definitely be said to be doing wrong. If he passes beyond the three stages and has an empty mind, yet has no concept of emptiness, this person can definitely be said to be blameless.1
Thus the old system was exposed as unnatural and unfair. Mahayana, the great vehicle, includes everybody, and challenges everybody to be free of “me and mine.” The ground is laid for engaged Buddhism. Here is Baizhang again:
Yunyan asked, “Every day we have hard work. For whom do we do it?”
Baizhang said, “There is someone who requires it.”
Yunyan said, “Why not let that person do it?”
Baizhang said, “That one has no tools.”2
Baizhang was born only 80 years after Dushun, one of the great founders of the Huayan, died. Moreover, according to tradition, Baizhang was one of 80 Chan contemporary fully fledged Chan masters who flourished all over China. This sudden appearance was a great shift in understanding that recapitulates the great shift that brought forth homo sapiens, when out of nowhere, it would seem, human beings were living in caves all over Europe, where none had lived before.
The time was right because it was made right. Dushun
and his colleagues were men of Bodhichitta, the compulsion to make real, who knew that all beings are the Tathagata, only their delusions and preoccupations keep them from realizing that fact. They faced squarely that heir separation from other beings in their demands that they be pure while others took on their impurity, and suddenly envisioned the jewel net of Indra, in which the great timeless and spaceless universes form a vast net, in which each of the numberless knots is a being that perfectly reflects and contains all other beings.
Baizhang and his many colleagues, plus two or three in an immediately preceding generation, were also dissatisfied men of Bodhichitta, and they were profoundly inspired by the net envisioned in the Huayan school, but they knew it was only a vision. They set about making it real and we continue their work to this day, and it will continue for the foreseeable future. This was a great shift in the evolution of Chan. There was one other great shift, when Chan had become Zen in Japan, the elimination of celibacy for the priesthood in the 13th century. One half of humankind had been excluded from the Dharma, and now humankind was a single body.
There were many other changes, all of them, like the great shifts, were prompted by dissatisfied men and women of Bodhichitta, whose unrelenting practice led them to face the delusion of the old views.
The many dialogues that were treasured in memory and tradition were brought together and catalogued in the 11th century. The cataloged dialogues were assembled teacher by teacher by teacher in the 13th teacher. Interviews between teacher and student became formalized at about this time, as did the study of dialogues become a curriculum.
All these changes came about with the practice of men and women of Bodhicitta who were dissatisfed with the old ways of realizing the Jewel Net of Indra and suddenly saw how to make it more clear.
We come now to our own times, when a successor of Harada Dai’un Rōshi became a female master of a monastery some eighty tears ago. With the move of Zen to the Western world the distinction between lay and clerical became diffused, and in the Diamond Sangha the only priests are former priests.
At this moment we are in the throes of another change. The Zen students interested in literature, art and music, and the literature, music and art affifianados who are interested in Zen are becoming one body. None of this is a mass movement, for there can be an almost unbelievably extreme lag. I once joined a noon meal with Buddhists at which the priest was served by others. They spooned his food into his immaculate metal plate while he did nothing, fearful that anything he did might kill microscopic beings.
Here at the Diamond Sangha we are at the forefront of the latest change. Tomorrow I resume my work of shelving books with Anastasia, the 11 year old daughter of Supiesi Lauaki, my head caregiver. I am endeavoring to bring the new change into being with the help of Roland Sugimoto, Supi and the other cavers, and Joan and Don Volk—and with the encouragement and the support of the Sangha.
The former living room of the Teacher’s Quarters is becoming a library and reading room. Quite a fine collection of books which hitherto has been inaccessible to the Sangha will line the walls. Buddhist images that have been in storage will be on display. Pictures that have not been seen since Koko An days will be seen again. A radio will be tuned to a station that plays classical music around the clock. After July I will lead a class in poetry appreciation, and I’m thinking about a lecture series.
Events will be scheduled when nothing is happening in the Zendo,
When lights are up across the way, our little dojo will be dark. In short, the Zen students interested in literature, art and music, and the literature, music and art affifianados who are interested in Zen are becoming one body.
Now in the spirit of the Dharma Assembly in which the master and srudents all have roles, please stand at your place and call out your question. Who would like to lead off?
NOTES
1 Thomas Cleary, trans., Sayings and Doings of Pai-chang: Ch’an Master of Great Wisdom (Los Angeles: Center Publications, 1978), P. 42.
2 Ibid.., p. 26.
-Robert Aitken 2009