Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

f92 As one can readily see, this story is more or less fictitious. I mean Kuang’s standing in the snow and cutting-off of his arm in order to demonstrate his earnestness and sincerity. Some think that the snow story and that of self-mutilation do not belong to that of Kuang, but borrowed from some other sources, as Tao-hsüan makes no reference to them in his book. The loss of the arm was due to a party of robbers who attacked Kuang after his interview with Dharma. We have no way to verify these stories either way. The whole setting however is highly dramatic, and there must have been once in the history of Zen some necessity to interweave imagination largely with facts, whatever they may be.

f93 According to Hsieh-sung, the author of the Right Transmission of the Law, Bodhi-Dharma has here followed Nāgārjuna in the anatomy of Zen-understanding. For Nāgārjuna says in his famous commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, “Moral conduct is the skin, meditation is the flesh, the higher understanding is the bone, and the mind subtle and good is the marrow.” “This subtle mind,” says Hsieh-sung, is what is secretly transmitted from the Buddha to his successors in the faith. He then refers to Chih-I of the Sui dynasty who regards this mind as the abode of all the Buddhas and as the middle way in which there is neither unity nor multiplicity and which can never be adequately expressed in words.

f94 According to this, there must have been a special volume of sermons and letters by Hui-k‘ê, which were compiled evidently by his disciples and admirers before they were put down in writing and thoroughly revised by the author himself. In the case of Bodhi-Dharma too, according to Tao-hsüan, his sayings were apparently in circulation in the day of Tao-hsüan, that is, early in the T‘ang dynasty.

f95 Understood by some to be leprosy.

f96 In the Vimalakīrti, Chapter III., “The Disciples,” we have the following: “Do not worry about the sins you have committed, O monks,” said Vimalakīrti, “Why? Because sins are in their essence neither within nor without nor in the middle. As the Buddha taught us, all things are defiled when Mind is defiled; all things are pure when Mind is pure: and Mind is neither within nor without nor in the middle. As is Mind, so are sins and defilements, so are all things—they never transcend the suchness of truth.”

f97Hsin, is one of those Chinese words which defy translation. When the Indian scholars were trying to translate the Buddhist Sanskrit works into Chinese, they discovered that there were five classes of Sanskrit terms which could not be satisfactorily rendered into Chinese. We thus find in the Chinese Tripitaka such words as prajñā, bodhi, buddha, nirvāṇa, dhyāna, bodhisattva, etc., almost always untranslated; and they now appear in their original form among the technical Buddhist terminology. If we could leave hsin with all its nuance of meaning in this translation, it would save us from the many difficulties that face us in its English rendering. For hsin means mind, heart, soul, spirit—each singly as well as all inclusively. In the present composition by the third patriarch of Zen, it has sometimes an intellectual connotation but at other times it can properly be done by “heart.” But as the predominant note of Zen Buddhism is more intellectual than anything else, though not in the sense of being logical or philosophical, I decided here to translate hsin by “mind” rather than by “heart.”

f98 This means: When the absolute oneness of things is not properly understood, negation as well as affirmation will tend to be one-sided view of reality. When Buddhists deny the reality of an objective world, they do not mean that they believe in the unconditioned emptiness of things; they know that there is something real which cannot be done away with. When they uphold the doctrine of void this does not mean that all is nothing but an empty hollow, which leads to a self-contradiction. The philosophy of Zen avoids the error of one-sidedness involved in realism as well as in idealism.

f99 I.e., Tat tvam asi.

f100 There is however a variation from five years to fifteen years according to different authorities.

f101 These accounts, whether truly historical or not, concerning the controversy between the two leaders of Zen early in the T‘ang dynasty prove how heated was the rivalry between the North and the South. The Sermons of the Sixth Patriarch (Fa-pao-tan-ching) itself appears as if written with the sole object of refuting the opponents of the “abrupt” school.

f102 This is a constant refrain in the teaching of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras—to awaken one’s thought where there is no abode whatever (na kvacit pratishṭitaṁ cittaṁ utpādayitavyam). When Jōshu called on Ungo, the latter asked, “O you, old wanderer! how is it that you do not seek an abiding place for yourself?” “Where is my abiding place?” “There is an old temple ruin at the foot of this mountain.” “That is a fitting place for your old self,” responded Jōshu. Later, he came to Shūyūsan, who asked him the same question, saying, “O you, old wanderer! why don’t you get settled?” “Where is the place for me to get settled?” “Why, this old wanderer doesn’t know even where to get settled for himself.” Said Jōshu, “I have been engaged these thirty years in training horses, and to-day I have been kicked around by a donkey!”

f103 This is the name of the place where Hui-nêng had his Zen headquarters.

f104Hsing means nature, character, essence, soul, or what is innate to one. “Seeing into one’s Nature” is one of the set phrases used by the Zen masters, and in fact the avowed object of all Zen discipline. Satori is its more popular expression. When one gets into the inwardness of things, there is satori. This latter however being a broad term, can be used to designate any kind of a thorough understanding, and it is only in Zen that it has a restricted meaning. In this article I have used the term as the most essential thing in the study of Zen; for “seeing into one’s Nature” suggests the idea that Zen has something concrete and substantial which requires being seen into by us. This is misleading, though satori too I admit is a vague and naturally ambiguous word. For ordinary purposes, not too strictly philosophical, satori will answer, and whenever chien-hsing is referred to, it means this, the opening of the mental eye. As to the sixth patriarch’s view on “seeing into one’s Nature,” see above under “History of Zen Buddhism.”

f105 According to the Mahāparinirvāna-sūtra, translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha, A.D. 423, Vol. XXXIII., he was one of the three sons of the Buddha while he was still a Bodhisattva. He was most learned in all Buddhist lore, but his views tended to be nihilistic and he finally fell into hell.

f106 That is, from the idea that this sitting cross-legged leads to Buddhahood. From the earliest periods of Zen in China, the quietist tendency has been running along the whole history with the intellectual tendency which emphasises the satori element. Even to-day these currents are represented to a certain extent by the Soto on the one hand and the Rinzai on the other, while each has its characteristic features of excellence. My own standpoint is that of the intuitionalist and not that of the quietist; for the essence of Zen lies in the attainment of satori.

f107 W. Lehmann, Meister Eckhart. Göttingen, 1917, p. 243. Quoted by Prof. Rudolf Otto in his The Idea of the Holy, p. 201.

f108 In Claud Field’s Mystics and Saints of Islam (p. 25), we read under Hasan Basri, “Another time I saw a child coming toward me holding a lighted torch in his hand, ‘Where have you brought the light from?’ I asked him. He immediately blew it out, and said to me, ‘O Hasan, tell me where it is gone, and I will tell you whence I fetched.’” Of course the parallel here is only apparent, for Tokusan got his enlightenment from quite a different source than the mere blowing out of the candle. Still the parallel in itself is interesting enough to be quoted here.

f109 See the Essay entitled “Practical Methods of Zen Instruction.”

f110 The lightning simile in the Kena-Upanished (IV. 30), as is supposed by some scholars, is not to depict the feeling of inexpressive awe as regards the nature of Brahman, but it illustrates the bursting out of enlightenment upon consciousness. “A—a—ah” is most significant here.

f111 This is spread before the Buddha and on it the master performs his bowing ceremony, and its rolling up naturally means the end of a sermon.

f112Tou chi chia, meaning “the verse of mutual understanding” which takes place when the master’s mind and the disciple’s are merged in each other’s.

f113 It was originally a mosquito driver, but now it is a symbol of religious authority. It has a short handle, a little over a foot long and a longer tuft of hair, usually a horse’s tail or a yak’s.

f114 In the Chinese Notes I have added six more such verses which may further help the reader to gain an insight into the content of satori.

f115 This is one of the most noted kō-an and generally given to the uninitiated as an eye-opener. When Jōshu was asked by a monk whether there was Buddha-Nature in the dog, the master answered “Mu!” (wu in Chinese), which literally means “no.” But as it is nowadays understood by the followers of Rinzai, it does not mean anything negative as the term may suggest to us ordinarily, it refers to something most assuredly positive, and the novice is told to find it out by himself, not depending upon others (aparapaccaya), as no explanation will be given nor is any possible. This kō-an is popularly known as “Jōshu’s Mu or Muji.” A kō-an is a theme or statement or question given to the Zen student for solution, which will lead him to a spiritual insight. The subject will be fully treated in the Second Series of the Essays in Zen Buddhism.

f116 Another kō-an for beginners. A monk once asked Jōshu, “All things return to the One, but where does the One return?” to which the master answered, “When I was in the province of Seiju (Ts‘ing-chou), I had a monkish garment made which weighed seven kin (chin).

f117 He is the founder of the modern Japanese Rinzai school of Zen. All the masters belonging to this school at present in Japan trace back their line of transmission to Hakuin.

f118 Literally, “a great doubt”, but it does not mean that, as the term “doubt” is not understood here in its ordinary sense. It means a state of concentration brought to the highest pitch.

f119 Ganto (Yen-t‘ou, 828—887) was one of the great Zen teachers in the T‘ang dynasty. But he was murdered by an outlaw when his death-cry is said to have reached many miles around. When Hakuin first studied Zen, this tragic incident in the life of an eminent Zen master who is supposed to be above all human ailments, troubled him very much, and he wondered if Zen were really the gospel of salvation. Hence this allusion to Ganto. Notice also here that what Hakuin discovered was a living person and not an abstract reason or anything conceptual. Zen leads us ultimately to somewhat living, working, and this is known as “seeing into one’s own Nature” (chien-hsing). The Chinese Notes, [5.39].

f120 Kō-ans (kung-an) are sometimes called “complications,” (kê-t‘êng) literally meaning “vines and wistarias” which are entwining and entangling; for according to the masters there ought not to be any such thing as a kō-an in the very nature of Zen, it was an unnecessary invention making things more entangled and complicated than ever before. The truth of Zen has no need for kō-ans. It is supposed that there are one thousand seven hundred kō-ans which will test the genuineness of satori.

f121 Tsu-yüan (1226–1286) came to Japan when the Hōjō family was in power at Kamakura. He established the Engakuji monastery which is one of the chief Zen monasteries in Japan. While still in China his temple was invaded by soldiers of the Yüan dynasty, who threatened to kill him, but Bukko was immovable and quietly uttered the following verse:

“Throughout heaven and earth there is not a piece of ground where a single stick could be inserted;

I am glad that all things are void, myself and the world:

Honoured be the sword, three feet long, wielded by the great Yüan swordsmen;

For it is like cutting a spring breeze amidst the flashes of lightning.”

See Chinese Notes, [5.40].

f122 That is, sitting cross-legged in meditation.

f123 This lively utterance remind one of a lightning simile in the Kena-Upanishad (IV. 30):

“This is the way It [that is, Brahman] is to be illustrated:

When lightnings have been loosened,—

a—a—ah!