Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

Abbinnalakshaṇaṁ cittaṁ vāsanaiḥ pariveshtitarṁ.

Malavad vāsanā yasya manovijñāna-sambhavā,

Pata-śuklopamaṁ cittaṁ vāsanair na virājate.

Yathā na bhāvo nābhāvo gaganaṁ kathyate mayā,

Ālayaṁ hi tathā kāya bhāvābhāva-vivarjitaṁ.

Manovijñāna vyāvṛittaṁ cittaṁ kālusbya varjitam,

Sarvadharmāvabodhena cittaṁ buddhaṁ vadāmyaham.

The Laṅkāvatāra, p. 296.

f154 Not an ordinary question asking enlightenment, but one that has a point in it showing some understanding on the part of the inquirer. All those questions already quoted must not be taken in their superficial or literary sense. They are generally metaphors. For instance, when one asks about a phrase having no shadow, he does not mean any ordinary ensemble of words known grammatically as such, but an absolute proposition whose verity is so beyond a shadow of doubt that every rational being will at once recognise as true on hearing it. Again, when reference is made to murdering a parent or a Buddha, it has really nothing to do with such horrible crimes, but as we have in Rinzai’s sermon elsewhere, the murdering is transcending the relativity of a phenomenal world. Ultimately, therefore, this question amounts to the same thing as asking “Where is the one to be reduced, when the many are reduced to the one?”

f155 This means Buddha who is supposed by Buddhists to have been the owner of a golden-coloured body, sixteen feet in height.

f156 Generally after a sermon the monks come out and ask various questions bearing on the subject of the sermon, though frequently indifferent ones are asked too.

f157 See the article on the “History of Zen Buddhism,” p. 149 et seq.

f158 For detail see “Practical Methods of Zen Instruction.”

f159 Cf. also “History of Zen Buddhism” where reference is made to the Northern and Southern school of Zen under the fifth patriarch in China.

f160 See for detail p. 177, “History of Zen.”

f161 According to Fariduddin Attar, A.D. 1119–1229, of Khorassan, Persia, Cf. Claud Field’s Mystics and Saints of Islam, p. 123 et seq.

f162 Underhill—Mysticism, p. 369.

f163 After this book went to the press, I have come across an old edition of the spiritual cow-herding pictures, which end with an empty circle corresponding to the eighth of the present series. Is this the work of Seikyo as referred to in Kakuan’s Preface? The cow is shown to be whitening here gradually with the progress of discipline. I may have an occasion later to reproduce this edition.

f164 See also a Sutra in the Anguttara Āgama bearing the same title, which is evidently another translation of the same text. Also compare “The Herdsman, I.,” in The First Fifty Discourses of Gotama the Buddha; Vol. II., by Bhikkhu Sīlācāra. Leipzig, 1913. This a partial translation of the Majjhima Nikāya of the Pali Tripitaka. The eleven items as enumerated in the Chinese version are just a little differently given. Essentially of course, they are the same in both texts. A Buddhist dictionary called Daizo Hossu gives reference on the subject to the great Mahayana work of Nāgārjuna, the Māhāprājñāpāramitā-Śāstra, but so far I have not been able to identify the passage.

f165 The ten pictures reproduced here were specially prepared for the author by Reverend Seisetsu Seki, Abbot of Tenryuji, Kyoto, which is one of the principal historical Zen monasteries in Japan. The original Chinese verses with their introductory notes are found in the Appendix.

f166 It will be interesting to note what a mystic philosopher would say about this: “A man shall become truly poor and as free from his creature will as he was when he was born. And I say to you, by the eternal truth, that as long as ye desire to fulfil the will of God, and have any desire after eternity and God; so long are ye not truly poor. He alone hath true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.”—(From Eckhart as quoted by Inge in Light, Life, and Love.)