“Caveats of Zen” by Wumen

Here’s my translation of the “Caveats of Zen” by Wumen.

This brief admonition for practice titled “Caveats of Zen” (禪箴, Chan Zhen, J. Zen Shin) is by Chinese Zen Master Wumen Huikai (1183-1260, J. Mumon Ekai) and is appended to his koan collection Gateless Checkpoint of the Zen Lineage (禪宗無門關 Chan Zong Wumen Guan, J. Zen Shu Mumonkan).  This is a genre of Zen writing especially popular in the 12^th and 13^th centuries in China and Japan, with such titles as “Caveats of Zen” or “Caveats of Sitting Meditation (Zazen).” The word 箴 (zhen, J. shin) has two primary meanings, first as “caveat,” “admonition,” “warning,” etc. and next as “needle” (either for sewing or acupuncture) or “probe” (in the sense of a “lancet”).  A similar but different genre is that of the etiquette, rules, or instructions (儀, yi, J. gi)  for Zen or Zazen, such as the well known example of Japanese Zen Master Dogen’s “Zazengi” (坐禅儀) and “Fukanzazengi.” (普勧坐禅儀). The “yi” texts are more in the line of prosaic “how to” instructions, while the “zhen” literature is more poetic in style and addresses the right view or frame of reference for Zen and sitting meditation (zazen). 

As we can see from the Chinese text below, Wumen's piece is constructed as eleven lines of eight characters for each caveat, followed by three lines of concluding admonition to make the effort put it into practice.

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“Caveats of Zen”

            Following the rules and protecting the regulations is binding oneself without rope. 

            Moving freely vertically and horizontally without obstruction is the nightmare army of the way of outsiders. 

            To preserve the mind and to purify it by letting impurities settle to the bottom in quiescence is the perverted Zen of silent illumination. 

            With unrestrained ideas neglecting the written records is falling into a deep pit.

            To be awake to awakening and not in the dark is to wear chains and shoulder a cangue.

            Thinking good and thinking evil are the halls of heaven and hell.  

            A view of Buddha and a view of Dharma are the two enclosing mountains of iron.

            A fellow who perceives immediately arising thoughts is playing with spectral consciousness.

            However, being on a high plateau in the habit of samadhi is the stratagem of living in the house of ghosts.

            To advance results in ignoring truth; to retreat results in contradicting the lineage.

            Neither to advance nor to retreat is being a breathing corpse.

            So just say, what steps will you take to do this?

You must now give birth to great effort to finish it.

[Zen] doesn’t teach eternal suffering or extra misfortune.

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Here's the original Chinese:

禪箴

循規守矩無繩自縛。

縱横無礙外道魔軍。

存心澄寂默照邪禪。

恣意忘録墮落深坑。

惺惺不昧帶鎖擔枷。

思善思惡地獄天堂。

佛見法見二銕圍山。

念起即覺弄精魂漢。

兀然習定鬼家活計。

進則迷理退則乖宗。

不進不退有氣死人。

且道、如何履踐。

努力今生須了卻。

莫教永劫受餘殃。   

Freedom and Liberty, from a "Green Buddhist"

What's the difference between a Green and a Libertarian? They both are advocates for freedom and liberty, but their framework for both is very different. For example, L/libertarians generally think that Ayn Rand "framed issues with refreshing clarity" when she wrote: “What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion…The issue is not slavery for a ‘good’ cause versus slavery for a ‘bad’ cause; the issue is not dictatorship by a ‘good’ gang versus dictatorship by a ‘bad gang. The issue is freedom versus dictatorship…If one upholds freedom, one must uphold man’s individual rights; if one upholds man’s individual rights, one must uphold his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness…Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life…”

This is not "clarity" but is instead merely framing a complex question into black and white. It does not take a genius at logic to see how completely muddied and confused this description of Rand's is. The most obvious problem is that this kind of individualistic definition of freedom completely ignores or glosses over the primary fact that no person exists as an individual and therefore the question of freedom can never be merely a matter of the individual. Rand's formula leads only to the dictatorship by the capitalists in an anarchical economic system of might makes right. A capitalist manipulating markets and creating advantages for the ownership class by government legislation is not exercising "individual" freedom, but is merely using power to infringe on the freedoms of others to their inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The primary delusion of this kind of individualist thinking is revealed in the equation of a person's individual rights with the an imagined "right" to own property exclusive of others. This is what the Jungian psychologist calls the return of the shadow. In a worldview of individualism, the shadow returns to enter our consciousness by being unable to distinguish between oneself as an individual and one's projections onto property, and in doing so, one actually becomes a slave to things, products, commodities, and property of all kinds, and thus in servitude to consumption and its capitalist priesthood, all in the name of the individual's rights and freedom.  This nearly irresistible impulse for the consumption of things as commodities is the shadow side of our individualism and floods our conscious thoughts and feelings by creating our identification with the things of an outside world. Without our conscious knowing, we project our individual identity onto things such as our cars, houses, families, etc. to make their acquisitions into trophies of our success as an individual.

Another example of the illogical positions of L/libertarians is found in the attitude toward taxes. While there are different shades and styles of L/libertarians, it is a common denominator that taxes are considered bad, unless they are used specifically for a program that the individual (L/l)ibertaian supports, such as the military.  In the website quiz asking "What Kind of Libertarian Are You" the third question shows narrow range of the attitude toward taxes:

What is your stance on taxes?

All taxes are theft, and no tax is morally legitimate

Taxes should be low, and should only fund the necessary functions of government

Taxes are a necessary evil, but we are in a fight for survival against Islamo-Fascism! We need a big military!

The only legitimate tax is a tax on unimproved land

There should be no taxation -- government should be funded voluntarily

This aversion toward taxes is also based on the one-sided view of an individual, as if the individual can exist outside of the networks of family, clan, tribe, nation, culture, and society.  The L/libertarian  war against taxes is nothing other than a war against the irrefutable recognition that we are all connected.

The goal of freedom and liberty as seen from the Green perspective is inherently social because it uses the context of ecology to recognize that justice is social, that we are all necessarily connected in the great web of life, and that none of us exists as an isolated individual outside of these living networks. Where L/libertarians see economics essentially as interactions between individuals, Greens see economics as community based.  Therefore, from this view, the Randian conception of freedom as merely an individual right is not only preposterous, but factually untrue.  Thus the individualistic idea of unending unregulated economic growth, either as an individual or a nation, as the measure of a healthy economy is delusional from the Green perspective which sees the measure of a healthy economy as it's sustainability and equity.

The goal of Buddha Dharma is freedom too. Not the freedom "to do what you want and the hell with everyone else," but the freedom, liberation, and emancipation of the mind to see the true nature of itself and be free from the fears and delusions created by the mystery of birth and death. While the Greens approach freedom from the primary standpoint of deep ecological interconnectedness, Buddhists approach freedom from the related standpoint of the interconnectedness of the causes and conditions of everything in the cosmos without externalizing either things or the cosmos, and such freedom is "measured" through the awakening of the person (as the word "Buddha" means an "awakened one"). Buddhism is primarily psychological, not ecological, as the Lankavatara Sutra says, “one’s own mind is the measure of manifestation.” (自心現量)  Though the deep psychology of Buddhism is very close to the deep ecology of the Green view. This deeply psychological orientation of Buddhism is why, on his death bed when he was reading the book Chan and Zen Teachings, First Series by Charles Luk, Carl Jung said that when he read what Zen Master Hsu Yun said, "he felt as if he himself could have said exactly this! It was just it!"

This recognition of the central role of the person's awakening is sometimes confused with the nihilistic individualism of the L/llibertarian view, but it is definitely not the same.   In Buddhism, the freedom realized through awakening brings us back to the immediacy of the social context not away from it, just like rain falls to the ground not up to space. In this metaphor it is the gravity of life that brings the awakened person back to the marketplace of social interaction as depicted in the final image of Zen's 10 ox herding pictures. 

In awakening, we see through the illusions of "the individual self" and have our own realization that all things are only the manifestation of Mind (which goes by many names such as Thusness, Emptiness, The Body of the Dharma, True Suchness, etc.), then we can say with Zen Master Linji, "That which is the Dharma is the Dharma of the Mind. The Dharma of the Mind is formless; it moves unobstructed through the ten directions and is seen functioning in front of the eyes." (法者是心法。心法無形通貫十方目前現用。)

If we stopped here, we could easily succumb to a nihilistic or absolutist idealism, however in Buddhism the awakened person gets up from the site of awakening (菩提場) and goes on to become a being of awakening, a bodhisattva (菩提薩埵) whose primary motivation is compassion for helping others with their sense of bondage and lack of freedom.  In this we can reclaim the foundational idea of "economy" from its usurpation by the ideology of individualistic neoliberal capitalism.  As Fred Kofman wrote, in an article referring to the 10 ox herding pictures, titled "Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands," even Adam Smith noted that an economy is based on the two primary poles of "benevolence towards others and self-interest." The neoliberal idealism of Randian L/libertarianism only sees one side of the polarity, that of self-interest, and they wholly ignore that "benevolence towards others" must have equal footing and impact in an economy for it to be healthy.  The L/libertarian usually rationalizes that self-interest will inevitably lead to an attitude that is benevolent toward others. The Buddhist sees that the selfless-interest of benevolence toward others is actually experienced by people as the more fulfilling kind of self-interest that actually produces the experience of happiness.   

The Value of Meditation as Implosion

We humans are very enamored of explosions.  We flock to displays of fireworks and to films with explosions. We spend billions on building better bombs and then finding ways to test them on or off the battlefield, and sometimes it seems we create a war just to have battlefield to test the next generation of exploding devices.  Most interesting to me personally, is that we have enshrined the explosion at the core--in the inner sanctum sanctorum--of our materialistic post-anthropomorphic creation myth of science and call it “the Big Bang.”

As I see it, our deep connection to explosion comes from the first stirrings of our sensory consciousness when we came into the world with the explosive force of birth and our senses met with the explosions of sound and color, sensations of heat and cold, being moved around in gravity defying positions, etc. Then, to make sense of this explosion of the senses, we sort through the dust storm of sensory data with a slow building explosion of mental distinctions and discriminations that separate, associate, and identify colors, sounds, touches, tastes, smells that becomes a mental explosion of the categorization of things. 

However, because we see the universe as the expression of an elemental explosion, as well as seeing our own consciousness as the most intimate explosion of awareness, we miss something equally as vital: for every explosion there is an implosion.   Because we are enchanted by the explosions of the senses that we perceive, we usually completely overlook that the perceptions are based on the actual fact of implosion: we receive sensory data,  Our usual conception of being a being in a skin bag looking out upon the external universe betrays the actual experience that our senses never “leave” our skin bag, and our “perceptions” never leave the mind.  We naively imagine in our materialistic construction of our worldview, that our senses go out of our body, that we see out into the world, but if we are able to see-through the enchantment of the sensory explosions, then we can note such insight as the fact that “light” is said to “enter” the eye and tickle the nerve cells in the retina that in turn tickle other neurons that they are connected to, which in turn tickle more neurons, until an explosion of neuronal waves of fireworks are swirling around within the grey matter of the brain that explodes in awareness of the outside universe.  But here’s the rub, in this materialistic worldview, this “outside universe” of physical matter is never actually “outside,” because it is completely contained in the grey matter as a mental construction or reflection of what has been imploded into the brain.  If we pay attention, we are forced to confront the idea that the universe is not exploding but is actually the implosion of how it all is received by our specialized sensory patches of skin to be recreated as the world within.

Here’s where Zen comes to the soteriological rescue.  In Zen meditation we “turn the light around” or “take the backward step” of awareness, so that from our usual looking outward at an evolving world, we turn to notice and be aware of this imploding nature of the universe. The technical Sanskrit term for this is asraya-paravrtti, “to turn around at the basis.”   Though it doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, this can be called “involution” in contradistinction to the usual view of “evolution.”  This training in asraya-paravrtti, as the turning around or involution of awareness to its own source, has been derisively called “contemplating one’s belly button” by people who don’t know any better and place great value in, and rest their self worth on, the outward show of explosions. 

There are many values of training and practice in sitting meditation (zazen), but the essential value is not in developing explosive force, but in the discovery of the implosive basis of awareness. While we are enamored and enchanted by explosions, we are also entangled by them in our relationships and killed by them in our interactions. The explosions of emotions are destructive to our personal as well as international relationships. We send drones to explode our perceived enemies and yet we refuse to acknowledge to ourselves as a people that we can’t really accomplish that goal without also exploding innocent bystanders. Likewise, this paradigm of international drama is also played our in our personal relationships, in relations of domestic violence where children become traumatized innocent bystanders, in our social and financial relations where people are forced to live in poverty, homeless, and without adequate health care, all because we are basing our social worldview on the perspective of people as beings who have exploded apart into separate entities competing with each other for the finite commodities of the. 

What sitting meditation reveals to us is that this worldview, of an exploding universe expanding into separate units flying apart from each other, is a myth, a false vision of what is actually happening right here and now.  This universe is also an imploding universe, condensing into mutual reflections of itself, revealing the absolute connectedness and unification of the universe, with our own mind and being seamlessly joined to each and every other node of awareness.  

Consciousness is not just the exploding evolution of awareness, it is equally the imploding involution of awareness. The value of meditation as implosion is that it opens us to the realization that awareness is only made possible by both its expansion and contraction, its explosion and implosion, and that this activity of expansion and contraction is the activity of the unified mind. This is why the toroid is the best simple model of conscious awareness as it represents both the exploding and imploding activities of awareness that form the shape of consciousness.*  The sitting meditation of Zen Buddhism, with its elegant simplicity, is the most effective way to come to terms, directly and personally, with this mutually expanding and contracting universe of awareness that we call mind.

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[Note *:  For the development of a more complex and comprehensive model for consciousness, elaborating from a simple toroidal model to a multi-faceted Mobius bottle model, see “Zen Theory: An Exploration of Space, Time, and Consciousness via the Cycle of Change Between Binary Opposites.” by Kigen William Ekeson available at his Zen Theory blog.]. 

 

 

 

 

Part 1 of The Treatise on Arousing the Faith of the Great Vehicle.

TREATISE on AROUSING the FAITH of the GREAT VEHICLE in a SINGLE SCROLL.

            Created by Bodhisattva Asvaghosa, and translated in the Liang dynasty[1] by Tripitaka Dharma Master Paramartha of Western India.

[OPENING ADORATION]

            Adoration to (namo) the Utmost One In The Ten Directions,

            To the Thoroughly Knowing One Who Conquers Karma.
            To the Sovereign One Unobstructed by Form,
            To the One Who Delivers the World with Great Pity.
            To the One Who Reaches the Essence and Characteristics of the Other Bodies (i.e., the 3 bodies of Nirmanakaya, Sambhoghakaya and Dharmakaya),
            To the Ocean of the True Suchness of Dharma-nature,
            To the Immeasurable Storehouse of Meritorious Virtues, and
            To the One Equal to the Cultivation and Practice that is According to Reality.

            May the multitude of beings be directed to get rid of doubts and renounce the grasp of perverted views, because by arousing the correct faith of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) the Buddha-seed is not cut off.

[THE FIVE PARTS]

            The Treatise says there is a Dharma able to arouse the root of faith in the Great Vehicle, and it is for this reason it must be articulated.  To articulate it, there are five parts.  What is said for the five?

            That which is first is the Part of the Causes and Conditions.

            That which is second is the Part of The Meanings Set Forth.
            That which is third is the Part of Explanations.
            That which is fourth is the Part of Faith in Mind and Cultivating Practice.
            That which is fifth is the Part of Exhorting the Benefits of Cultivation.

[ONE:] 

THE BEGINNING PART ARTICULATING THE CAUSES AND CONDITONS

            A question says, “What are there as the causes and conditions to then create this treatise?”

            The answer says, “Indeed, of the causes and conditions there are eight kinds.  What are said for the eight?

“That which is first, as the general characteristic of the causes and conditions, is because it actually designates what directs the multitude of beings to be free from all suffering and to attain the ultimate ease (i.e., nirvana) that does not seek worldly fame, benefits, or respect.

            “That which is second is because it is for the desire to expound the Tathagata’s meaning of the fundamental and to direct the various multitudes of beings to the correct understanding that does not deceive.

            “That which is third, is because it is for directing the multitude of beings with ripened good roots to the Mahayana Dharma that they do not retreat from their faith.

            “That which is fourth, is because it is for directing the multitude of beings with slight good roots to cultivate faith in the mind.

            ‘That which is fifth, is because it is for revealing the expedient means to alleviate the obstructions of evil karmic-actions[2], to well guard their mind, to keep at a distance foolish pride, and to come forth from the net of errors.

            “That which is sixth, is because it is for revealing the practice pair of quietude and contemplation (samatha and vipasyana) to control the transgressions of mind of the common people and those of the two vehicles.

            “That which is seventh, is because it is for revealing the expedient means of single-pointed recollection (smrti) to be born in front of the Buddha and necessarily be firmly settled and not backsliding from faith in the mind.

            “That which is eighth, is because it is for revealing the benefits and encouraging cultivation.

“As such, these are the categories of the causes and conditions actually used to make this treatise.”

A question says, “Possessed within the Sutras there is this Dharma.  Why should this be so seriously articulated?”

            The answer says, “Although within the Sutras there is this Dharma, in use, the roots and practice of the multitude of beings are not equal, and the conditions of their receiving and understanding are different.  It means when the Tathagata was in the world, the multitude of beings were keenly endowed, and the people with the ability to articulate the excellence of form, mind, and karmic-actions were completely of one voice in expounding the different types of understanding (i.e., liberation). Consequently, they did not need these treatises.

Supposing after the extinction of the Tathagata, perhaps there are in the multitude of beings some who are able to use their own power of listening extensively and they receive understanding (i.e., liberation); or there are in the multitude of beings some who likewise use their own power of listening a little and many of them understand (i.e., are liberated); or there are in the multitude of beings some who are without their own strength of mind and from the extensive treatises as a cause they gain understanding (i.e., liberation); and on their own, there are in the multitude of beings some who again and again use the writings of extensive treatises much as an annoyance, whose minds enjoy collecting and holding a few writings and by absorbing much meaning are able to receive understanding (i.e., liberation).

Thus is this treatise. Because it is for wanting to collect the infinite meanings of the Tathagata’s extensive and greatly profound Dharma, it is agreeable to articulate this treatise.

~The end of the part articulating the causes and conditions.

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[1]  Dates 502-557.

[2] The Sanskrit term karma, (Ch. 業) literally means action or activity but in the context of Buddha Dharma it refers specifically to actions that are volitional, i.e., directly related to the complexes of identity aggregated as the Fourth Skandha.  Therefore depending on the context, it is translated herein as “karmic-activity” or “karmic-action” to distinguish this type of volitional human action and activity from non-volitional actions and activities (e.g., Ch. 作, 為) such as the heart beat or knee reflex, as well as from non-human actions and activities such as a tree falling in a storm or waves eroding a beach. 

Related posts on Arousing Faith of the Great Vehicle: On the title; Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five.
[This post first posted 01/03/2016 Copyright (c) A. Gregory Wonderwheel 2016.]

On the title "Arousing Faith of the Mahayana"

 

"The Treatise on Arousing Faith of the Great Vehicle" is most commonly known by D.T. Suzuki's rendering of the title as Discourse on The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana .  Yoshito S. Hakeda's translation shortens the title to The Awakening of Faith.  The Sanskrit title is Mahayana-Sraddhotpada-Shastra, and the Chinese title is 大乘起信論 Dàshéng Qǐxìn Lùn. (WG: Ta-ch'eng ch'i-hsin lun).

In his essay “Wonhyo's Reliance on Huiyuan in his Exposition of the Two Hindrances,” A. Charles Muller writes in Note 8:  

In rendering the title of the Dasheng qixin lun as Awakening of Mahāyāna Faith, as opposed to Hakeda's "Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna" I am following the position put forth by Sung Bae Park in Chapter Four of his book Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment. There he argues that the inner discourse of the text itself, along with the basic understanding of the meaning of mahāyāna in the East Asian Buddhist tradition does not work according to a Western theological "faith in..." subject-object construction, but according to an indigenous East Asian essence-function 體用 model. Thus, mahāyāna should not be interpreted as a noun-object, but as a modifier, which characterizes the type of faith.

 

Of course, Hakeda took his lead from D.T. Suzuki’s rendering of “The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana,” but Hakeda himself seemed to be uncomfortable with the phrase “in the Mahayana,” and he shortened his English title to just “The Awakening of Faith” dropping off the problem of “faith in what?”   I agree with Park's argument that the frame of "faith in..." becomes problematic in reference to the Buddhist idea of vehicles as the vehicles or means of faith, not the aim or ends of faith. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the rendering "faith in the Mahayana" as long as we realize that it is faith in the vehicle, not faith in the Mahayana as a dogma of faith.  

Also, Park’s argument, via Muller, has some rationale for it based on taking the Chinese title 大乘起信論 as a reordered syntax of the Sanskrit Mahayana-Sraddhot-Pada-Shastra (mahāyānaśraddhotpādaśāstra).  But the Chinese title by Paramartha places “arousing” 起 (I prefer using "arousing" to that of “awakening” which is actually another Sanskrit or Chinese word) between “Mahayana” 大乘 and “faith” 信, which means, when viewing the term “Mahayana” as a modifier, that the term Mahayana would be directly modifying the type of “arousal” not “faith.” By Park’s and Muller's logic of separating arousal and faith, the title would be “Faith of Mahayana Arousing” and not “Arousing of Mahayana Faith.”  

So the problem with the title comes from the divergence of the Sanskrit or Chinese syntax and ultimately how to read the Sanskrit. That is, the syntax of the Chinese title takes the Sanskrit as “Mahayana Sraddhotpada,” while Park’s view takes the Sanskrit as “Mahayanasraddhot Pada.”  My current preference is to agree with Park only in so far as the title does not refer to faith “in” Mahayana, but then to follow Paramartha’s Chinese rendering of “Mahayana Sraddhopada” to read Mahayana as modifying both the “arousing” as well as the “faith”, thus rendering it as “The Treatise on Mahayana’s Arousing Faith” or “The Treatise on Arousing Faith of the Great Vehicle.”  The treatise is not referring to an “Awakening of Mahayana Faith” (ala Park and Muller) any more than to “Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana,” (ala Suzuki and Hakeda); but refers to Mahayana’s method or way of arousing faith in the true suchness of mind. As the Treatise states, "it is the characteristic of the True Suchness of mind that exactly shows the essence of the Great Vehicle." (是心真如相即示摩訶衍體)   So the title could, if somewhat loosely, be translated with a modern ring as “Arousing Faith Mahayana Style.”

 

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Related posts on Arousing Faith of the Great Vehicle: On the title; Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five.

[This post first posted 01/03/2016 Copyright (c) A. Gregory Wonderwheel 2016.]