Falling Into Subject and Object Relationship.

Question:

     There’s a lot of Buddhist exegesis on subject-object but little on the subject-subject relationship. Yet the latter is far more interesting to contemplate. Our lives revolve around it.

My Response:

     Apparently, there is a difference in the use in language. What could a subject-subject "relationship" even be?  Without an object, there is no subject, and thus no "relationship," because there is no distance. If there is distance, then there is objectification and relationship between subject-object, also known as person and environment. 

     The thought that the object is also a subject, is a thought-reflection that creates a characterization of the object thereby imagined as a subject from it's own perspective. But engaging in a object that is labelled "subject" does not make the object into a subject for relationship purposes.  That is, we still don't know what the object is perceiving and we can never perceive through the conscousness of the other even if we call that other a "subject."

     "Subject" means the sense of foundation and centeredness to our awareness. "Subject" is another word for "self-centered" awareness, or self-consciousness. The emergence of the subject depends on the 6th level of thinking-consciousness (mano-vijnana) coordinating the 5 consciousnesses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch into a coherency pattern, as the palm of the hand coordinates the five fingers, then by the function of 7th consciousness (manas) that coherency is then directed to be reflected in the mirror of the 8th consciousness (alaya-vijnana) to create the appearance of a subject. 

     On realizing that this process is what generates the entire field of conscious awareness we can realize the one mind, and thereby we realize there is no self or subject that is objectified within mind and that everything is a manifestation of mind. In this way we realize that our one mind is simultaneously subjectifying and objectifying to create the field of awareness polarized as self and object that we call consciousness that depends on the perspective of the awareness that emerges. But once awareness emerges by the self-awareness process, there is always distance between subject and object, because awareness, like a whirlpool in a stream, always has a centering aspect to it which is what we call "subject." That one whirlpool of self-awareness can recognize that other whirlpools of self-awareness have emerged, i.e., that I can recognize you, does not change the fact that "I" is the subject and "you" are the object within the polarized field of awareness.

I refer us to Case 62 in the Zen koan collection Record of the Temple of Equanimity:

Raised: 

Mihu directed a monk to ask Yangshan, “People of the present time turn to the phenomenal in denial of awakening.”

Shan said, “As to awakening, it is not that there is none; the struggle is how to bear falling into the second head.”

The monk returned and raised it to appear to Mihu. Hu deeply agreed.

<> 

 

     No matter how awakened a person is, we always fall into the "second head" of subject-object relationship. This "fall" is like falling in love or the angle falling from heaven. The unawakened person has "fallen" into the second head of the polarized field without awareness that the field is polarized, and so they don't have to struggle to bear it. . The awakened person also falls into the polarized field of the "second head" but has the awareness of doing so, and because of this must struggle how to bear the awareness without regressing into unawareness.  This is the mystery of seeing every object as being simultaneously a subject in the one field that is neither mine nor yours, and engaging in every subject-object relationship as a subject-subject relationship where distance is an illusion of the field,

 

“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。   

Record of Transmitting the Light

I posted my translation of the cases and capping verses from Zen Master Keizan's Denkoroku~The Record of Transmitting the Light.   The translation is downloadable.
I'm still figuring out how this Academia.Edu website works. It is posted as a draft paper with a "session" open for comments for a month. I definitely will appreciate comments.  I have a particular (if not peculiar) translation style so I like to get feedback about what does or doesn't work for the reader.
You have to join and sign-up to view pages as Academia-dot-Edu, but it is free and not an intrusive process. You can sign up with google-plus, facebook or individual email.

Koans Are Not About Santa Claus

This essay is a reply to a talk titled “Dogen’s Use of Koans” by Griffith Foulk given on November 12, 2011, at the Bringing Dōgen Down to Earth conference held at FIU Miami.  The audio of the talk is available at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, Audio #124, http://audio.ancientdragon.org/20111112DT_ADZG_dogen2_griffith_foulk_koans.mp3 -

Though I am critical of Foulk’s perspective on koans that is presented in this talk, I do very much appreciate his willingness to present his views and make them available to the public like this.  The Dharma neither increases nor decreases, but discussions of the Buddha Dharma like this help to increase people’s awareness and realization of the Dharma.

Griffith Foulk is an academic scholar and my criticism of his approach to koans is centered on his academic orientation on “understanding” koans, as if that is what koans are about.  Zen koans are not created by scholars, not used by academics, not appreciated by pundits, and not realized by professors; they are created, used, appreciated and realized by Zen practitioners.  This fundamental distinction is lost in talks by academics who tell their audience as Foulk does that after a brief academic presentation “You will understand koans.”  The core error with this type of “understanding” is that it applies an inert doctrine as an overlay to a living koan and then claims to have established “understanding” thereby.  This is like saying you understand a dog because you know the name of its breed and the major anatomical features of the species.  This kind of understanding is so limited that it in no way approaches real understanding of this particular living dog. Likewise, Foulk in no way has approached real understanding of the particular living koans.

Foulk’s talk is titled “Dogen’s Use of Koans” and he attempts to bring Dogen’s use of koans down to earth by presenting a key to understanding all koans through the use of two primary doctrines of Madhyamaka analysis, that is, the doctrines of emptiness and the two truths.  Most of the talk describes his method of understanding koans as metaphors used in the context of teaching emptiness. 

Foulk begins by alluding to the fact that there is a common misunderstanding that portrays Dogen as not using koans. Foulk is quite correct that this view is erroneous and that Dogen did indeed use koans frequently in his writings and talks as a central teaching device and that Dogen even compiled a collection of 300 koans.  It is most unfortunate that in the first half of the 20^th century a legend arose within the Soto branch of Zen that Dogen was opposed somehow to koans.  It is amazing to consider how this legend grew independently of Dogen’s actual writings in which any plain reading must clearly observe Dogen’s abundant appreciation and use of koans.

In asking “What are koans?” Foulk also points out correctly that koans are not riddles as the term is commonly used and as koans are often misunderstood to be.  But then he refers to a koan and says, “When I’m done in ten minutes you’ll understand it,” which no one who seriously knows koans would ever say even in jest.  That a koan is not a riddle, i.e., a problem to be solved or guessed, doesn’t mean the opposite, that it is a locked box that can be opened simply by applying the doctrine of emptiness as a skeleton key to understand every koan.  .    

Foulk points out that because koans use striking imagery or irreverent non sequiturs that they are often thought of by some scholars as nonsensical statements intended to stop the workings of the intellect or to cut off discursive or dualistic thinking.  He dismisses this view as “totally idiotic,” because koans would not be around for over a thousand years if they were nonsensical.  But then he throws the baby out with the bath water and leaves aside the basic working of the koan: that even though the koan is not “nonsensical,” there is in fact a strong component to all koans that is intended to cut off dualistic thinking.  This is the soteriological “understanding” of koans whose purpose is to act as the ferry to cross over the ocean of afflictions by turning awareness around to its own source. This function of “turning the light around” is called in Sanskrit paravrtti and will be discussed further below.

On the question of the translation of the word “koan,’ Foulk says “The term ‘koan’ is often translated as ‘public case,’ but that also is not correct.” However, it is Foulk who is incorrect on this point.  The word koan as it has come into English is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word gongan composed of two characters gong (J. ko) and an (J. an). Foulk wants to make much out of the fact that gong means “public official, a magistrate or a judge” but he is just plain wrong when he says it doesn’t also mean “public” without the “official.” Chinese characters do not change form as English does when a noun is made plural, turned into a verb, or made into an adjective. So the term gong means both “public” and “public official” and the term gongan or koan means, depending on usage, either “public case” or “case of a public official.”  In the current usage within Zen practice, it makes much more sense to use just “public case” as the koan has become public and none of the players in koan are actually “public officials, magistrates, or judges” even though, as Foulk points out, they can be metaphorically imagined to be acting judicially.   This little detour into translation points just appears to be an attempt at scholarly one-upmanship. 

Next, Foulk presents some of the traditional contexts for koan use. He points out that in public meetings, a monk may come forward and ask about a koan or a teacher may raise a case on their own to comment on as part of their teaching.  Also a student may bring a koan into a private interview with the master.  However, at this point Foulk leaves out the most important aspect of current koan use in Zen practice today in those Zen schools that use koan inquiry, which is that in the private interview setting the teacher will raise a koan and present it to the student to measure or check the student’s realization.  This is the hub of all koan use, and Foulk’s omission or lacuna on this point says much about how he misperceives koans.

 The central point being made is the following: “Koans are not nonsensical. This is the point I want to stress. There is a standpoint from which they make sense and they’re perfectly logical. They do involve a lot of word play, punning, joking, metaphorical flights of fancy, but all of those are grounded in an understanding of the point being made.”   He concludes this analysis saying that “The meaning of any koan can be explained in logical philosophical language, but that’s not the rules of the game. The rules of the rhetorical game of commenting on them call for a rhetorical response in kind.” 

First, there are many different kinds of “understanding” and “logic” and Foulk seems to ignore that every understanding is based on its particular standpoint.  So koans may be “understood” from the standpoints of history, sociology, psychology, phenomenology, ontology, soteriology, etc., and even from a standpoint of Madhyamaka Buddology, but so what?  Of course there is a logical standpoint that can be overlaid onto koans to make them appear “perfectly logical” but does that really have anything to do with the function of koans or just with the analytical measuring tool that results in what is labeled as “understanding”?  

Koans are not “rhetorical games” and to call them such is to malign them just as much as one does by calling them “riddles.”  Why Foulk acknowledges that koans are not “riddles” but then calls them by the equally erroneous term “rhetorical games” is expressive of his scholarly approach in which nothing about koans is really understood, but the gamesmanship of the academy is front and center.  What Foulk misses is that the “logical philosophical language” that he uses to “understand” koans is after the fact of the koan itself and is merely a case of putting the cart before the horse.  Koans are about the horse, or the ox to use the more Buddhist associated animal, that is pulling the cart and not about the cart.  And focusing on the ox rather than the cart is not merely a rhetorical game; rather it is the essence of Zen itself and the factor that distinguishes Zen from all other forms of Buddhism that focus on the carts.  And it is the factor that Foulk has completely missed in this presentation.

Foulk would have people believe that koans are making points of Buddhist doctrine to be understood. This is wrong, but it is a nuanced error.  In its fundamental aspect, the koan represents a nexus or nodal point of awakening or potential for awakening.  Buddhism is about awakening and Buddhist doctrine when rightly understood is about the various paths to awakening. Therefore koans may be analyzed in terms of Buddhist doctrine because it is the function of Buddhist doctrine to analyze life in terms of awakening and koans are both about awakening and life.  But that analysis does not mean that the koan is understood, it only means that the doctrine applied to the koan is understood. There is a big difference between these two aspects. 

In other words, every koan has within it a presentation of some Buddha Dharma. Why? Because Buddha Dharma is about life and Buddha Dharma can be related to every aspect of life and koans represent life and thus also represent the Buddha Dharma of the life represented in the koan. 

I like the analysis that every koan can be understood through the multidimensional prism of the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  That is, every koan has a Buddha aspect, a Dharma aspect, and a Sangha aspect.  Foulk primarily focuses on the Dharma aspect and mostly ignores the Buddha aspect.  But more importantly, Foulk only focuses on one Dharma aspect, that of the Madhyamaka analysis of Emptiness and the Two Truths.  This is nothing other than a Buddhist version of philosophical reductionism.   

So how does this work for Foulk?  He compares Dogen’s use of koans with the Linji lineage Zen master Dahui Zonggao (大慧宗杲) (1089–1163), the most well known koan master of the time, as advocating focusing on the koan and “go into trance” to have a breakthrough experience.  The crassness of the term “trance” in this context is only understandable when one recognizes that Foulk has a pejorative view of koan practice calling it by the derogatory term “kanna zen.” He says Dogen did not advocate using koans as a device in mediation for a single moment of awakening and instead used koans in his teaching so that over a long period of time one would get a different point of view that could be called awakening.  Of course this ignores the fact that in his own life Dogen did indeed have a single moment of awakening, but whether it is Foulk or Dogen who is ignoring that Dogen had his own all important single moment of awakening is something to be left to another discussion.

Then Foulk takes up Dahui’s favorite koan and perhaps the most famous koan in the West, “Zhaozhou’s Dog.”  He relates the koan like this:

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Even in a dog, is there Buddha nature or not?” 

And Zhaozhou said “Wu” (or in Japanese “Mu”).

Foulk explains that saying “Wu” means “there is none,” so that Zhaozhou is saying the dog does not have Buddha nature which files in the face of standard Buddhist teachings that all beings have Buddha nature.  Foulk then says it can be explained like this: “To ask if a dog has Buddha nature is just like asking, ‘Does Santa Claus have a red suit?’”

From here, Foulk goes wrong.  He says that everyone knows Santa Claus has a red suit just like all Buddhists know a dog has Buddha nature, but that everyone knows that Santa Claus does not exist and so the red suit also does not exist, just like Buddhists know that a dog does not exist so the Buddha nature of the dog also does not exist. It seems to make no difference to Foulk that the non-existence of Santa Clause is a different order of non-existence from the non-existence of either the dog or Buddha nature. By ignoring this distinction between the two kinds of non-existence, Foulk is ignoring an important distinction of Buddha Dharma. 

When he says Santa Claus doesn’t exist in an ultimate sense, he is relying on Madhyamaka analysis and its two primary doctrines of Emptiness and the Two Truths.  He says that the doctrine of Emptiness is that there is no subjective being and no objective thing (dharma) as both are mere empty categories, and the doctrine of the Two Truths is that there is the conventional truth that beings and things exist and the ultimate truth that in its Emptiness no being or thing exists. Foulk then goes on to say “Emptiness makes all language defective.” 

The limitations of this flawed dualistic analysis of the Two Truths are what led to the Yogacara analysis of the Three Natures or Three Truths.  In this analysis, there is a significant difference between an actual living dog and Santa Claus.   While both the dog and Santa Clause have the constructed nature of conventional truth, that is, the constructed images of identity based on language, only the dog has the interdependent nature that can be petted, can retrieve a ball, can lick its master’s face, etc., and Santa Claus doesn’t, and only the dog has the fulfilled nature of its Buddha nature and Santa Claus doesn’t.  In other words, the dog is a living being and Santa Claus is not. It is the evidence of Foulk’s entanglement in Madhyamaka philosophical scholasticism rather than Buddhist practice that he does not recognize this living distinction between a dog and Santa Claus and instead says, “there is no such thing as Santa Claus or a dog.” 

Based on this faulty analysis, Foulk then asserts that this view of Emptiness and the Two Truths is the underpinning of all of koan literature.  He says that since all language is defective because it can only convey conventional truth and never ultimate truth, that a hit or a blow is more appropriate than even saying “Wu” because even the word “Wu” is defective as it too is language.  In this shallow analysis, Foulk makes himself appear completely ignorant about how the “hit” is used to communicate various meanings or messages, none of which are usually a message that “language is defective.”  In other words, the “hit” presumes as its context the understanding that language is limited within the field of duality and that the hit is effective to get around the usual distractions of duality, but that is the presumption for the context of the message, not the message itself. Foulk loses this point completely.

Again, Foulk takes up another famous koan, again one with Zhaozhou as the protagonist, Zhaozhou’s Cypress Tree.  Foulk calls it the “Oak Tree in the Garden,” which, by the way, reveals that he is using the Japanese sources that call the tree an oak tree rather than the Chinese sources that call the tree a cypress tree. This koan, as I translate it, goes like this:

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Like what was the intent of the ancestral founder coming from the west?”

Zhaozhou said, "The cypress tree in front of the hall.”

The “ancestral founder” is a reference to Bodhidharma who brought the Zen lineage to China in the East from India in the West. So the question translates into “What was the purpose of bringing Zen Buddhism to China?”  (Foulk unfortunately, misremembers this koan when he presents it and has it coming from Yunmen by mistake rather than Zhaozhou and he has the question as “What is Buddha?” rather than the question as above. Be that as it may, it doesn’t matter as far as Foulk’s wrong turn in understanding the koan.)

Foulk, then says, “When he is asked, ‘What is Buddha?’ how about saying ‘Santa Claus’?”  Like when he could not distinguish between the dog and Santa Claus, now Foulk is unable to distinguish between the living tree and Santa Claus.  This inability to differentiate between living breathing feeling sentient beings and myths on Foulk’s part must give us pause as this is the primary issue of the Bodhisattva path of Mahayana Buddhism.  . 

tTo Foulk “one of the tricks of koan rhetoric” is that if often uses metaphors and similes without using words like “like” or “as if” to indicate the presence of metaphor.  This is a bogus charge of the academic. No Zen practitioner worth his or her salt gets confused by such things.  Often, as the above example of the Cypress Tree shows, the word “like what” is often in the question, so there is no need for the reply to include it.  But even if the word “like” is not present there is no infirmity in the verbal exchange because it is not a rhetorical game relying on metaphor.  Foulk seems to completely misunderstand the use of metaphor in koans.  Yes the “Cypress Tree” can be seen as a metaphor, but that is only one aspect of it, and not even the main or central aspect.  More important, is the fact that the cypress tree is a living being actually present in its living appearance.  Again, this deconstructs Foulk’s “Two Truths” analysis, where all language is defective, in favor of the Zen preference for the “Buddha nature” analysis of living beings as expressions of living Suchness. 

It is at this turning point that Foulk misapprehends the point of koans.  Koans are not as Foulk states, teaching points about emptiness or the Two Truths based on the underpinning of seeing that ultimate truth is just the understanding of the limitations of language.  Koans are not about anything even remotely intellectual as that.  Koan work is within the context of recognizing that language is limited by its inherent duality, not by its inability to express ultimate truth. Koan work is about seeing through the limitations of the dualities that frame our views of reality and our lives, including the structural dualism of views such as doctrines of “the Two Truths.” 

In Foulk's view, koans are rhetorical games used for the purpose of teaching us the ultimate truth that language is defective. However, koans are not that at all. Koans are living expressions of teachers pulling out the nails and pegs of dualism that hold together our constructed realities.  Here, recognizing that language is limited is not the ultimate truth, but only the signpost that suggests we are going the wrong way in search of the ultimate truth that is our Buddha nature and own true suchness.  The point of koans is all about turning us around from grasping at externals based on our dualistic views, to turn the light of our own awareness around to see the source of awareness itself.  

This “turning around” is what I call the Buddha Treasure aspect of the koan.  The Dharma Treasure aspect is seeing how the koan relates and conveys an aspect of Buddhist teaching, and this Dharma Jewel aspect is often conveyed in metaphor as well as practical imagery and presence.  When Zhaozhou was asked what was the intent of Bodhidharma coming to China to convey the Zen lineage, his response of “The cypress tree in front of the hall,” was not a teaching about the emptiness of language like Santa Claus is empty, but about the living presence of a living tree in the living world before the hall.

In the metaphorical aspect, Zhaozhou was saying that as the tree gives shade and solace and beauty so does the practice of Zen.  He was saying, too, that this very tree and its actual location before that hall was the living realization of the purpose of Bodhidharma’s Zen lineage, not some conceptual idea as Foulk would have it about Two Truths or a fantasy that the existence and nonexistence of the cypress tree is equal to the existence and nonexistence of Santa Claus.. Zhaozhou’s response was leaping clear of that exact hot water of duality of existence and nonexistence that Dogen refers to in his essay Genjo Koan.  That which is the leaping clear of the dualistic framework of language is the Buddha aspect of complete unity and clarity that is in all koans, in both the question and response, and that is only found by the turning around that all the past Zen masters including Dogen emphasized in their practical teaching of zazen.

This turning around of paravrtti is at the heart of Dogen’s Zen just as it is at the heart of koan practice and is directly how he used koans in his literary efforts.  Everything that Dogen wrote that included koans was about confronting our own grasping at externals by affirming our dualistic frameworks and about turning around from that wrong practice.   Based on the paucity of the available records, none of us will ever know definitively how Dogen did or did not use koans in personal interviews or as meditation methods, but there are enough suggestions in his writings to confidently conclude that he used koans in both contexts of personal interviews and in meditation, at least to some degree.

Three Threes In Front, Three Threes In Back.

This is a response to Dosho Port's "Wild Fox Zen" blog entry Dragons and Snakes Intermingle Dosho is musing on the conundrum of Zen teachers who act like ordinary fools and how we respond to them. Its a topic that calls forth responses from the dragons and snakes of our own nature. Dosho is riffing on the koan Manjusri's Three Threes which is case 35 of the Blue Cliff Record. Here's my translation of the koan:

Raised: Wenshu (Manjusri) asked Wuzhu, "What place have you departed from recently?"
Wuzhu said, "The region of the South."
Shu said, "So how is the Buddha Dharma kept alive in the region of the South?"
Zhu said, "Recently, few of the mendicants of the Dharma respect moral discipline and the rules."
Shu said, "How many assemblies?"
Zhu said, "Perhaps three hundred, perhaps five hundred."
Wuzhu asked Wenshu/Manjusri, "So how is it kept alive in this space?"
Shu said, "The ordinary and sages reside together, dragons and snakes intermingle."
Zhu said, "How many assemblies?"
Shu said, "Three threes in front; three threes in back."

I appreciate the “dragons and snakes intermingling.” It is also a great expression for the feelings stirred up. People thought these fellows were dragons and “lo and behold” they acted like snakes. To paraphrase the Bodhisattva of the Levant, “Let those who have never acted like snakes throw the first stones.” Any adult who believes they have never acted like a snake is truly delusional. It is no excuse to say “I’ve just been a ribbon snake, not a king cobra.”

If nothing else, the venting of venom against these Zen teachers has shown that people are meeting on the common ground of being snakes. Three threes in front! Yet, to see only the dragon and not the snake; three threes in back!

I’ve been reluctant to say much about these controversies because I’m all too aware of past lives where I was a mass murderer or a wife-beater.

We can only make these events into Dharma food by the alchemical transformation of turning the three poisons into the three treasures. .People who criticize Genpo, Eido, and others for not living up to their dragon persona do no service to the Dharma by maintaining the mental apartheid of dragons and snakes. The lineage of awakening now called Zen, as Bodhidharma told us, is entering by the gate of principle in which we bear profound faith that the one true nature of beings is the same, without self and without other, with the ordinary and the sagely one and the same.

It is not someone else’s greed, hatred and ignorance that must be transformed. It is our own. It is not that the three poisons are jettisoned, discarded, or left behind and replaced by the three treasures. It is three by three: three threes in front. The greed itself is and becomes the compassion of the sangha, the hatred itself is and becomes the equanimity of the Dharma, the ignorance itself is and becomes the wisdom of the Buddha.

What is most difficult for the inexperienced to understand and accept is how the transformation works in the opposite direction: with three threes in back; where the wisdom of Buddha manifests as ignorance, the equanimity of the Dharma revealing aversion, and the compassion of the sangha showing our greed. What kind of topsy-turvey world is this?

Our Idealism wants a world where poisons become treasures, and not a world where treasures become poisons. But hey, it’s three threes in front, three threes in back, nothing amiss.
For the Dharma it is essential to be able to distinguish poisons from treasures, but it is just as essential to see their sameness, and to see in what way dragons and snakes intermingle within each of us.

Case 95 Baofu Drinks Tea

Here's my most recent translation.


95 Baofu Drinks Tea

[Yuanwu’s] Appended pointer says:

Where there is a Buddha do not get there and stop; to stop manifests a life of horns on the head. Where there is no Buddha, quickly run by; if you do not run by, the grass is ten feet deep. If you are abundantly upright, clear and all naked, red and all washed, with external affairs being without machinations, and the external being without affairs, you do not escape sticking by the stump waiting for a rabbit.
Just say, altogether, is treading the living walk not like this or is it like this? A test is raised for examination:

Raised:

There was a time Changqing said, “I would rather there be talk about arhats having the three poisons; don’t talk about the Tathagata having two kinds of language. I don’t say the Tathagata is without language, only is without two types of language.”
Baofu said, “How do you make it alive to be the Tathagata’s language?”
Qing said “A deaf person struggles to be able to hear it.”
Baofu said, “I know for sure you are facing towards the way of the secondary head.”
Qing said, “How do you make it alive to be the Tathagata’s language?”
Baofu said, “Go drink tea.”

[Xuedou's] Ode says:

Oh, the head! Primary. Secondary.
A resting dragon does not reflect on the still water.
Having the moon without a place, the waves settle.
Having a place, the billows rise up without a wind.
Zen traveler Leng, Zen traveler Leng!
In the third month at the Dragon Gate of Yu, he incurred a spot on the forehead.



[My Comments:
Changqing Huileng (854-932) and Baofu Congzhan (d. 928) were both disciples of Xuefeng Yicun. It is said in the Zen records that “Baofu often inquired of his Dharma brother, Changqing Huileng, concerning ancient and current expedient methods of teaching.”

As Yuanwu’s pointer implies this koan is about the three levels of teaching in Zen. Yuanwu designates the three levels as (1) where there is a Buddha, (2) where there is no Buddha, and (3) the pure naked state without any outside entanglements.
Baizhang Huaihai (Pai-chang Huai-hai, Hyakujo Ekai) (720-814) taught the three steps of the teaching this way:

The words of the teachings all have three successive steps: the elementary, the intermediate, and the final good. At first it is just necessary to teach them to create a good state of mind. In the intermediate stage, they break through the good mind. The last is finally called really good—‘A bodhisattva is not a bodhisattva; this is called a bodhisattva. the truth is not a truth, yet is not other than truth.’ Everything is like this. Yet if you teach only one stage, you will cause sentient beings to go to hell; if all three stages are taught at once, they will enter hell by themselves. This is not the business of a teacher. (Thomas Clearly translation)

The first step then is the teaching “there is a Buddha”. This is the elementary step of dwelling in the good that affirms and teaches using positive metaphors, but staying in this stage is still living under the duality of good and bad and is thus a life with horns on the head. The intermediate step of not dwelling in the good is taught by negative metaphor such as the teaching of “there is no Buddha” to lead the student to transcend the former duality. However, to dwell in this stage is to allow the grasses of confusion caused by attachment to emptiness to grow. In the third stage, the transcendent unified synthesis of the first two stages is without even the conception “not dwelling.” Having no conceptions about Buddha or no Buddha, it is called being pure, naked, and completely washed. Though this third stage can be said to be the first stage of Zen, having a conception of being naked and clear is still a last attachment. The fruition of Zen is to go beyond the three stages, and this realization is the meaning of this koan.

“the Tathagata having two kinds of language” In most Mahayana Buddhism other than Zen, such as Tiantai (Tendai) and Pure Land, it is said that Buddha speaks two types of truths: the relative and the absolute, or the conventional and the genuine. Another way of saying this is that Buddha speaks in the two languages of affirmation or positive metaphor and negation or prohibitive words of negative metaphor. The relative or conventional language of positive metaphors affirms the Dharma as a good: that there is practice, that there is realization, that the mind itself is Buddha. The absolute truth uses the language of negative metaphor: there is no practice, no realization, no mind, and no Buddha.

“The Tatahagata is without two types of language”. From the Zen point of view, the two types of language correspond to the elementary and intermediate steps of the teaching and do not reach the third step that simultaneously synthesizes and goes beyond these two steps to speak the bare naked language of the nondual, beyond assertion and denial. Tathagata Zen speaks the nondual language of the Tathataga.

“How do you make it alive?” This is a Zen idiom that refers to using language in an alive manner and not in a dead manner. Baizhang Huaihai instructed, “In reading sutras and studying the teachings, if you do not understand their living words and dead words, you will certainly not penetrate the meanings and expressions therein." Asking “How do you make it alive?” is synonymous with asking for “turning words” that turn the mind around from externality and dualism to realize the nondual.

“A deaf person struggles to be able to hear.” This is a double entendre pun as the term “deaf” (聾) is also used in Mahayana (Great Vehicle) jargon as a depreciative term for a sravaka, a disciple of the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle). In the frame of reference of the three vehicles of Buddhism, the people of the three vehicles are termed 聾, 緣, and 菩, that is, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas. So, when asked about the language of the Tathagata, Changqing's comment is also saying the disciples (sravakas) of the lesser vehicle struggle to be able to hear it, meaning they only hear the spoken words and are deaf to the meaning. He is thus pointing to one of the primary foundational issues of the Mahayana that says all beings are Buddha by nature and all things (dharmas) preach the Dharma, so there is no need to struggle or strive to hear the language of Suchness because whatever we hear is that language once we know the true Tathagata.
Changqing is being slippery and cutesy. When asked to make the nondual language ot the Tatagata come alive, he avoids both the affirmative statement about what it is and the negative statement about what it is not. In the context of Zen's three levels of teaching, Changqing is attempting to speak from the position of the third stage of being "naked and bare” by not asserting or denying any conception about it, while at the same time pointing to it by saying those who are not of the Mahayana struggle to hear it.

“facing towards the way of the secondary head.” Baofu is correcting Changqing because Changqing’s response still has the odor of attachment to the conception of not having a conception of not dwelling. “The Way of the secondary head” is the language still within the first or second stages and has not yet realized the nondual, that is, not reached the primary principle of the One Vehicle (Ekayana) as taught by Bodhidharma. By saying a deaf person "struggles," Changqing is implying that he and others in the know do not struggle because they hear the Tathagata’s language everywhere from everything. But the dualities of struggling and not struggling, hearing and not hearing, are still lingering conceptions clinging to Changqing’s words. He’s bragging that he doesn’t objectify the Tathagata’s language, but he is bragging based on pointing to others who do objectify the Tathagata’s language, and so he still has the whiff of “self and other” in his words and has not reached the nondual language of the Tathagata.

“Go drink tea.” Baofu is echoing Chang of Baizhang (not to be confused with Baizhang Huihai his teacher) who had a favorite saying when teaching the assembly,

“Baizhang has three tricks of the trade: ‘to drink tea’, ‘to cherish it’, and ‘to take a rest.’ By intending to discuss it further and to use comparative reasoning one knows you still have not penetrated.”

“To drink tea” is to hear and speak the Tathagata's language in the deepest sense. This tea is never exhausted. Baofu is telling Changqing he doesn't need to stir up waves with his comments about the deaf struggling to hear; it is enough to drink tea with the Tathagata, to cherish the drinking and the tea, and to let the waves rest on their own.

"Zen traveler Leng" This is an informal and comradely way of addressing Changqing Huileng using only his shortened personal name "Leng."

”In the third month at the Dragon Gate of Yu, he incurred a spot on the forehead.” This line uses a pun to eulogize Baofu’s words that Chingqing remained in “the secondary head”, by saying that “Zen traveler Leng”, i.e, Changqing, is bumping his head against the barrier of the nondual Tathagata’s language. The Dragon Gate of Yu is a legendary gate created in the mountains by Emperor Yu over 5,000 years ago for the Yellow River to pass through. The Gate is a narrow passage through the mountains where the river rushes through exceptionally fast. The third month is the month when the river is highest and the water is most turbulent as it passes through the gate, and it is said that if a lowly carp is able to swim upstream and pass through the gate on the third day of the third month it is transformed into a dragon, hence it is called the Dragon Gate. Xuedou is saying “Changqing, you wanted to be a dragon but you just bumped your head and remained a carp.” He is confirming that Baofu was the dragon in the interchange of that koan.

]

A Case of Mistaken (Fish) Identity

Sansheng's Golden Fish Scales
三聖金鱗

Raised: Sansheng asked Xuefeng, "[If] the golden fish scales that pass through the net are not investigated. [then] what is used for food?"
Feng said, "Wait until you come out of the net, then [I'll] speak to you."
Sheng said, "A learned and virtuous one of fifteen hundred people and [you] still don't know the 'head of the word' (huatou)."
Feng said, "[I'm] an old monk in residence managing numerous affairs."

###

The Zen koan "Sansheng's Golden Fish Scales" is included as Case 49 of the Blue Cliff Record (碧巖錄, Biyan Lu, J. Hekiganroku) and Case 33 of The Record of the Serene (從容錄, Congrong Lu, J. Shoyoroku). Unfortunately, the translations that I have come across by the Cleary brothers, Thomas and James C., (in their The Blue Cliff Record), Thomas Cleary alone (in his The Book of Serenity) and the Sanbo Kyodan lineage (on the internet at http://perso.ens-lyon.fr/eric.boix/Koan/Hekiganroku/index.html and http://perso.ens-lyon.fr/eric.boix/Koan/Shoyoroku/index.html ) leave out the important set up to the koan's gambit: that Sansheng is asking about huatou practice. All three translations state erroneously that Sansheng is asserting that the fish has come through the net, and all three leave out the reference by Sansheng in his response to the huatou.

The word huatou (話頭, J. wato) literally means "the head (頭) of the word (話).". The word "head" is used in the sense of the headwaters of a river and so it means "the source of language" itself. Zen Master Yuanwu is the commentator of The Blue Cliff Record and the huatou, method was widely popularized by his dharma heir Dahui Zonggao. In fact because of the great success of his popularizing efforts some people have mistakenly believed that Dahui actually created the huatou method. This koan is a demonstration that huatou comes directly through Linji as Sansheng is one of Linji's great dharma heirs.

What is a huatou? The koan presents a story in words. The story embodies some kind of dilemma of duality. The zen of meditation is to turn around (Skt. pravritti, as found in the Lankavatara Sutra) the flow or light of the ideation that results in duality to be aware of the source of the ideas themselves. The huatou is the kernel or pivot point of the koan upon which the focused attention can effect this "turn around" to see the source of the words.

The most famous huatou of all is in the koan Zhaozhou's "No." (Ch. "Wu", J. "Mu"). Other well known huatou center around the word "Who" such as "Who is repeating the Buddha's name?", "Who hears?" and "Who is dragging this corpse around?" Every genuine koan has its huatou that turns the attention around to point directly to the source of mind.

In Zhaoahou's famous koan, a monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does the puppy dog have Buddha Nature?" Zhou said, "No.". The mind naturally tries to reason this out by thinking about the concepts of Buddha Nature, which living beings have or do not have Buddha Nature, etc. Zhaozhou's reply is contrary to the usually held concept that all beings have Buddha Nature so another duality arises in the mind about why does he say "No"? The huatou method is to focus attention directly on the word "No" within the frame of the inquiry of what is the "head of this word"? "What is 'No'?" means what is the source of the very idea of "No"?

The Sixth Ancestor of Zen, Huineng, stated this question in the following way. "True Suchness, as it is, is the essence of thought. Thought, as it is, is the function of True Suchness." The huatou method is to focus directly on the essence or source of thought itself without being attached to the thought. As the Great Chinese Zen master Xuyun, whose life spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, said, "Hua is actually a wandering thought. You're actually talking to yourself. Before the wandering thoughts arise, one must illuminate on them. Look to see just what is the original face? This is called looking at Huatou." ( http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/clubs/buddhism/newsletter/news35.html )

Discussing the huatou in the sentence "Who is repeating the Buddha's name?", Xuyun also said, "Before this sentence is uttered, it is called a hua t'ou (lit. sentence's head). As soon as it is uttered, it becomes the sentence's tail (hua wei).." (http://www.sinc.stonybrook.edu/Clubs/buddhism/xuyun/index.html ) The usual practice is to begin investigating a huatou by mentally uttering simple rote repetition of the huatou word or phrase. This is looking at the tail of the word not the head, but it is quite natural to begin this way. The investigation of the huatou can be said to begin with the attention going "behind" or "before" the repeated word and seeing that thoughts arise in the context of thoughtlessness as sound arises in the context of silence. The attention turns away from the word by jumping off the rote repetition to look at the question of how does the word or thought itself arise from within the context of thoughtlessness? This becomes looking directly at True Suchness or Original Face. Xuyun says, "Our minute examination should be turned inward and this is also called 'the turning inward of the hearing to hear the self-nature.'"

The fish in Sansheng's koan is none other than one's own True Suchness, Original Face, Self-nature, etc.. Sansheng's opening line says, "I don't study the golden fish scales that pass through the net." (透網金鱗未審, lit.: pass through-net-golden-fish scales-don't-study) Sansheng is saying that in his huatou practice he is not studying the words or thoughts that have already arisen in the mind, i.e., the golden fish scales that have passed through the net of the differentiating thought processes. The translations that state this sentence as "The golden fish that's passed through the net" (Cleary) or "When a fish with golden scales has passed through the net" (Sanbo Kyodan) miss this point entirely. The phrase that they translate as "golden fish" is 金鱗 and 鱗 means "fish scales" not fish. Cleary ignores this altogether and translates "fish scales" as "fish". The Sanbo Kyodan translation includes the reference to the "scales" but it inserts "fish" to make "fish with golden scales" as if it is necessarily implied.

But Sansheng is neither asserting nor implying the fish has passed through the net, he is saying the fish's golden scales, i.e., thoughts, pass through the net and he knows that these are not the subject or object of huatou practice. Sansheng's next question is the serve to Xuefeng asking how then does one do huatou practice if thought is not studied? It must be assumed that Sansheng as a Zen master in his own right has his own answer to this question and that he is putting himself in the position or role of a senior student to ask his question for the Zen drama. When teaching the huatou method Zen teachers commonly say things like, "Chew on the huatou like a dog who won't give up a bone." Sansheng's question, "[If] one doesn't study the golden fish scales that pass through the net, [then] what is used for food?" has the double entendre of asking "what is there for the meditator to chew on if one is not examining thoughts or ideas (i.e., the golden fish scales)?" and also "what does the fish (True Suchness, Original Face, etc.) itself have for food if there is no source beyond it?" (which in the theistic context is like asking "if God is the creator, who creates God?").

Xuefeng's response "Wait until you come out of the net, then I'll speak to you." has several levels of nuance. First, on the surface, it simply takes the question at its face value, and Xuefeng takes the role of the teacher saying he won't give an answer to the student because the student must find it on his own. But also Xuefeng is saying to Sansheng, "I'll wait until you stop playing games trying to catch me in your net before I talk with you." And thirdly, Xuefeng is acknowledging that Sansheng himself is the fish and when he shows himself in a straightforward manner then they can talk as equals.

Xuefeng's response is a returning challenge to Sansheng pointing out the duality of the "net" and asking, "Which side of the net are you on?" The "net" in question is known in Buddhist psychology as the Seventh Consciousness. When the undifferentiated awareness of True Suchness of the eighth consciousness passes through the seventh consciousness it is differentiated into self and environment, subject and objects. Here is how Xuyun described this process in reference to the use of the huatou:

Each of us has a mind which is the eighth consciousness (vijnana), as well as the seventh, sixth and the first five consciousnesses. The first five are the five thieves of the eye, ear, nose, tongue and body. The sixth consciousness is the thief of mind (manas). The seventh is the deceptive consciousness (klista-mano-vijnana) which from morning to evening grasps the eighth consciousness' "subject" and mistakes it for an "ego". It incites the sixth to lead the first five consciousnesses to seek external objects (such as) form, sound, smell, taste and touch. Being constantly deceived and tied the eighth consciousness-mind is held in bondage without being able to free itself. For this reason we are obliged to have recourse to this hua t'ou and use its "Vajra King's Precious Sword" to kill all these thieves so that the eighth consciousness can be transmuted into the Great Mirror Wisdom, the seventh into the Wisdom of Equality, the sixth into the Profound Observing Wisdom and the first five consciousnesses into the Perfecting Wisdom. It is of paramount importance first to transmute the sixth and seventh consciousnesses, for they play the leading role and because of their power in discriminating and discerning. While you were seeing the voidness and the brightness and composing poems and gathas, these two consciousnesses performed their (evil) functions. Today, we should use this hua t'ou to transmute the discriminating consciousness into the Profound Observing Wisdom and the mind which differentiates between ego and personality into the Wisdom of Equality. (Ibid.)

Xuefeng's response is asking Sansheng whether he has actually transmuted the seventh consciousness or is he still holding onto and held by the net's function of discrimination?

Sansheng in order to meet Xuefeng face to face, needs to push the discussion beyond this question of the duality of which side of the net one is on. Sansheng says, "Fifteen hundred learned and virtuous people [in the assembly] and you still don't know the 'head of the word' (huatou)." Sanshang thus turns the question directly back onto Xuefeng implying "I am out the net, are you?" Sansheng's response stands as if saying that if he wasn't already out of the net then he couldn't have asked the first question as he did. On the surface he is challenging Xuefeng to the very last drop of duality saying, in effect, "You are in the teacher role here, so I asked you to say something about the huatou with my first question, and yet you, the teacher of 1,500 worthy people, refuse to reveal the huatou plainly. So does that mean you do not know the huatou, that is, the source of the mind?" Here the two Zen masters are meeting face to face and their eyebrows become entangled since already within the deeper meaning of Sansheng's response is his acknowledgment that neither he nor Xuefeng can actually say anything about the huatou as an object without becoming entangled in the net. Sansheng's saying "You still don't know the huatou" is a two-edged sword: on one edge is the upside down Zen praise of Sansheng for Xuefeng who did not fall into Sansheng's net and on the other edge is the last challenge to Xuefeng: "What can you say that shows how the huatou passes through the net to transform the net itself?"

Xuefeng's response is "[I'm] an old monk in residence managing numerous affairs." (老僧住持事繁) This response is the pure taste of Zen. It is completely plain spoken with no pretence to or perfume of any transcendent meaning. Yet, because the transcendent and the mundane are a complete unity and this unity is completely realized by Xuefeng, it is a completely transcendent statement by the huatou itself in its own words. Xuefeng's "[I'm] an old monk" (老僧) directly demonstrates the Great Mirror Wisdom of the transformed eighth consciousness. Since the statement is the statement of the huatou without any intermediation by the seventh consciousness acting as a differentiating agent mistaking things as objects, the huatou says it is "dwelling in residence" (住), thus the seventh consciousness is shown in its transformed state as the Wisdom of Equality. Xuefeng's "managing" (持) is the description of the sixth consciousness transformed into the Profound Observing Wisdom and the "numerous affairs" (事繁) being managed are the five sense consciousnesses transformed into the Perfecting Wisdom.

Now all this is just the used mouthwash of this poor student and should be immediately rinsed down the drain. If these fish scales have any value at all it could only be to encourage you to follow your meditation method diligently and not be confused by such glittering golden fish scales, so that you may personally grab the fish with your own bare hands.

_/|\_
Gregory