THE SUTRA OF PERFECT AWAKENING FIFTY FIRST LECTURE Wednesday September 20th, 1939 "If all sentient beings wish to abandon their desires, the state of their stained natures must first be removed. Then, even though their notions, which are an obstacle to attainment of the right View, have not yet been removed they are ready to attain the degree of enlightenment of cravaka and pratyeka Buddha, though they are not ready to live in the state of Bodhisattva. O Obedient One! If all the sentient beings of the future world desire to float on the surface of the ocean of Tathagata's Perfect Awakening, they must make a vow to eradicate the two kinds of obstacles by their own endeavors. When these two kinds of obstacles, notions and the state of stained nature, have been completely conquered then the state of Bodhisattva will be attained. When once you have annihilated these two kinds of obstacles, you will enter for all time the Tathagata's Marvelous and Perfect Awakening and within that Awakening and within the great Nirvana you will find complete fulfillment!" SOKEI-AN SAYS: The main point of this part is that there are two obstacles preventing the attainment of enlightenment. One is the obstacle which comes from circumstances; the other is some idea or notion that is planted in the mind. They are objective and subjective obstacles. You must annihilate both and then you are ready to attain enlightenment, awakening. This English world "enlightenment is misleading gives a queer notion to the audience. "Awakening is better to express our meaning because "enlightenment always conveys a sense of something connected with "light. This leads to all sorts of ridiculous ideas! There is no "queer phenomenon connected with Awakening; it is as you awaken from your sleep. During our lifetime, we pass through many different phases and each beginning is an awakening: the infant awakes to its parents; children awake to adolescence; youth will awaken to
ambition; middle age will awaken to the disillusionment of life. Some, in the early old age, will awaken to the understanding of human life; and then, still in old age, these may awaken to the conclusion. Confucius said that, at twenty years, he awoke to learning; at thirty, he awoke to his aim to what he was living for; at forty he awoke to his decision, and at fifty, he awoke to his fate, his capacity, his limitations in place and force knowing that he could do no more than he was doing! It is very hard for a man of that age to awake to that realization. At sixty years old he awoke to observe everything in affirmation. Until that time he had been denying everything: poverty, wealth, power all the usual attitudes of the human being. Now affirming everything nothing was unacceptable to him. Therefore, at seventy, Confucius awoke to the freedom of doing what he wished to do. His behavior never contradicted the law of nature. This is certainly an awakening, isn't it? All human beings must pass through many periods of awakening. But, in Buddhism, there is a particular type of awakening called "satori." Because many translators call this "enlightenment," some imagine this is like a big flame bursting in the brain which makes the eyes shine like diamonds. And some teachers who give out such shallow teaching will have their photograph taken eyes starting out of the head for some magazine! There are even some famous Zen students who have written books about their experiences of "enlightenment, when they felt shocks in the body psychic earthquakes when the mind will be reborn in a different stage and the body will be transformed. Such a one, though he may call himself a Zen student, doesn't know what awakening is nor what he is talking about. The first awakening in Buddhism is very simple. From this phenomenal world we awake to the stare of Reality; it is just as you awaken from a dream, realizing that it was a dream. Now we are looking at Reality. If my hand were as hard as a diamond all these solid objects would be soft as cotton. Color is an optical illusion the vibration of ether on the retina of the eye. Through meditation, we attain Reality, for, after all, we are living in our own consciousness. In the second state of awakening, you come back into this existence and, from your original state, you observe once more this
phenomenal world and you find the law in it. In the third state, you live creatively, actively. You are completely awakened and can call yourself one who has attained buddhahood. "It is very difficult!" No, it is not difficult at all-- but it takes about thirty years. All religions are notions. Buddhism is a big notion. Religion is really an explanation of human life by which you can understand your self. All theological students must study ontology first. You must annihilate the two "obstacles. "Annihilation really means "awakening to. As the psychoanalyst says, "If you really know why you are suffering, you are relieved. It is so in the Four Noble Truths: agony is the first, the cause of agony is the second, cessation of agony is the third, and the way of cessation is the fourth. "If all sentient beings wish to abandon their desires,. " All desires are divided into the five desires: to eat, generate, gain wealth, become famous, to rest. "... the state of their stained natures must first be removed. Then, even though their notions, which are an obstacle to attainment of the right View, have not yet been removed, they are ready to attain the degree of enlightenment of sravaka and pratyeka Buddha, though they are not ready to live in the state of Bodhisattva." I have explained the attitude of the sravaka and pratyeka Buddha and explained why he will never know the greater teachings. You must attain awakening--perfect Awakening in the three stages: Awake to Reality; come back to the phenomenal world and understand what it is; live in this world and obey the law. ***** Three-Hudred-Mile-Tiger Sokei-an's commentary on The Record of Lin-Chi Discourse XI, Lecture 6 When I am quietly seated and someone comes to see me, I instantly pierce his soul. How am I able to do this? My understanding of Dharma differs from others. I do not affirm the sacred or the secular in the objective world, nor do I remain in the essential ground [of wisdom] in the subjective world. Penetrating both, I have no doubts of any kind.
SOKEI-AN SAYS: When Lin-chi seats himself he is different from other people, he has nothing in his mind, no mind-stuff. His sitting comprises the three stages of enlightenment tathagata, man, and deva. It should be the same with everyone. Really there are more stages but from our standpoint the manifested body is the body of tathagata; the body of the invisible Buddha manifesting in his usable body as nirmanakaya. Perhaps you could say the body of God, the Universal Buddha, is manifested in His body. The nirmanakaya of tathagata is a man s dharmakaya. The nirmanakaya of the fundamental stage is the dharmakaya of the middle stage, and the nirmanakaya of the middle stage is the dharmakaya of a higher stage. So enlightenment becomes ever brighter. Lin-chi called this the three mystic fundamentals and the three principles. Three principles in three mystic fundamentals equal the nine points. Of course there must be more stages, but the being existing in this universe now can attain these nine stages. So the Buddha s enlightenment is different from that of the consciousness of a human being. The consciousness of the universe is unmanifested consciousness. The consciousness in our hearts is one of the consciousnesses of tathagata, but the unmanifested consciousness has no knowledge in it, no wisdom in it; it is the creator. The consciousness in man s heart is the consciousness of plants, that is, of Great Existence. As Lin-chi sits in quiet, he has all these stages in him. If you go to Japan, you will see pagodas that signify the enlightenment stages of tathagata, manu, and deva.1 All knowledge is a stage in which man uses deva as foundation and creates another essential body on top of it. Everyone can see the man s body but not the mental body. When I am quietly seated and someone comes to see me, I instantly pierce his soul. The disciple wishes to see the master s deva-body, but Lin-chi sees through the three stages of enlightenment: enlightened body, soul and substance. Nature is the substantial body. Lin-chi penetrates all three stages without saying a word. How am I able to do this? My understanding of Dharma differs from others. Others do not try to see through the mind. The Zen master sees through the mind-stuff that the disciple creates. Is the student in kamadhatu, the desire stage? Is he in rupadhatu, the form stage? Is he in arupadhatu, the formless stage? He sees 1 Pagodas, like stupas, are repositories for Buddhist relics and have cosmic and symbolic importance.
through the soul, sees through its enlightenment, it s faculties, and so forth. I do not affirm the sacred or the secular in the objective world, nor do I remain in the essential ground [of wisdom] in the subjective world. He does not differentiate between the spiritual and the material, the sacred or profane all that belongs to the outside. Anyone who has knowledge such as Manjushri and Samantabhadra, he calls sacred; his disciples he calls secular. Nature gives all nine points to each of us, though we may not be aware of this. The prime or essential ground of wisdom is dharmakaya, the three dharmakayas: the dharmakaya of tathagata, of manu, and of deva. Lin-chi does not stay in any of these, the root, trunk, or branches. He penetrates all. Penetrating both, I have no doubts of any kind. In meditating, he creates his wisdom from the lower stage of consciousness, which is in plants and animals. Plants create animals; the animal is the nirmanakaya of plants. Animal creates man and man creates something else. These days, man does not control his thoughts; thoughts control him. But man s real ground is thought our life is therefore different from that of animals. If our mind is not enlightened, however, we are just the same as animals. Our material in the human struggle is thoughts; this is the dharmakaya of a new being. Wisdom in the body of thoughts creates a higher understanding. There is one thing that you must have at the highest point of the struggle for knowing. Lin-chi did not express this in words, but he carried it into one sharp point Ha! This means nothing if you think it is just a shout. It was his expression of the highest point that man can reach. Fearless Mountain A film by Tony Anthony and Andrew Anthony Reviewed by Ian R. Chandler Abhayagiri means Fearless Mountain in Pali, and the Abayagiri monastery in Redwood Valley, California is a new American Buddhist community in the forest monastic tradition of Ajan Chaa. The calm, intelligent monks in Fearless Mountain are unapologetically Buddhists in the Theravadin tradition, and are living the rigorous life which that tradition calls for; celibacy, vegetarianism, and long hours of meditation and manual labor. There is a strong sense of camaraderie among the monks and their roots in ancient tradition come through in the film with their
deep, slow melodious chant of the three refuges in Pali: Buddham saranam gacch?mi Dhammam saranam gacch?mi Sangham saranam gacchami Fearless Mountain reminds me of Into Great Silence a film about the Catholic Carthusian Monastery in the French Alps. The paradox of Into Great Silence is that it works very effectively even though it moves very slowly. Watching Into Great Silence one feels as if one has actually entered the Catholic monastery and is living the slow-moving contemplative life right alongside the monks. The film provides extended shots of monks in meditation to give a strong feel for their contemplative life. Fearless Mountain, on the other hand, only gives some brief shots of the monks meditation practice and would be stronger if it provided more direct exposure to their meditation practice. Is Abhayagiri monastery actually able to survive entirely on alms alone? I remember talking with the head monk at the Mt. Baldy Zen Buddhist Monastery in California and he said that food was not too much of a problem, but that they had a hard time getting health insurance. As long as the monks are healthy young men, it probably does not matter too much, but long-term, it is potentially a very expensive problem. The Theravadin monks in Thailand and Cambodia live an austere life, supported by alms from local villagers, while in America able-bodied adults are expected to provide for themselves, including health insurance, housing, etc. The Catholic monastery from Into Great Silence distills and sells Grand Chartreuse liquor while, historically, funeral services provided a source of revenue for many of the Chinese monasteries. I hope that the Abhayagiri monastery exercises upaya skillful means for their upkeep. Perhaps their product will be meditation retreats for the lay public, or getaways to the beautiful Redwood Valley countryside. Fearless Mountain benefits from professional quality editing and cinematography. The director, Tony Anthony, explained to me that the one hour movie was a distillation of 72 hours of filming. His son, Andrew Anthony, did an expert job splicing and editing the film, and dividing it into modules. The shots are well composed, focus is on the subject, the dialogue is easy to understand, and the film moves forward in clear, logical progression. Sokei-an Sasaki used to say that it would take 300 years for Buddhism to take root in America. I hope that Abhayagiri Fearless Mountain monastery will live up to its name and endure. These Theravadin monks have made a strong beginning, and I expect that their monastery will be in America for generations to come.
TWENTY-FIVE KOANS: (NINTH KOAN) Delivered by Sokei-an, March 5, 1938 One day Joshu went to see the stone bridge with the head monk. Joshu questioned him, "Who made this stone bridge?" The head monk answered, "Li-yuan made it." Joshu said, "When he made it, where did he first put his hand?" The head monk could make no answer. Joshu said, "We are talking about an ordinary stone bridge. To my question you do not know how to answer as to where the builder first put his hand?" Sokei-an: This is the koan. Zen master and disciples--their mind is always on enlightenment. The master's every word is a question to the student, but the student does not understand; he thinks the master's words are the usual words, "Good morning," "Good evening," Goodbye!" But from the Zen master's standpoint it is different. A similar koan that you should observe always is: "Indra made the tower that was seamless upon the top of Mount Sumeru. When he made it, where did he put his hand first?" The same koan! God created this universe in one piece. From which corner did he begin the creation of the world? You will answer, "On Monday this; on Tuesday that; on Wednesday and Thursday this and that; on Friday, the fish; on Saturday, the human being, and on Sunday he took a rest! The same question. And the question was so deep that the head monk could not say a word. I regret I did not tell him that the fish were created on Friday. Then he could make an answer! Joshu said, "We are talking about an ordinary stone bridge. To my question, you do not know how to answer as to where the builder first put his hand?" Joshu's view of the state of reality was expressed by this. It is like Dosan's answer to "What is Zen?" "Drink tea." This novice thinks Zen is very difficult --thinks that
through stages we attain the mystery of Zen. Joshu affirms nothing; he accepts everything. He does not deny even the cockroach in the kitchen. He accepts everything like the ocean which swallows clear water and dirty water at the same time. But first you destroy all your notions and all your sense perception and reach final nothingness. And then you open our eyes from the inside. When you were born you opened your eye from the outside-- colors there, father, mother, and you never questioned it. But when you question it--what is it?--you find it is vibration of ether, that color, that sound. Without that there is no father, no mother, no red, green, light, dark. You question all the five shadows and then you go through the uttermost bottom of consciousness and nothingness. And you think that is enlightenment. But it is not true enlightenment yet. You must accept all. Joshu was one of the famous Zen masters of the Tang dynasty. When Joshu was still a lad, his head was shaved, but the commandments were not yet given to him. Later he went to the Zen master Nansen and paid his homage to Nansen, who was taking a rest, lying on the floor. You must make your own mental picture of this to understand the koan. Nansen asked, "From where did you take your departure?" Joshu replied, "From the Temple of the Lucky Image." Nansen said "Have you seen the Lucky Image?" Joshu answered, "No, I did not, but I saw the reclining Buddha." Nansen asked, "Have you a master of your own?" Joshu answered, "Yes, I have." Nansen asked, "Where is your master. Joshu replied, "In the middle of a severe winter, I bow and pray that the master may thrive and prosper." Nansen realized that Joshu was a vessel of Dharma and permitted him to become his disciple. This stone bridge of Joshu was a famous stone bridge made by the governor, Li-yuan of Joshu. Joshu still exists in northern
China. This stone bridge was very beautiful--built like an arch, every stone supporting the other, so every stone must be set at the same time. Some novice came to see the bridge of Joshu, and hearing of the famous master he visited Joshu and said, "I have heard of the famous stone bridge of Joshu, but I just saw a plank." Joshu replied, "You saw a plank, but you did not see the stone bridge." The monk asked, "What is the stone bridge?" Joshu told him, "You must come closer." The monk came closer. Another monk came and said, "I saw the famous stone bridge, but I saw only a plank." Joshu said, "You saw a plank, not the stone bridge." The monk asked, "What is the stone bridge?" Joshu said, "Donkeys will come across it." His answers were very deep. It was difficult to grasp the viewpoint of Joshu. Soon after his encounter with Nansen, Joshu left and took the commandments and then came back to Nansen and stayed a long time. There are many stories of Joshu. I chose this one. This was Joshu's understanding: "We are talking about an ordinary stone bridge. To my question, you do not know how to answer where the builder first put his hand?" The monk's attitude was lofty--he could make no answer. Joshu's attitude was different. These koans show the true understanding of Zen. Rang bell.
BANKEI AND HIS WORLD by Peter Haskel Like Bankei, many of his contemporaries in the priesthood in seventeenth-century Japan believed that the authentic transmission of Zen in their land had been debased and finally destroyed during the preceding two or three centuries. If Zen was to continue, such reformers argued, it had to be thought through again from the beginning, not only revitalized but reinvented. The Zen of Bankei's age, the Tokugawa period, was in many ways a rejection rather than an extension of the Zen that came immediately before. To fully understand Bankei and seventeenthcentury Zen, it is therefore necessary to start with a discussion of Japanese Zen in the late Middle Ages, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the latter part of what is referred to as the Muromachi period (1333-1573), after the Muromachi district of Kyoto where the reigning Ashikaga shoguns had their palace. Much of the information cited below is drawn from the pioneering research of Tamamura Takeji, a leading scholar of medieval Japanese Zen history. The discussion here focuses on the two principal groups identified by Tamamura as dominating Muromachi Zen: the sorin, the official Gozan temples patronized by the shogunate; and the rinka, those temples like Daitokuji, Myoshinji, Sojiji, and Eiheiji that remained largely outside the official system. ZEN IN THE MUROMACHI PERIOD (Part I, #21) (Continued from the Spring 09 Zen Notes) Missan Zen Clearly, despite superficial similarities, there was a considerable difference between Daito's Zen instruction and that of the missan teachers of the late Medieval rinka. Yet the origin of the ritualized missan transmission can perhaps be traced to the direction established by the mondo (Zen exchanges or dialogues) of the early Daitokuji and Myoshinji line teachers, mondo whose content leaned heavily on capping verses. In the first generations of the Daio-line, a balance was apparently maintained between formal literary elements of instruction borrowed from Sung Zen and active practice leading to the experience of enlightenment. But later teachers seem to have gradually abandoned the goal of intuitive realization for a ritual transmission of the capping verses that confused the apparratus, the form, of Chinese Zen, with its substance. The Daitokuji, of course, represented only one corner of the late Muromachi Zen world. But it became a pillar of the rinka, a lead-
ing exponent of the missan transmission. And because a certain amount of detail on its early teachings survives, Daitokuji suggests a possible model for the evolution of missan Zen in the rinka as a whole. Despite the fact that the missan transmission dominated late Muromachi Zen, little dated evidence exists that would allow us to chart its evolution with any certainty. Based as it was on values of secrecy and exclusiveness, the history of the missan system in Japan remains vague at best. Yet marshalling certain fragments of information that survive, it is possible to form at least a tentative picture of its development. Missan Zen's origins can probably be traced to the Kamakura period. Writing toward the close of the thirteenth century, the Chinese Master Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan, founder of Engakuji, commented caustically on the Japanese priests' habit of using "ponies" for sanzen, and his account suggests that the practice may have begun with the introduction of Zen itself. Wu-hsueh observes:..." There is a class of Zen priest who, having failed to grasp his own original nature, merely turns to a notebook, memorizes [certain items], and then comes forward to present his answer [in sanzen], even giving detailed instruction [in this] to others and babbling the wildest nonsense. If a person is going to study Zen like this, he's better off reciting the nienfo (J: nenbutsu). Last year, in the quarters of the abbot's attendant, I came upon a notebook consisting entirely of phrases drawn from the records of the old masters, some three hundred to five hundred of them. When I'd finished looking it over, I simply couldn't contain my laughter. When I asked someone [about this, I learned that] from the start, all the Japanese priests have copied [such] notebooks for themselves, making this their principal activity. How pernicious to [thus] obscure what is bright! How terribly pernicious!" Wu-hsueh arrived in Japan in 1280, just six years before his death, and thus describes the period 1280-1286. Our understanding of koan practice in the Sung and Yuan Zen temples is still highly imprecise, and we cannot exclude the possibility that a "secret transmission" of capping verses for koans was practiced in certain Chinese assemblies. However, Wu-hsueh's expression of surprise at the Japanese "copybooks" he saw in Kamakura and the general tone of his remarks makes it appear unlikely that any such Chinese prototype existed. The details of Wu-hsueh's account are supported by an incident recorded in Muso Soseki's biography, Muso kokushi nenpu. According to the narrative, in 1303 Muso experienced a profound realization and recognized that he had only been staying on the
level of words, attached to the pointing finger without seeing the moon. He then threw into the temple kitchen's fire the notebooks in which he had recorded his sanzen experiences with the various teachers under whom he had studied. Though Muso's Zen was syncretic and therefore denigrated by Daito and Daito's disciple Emperor Hanazono, he considered himself a devotee of the twelfth century Chinese champion of koan Zen Ta-hui and sharply deplored the literary, intellectualizing approach to the koan that he witnessed in the Zen temples of his day. In Seizan yawa, Muso laments that: "Most students nowadays search in books for the meanings of the words of the old masters, and then, committing them to memory, facilely proceed to give out capping verses. This they call the "inner teaching" of the patriarchs... " Suzuki conjectures that these books were early forms of missancho, and the incident from Muso's biography referred to above tends to support this notion. Taken together, Wu-hsueh's and Muso's observations seem to indicate that traces of the missan approach were already in evidence in the Gozan temples of the late Kamakura and early Muromachi periods. And Daitokuji, as at least a nominal member of the Kyoto Gozan, may probably be included in this premise, if one accepts the evidence for a secret oral transmission of capping verses by Daito and his successors cited previously. In light of this, it seems reasonable to suggest that while it may have assumed its mature form in a largely provincial setting, missan Zen had its beginnings in metropolitan temples that emphasized a literary style of Zen focusing on specialized Chinese language materials. In the course of the fourteenth century, as Gozan Zen concentrated overwhelmingly on bureaucratic, literary and ritual concerns, the rinka schools remained active as centers of Zen training. However, while such practices as koan study, mondo, sanzen (private interview with the Zen master), angya (Zen pilgrimage) and inka (the Zen master's written sanciton of enlightenment) were continued in the provincial temples, these gradually assumed a ritualized form that distorted their original purpose. By formalizing and ultimately debasing these practices, rinka Zen was able to attract many provincial patrons and priests who were otherwise illsuited to the difficulties of orthodox koan study. This transformation, whose final result was the missan transmission, seems to have occurred simultaneously in both Rinzai and Soto schools. The Soto Zen master Daichi (1299-1366), an heir of Keizan's successor Sotetsu Meiho (1277-1350), deplored the lax standards of his day, complaining in his Kana hogo that students were routinely awarded inka after a mere three or five years study and
"then think they have completed their attainment of Zen..." Similar problems appear to have plagued the Rinzai school, and in the late fourteenth century, Daichi's comments are echoed by the Hotto-line Master Bassui Tokusho. In the 1386 Wadei gassui ("Spattered with Mud, Doused with Water"), Bassui decries Zen students who..."obtain transmission (kechimyaku) and keep it hung about their necks as proof of their enlightenment... Others speculate haphazardly over the Buddhist teachings, lecture about Zen and hold dialogues in an attempt to display their superiority. Lacking the strength of an enlightenment experience of their own, all they can do is to make collections of the sayings of the old masters, keeping them secret and not allowing others to see them. They then produce Chinese verse and Japanese poems, delighting in capping verses and using their verbal dexterity in an effort to outdo their fellow disciples. All such people are heretics...!" While it is difficult to identify precisely what Bassui is describing in this passage, the overall picture he draws is deeply suggestive of the atmosphere of missan Zen, with secret records involving koan and poetic glosses, and a pervasive factionalism, each line with its own secret and hotly defended tradition. In fact, our earliest identified example of a missancho-type document originates in this period. By the late Oei era (1394-1427), with the popularity of the missan transmission established in the rinka temples, the nature of inka seems to have altered considerably. Judging by fifteenth century accounts, inka no longer served to confirm a student's intuitive experience of enlightenment, but rather possession of a particular line's formal transmission of capping verses for certain koan, as received in private interview with the teacher. If we can credit the charges leveled against Zen practice at this period, inka seems to have been conferred almost as a matter of course after a certain number of encounters between master and disciple. As such, it was now available to ordinary laypersons, many of whom were more than willing to make substantial donations in return for the prestige of obtaining a Zen master's inka and possession of a line's "secret" teachings, frequently referred to as tokuho, "obtaining Dharma." The distinction, if any, between inka and tokuho seems unclear; also unclear is whether tokuho was given for individual koans as well as upon completion of a given course of koan study involving multiple cases. In any event, by the midfifteenth century, abuses of the transmission system in the rinka line seem to have become endemic. Jikaishu ("Take Warning!"), perhaps our principal source material for missan Zen in this period, was composed by the Daitokuji Master Ikkyu Sojun in 1455, in large part as a jeremiad against the degeneration of inka at Daitokuji. Degeneration of inka, in turn, is attributed to the generally corrupt state of Daitokuji Zen, which under Ikkyu's Dharma
brother Yoso Soi had, it is alleged, forsaken the traditions of its distinguished founders for the practice of sangaku, the term by which Ikkyu characterizes the missan-style treatment of koans. At the opening of Jikaishu, Ikkyu launches directly into an attack on what he considers Daitokuji's practice of indiscriminately bestowing inka. He particularly condemns Yoso's conferring of inka on laymen, which he insists cheapens Zen by allowing ignorant persons to set themselves up as teachers. Ikkyu then declares, as if it were a matter of pride in view of the worthlessness of inka, that his teacher Keso Sodon never received inka from his teacher Gongai Sochu (d. 1390), and that Ikkyu himself never received Keso's inka. The assertion is repeated at the close of Jikaishu, and seems to provide a theoretical frame of sorts for the work:... "I have never given inka to anyone. Keso never received inka from Gongai. I never received inka from Keso. This is public knowledge. Yet here right under my nose there are plenty of people who claim to have my inka... So if after I'm gone, someone comes claiming to have my inka, you should report him to the authorities and prosecute for criminal misconduct. That's why I'm telling everyone the facts by way of a written testament. I never received inka from Keso. Anyone who says I did is lying. And I never gave inka to anyone, either priest or layman... However much people may insist they have my inka, even if they say they've studied with me for many years... do not believe them!" In something of a reversal of the traditional attitude, Ikkyu in Jikaishu establishes his legitimacy in terms of the absence of inka. The institution of inka, he implies, has become so debased that to give or receive inka is tantamount to fraud; to shun it, a clear proof of integrity. In Ikkyu's account, the failure of inka at Daitokuji is linked directly to the degeneration of koan study. The body of Jikaishu contains an indictment of koan Zen as practiced at the temple, exemplified by the teachings of Ikkyu's rival Yoso Soi, who, as noted earlier, serves as the particular butt of the work. Especially galling to Ikkyu is Yoso's practice of dispensing koan instruction to nuns and various groups from the new classes of late Muromachi Japan, whose support was then being sought by Daitokuji and other rinka temples. Jikaishu accuses Yoso of "selling Zen" to elicit donations, giving out koans in kana to nuns, merchants and the like in order to instruct them more readily and enable them to receive the secret transmission: "One tradesman declares: 'I did it in ten days.' Another states: 'I got tokuho in an embarrassingly short time...'" Throughout Jikaishu, Yoso is continually faulted for perverting Zen study to attract supporters, indiscriminately transmitting
the teaching to all comers: "Whether it's a man or a dog, a fart or a turd, he's ready to cajole them, selling koans and calling it tokuho"... At the same time, Ikkyu satirizes the mechanical manner in which koans are being transmitted, their "answers" reduced to formulas that could be recorded and preserved by ignorant initiates. He describes the case of two nuns: "One nun grieved, thinking she had lost the kana explanation of Joshu's "Cypress Tree in the garden, having actually placed it inside a handbox... "Another nun was weeping, thinking she had lost the memo she'd written with the answer to the koan "Who is it that does not accompany the ten thousand things? (manbo furyo). Ikkyu's commentary in Jikaishu is generally vitriolic and may well be rife with exaggeration and distortion, particularly as regards Yoso and his record as abbot at Daitokuji. Nevertheless, even allowing for the fact that Yoso himself might not be guilty of many of the abuses Ikkyu details or that others may be considerably overstated, something of the worst aspects of missan Zen in Ikkyu's day can probably be gleaned from Jikaishu. There remains however, a certain ambiguity in Ikkyu's attitude toward the missan transmission of koan which may be as telling as Jikaishu's powerful vilifications of missan Zen at Daitokuji. Although Ikkyu identified himself with Daio's master Hsu-t'ang and pure Sung Zen and opposed the corrupt form Rinzai practice had assumed in his own age, the nature of Ikkyu's own Zen teaching is unclear. It is certainly possible that his criticism of the extreme abuses of the missan system did not automatically preclude the use of certain forms of missan Zen in his own teaching program, and he conceivably accepted as standard certain aspects of the missan system at Daitokuji, even while rejecting others that he regarded as degenerate. Lending credence to this view is a passage dealing with koan study that appears in the Ikkyu kana hogo, an undated work by Ikkyu apparently consisting of instructions to a laywoman on Zen practice. In it, Ikkyu writes: "You tell me that, in your practice, you wish to clear up your doubts about koans. This is quite natural. So, for your diversion, I am going to set down in approximate form in kana some of those examples that the priests of long ago collected. "In teaching the koan 'One's original face,' the teacher asks: 'Without thinking of good or of evil, before you were born' where did you come from?' or, simply, 'What is your original face?" "Having received these words and completed his investigation of the koan, after thirty or fifty days or even one or two years'
study, the student will tell the teacher: 'My aspect before birth is that which not even the buddhas or any of the patriarchs have been able to realize.' "When the student declares it's that which the buddhas andpatriarchs can't realize, the teacher tells him:" "There are more important things than this." Then, after further study, the student declares: 'I have experienced what none have been able to realize since the beginnings of heaven and earth,' and the teacher expresses his approval. Afterward, the student gives his own word in accordance with the teaching. This is, generally speaking, what is involved. "As for the koan 'The Cypress Tree in the Garden,' the teacher tells the student: 'Investigate the meaning of Master Chou-chou's [Joshu's] answer 'The cypress tree in the garden' when he was asked about the purpose of the Patriarch's coming from the West." "Thereupon, the student replies: 'The purpose of the Patriarch's coming from the west, the cypress tree in the garden--both represent the same mind. It is simply the principle of Nature, the mind which knows neither before nor after.' As a capping verse, he gives: 'The pine is straight, the brambles bent.' When the teacher asks him, 'What about after forms have dissolved?' he says: 'The pine is not straight, the brambles not bent.' After giving three or four different replies, the student declares: 'This is the ultimate principle. This is what is meant by; the willow is green, the flower red.' The teacher then asks about the ultimate significance of this phrase, and the student replies that it is meant to impart the truth of original formlessness. This is more or less what happens... " There follow descriptions by Ikkyu of other koans with apparently acceptable replies offered by students. The format and content of these interviews are strikingly similar to those found in missancho cited by Suzuki Daisetsu; the hypothetical student's 'answers' to Chao-chou's 'Cypress Tree,' in particular, are almost identical to those in several examples of missan treating this koan. There is nothing in the kana hogo to suggest that Ikkyu is being critical of this approach to koan instruction or takes exception to it. On the contrary, what we have seems to be an attempt by Ikkyu to describe to his reader how koan study in Zen is typically carried out. While falling short of an endorsement, the passage in the Kana hogo suggests that Ikkyu and other reform-minded rinka priests may have tolerated, if not actually embraced, some form of missan Zen in their day-to-day teaching of koans. Criticisms of missan practice similar to those made by Ikkyu
in Jikaishu appear in other contemporary accounts. Many of these derive from Gozan priests of the Onin-Bunmei period (1467-1483), when the vigor of the sorin was being sapped by the leading rinka temples, and their objectivity, like that of Jikaishu itself, may thus be called into question. Nevertheless, in their details, these records seem to agree broadly with one another as well as with Jikaishu. Several chroniclers deplore the secret transmission of words and phrases in the rinka temples, with one, the Gozan literary priest Genryu Shuko (1458-1492), remarking that "these are entirely private words and not public words displayed before the realm," an ironic allusion to the original significance of the term ''koan'' as a public record of legal precedents. In a similar vein, the Shokokuji abbot Keijo Shurin (d. 1518) attacks the quantitative approach to koan practice rife in Zen temples, and writes of priests "selling" Rinzai and Soto, falsely labeling this the authentic transmission... "Calling themselves teachers, their instruction to students consists in having them study koans by finishing one and moving on to the next, just as though they were piling up the stories of a pagoda...". ***** (translation and copyright by Peter Haskel) Cover: Coverpic by Seiko Susan Morningstar.
Seiko Susan Morningstar A limited number of complete sets of Zen Notes (from Vol. I, 1954 to Vol. LVI, 2008) are available for sale. Price - $300.00. If you are interested, contact the Institute at the phone number below. Copyright 2010 PUBLISHED BY FIRST ZEN INSTITUTE OF AMERICA, INC. 113 East 30th Street New York City, New York 10016 (212) 686-2520 VOLUME LVI, NUMBER 3 SUMMER 2009 Editor, usually anonymous artist, poet... Peeter Lamp ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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