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ENTERING
THE TEACHER'S ROOM The Case Hui-neng was the thirty-third
ancestor of the Zen line and the sixth of the Chinese transmission. While he was working
in the rice-hulling shed, his teacher the Zen Master Hung-jen entered and asked, "Is
the rice white yet?" Hui-neng answered, "It’s white, but it hasn’t
been sifted yet." Ta-chien Hui-neng (Daikan Eno in Japanese) was born in the year 638 of our Common Era. He was orphaned at the age of three, and due to the extreme poverty of his family he was forced from a very early age to help support his mother by cutting and selling firewood. One day as he was carrying a load of kindling into the town he overheard someone reciting a line from a sacred text. "You should activate your mind without it dwelling anywhere." Just hearing these words were enough and the boy was awakened. He asked the source of this text, and was told it came from the Diamond Sutra, one of the books of the Prajanaparamita cycle and had been given to the speaker by the Zen master Hung-jen. In the story of the Buddha, when the great urge to awakening pulled him to the path he abandoned his family and immediately began the quest. This, however, is a Chinese story, so the faithful youth first made arrangements for the care of his mother before heading north. As he made his way north, first he stayed with a family that included a nun. As he began to explain the meaning of obscure texts to the nun, he quickly revealed that while untutored, indeed while illiterate, he had great natural wisdom. He quickly captured the affection of the family, and not long after that, of the entire village. Soon people were traveling for miles around to hear the young sage speak of the way of a mind that is active but resting nowhere. However he thought to himself, "I seek great wisdom, why should I stop halfway?" And continued on to Hung-jen’s monastery. When given an interview with the master, Hung-jen asked the youth from where did he come, and why did he wish to enter the community? Hui-neng replied he came from the Ling-nan in the south, and that he wished to become a buddha. The master laughed and said no one in Ling-nan, or for that matter, anywhere in the south has buddha-nature. This might be like someone in Boston saying no one from Iowa has buddha-nature. Probably a joke. Impertinently the young Hui-neng corrected the teacher. "Within common understanding it can be said there are northerners and southerners, but can that be true within buddha-nature?" Here we find an echo reverberating throughout the world’s faiths. Paul declaring "In Christ Jesus there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female." And the Sikh founder the Guru Nanak declaring upon his own awakening "There is no Muslim, no Hindu." When the alert mind does not settle into one thing and another how can there be discrimination? Hung-jen was satisfied, so the boy was set to work husking rice. He settled into the rhythms of monastic life for eight months. During this time he probably had no further encounters with the teacher, other than perhaps hearing him lecture. As a lay-practitioner, the young Hui-neng may not even have had the opportunity to sit in the meditation hall. But all this time that active mind settled nowhere, continuing to deepen. Also during this time Hung-jen had decided to name his successor. Because this is a story, he decided to frame a contest to find that successor. He declared "The great way is difficult to understand. So, I don’t want you simply to regurgitate what I’ve said to you all these years. Instead, I want each of you, my students, to compose a brief verse that demonstrates your own intimate understanding." Again, because this was a story, only one person wrote a verse, and that was the head monk, Shen-hsiu. But in the story he was hesitant to bring it directly to his old teacher, so instead he wrote it anonymously on the wall of the great hallway. The body is the tree of wisdom. The mind but a bright mirror. At all times diligently polish it, To remain untainted by dust.1 The master saw the verse and declared, "Very good. Very good." But in private he was concerned the writer, whom he was certain was Shen-hsiu had not yet penetrated to the deepest matter. However, before he was forced to confer the transmission on an unworthy successor, Hui-neng came into the hallway, and because he was illiterate, had to ask a monk what it said. When he heard the words, he said, "No, that’s not it." And he asked the monk to write another verse. The tree of wisdom fundamentally does not exist. Nor is there a stand for the mirror. Originally, there is not a single thing, So where would dust alight? When the master saw this, he knew it was written by the successor he was seeking. He also knew, somehow, this must have been written by the young lay-practitioner he’d set to work husking rice eight months before. He announced, "No, this is written by someone who has yet to understand the matter fully." And had it erased. That evening, he went to the shed, and the encounter recorded by Keizan took place. Of course, the story continues after that encounter. This meeting is the mid-point in Hui-neng’s life. The old teacher gives him the ancient signs of transmission; his own robe and bowl. There is a flight into the dark. And miracles follow like night follows day, like spring follows winter. A monk catches up with him and demands the robe and bowl. Hui-neng says the robe and bowl are not realization and puts them down for the monk to pick up. But when the monk discovers he cannot pick them up, he repents his grasping after outer symbols and becomes a follower of Hui-neng. Then after years in the wilderness, he is ordained, and eventually founds a monastery. Soon his teachings on the immediacy of understanding become the hallmark of the southern school of Zen. As the generations pass his is the Zen line that prevails. All of us, of whatever nationality, of whatever culture, of whatever Zen sect whomever walks the Zen way, we are his heirs. He is both a story and a map. His teaching is about who we really are, and what it is we can find in our seeking. Now this case turns on that encounter in the rice husking shed. And so, let’s turn our mind’s eye to what was said and what happened. When I first took up the cases in the Denkoroku, it was after years of koan study. And I was looking forward to encountering these stories of the ancestral transmission taken up as koans. I was also looking forward to working, for the first time, with a collection of Japanese koans. Everything I’d done before had been out of the great Chinese collections. And truthfully, I was disappointed. I quickly saw some of the differences between the cases of the Denkoroku and the Chinese books such as the Wumen-kuan and the Pi Yen Lu. For one thing these older collections were compilations, the teachings and encounters of many different individuals. As a matter of practice they bring up the multiple facets of reality, now this, now that. The Denkoroku tells the stories of fifty-two masters from Shakyamuni down to Keizan’s teacher, Dogen’s heir, Eihei Ejo. But they are all told by a single voice, taking traditional stories and working them to a specific purpose. Wonderful as that voice is, I found the relentless similarity of resonance among all the cases disturbing. That relentlessness is about one thing, the falling away of all certainties and the moment of deepest awakening. It is, in a genuine sense about that moment pointed to in the Diamond Sutra. "You should activate your mind without it dwelling anywhere." A true statement. A critical point of understanding. But why this point over and over again? For some time my feeling was that this collection wasn’t nearly as interesting or powerful as the older Chinese collections. But, as I continued on through the cases, while they did indeed continue to resemble each other, I began to see how they also showed a subtlety of insight that required slowing down and noticing. Koun Yamada, the teacher of Robert Aitken, once commented that the Denkoroku is old man’s Zen, old woman’s Zen. This deep pool of relentless letting go is our deepest awakening. The true way is achieved when we’ve burned our bridges, when we’ve fought the last battle, when we’ve surrendered all our ideas of what should be in favor of the subtle truth of this moment. Hui-neng had already seen through the divisions of life and death, of high and low, even of good and ill. He had achieved recognition of his insight by many people. But, he knew that was only halfway. The rice was white. But it hadn’t yet been sifted. Maybe this is our situation as well. Perhaps the rice has become white for us. Perhaps we’ve studied the Dharma, and have come to some authentic understanding of the relationship between form and emptiness, between the phenomenal and the great openness that is the truth of our being. Maybe we’ve even come to experience this as more than a good idea. Maybe we’ve felt the identity of self and other; maybe we’ve even experienced a falling away of self and other. These are the hallmarks of awakening. And yet, in this case we’re called to continue on. To continue on. So, Hui-neng came to the north, he came to Hung-jen, and he accepted the most humble task, working out there in the rice husking shed. He didn’t study the sacred texts. He didn’t, probably, even do zazen. He just worked. Like those random words from the sutra, everything was teaching him, every moment, all the time. Then he came to the time of sifting. In our way this is signaled by an encounter with a teacher. This is an important point to this koan. The testing and confirmation of another human being is very important. But in fact it is bigger than receiving the seal of approval even from Hung-jen, the Fifth Ancestor of our way. Our realization does need confirmation. We need constantly to test and reawaken. But, really, ultimately, what is that confirmation? How do we achieve the great falling away of realization itself that is the sifting? How do we discover the identity of realization and ordinary action which is signaled for us by the simple acts of striking a mortar with a staff and shaking a basket? Here, as we consider this as our own path, perhaps we begin to understand our ancestor Dogen’s teaching. "To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly." Do you understand? Here is the sifting. The rice and the husks have all fallen away. And here is our confirmation. The mortar is struck, the basket shaken. Here where there is no trace of enlightenment left, we have discovered the truth of our realization. Here, right here in this place, among us in this room, sitting together, listening together, finding our lives together and facing our deaths together. And at the same time, each of us doing these things profoundly alone. In all this the great way is revealed, our saving is assured, as is that of all the many beings. Let us notice that, and then let go of it, as well. The bridges were burned a million years ago. Now, no Soto. Now, no Rinzai. Now, no Chogye. No shikantaza. No koans. No rice. Just this. Right here. You. Me. The great world. One body. OneBody. |
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