ZHAOZHAOU'S NO
by Roshi James Ishmael Ford, 2 September 2002
Boundless Way Zen, Henry Thoreau Sangha

The Case
A student of the way asked Zhaozhaou, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?"

Zhaozhaou replied, "No."

Wumen’s Comment 
To accomplish the way of Zen you must pass through the barrier set up by the Zen teachers of old. To achieve subtle wisdom it is essential you cut off the mind of discrimination. If you do not pass through these barriers, if you do not cut off the mind of discrimination, you are like a ghost clinging to grasses and trees.

Zhaozhou Congshen, (Joshu in the Japanese transmission), is another of the central figures of koan Zen. He was born in 778. At eighteen he made his way to the monastery of the renowned master Nanquan Puyuan (Nansen in Japanese), one of the successors of Mazu. There he had a fateful encounter, one that transformed his life, and may touch our lives, as well. Zhaozhou asked Nanquan, "What is the way?" Here is the great question for so many of us. What is the way? How do we find our path through the sorrow and confusion of life and death?

Nanquan replied, "Ordinary mind is the way." Zhaozhou asked, "Does this way have a special character?" The old monk who would become his teacher replied, "With the slightest intention it is lost." Confused, Zhaozhou said, "Without intention or direction, how can one know what is the way?"

Nanquan replied, "The way is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion while not knowing is mere blankness. When the way is truly attained, it is like a great emptiness, vast, expansive. So how can it be reduced to right or wrong?"

With these words Zhaozhou had his great awakening. But he continued to study with Nanquan, refining this understanding for forty years. He stayed until the death of his teacher. He then proceeded on pilgrimage, vowing "Should I meet a hundred year old who seeks my counsel, I’ll teach that person. Should I meet a seven year old child who can teach me, I’ll listen closely to that person."

Eventually Zhaozhou settled at the Kwan Yin monastery where he began formally teaching, quickly gaining a reputation for deep wisdom and a surprising skill in guiding others. Even Dogen Kigen, who was quick to point out the mistakes and foibles of other teachers called Zhaozhou the Old Buddha.

So, it is small wonder that when Wumen Huikai came to compile his famous collection of koans, the Wumenkuan, or Gateless Gate, the first case he chose to include would be one featuring Zhaozhou. He chose brilliantly.

The word koan has several possible meanings. The most commonly accepted one is derived from the meanings of the two Chinese characters "Kung" and "An" which combine into the word. Together they mean "public case," as in a court document. And in public document we find a pointing. Koans are about those encounters, which reveal the way things are, the true laws of nature and of our human minds.

So in one sense at least, koan Zen is a path of meditation and encounter between a teacher and a student focused on brief phrases or even a single word which can reveal what is. A koan may be derived from conversations between students and their teachers, from fragments of poems, or bits of folk tales, anything that strikes the teacher as capable of opening the heart and mind, of directing us to our own original experience.

There are many ways to engage koan study. Today in China and Korea one may take up a single koan, usually called by itself a "case," and sit with it for a full lifetime. Within this tradition Zen practitioners may work with one, or no more than two or three cases, examining the many facets of the jewel, never exhausting all the possibilities.

In Japan koan Zen developed into a curriculum, following the work of the eighteenth century spiritual genius Hakuin Ekaku. In his system further developed by his students and theirs, one began with a koan that points toward our fundamental openness such as Zhaozhou’s No.

Here, as one’s eye begins to open the student is asked twenty or thirty or more "checking questions." These are questions that push the mind and body to express our intimate understanding of that oneness and how we differentiate out from that oneness, how we return to that openness in the dance of interrelatedness, of our being and nonbeing, the dynamic of a wakeful life.

While not giving it the lifetime of study found in most Chinese or Korean traditions, this does provide a comprehensive investigation of that fundamental case. After this detailed exploration of the gateway koan, one works systematically through various collections, engaging two or three or at most a dozen possible points for each subsequent koan, until one has "finished" the curriculum. The quotes are essential here, because so long as we’re alive koans continue to present themselves, opportunities for further understanding, for clearer seeing constantly arise.

I’ve done most of my koan study within the Harada Yasutani school, a lay branch of the Soto tradition that has reincorporated a full koan curriculum from the Rinzai tradition. Within the curriculum of the Harada Yasutani school, after the No cycle, one does a collection of "miscellaneous koans" originally compiled by the founders of the school, but continuously modified and tweaked by successive teachers.

We then move on to the traditional collections, Gateless Gate, the Blue Cliff Record, the Book of Serenity, Keizan’s Japanese version of the Transmission of the Lamp, the Five Ranks of Tungshan, and finally the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts engaged as koan. Other schools in the Japanese Rinzai lineage follow slightly different collections, but the general scheme remains constant.

However there is a single foundation to koan study, which is mo-chao ch’an or mokusho Zen, the Zen of silent illumination, the practice of choiceless awareness. The essential practice of silent illumination is simple: Sit down. Shut up. Pay attention. It is a variation on the ancient vipassana or mindfulness discipline taught by the Buddha and his heirs. In Japanese it is called shikantaza meaning "just sitting" or "silent illumination," and have no doubt it is the heart of our Zen practices.

Many people make much of the distinctions between the two principal paths of Zen, this Zen of silent illumination and k’an-hua’ch’an, the Zen of the contemplation of words, or koan Zen. But in fact without silent illumination there is no koan study.

While some people think koans are meaningless, they in fact are all grounded within an understanding of the way things are: of our essential openness as well as our radical interdependence and how we act from that open interdependence. Koan Zen without this grounding in pure attention to what is, to silent illumination, to mindfulness, can be a game. Not careful about this we can be trapped in our good idea of what is, rather than moving beyond mere concepts into a living reality.

This is the danger of koan Zen, the danger of anything that points to the real. The near truth of it becomes its dangerousness. One can tumble to the inner logic and answer one question after another without ever achieving the integration of experience for which the practice was developed. I’ve seen this happen, and this missing while so close is sad. And sometimes it is tragic, as one takes the good idea of freedom and turns it into a justification for an unhealthy appetite.

But, with a little humility, and remembering this is not some divine practice given from heaven, but an amazingly practical device developed by human beings to help us on our way to our own intimate and authentic depth, the true possibilities of the koan way begin to open up.

And here we are, children of the west taking up the Zen way. We find these questions and their possible answers welling up within our own hearts and minds as our own possibility. We take up the way and find it truly is ours. And so, of course, there are also small shifts, new ways of engaging this once and future practice.

For one thing koan study developed within a monastic context. Now, most  who come to this practice in the west are either lay people, or ordained within the priestly transmission of Japanese Zen. Few of us are monks or nuns in the traditional sense of those words.

And so, where in years before, should the student bring their personal difficulties into the dokusan room, the interview room, the teacher would simply ring the bell signifying an end to the interview. But now we find we need to bring our whole life into that room. We must include our hurts, our longing, all the great and small devastations and joys of our lives: our children, our work, our spouses and lovers, each crowd up with us as we engage the koan. Nothing is off limits as we encounter our teachers, and seek the deep knowing that is our promised heritage.

So, there I was, sitting with one of my students in the dokusan room. He had been wrestling with this koan for some time. As is our convention, after making his bows he recited the case and then said to me, "So far I’ve found three aspects to this case." He hesitated. "I suspect there are more."

I waited. Then he said, "First, there is my father’s ‘no,’ wagging his finger, disapproving of everything. Then, there is the no that cuts through all my ideas. ‘I am good for taking up this practice’ No. ‘I’m bad because I don’t understand.’ No. ‘Now I understand.’ No."

We sat together silently. The early morning light was beginning to lighten the room. I saw he hadn’t shaved that day. He cleared his throat, almost like he was embarrassed. I could smell the smoke of the incense stick burning on the small altar behind my back, and the memory of coffee on his breath. "And then, James," he said. "There’s that point where no falls away."

The first of these -- our investigation of the shape of our minds, our hurts and wounds -- can be very important. When we don’t understand our psychological motivations we will be pushed to and fro by forces beyond our understanding. It is essential for us to see how our minds work, just as it is essential to learn how to live in the world in an authentic and artful manner.

And we find the work of inquiry the major ongoing project of Zen practice. This constant investigating and cutting the roots of thoughts and feelings as they arise is the ongoing and necessary task of the spiritual enterprise. Here we see through each thought, each passion as it floats up; here we find that which allows us to understand both our selves and others with genuine compassion.

And on our way, the most important thing is to find that moment when self and other fall away. Here as our ideas of good and ill and should or should not fall away we find the true gate of freedom. Here is the great gift of the Zen way: a direct pointing to that which is. We need the other two aspects, healing the hurt and seeing through the patterns to live full lives. But here we speak of the grand ultimate, the great matter itself. While words fail to be able to describe it, this openness, this place of silence is what our quest is all about.

So we find all these aspects in koan study, and particularly so within the investigation of no. In fact in our western Zen way most koan teachers actually don’t translate the word. As it has been transmitted to us by our Japanese teachers, and I follow in a Japanese-derived Zen lineage, the word given as the object of meditation, and the subject of the critical encounters between a teacher and a student is Mu. (The Chinese is Wu.)

In our way the first case is almost always this one. The resolution, or wato (literally "word-head"), is this single syllable, whether it is Wu or Mu or No. Now there is a certain grace in using Mu, a word that has no inherent meaning in English, other of course, than the lowing of a cow. The very lack of meaning makes it the canvas of our longing, the mirror of our inquiry. It can be powerful.

But a few years ago Tarrant Roshi began using this translated word, and now after sitting with no for a while myself, I’ve taken it up with my students. It speaks to some of the many possibilities within our encounter. And my friend in his struggles spoke to several critical ones.

First we are haunted, as in his "father’s no." It can be some parental disapproval that haunts us twenty or thirty or fifty years after we’ve grown up. It might be the "no" in someone’s glance or tone that we can’t shake. Or it can be our own no, one that hurt, that continues to hurt. It is the fear of not being accepted, of never having been accepted, or our own not accepting, presenting itself while we’re trying to "work" the koan.

Of course the problem may take another shape. It might be some other demon than disapproval riding on the word no. No reveals the poison, whatever it is, as it creeps into the shadows of our lives, visiting our dreams, harming our relationships. You probably know what your poisoned no is. Whatever it is, this is something we need to encounter, to understand, to deal with as we make our way toward our full humanity, binding the wounds, seeking the great peace.

Now mostly this is the work of psychology, healing those wounds of our living. But, of course, the division between the arts of psychology and the "cure of souls," that felicitous turn of phase in our western traditions for guidance on the life of the spirit is a recent distinction. I don’t disdain the use of traditional western psychology and the exploration of the relationship of self in a healthy life. And I hope people on the spiritual way avail themselves of the possibilities within modern psychology. It can be very important.

But, it is simply one facet of the koan way -- and by no means its most significant. Indeed, part of the complexity of it all is that while we need to seek healthy ways of engaging our selves, at the very same time we need to see through the self as conditioned and in its very nature passing. Here we begin to encounter the no that cuts through our distinctions, our picking and choosing.

Here is that second no we might encounter. When every thought and emotional response is met with a no, something is revealed. Here as our best analysis is met with a no, much is revealed. And of course, even those revelations need to be met with no. No. Relentless. No. Constant. No.

Find that no, all the way down.

Each no, in turn, can be useful. I need to engage the hurts of the no that I’ve encountered in my life, and the fragility of my self in this world of distinctions. And I need to know the no that cuts through my clinging to any of these aspects of reality as if they were permanent and true in some cosmic sense.

Here no at one moment is the saving of perspective, and at the next it is the liberating sword cutting through delusions. And if it were no more than one or both of these things, this no would be a beautiful and powerful thing. It reveals the fragile and wondrous nature of my mind, and the astonishing grace of seeing through each thought and emotion as rising out of some mysterious reality that evades my naming. But then there is also, as my friend suggested, that third thing.

There is a moment beyond the heat of that red-hot ball stuck in the gullet, a moment when the ball and the gullet fall away. A moment when the cruelty of our parents, or the unfairness of the world, or the fragility of our own lives falls away. There is a moment when each thought and emotion, and even the mysterious source of those things, all fall away. There is a moment when all distinctions and exceptions themselves fall away.

Here, just no.

No.

And then, if we persist and are just a little lucky, at some moment even no falls away. And what presents itself then? To what accident does all this take us? Not us. You. Me. Here in our most intimate moment.

So, here is the question of this last no. Each of us as we’ve arisen out of the mystery, and come into being, you, me, what is the no from before we were born? What is our original face? As we take up this way, to what truck crash are we heading? What happens when the dog, when the student of the way, when you and I and all things simply fall away? Wumen’s poem suggests what we find.

Dog – Buddha nature –
Everything is revealed.
But in a moment of yes and no
body is lost, life is lost.

There are two points here. The first describes the moment of waking. The second the alternative tumbling and stirring of sleep, and a hint of warning. Within our sleeping, in any moment of distinction, of our sleeping lives dreaming a world of separation, all is lost. But, letting what is just be, without an additional thought, that opens a way of revelation, of possibility, of art, of generosity, of hope.

It is for this we were born.

Is this clear?