Zen Buddhism 5

Introduction The Anatomy of the Zen Koan

John Daido Loori

According to the legend of Shakyamuni’s birth, when the Buddha was born he took three steps forward, pointed to heaven with one hand and to the earth with the other and said, “Between heaven and earth I alone am the honored one.” In Zen, we take this pivotal moment and study it as a koan—a fundamental question about the nature of reality that a student works with during periods of zazen, or Zen meditation.

These days, koans have become part of our everyday language. They appear in songs, movies, even beauty products. Some well-known koans are What is the sound of one hand clapping? or Zhaozhou’s Mu. The common view of koans like these describes them as riddles or paradoxes, but the fact is there are no paradoxes. Paradox exists only in language, in the words and ideas that describe reality. In reality itself there are no paradoxes.

In order to see into a koan we must go beyond the words and ideas that describe reality and directly and intimately experience reality itself. The answer to a koan is not a fixed piece of information. It is one’s own intimate and direct experience of the universe and its infinite facets. It is a state of consciousness.

A practitioner working on Shakyamuni’s statement needs to sit with the questions: Who is that honored one? What does it mean to stand alone between heaven and earth? Although the Buddha lived over 2,500 years ago, these are not abstract questions. To ask Who is the honored one? is no different from asking What is reality? What is life? What is death? What is God? Who am I? These are questions about the basic truths of our lives. In Zen, the investigation into these questions takes the form of koan introspection within the context of zazen and the teacher-student relationship.

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In the beginning stages of practice, zazen allows the mind to become quiet and focused, bringing attention to the present moment. Little by little, we learn to still our internal dialogue so we can put our attention on the breath, and eventually, on the koan. By working with our thoughts—acknowledging them, letting them go, coming back again and again to the breath—we begin to develop joriki, or self-power. Joriki pre- pares us to work on koans because it enables us to put our mind where we want it, when we want it, for as long as we want it there.

The further we go into zazen, the more confidence we develop in our ability to let go. As our confidence grows, our ability to process sup- pressed thoughts broadens. Little by little we work our way through the accumulated baggage of a lifetime. Gradually the mind settles and qui- ets down. Our zazen becomes serene and spacious.

Eventually, joriki turns into samadhi, or single-pointedness of mind. When samadhi has developed sufficiently, we begin to work with the first koan. Up until that point, the teacher has been supportive and nourish- ing in dokusan, or face-to-face teaching. But when the first koan is intro- duced, the teacher turns into an adversary, demanding clear responses. “What is it? Go deeper. Not good enough. Work harder.” Suddenly the student is on her own: What is it? What is it? What is it? keeps resonat- ing in her whole being. She knows there’s an answer, and she knows other people have seen it, so she perseveres. She keeps trying, and she keeps getting rejected. She keeps getting thrown back on herself.

This is usually the most difficult period of practice. Sometimes it takes years to see the first koan. During this time the student will go to the teacher hundreds of times and present an understanding, and the teacher will reject it. If the student has not built up some self-esteem and some stability in zazen, she suddenly finds herself in a quandary because the teacher’s support evaporates. The only place she can turn to is very deep inside herself. This personal foundation of self-study is often referred to as “the three pillars of Zen”: great doubt, great faith, and great determination.

Great doubt is the question of life and death. Koans are a distilled essence of this question—the fuel behind the spiritual quest. Great doubt is described by the Chinese master Wumen as a red-hot fiery ball that’s stuck in your throat. You can’t swallow it and you can’t spit it out.

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Great faith is the sincere trust in the process. This trust is not only in Buddhism and Zen, but in koan introspection, and most importantly in oneself and one’s own ability to break through the koan. To break through, you need to have total trust in yourself and your ability to do it. If you don’t believe you can, you won’t. It’s not something that’s going to happen by accident, but rather something you’re going to do with your own body and mind.

Great faith and great doubt are in dynamic equilibrium. They cre- ate a spiritual tension that must be balanced with a third quality: great determination. Great determination is vital in koan study, particularly in respect to the shifting teacher-student relationship. This relation- ship is in a constant state of evolution, from the first meeting to the last. Our upbringing and educational system place immense value on approval, which can often lead to feeling dependent on the teacher or to a lack of trust in one’s own self-sufficiency. Great determination is the kind of determination that Bodhidharma spoke of: “Seven times knocked down, eight times get up.” There’s nothing that can stop you. It may take time, it may take endless effort, it may take the rest of your life, but you’re going to do it. You keep practicing until the intellect is completely exhausted and you make the quantum leap necessary to see the koan.

That initial insight is usually the first glimpse into the absolute basis of reality, the dharmakaya. Clarifying and thoroughly understanding the dharmakaya is a process that continues throughout the entirety of a student’s training. Following the first koan and the initial breakthrough is a sequence of koans whose role is to clarify that original insight. In the training at Zen Mountain Monastery, there are one hundred miscella- neous koans that act as a prelude to the classic collections. The curricu- lum of koans that my teacher Maezumi Roshi used in training students include two-hundred miscellaneous koans, forty-eight koans of The Gateless Gate, one hundred koans of The Blue Cliff Record, one hun- dred koans of the Book of Equanimity, fifty-three koans of The Record of Transmitting the Light, the koans on the Five Ranks of Master Dong- shan, and a hundred and twenty precept koans. Towards the end of training there are also the kirigami documents and oral teachings with koans embedded in them. Altogether this represents roughly seven

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hundred cases that students work with day by day, week by week, year by year, slowly and painstakingly transforming themselves and their lives.

Progression through the koan system varies from person to person, but most often it is irregular, with periods of smooth sailing interrupted by moments of self-doubt and confusion. A student may be moving along, passing koans, when all of a sudden he runs into an impassable wall—a killing-sword koan. The teacher will use these koans to “kill” the student’s ego. Just when things are beginning to make sense, the teacher pulls out the rug. Nothing makes sense anymore, and the student is once again thrown into turmoil.

This pattern repeats itself throughout training. From one perspec- tive, this dance is the basis of the teacher-student relationship. When the student gets comfortable, the teacher pulls out the rug and the student falls.The teacher rushes over and helps the student to his feet again; once the student is brushed off and standing firmly, the teacher pulls out the rug again and down he goes. This happens again and again until the teacher can pull the rug without the student falling. They bow to each other and the process is completed: the dharma is transmitted to the next generation.

To understand this dance, it is helpful to also understand how the mind-to-mind transmission works in Zen. When Shakyamuni Buddha realized himself under the bodhi tree, he realized that all sentient beings are—and always have been—perfect and complete, lacking nothing. But given this truth, teaching becomes a very difficult task. If we already have what we’re looking for, what is there to teach? Knowing this, the Buddha developed myriad upaya, skillful means, in order to help us realize that which has always been present.

It is that realization that was transmitted on Mount Gridhrakuta years later, from Shakyamuni to Mahakashyapa. Two thousand students had gathered on Vulture Peak to hear the Buddha give a discourse. When the Buddha appeared, he held up a flower and without saying a word twirled it in his fingers. Of all the students listening, only Mahakashyapa smiled and blinked his eyes. The Buddha said, “I have the all-pervading true dharma, incomparable nirvana, the exquisite teaching of formless form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside the scriptures. I now hand it to Mahakashyapa.” As with the Buddha’s birth, Zen takes

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up this event as a koan; the full case appears in The Gateless Gate with commentary and verse by Master Wumen.

Some time after the Buddha’s death, the dharma was again transmit- ted to the next generation. Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant and cousin, had been present at the assembly on Vulture Peak when Mahakashyapa received the transmission. It is said that Ananda had an incredible mem- ory; all the sutras are purported to have come from his recitation of the Buddha’s words. But despite Ananda’s unparalleled knowledge, it was Mahakashyapa who received the Buddha’s acknowledgment. Why? Why didn’t Ananda get it? Because the mind-to-mind transmission is not based on knowledge or information.

After the Buddha died, Ananda became Mahakashyapa’s attendant. One day Ananda was reflecting on the incident on Mount Gridhrakuta and he asked Mahakashyapa, “When the Buddha gave you the robe and bowl [the symbols of transmission] on Vulture Peak, what else did he give you?” He was full of doubt and asking, What do you have that I don’t have? Mahakashyapa answered, “Ananda!” Ananda responded, “Yes Master!” Mahakashyapa said, “Take down the flagpole.” Hearing these words, Ananda was greatly enlightened. “Take down the flagpole” is another way of saying “the lecture is over.” In those days, whenever a discourse was given by a teacher, a banner would fly on the flagpole. To take down the flagpole meant that the talk had ended. This incident, according to the Zen tradition, marked the transmission from the second to the third generation.

The very same thread continued on for generation after generation for 2,500 years—not through lectures, sutras, philosophical treatises, or belief systems but mind-to-mind. A direct insight into the teaching was said to be carried for twenty-eight generations in India. Then it was brought to China by Bodhidharma. It flowered there during the Tang Dynasty and continued for fifty-one more generations in China and Japan, eventually coming to this continent at the turn of the twentieth century. It was always transmitted directly, intimately, from generation to generation, teacher to student.

Because of the nature of Zen training and its emphasis on direct experi- ence, a book about koan practice is, in a way, a contradiction in terms.

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Whole volumes on koans could not adequately explain how they work or what they’re about. However, a text on the history and study of koans can act as upaya. One of the factors motivating modern practitioners these days is their intellect. So in order to do good “Zen fishing” and guide students into serious practice—one of the vows of a Zen teacher—it is sometimes useful to bait the hook with beautiful, juicy intellectual worms. Sitting with Koans is one of these worms.

The hundreds of dialogues, encounters, commentaries, and verses recorded in the koan collections provide a beautiful context for under- standing the evolution of the dharma through the centuries. Ours is not a Buddhist culture, so it is important for practitioners to get a sense of the socio-historical background in which koan introspection developed and the effect it had on shaping Zen practice. The first section of this book provides just such an overview.

The second section lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the Japanese koan system, with special emphasis on works by great masters like Hakuin Ekaku and Eihei Dogen—pivotal figures in the revi- talization of koan introspection, as well as avid and original commenta- tors on koans.

The third section includes teisho (dharma discourses) by some of the Japanese masters who came to America at the turn of the twentieth cen- tury in order to establish Zen on these shores. These discourses are fol- lowed by talks by some of their successors, the American Zen masters who laid the groundwork for an authentic, yet distinctly Western, style of Zen. In selecting teachers for inclusion in this volume, I have chosen from among only those teachers who have received inka (formal Rinzai transmission, Rinzai Zen being the tradition most closely associated with koan practice).

Sitting with Koans is not meant to be taken as an academic text. Nor is it a how-to book meant to provide answers to life’s questions. If any- thing, it will hopefully leave you with more questions. The only way to truly learn about koans is by doing them. Master Dogen said the koan is like a sharp lancet. You turn it toward yourself in order to pierce through the bag of skin—the idea of a separate self. Each koan, experienced with the whole body and mind, is an initiation into a new way of being. Each koan presents us with the possibility of experiencing true freedom.

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We all have the potential to live a fully deluded or fully awakened life. It is up to us to choose.This boundless dharma is always present, whether we realize it or not. We should strive with all our might to keep it alive and vibrant. It is the most important thing that we will ever do with our lives.

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