It’s quite well known today that the Sanskrit word, dhyāna, was phonetically sounded in Chinese as Ch’anna. Shortened to Ch’an, dhyāna became Zen in Japanese. The word is usually translated into English as “meditation,” and therefore Zen is sometimes described as the “meditation sect” of Buddhism - a distinguishing characteristic which, for a number reasons, doesn’t really bear scrutiny!
Hebert Guenther pointed out, that according to the 21st Ancestor, Vasubandhu, the Sanskrit word dhyāna has an etymological root in upanidhyā: “to know directly and correctly.” Seen in this light, dhyāna is a method to know reality, directly and correctly. This is helpful. It draws out a connection between dhyāna and prajñā (insight, or wisdom). However, it also begs some questions:
As to the first question, Har Dayal argued that, along with a number of other important Buddhist terms, dhyāna is untranslatable into English. We must search for its meaning by examining the contexts in which the word is used, rather than looking for a single overarching English word that encompasses it. Dayal said that, although we will find dhyāna variously translated as “meditation” “trance” “ecstasy” “contemplation” “rapture”, all these words derive from a European rather than a Buddhist way of thinking. So, they tend to miss its meaning. For example, the most commonly used words “meditation” and “contemplation” are problematic because both have 16th century origins in the dualism of a thinker and an object of thought. The Latin words “meditātus” and “meditārī” intend that someone is meditating upon or making a plan about something. The words “contemplatus” and “contemplari” also require that someone considers, observes, gazes intently at, reflects upon, ponders, studies or views something. Dhyāna, by way of contrast, is a transcendent term, in which the thinking subject, the activity of thinking and the object of thought would be unified in a totalising experience of the here-and-now. For this reason, the translator C A F Rhys Davids argued that dhyāna does not mean “meditation”! To take another example, Edward Conze used the word “trance” as a translation of dhyāna, which term at least has the advantage that it less obviously posits the dualism implicit in the notion of someone thinking about something. However, “trance” is a problematic word for other reasons. It carries the unfortunate connotation of a dreamlike or semi-consciousness reverie, in which one is either wholly unresponsive to external stimuli, or at best only selectively so. C A F Rhys Davids, thought “rapture” (from the Latin word “rapiemur”, meaning “we shall be caught up”) or “ecstasy” (from the Greek “ekstasis”, meaning “to stand outside of or transcend [oneself]”) to be closer to the meaning of dhyāna. Like trance, rapture is less obviously dualistic. Unfortunately, however, the sorts of experience people would today associate with rapture or ecstasy tend to be prone to the same criticisms we can level at the word “trance,” or else they refer to “getting high” or an experience so expectational as to generate a dualism of another sort – that of a division between our mundane work-a-day lives and a paranormal state of being. Since English words for dhyāna all involve a compromise, another avenue of exploration is to study its translation into Chinese, as Ch’anna (禪那.). The Chinese resolution of the problem of translating the word dhyāna might help us in our own understanding of its meaning in English. In his book China Roots, David Hinton offers an interpretation of the ideograms 禪那 (Ch’anna). The second part (-na; 那), which was dropped from later usage, refers to tranquillity in the immediacy of consciousness. It points towards the immediacy of felt-presence in the here-and-now, to which the posture of dhyāna and attention to the breath direct us, when represented by zazen. Over time, ch’anna was shortened to the two ideographic elements making up the word, ch’an (禪). The left-hand element of Ch’an (礻) is the “radical,” which gives us the general class to which the overall ideogram belongs. Hinton and others agree that this particular radical denotes an altar, or a person kneeling before a shrine. Therefore, it’s a religious radical. It’s suggestive of spiritual practice, and more particularly in this case, the practice of seeing into Buddha nature. Hinton says the radical points towards a practice in which we see that we are much more than our thoughts and memories. Although he puts a Daōist twist on the meaning of the ideogram, his basic point is clear: the ideogram indicates the deconstruction of the dichotomy of a subjective thinker, the thinking process and an object of thought (which, as we’ve noticed, the original European meanings of words like meditation and contemplation fail to capture). Moreover, as Hinton explains, a very early meaning of the ideogram 礻 was that of, “landscape,” conveyed, imaginatively, as “mountains and rivers.” Therefore, the altar, or the person kneeling before a shrine, in the radical for ch’an (禪), is directed towards a spiritual significance to be found in landscape, mountains and rivers, or the sensual world around us. Returning to our starting point, we could now say that the practice of dhyāna is to know mountains and rivers directly and correctly, not as divine fetishes of some kind, as they are in themselves. According to the implication of the Chinese ideogram, ch’an, the word dhyāna asks us to examine the world around us, including ourselves, and know it directly and correctly, as-it-is. The right-hand element of the ideogram for Ch’an (單) can be read in at least two interesting ways. It can mean a net used to capture animals (in this case, indicating that our untamed emotions and volitions are tethered to the practice), or it can refer to solitude (conveying the idea that each of us is existentially alone in our own seat of consciousness). In the combined symbolism of solitude and a net there may be more than a hint in this ideogram of a practice to be taken up as a whole-hearted, body and mind, personal quest that harnesses holistically our corporeality and our feelings, volitions and perceptions, as well as the faculties of reason and discernment (with which the original European ideas of meditation and contemplation were preoccupied). From this perspective, we can see why Dōgen Zenji referred to zazen as a body and mind practice, as opposed to a practice in which merely the mind is used to work on the mind. It may be additionally possible to read into the symbolism of the net implicit in 單 an acknowledgement of dependent origination, or the interdependent conditions of existence, represented in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra by Indrā’s Jewelled Net (which is described in this way by Francis Cook): “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.” So in summary, the method of dhyāna, is directing us towards a spiritual practice, which we have to undertake for ourselves, so that we may know directly and correctly the nature of reality, ourselves and our world, by bringing together the totality of what we are in the tranquil felt-presence of the here-and-now. We could add that “to know directly and correctly” is what Dōgen Zenji called the practice of dropping body and mind. If we leave aside our reservations about the word, “meditation,” we can use it loosely, because it’s becoming clear why Robert Aitken Rōshi called dhyāna, “the form and method of zazen” (which is another word that also tends to get translated as “meditation”). If we examine Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi, we see that he set out the form and method of zazen, so that we can be in no doubt what dhyāna looks like. In considering the second question (how is dhyāna practised as a pāramitā?), it may be helpful to explore the word samādhi, which is another of those awkward words to translate. Aitken Rōshi observed that although the two words dhyāna and samādhi and often used interchangeably, if dhyāna is the form and method of zazen, then samādhi is actually its condition. The condition of zazen is something we only understand by doing it. Dōgen Zenji offered us almost nothing about the condition of zazen in his Fukanzazengi. He gave only an outline of hishiryõ (“beyond thinking”) and left it to us to discover the condition that arises from zazen. We’re expected to immerse ourselves in the method of practice, and find out how zazen tastes (as it were) for ourselves. This makes practice very personal, and once appreciated, our body and mind recollection of it is intuitive. When it dawns on us what zazen is all about, it feels as if we’ve come home to our original dwelling place, like the prodigal son returning from a distant land. Samādhi, the content of dhyāna, is not a trance. Nor is it an attempt to block out everything in favour one particular thought or idea. Although samādhi is often translated as “concentration” (which does tend to suggest we should put all our energy into to blocking out everything but the breath, or a kōan), it’s more like an open gateway into being. If we understand samādhi merely as concentration, we’re liable to close our minds to the mountains and rivers – the total picture of what are lives are in each moment. For this reason, Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche told his students, “The practice of samādhi does not involve concentration”. Since we’re only ever breathing in and out right now, focussing attention on the breath can be helpful, because it grounds us in the life-moment. There is a calm and stability which comes from concentrating on the breath. It also discourages an over-romanticisation of Zen practice, making us patient with our endless tendency to become distracted. Kif we’re working on a kōan like Jōshū’s “Mu!” we also need to put a lot of concentrated energy into it. It does no good, however, to make concentration a yardstick to measure how well we’re doing in zazen. It’s not an end in itself. Unless we’re investigating our total life situation, we’re simply performing what Trungpa Rimpoche called, “mental gymnastics.” Taizan Maezumi Rõshi said that samādhi is to be “one” with the practice. When we’re one with our practice we abandon the tendency to draw a distinction between who we are and what we’re doing. When there’s no distinction there’s no need for a lot of effort to get a practice method “right” because holding to the method we are authentically what we as we sit in zazen. To practise dhyāna as a pāramitā we simply need to authentically be ourselves, at one with what we’re doing. In Fukanzaengi, Dõgen called zazen the Dharma gate of peace and joy, which that hints that the practice dhyāna is to relax into the posture of Zen, and let ourselves be as we are. Practising in this way, there is an openness, peace and precision to our being, which requires no artifice or wilfulness from us. The ego gets out of the way, and ordinary things shine out in own their intrinsic givenness. We can now begin to see the sense in which we might know reality, which was our third question. To know reality directly and correctly is to allow all the circumstances of our lives to arise, abide and pass away, just as they do. From this, it also begins to be clear what knowing reality indirectly and incorrectly might involve. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to find that we experience reality as a battle with ourselves, to settle our bodies and minds into enough calmness and tranquillity to sit serenely in the here-and-now. Reality, to us, can be a fight with our ego minds, in order to concentrate on what we are “supposed” to be doing. We struggle to concentrate because we feel distracted; and the struggle to concentrate just becomes one more cause of distraction. Trunga Rimpoche wryly observed that we entangle ourselves in a battle, in which ego fights to overcome ego! We can only end the battle through an insight into this fact. The fight to overcome distraction by concentration is itself the cause of our struggles with the practice. To begin to see this is to begin to reality directly and correctly. To know reality indirectly and incorrectly is to know it only as an idea of what it ought to be like, and a fight against the way it actually is. For there to be glimpse of reality itself we need to stop struggling, and rest in the here-and-now. This is a realisation that Trungpa Rimpoche said comes about when gaps in our exhausting effort to concentrate begin to appear. In the beginning, these gaps may only last for a short time, after which the ego-driven fight kicks in again, and we begin arguing with ourselves once more about how well we’re doing at zazen. This is why prolonged practice on, say, sesshin is so valuable. We wear out our habitual thinking patterns, like old shoes, to borrow one of Trungpa’s metaphors. Wearing out our habituation patterns of behaviour, so that gaps in them begin to emerge, and it’s possible to see more serene and less self-centred ways to appreciate our being is an aspect of dhyāna as a parāmitā. It’s a parāmitā because the work is endless. Knowing mountains and rivers directly and correctly is difficult because they are always receding from view. Understanding that is prajñā, the insight of panoramic perspective, which we will talk about next time. Sources The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature by Har Dayal The Practice of Perfection by Robert Aitken Rōshi Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa Buddhist Meditation by Edward Conze China Root by David Hinton The Etymology of the Chinese Ideogram ‘Ch’an’ (禪) (Published in The Middle Way, Journal of The Buddhist Society, London - Aug 2011 Vol. 86, No. 2 - page 171) https://wenshuchan-online.weebly.com/etymology-of-the-chinese-ideogram-lsquochrsquoanrsquo-31146.ht Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra by Francis Cook Fukanzazengi By Eihei Dõgen Zenji
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Koan: A monk asked, “Does a dog have Buddha Nature or not?” Jōshū answered, “Mu!” Joshu’s Mu is the first of 48 cases or kōan appearing in the Gateless Gate kōan collection (the Mumonkan) complied by Mumon Ekai (1183-1260), in 1228. It’s also the first case in the 200 introductory kōan studied by students working with teachers in Taizan Maezumi Roshi’s White Plum lineage; and it appears in the Rinzai Zen Shumon Kattoshu (Vines and Entanglements) and in the Sōtõ Zen Shoyoroku (Book of Equanimity). In the White Plum curriculum this kōan is studied three times. So, it’s a first and fundamental case for study, to which we keep coming back. Mumo considered this kōan the barrier of the ancestors, perhaps because we entrap ourselves by its seeming obscurity. We overthink its meaning and look for its resolution in the wrong place. Since Mu cannot be thought out and explained away, its resolution demands a leap beyond personal, dualistic perspective, even as we begin by grasping at shadows in a search for some grammatical means to articulate its unconditioned significance. The resolution of this kōan comes from a profound change in our appreciation of our own being in relation to the teaching of Buddha Nature. Mumon Ekai said of this kōan: “To realize Zen, one has to pass through the barrier of the ancestors. Enlightenment always comes after the road of thinking is blocked. If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors, or if your path of discursive reasoning is not blocked off, whatever you think, whatever you do, is like an entangling ghost. You may ask: What is a barrier of a ancestors? It’s just this, “Mu!” This is the barrier of Zen. If you pass through it, you will see Jōshū face to face. Then you can work hand in hand with the whole line of ancestors. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” The kōan’s significance arises from the question Joshu was asked, “Does a dog have Buddha Nature, or not?” The monk asks the question because, in the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra, the Buddha teaches that all beings have the ineffably subtle, eternal, blissful, authentic and pure Buddha Nature, which is nevertheless indistinguishable from conditioned existence and the monk wanted to understand what Buddha Nature was. The question was not an idle speculation. Seeing a dog in the temple courtyard perhaps, the monk intently wondered something along these lines: “If, as the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra says, all beings have the ineffably subtle, eternal, blissful, authentic and pure Buddha Nature, then I must have it; and that dog in the courtyard must have it. So, what is it? Why can’t I find it? Do I really have it, or not? Does that dog have it?” The teaching that all beings have the Buddha Nature had considerable traction in the development of Buddhism in east Asia and many of the principal sects of Mahayana Buddhism, including Zen, were fundamentally shaped by it. The thrust of the teaching is that Buddha Nature or Enlightenment is not something we acquire from practice, it is our original nature. We have always been fully endowed with Buddha Nature from the beginning of everything. It is one thing, however, to read and understand the words of the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra, and perhaps also to have a certain amount of faith that the Buddha Nature teaching must be true; and quite another to experience the teaching as true for oneself, as one’s own life. The central concern of Buddhism is not merely that we believe the teachings but that we test them out, practice them and find them to be true for ourselves. It’s imaginable then, that during the heyday of Buddhism in China countless Buddhists devotedly learned, copied out, studied and chanted the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra with the intention to see directly for themselves that all beings have the Buddha Nature, and that many of these people, try as they might, could not get a handle on what Buddha Nature was. Chapter 27 the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra suggested an approach to understanding Buddha Nature offered a clue to the realisation of Buddha Nature: Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha Nature, We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances. When the time has come, The Buddha Nature is manifest before us. There must have been many earnest Buddhist practitioners who studied this verse and prayed ardently that their time would come, and Buddha Nature would be made manifest before them. It’s exceptional however that persistent and ardent desire alone delivers to us what we want. More commonly we need help and guidance in our endeavours and we need the right tool to break down the obstacles to obtaining what we want. The monk who asked Joshu whether a dog had Buddha Nature or not might have watched the dog intently, as it carried on in real time conditions and circumstances, and wondered when the time would come for it Buddha Nature to be manifest before him As Zen became established in China, it offered the person-to-person transmission of a direct, intimate understanding of the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings, without reliance on the words of sutra study. To many renowned exegetes of the sutras, the Zen teachers making such claims would have seemed like fraudsters, however, there were many monks and nuns who turned to Zen from a desperate need for the personal experience of Buddha Nature they lacked from the study of the mere words of the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra. The monk questioning Joshu would have been like this. However, when the monk put his question to Master Joshu, he received the answer “Mu!” We may wonder how that helped him. The point however of the kōan is that is if we penetrate the meaning of Mu we ourselves will be helped, immeasurably. There are two recorded versions of the dialogue about the dog and Buddha Nature in the record of Master Joshu, although it’s only the first one, in which he answered “Mu!” (“No!”), which was incorporated by later teachers into the classical kōan collections. The full record of Master Joshu reads like this: A monk asked, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Joshu answered, “Mu! [no]” The monk replied, “All sentient beings have Buddha nature. Why would a dog not have it?” Joshu said, “Because it has karmic consciousness.” A monk asked, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Joshu answered, “Yu! [yes]” The monk replied, “If it has, why then is it still stuffed into a bag of skin?” Joshu said, ”Because though it knows, it deliberately transgresses.” It does not particularly matter whether it was the same monk or two different monks who asked these two questions. What’s interesting is that on the first occasion Joshu answered in the negative; and on the second, in the affirmative. His first answer denied that the conditioned existence of a dog could be anything apart from its dog nature. If the monk thought its Buddha Nature would be something other than its karmic consciousness, or dog nature, he didn’t understand what Buddha Nature was. Joshu invited the monk to see the dog as a dog, rather than try to make it conform to some invocation of an idealised Buddha Nature. In the second case, Joshu affirmed that even in its conditioned existence as a dog, the dog was nevertheless nothing other than Buddha Nature; because, in the dog’s case, Buddha Nature was nothing other than the bag of skin making up the dog’s conditioned existence, as a dog. In both answers, the issue at stake was not the affirmative or the negative answer, it was the monks’ misidentifications of the Buddha Nature as other than conditioned existence. It’s unimportant whether Joshu said, “No!” rather than “Yes!” or “Yes!” rather “No!” in as much as neither answer denied the phenomenal nature of the dog as a dog; and both answers threw the monk the bare bone of the dog’s facticity, as an invitation to see what the Buddha Nature of a dog therefore amounted to. Joshu’s intention was, of course, that the monk should see for himself what his own Buddha Nature amounted to. This is also precisely the point encapsulated in the verse: Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha Nature, We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances. When the time has come, The Buddha Nature is manifest before us. The kōan of the nonsensical answer “Mu!” throws us up against the boundaries of real time, conditions and circumstances in order to that we might appreciate what we amounts to. For the purposes of kōan study, we could say that the words of the sūtra “We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances” match up with the advice of Master Mumon Ekai, “Just concentrate your whole energy into Mu!, and do not allow any discontinuation.” Master Mumon Ekai also said that to pass through the barrier of the kōan Mu, realise Buddha Nature and see Joshu face to face, it’s necessary to study, “…through every bone in your body, through every pore of your skin, filled with this question: What is Mu? and carry it day and night.” If we are willing to muster the determination to do as Master Mumon Ekai advises then the real time, conditions and circumstances of our lives become transparent and Mu appears. It is not nothingness, and nor is it merely the real time, conditions and circumstances as we ordinarily think of them. From study of Mu the realisation of Buddha Nature dawns, and a treasure store of abundance, which is the birth right of us all is found to be spread out, all around. In the meantime, Master Mumon Ekai advised that the question “What is Mu?” should be pursued unremittingly, as if, “…you had taken into your mouth, “a hot iron ball that you can neither swallow nor spit out.” Imagine the visceral discomfort conjured up by this image! Mumon Ekai urges the abandonment of all swallowing and spitting out, which is to say all preconceived ideas and beliefs about Mu, or Buddha Nature. The resolution of the kōan is not to be found in evasive and mediated interpretations of its meaning. All our usual stratagems and explanations for containing doubt must all be thrown out, and the dark significance of Mu itself must be fearlessly embraced. Master Dōgen expressed the same perspective when he said that where the sutra says, Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha Nature, it includes wanting to forget. So saying, Dōgen was hinting at a heuristically embodied understanding of the nature of existence, in which knowledge harvested from books and scholarly research is laid to one side. In the study of Mu, “wanting to forget” is to put aside everything we think we know about Buddha Nature, or the kōan itself, together with everything we think might be a potential answer to the kōan. We need to throw ourselves into an investigation of Mu with an expansive and open-minded doubt. The sūtra’s admonition that We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances csan be considered together with Joshu’s two answers to the same question, both of refer to the real time, conditions and circumstances of a dog being a dog. Master Dōgen said that that the wanting to know exhibited in both questions is not different from real time, conditions and circumstances, which in terms of the koan is equivalent to saying that the question, “Does a dog have Buddha Nature of not?” is not different from real time, conditions and circumstances, and indeed that everything in the kōan is not different from, real time, conditions and circumstances. The monk, Joshu, the dog, Buddha Nature, the question, the answer Mu, or any other answer, are none other than real time, conditions and circumstances. Such an understanding follows because the expression, real time, conditions and circumstances, refers to the conditioned nature of all existence: i.e., as insubstantial, contingent and impermanent. There is no stepping outside of this law, which is all we find when we look for the cause, essence or ground of phenomenal existence. One of the Buddha’s most accomplished contemporary followers, the venerable Saripūtra, is recorded to have said that whomsoever understands the teaching of real time, conditions and circumstances realises the essence of Buddhism, and whomsoever understands the essence of the Buddhism realises this teaching. It’s therefore perfectly consistent that Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha Nature, We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances. and so too Joshu’s utterance Mu and its helpfulness as a barrier koan. There is however something rather important, and perhaps startling, that we need to register about the identification of “wanting to know” with “real time, conditions and circumstances. Look again at these lines: Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha Nature, We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances. Buddha Nature and real time conditions and circumstances are identical. Buddha Nature and Mu are identical. Mu and the dog are identical. If, we understand Buddhism to mean that the practice of the Way will lead us away from dukkha (suffering) and samudaya (its cause) to a new and different place, nibbana (release from suffering) via marga (the eightfold path), then we overlook the identify of Buddha Nature and real time conditions and circumstances, and Dogen cautioned that the effect would actually be to perpetuate our suffering and bring about its continued cultivation! Suffering and its cause arise within real time, conditions and circumstances. Release from suffering and a path to the release from suffering also arise within real time, conditions and circumstances. It isn’t possible to escape real time conditions and circumstances by means of real time conditions and circumstances. We always remain in the feedback loop of real time conditions and circumstances. We need to remember this, as we grapple after the resolution of the kōan, and begin to chase the shadows of all sorts of metaphysical ideas about what Mu might be. What then is the solution? How do we penetrate the barrier of Mu and see the Buddha Nature? Dogen said the words, we should just reflect, in the line, We should just reflect real time, causes and circumstances make it clear that the real time, conditions and circumstances of everyday life, with all its highs and lows, can nevertheless provide us with a complete understanding of the ineffably subtle, eternal, blissful, authentic and pure Buddha Nature. Why was he able to say that? Real time, conditions and circumstances offer a complete understanding of the ineffably subtle, eternal, blissful, authentic and pure Buddha Nature if we work with our lives in an embodied and enacted way, rather than by imagining Buddha Nature as an intellectual construct. To just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances is to allow the whole of our sensory apparatus to engage with the whole of life as-it-is, effortlessly and transparently. Engaging with life in this way then, as the sutra says, the time has come, and Buddha Nature is manifest before us. To put it differently, and in terms of the kōan, we penetrate the barrier of Mu when we embody it, rather than merely think about it. A mirror might be a good analogy for an embodied and enactive understanding of Mu (in the sense that Dōgen suggests to be the meaning of just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances). However, an important difference between a human being and a mirror is that a mirror isn’t busy. A mirror mindlessly and passively reflects. Human beings, by contrast, are always busy, hurrying from one thing to the next. So, in a way, we’re like distorted mirrors. We don’t reflect the arising, duration and departure of things all that clearly, because we’re relentlessly impelled either to hang on to, or move on from, real time, conditions and circumstances. Remembering the last thing and anticipating the next, we’re seldom passive; and we’re not so good at remaining more than fleetingly attentive to the present moment. In this way, we tend to overlook much of what’s presented to our senses and we don’t often take the trouble to examine what real time, conditions and circumstances say about the nature of momentary experience, as it arises. Instead, we dwell on what is already in the past, or our expectations about the future. In this way, we miss the subtle revelation behind the words, We should just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances, which Master Tōzan Ryōkai (807–869) described, in these lines from his Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, Like facing a precious mirror; form and reflection behold each other. You are not it, but in truth it is you. This is the transcendence of real time, conditions and circumstances direct us, and the intimate experience of the kōan of Joshu’s Mu. Wanting to know Mu, Mumon Ekai urges us to earnestly raise the doubt, “What is Mu?” during housework, walking to the bus and other day to day real time, conditions and circumstances. Doing so, we just reflect real time, conditions and circumstances, which is to say we unselfconsciously move beyond the dualistic subject - object paradigm that infects and distorts our understanding of the distinction between delusion and enlightenment. To just reflect, or to be lost in the question, “What is Mu?” is a transparent interaction with real time, conditions and circumstances. To put it differently, to lose ourselves in the doubt about the nature of Mu, is a transcendence of real time, conditions and circumstances. In the transcendence of real time, conditions and circumstances, is the moment of When the time has come, The Buddha Nature is manifest before us. Dōgen Zenji said that, When the time is come means this time. To raise the doubt about Mu is the catalyst that enables to us ascertain the significance of reflecting real time, conditions and circumstances as the Buddha Nature of our own lives. When the time has come, in the present moment, the reality of The Buddha Nature is immediately manifest before us, appears, like a clear reflection in the mirror. When the barrier of Mu is pierced, it is seen in its entirety, and there is no doubt what Mu is. Dōgen said: “There has never been any time which was not time having come nor any Buddha Nature which was not the Buddha Nature manifesting before us.” There is therefore nothing in real time, conditions and circumstances from which we should feel any need for retreat or disengagement, or indeed any aspect of real time, conditions and circumstances from which retreat or disengagement is actually possible. Nothing impedes us from appreciating that in the present moment of real time, conditions and circumstances the lived-experience of Buddha Nature is manifesting. There was nothing to impede the monk’s sight when he questioned Joshu about the Buddha Nature of a dog and there is nothing impeding us from penetrating the barrier of Mu. If the kōan blocks us, and generally it does, it’s because we hide from ourselves in an inattentive reluctance to reflect real time conditions and circumstances, as they are. Note There are a few published translations of the Mahaparanirvana Sūtra available in book format and online. For consistency and ease of reading I have adapted the verses I have used to align with the terminology in other translated materials I have used. I have referred to the Nishijima and Cross translation of Eihei Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo (and in particular the Busshō fascicle). The quotation from the Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi is from the translation by Taigen Dan Leighton, published in Cultivating the Empty Field. The edition of the Mumonkan I referred to is The Gateless Barrier, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, by Zenkei Shiayama Roshi. The two dialogues about the Buddha Nature of a dog can be found in The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, by James Green. The Calligraphic kanji, Mu, is by Brigitte D'Ortschy (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported) |