In The Boddhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, Har Dayal explains that the term, Sīla (which we translate as, the Precepts) is rooted in repeated practice. To me, the idea of something repeated has the connotation of continually coming up short. We’ve seen already that Pāramitā has a meaning of the “most distant, highest and most excellent,” according to Dayal, which suggests that which is out or reach and very remote from the place we in which we find ourselves. The need for repeated practice conveys a hint that we do something over and over because any idea of completion is far removed the actuality of what we’re able to accomplish at any given time. Therefore, we could say that Sīla Pāramitā, the perfection of the precepts, must lie within our imperfect and inadequate observance of the precepts, day by day! As a practice, our observance of the precepts will always come up short, no matter how hard we try. Therefore, there is a humility to Sīla Pāramitā, which a “holier than thou” attitude of moral superiority would entirely miss. In so far as can be known, Sīla has been a foundational element of Buddhism since its inception. Together with Samādhi and Prajñā (concentration and wisdom), Sīla is included in the earliest threefold formulation of Buddhist practice (Triśikṣā). The Venerable Ashvagosha said that a Buddhist without Sīla was an imposter, belonging neither to the lay nor the monastic sangha. I think his point was both rhetorical and practical. It was rhetorical in that he was saying something about the ethical standards to be expected of Buddhist practitioners. It was practical because, in the absence of Sīla, one really can’t be a Buddhist in any socially acknowledged sense without participating in the ceremony of receiving the precepts (which, in Zen, we call Jūkai). In India, becoming a follower of the Buddha involved leaving home and becoming a wandering mendicant and the right of passage that marked this transition was the ceremony of receiving the precepts. It’s interesting, in this connection, that the Japanese imperial court belatedly recognised the importance of the ceremony of conferring the precepts about 100 years after Buddhism first entered Japan. Chinese Buddhist precepts masters had to be invited from across sea to visit the main Japanese temples and formally transmit the precepts to the home-grown monks who were already there. Prior to that time, most Japanese Buddhist monks were apparently self-ordained and self-taught. Those monks who received a formal transmission of the precepts from the Chinese masters became a disguisable sangha, the Ritsu-shu, set apart from those who remained endogenously Japanese in calling themselves monks. Irrespective of organised religion however, a kind of moral code seems to be essential to any civilisation. Throughout world cultures common basic principles have emerged for ensuring that people are able to live together in relative peace and harmony. The practices and beliefs of the Stoics for instance emerged from an enquiry into the grounding of such principle. Much later, Immanuel Kant would argue that they are embedded in his “Categorial Imperative”. There is also the Golden Rule of reciprocity, which is well known from the New Testament: “In everything, do unto others as you would have others do unto you” (Matthew; 7:12). Confucius made a similar rule (Analects, 15:24) “Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” Versions of the Golden Rule also appear the philosophies Plato and Aristotle and, of course, in Buddhism. The Dhammapada reminds us that since all beings fear death and cherish life anyone who considers will this will not kill cause harm or death (10:129 & 130). If the Golden Rule fails to avail, everyday morality appeals to personal considerations such as gain and loss, fame and obloquy, praise and blame and pleasure and pain. These rational means of encouraging minimal levels of morality are, of course, backed up the criminal law, where necessary. When however rational devices fail there are always the metaphysical threats and incentives offered by religion to fall back upon. Mahayana Buddhism imagines various different states of purgatory, each different, and like Dante’s rings of Hell, adapted to match the immoral behaviours of its various malefactors. Buddhist hell realms differ from the Christian conception of Hell only in as much as nothing in Buddhism is permanent, apart from Nirvana itself. To the early Buddhist, fear of punishment would probably have been rather an immature reason to be ethical. A basic tenet of early Buddhism, including the so-called Hinayana (“lesser vehicle”), would have been that the precepts should be followed in order to maintain the calm and clear conscience, free from the passions of greed, hatred and ignorance, and necessary for serene meditative concentration and the cultivation of insight into reality. From this Hinayana perspective, the precepts are followed out of self-interest. They are a rational gateway to personal liberation; or, if that is too difficult, they are grounded in a metaphysic that by minimising painful karma in this life, a good rebirth is assured for the next life. Turning to the Mahayana, Har Dayal identifies two characteristics of a more sophisticated motivation underlying Sīla. First, he says, there is Apatrāpya, which is a conscientious wish to avoid personal shame and social censure. Shame arises from a sense that one is coming up short in one’s practise of the Pāramitās, and it seems that Sīla Pāramitā is motivated by this quality, at least in the beginning. Secondly, there is Hrī, which is likened to an inner mentor that encourages a purity of intention coupled with a disinterested modesty with regard to oneself. It is rather different from an ordinary understanding of self-respect, in that self-respect would leave unanswered questions about the nature of self. In our own Jūkai ceremony we receive ten grave precepts. The first five (not to kill; not to take the not given; to refrain from sexual misconduct; not to speak falsely; and, to refrain from being intoxicated) are the oldest, the second five were later additions (not to speak of others errors and faults; not to elevate oneself while depreciating others; not to be stingy with the Dharma; not to indulge anger; and not to defame the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). If the Hinayana perspective is that we should avoid breaking the precepts at all times, the Mahayana perspective is that the purpose of Sīla is the liberation of other beings rather than oneself and that therefore it may sometimes be necessary to break a precept for the welfare of others. We decide for ourselves whether breaking a precept would be casuistry or a genuinely well motivated decision. I set out below some examples of circumstances in which Buddhist commentators have argued that it might sometimes be appropriate not to follow the letter of the precepts. Some are redolent of the Paul’s statement in Corinthians 9:22, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some”; they would also account for the enlightened layman Vimalakīrti’s choice to consort with prostitutes and ne’er-do-wells in the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra.
I find some of these examples less persuasive than others. Dayal argues that such reasoning is grounded in a belief that the end justifies the means. From a narrowly Mahayana perspective, he might be right, in that an objective is to save all beings might justify a means that compromises the applicability of general precept. At the time Nansen killed the cat, he may have thought that the end justified the means in this way. However, from a Buddhayana perspective, we would need to keep in mind that there is no end to justify any means. There is only continuous practice-realisation. We can therefore acknowledge that the repercussions of breaking a precept (as, for example, Nansen did, by killing a cat) might be very limited when set again the infinitude of the time and space of Buddha’s non attained practice. It is, moreover, possible to appreciate that Buddha Nature is unaffected by our errors, faults and shortcomings, whether arising from the best of intentions, or not. On the other hand, since we don’t live in the splendid isolation of an absolute unity, we do need to keep continually in mind the entangled network of real time conditions and circumstances, which we inhabit. Actions have consequences which may be far reaching and unpredictable. We live within the triple body of the Buddha. There is the formless, essential nature of reality, which is the Dharmakaya (the Absolute, or emptiness) and there is the phenomenal world in which we live with others, which is Nirmanakaya (our unique and discrete embodiment in real time conditions and circumstances). The realm of the precepts is at the interface between these two, which is the Sambhogakaya (the energetic body) and the desire world, which is where karma accumulates from our activities of body, mouth and thought. Senn in this context, I would say that, for all the clarity of understanding the great Zen master Nansen would have possessed, his inner mentor (Hrī) would have said he’d come up short when he killed the cat. In the outcome of his decision to kill the cat we might be witnessing an example of the importance of Apatrāpya. Nansen’s conscientious wish to awaken his monks brought upon him a sense of personal shame and social censure. He seems to have lamented the death of the cat, because he confessed what he’d done to his successor, Jōshū, who responded, understandingly, with a ritual of mourning. The perfection of the precepts works at the boundary between self and other, and relative and absolute. It’s motivated by a conscientious concern for the welfare of all and involves an unending quest for harmony and balance within life’s continually changing conditions and circumstances. It’s therefore the work of the moment, rather an investment of effort for a benefit to come. In that respect as Socrates might have said, it’s an example of virtue as its own reward.
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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) |