The Undying Lamp of Zen
Page 15
So it should be realized that the Spirit Vehicle and Buddhism have the same noumenal substance, but neither are beyond the one single truth of seeing nature. If you can understand your own nature, then you merge with the primeval noumenon at the outset; if you then search out the deep meaning within nature, you gradually emerge from its borders and return to the origin of the primordial. Ah, the word origin is excruciatingly hard to approach—students of the Spirit Vehicle should not gloss over it!
Also, in the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius, name and reality are used together for the general welfare of the world. Humanity, justice, loyalty, and reciprocity are produced by a single nature. The doctrines of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu refute names to get to realities, solely studying the Way and its virtues. Emptiness, nothingness, and spontaneity are produced by a single nature. Therefore Confucius and Mencius never made humanity, justice, and reciprocity out to be the Way, and Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu never made emptiness, nothingness, and spontaneity out to be the Way. They just imposed names to open up essential roads; these are not what they consider ultimate ends.
Therefore Confucius said, “Do you think I know a lot by broad study? My way is pervaded by unity.” Lao-tzu said, “Always desireless to observe the subtle, always desiring to observe the cyclic.” Confucius and Mencius disciplined by education; Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu educated by discipline. Buddha could educate and could discipline. Confucius and Mencius are enriched by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu are completed by Confucius and Mencius; both doctrines are penetrated by Buddhism, while Buddhism uses the two doctrines to assist. The influence of Confucius and Mencius broadens, the influence of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu deepens; the influence of Buddha perfects and clarifies. The teachings of Confucianism and Taoism communicate their wisdom to one era and only benefit human beings, not other forms of life. The knowledge and compassion of the Buddhas is infinitely vast, benefiting beings in all forms of life and comprehending all things in all times.
Nevertheless, even though there are differences in breadth and narrowness, partiality and completeness, the essential import is but one. Some compare Confucius and Lao-tzu to the two lesser vehicles, but without thorough discussion. Now let me discuss this in terms of their teachings. To compare these to the lesser vehicles is all right in respect to having the flaw of bias, but even so this is a question of comparative crudity or precision of verbal instruction; it doesn’t mean their ways have that problem.When Confucius and Mencius explained the accumulation of suffering and set up guidelines close to the standards of conduct of the lesser vehicles, they were temporarily teaching the Way in conformity with society; if you don’t recognize skill in expedient means, you’ll stop halfway. When Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu repudiated everything based on the way to extinction resembling nirvana with remainder, they were temporarily treating symptoms according to potential; if you don’t study the principle of completeness, you’ll surely stay in the magic citadel.38
It is like Buddha setting up three vehicles; though there is deep meaning, people of small potential all stop at the tracks of the teaching. So it’s not the fault of the Way, but the shortcomings of people’s faculties and potentials. Zen Master Dazhu Huihai said, “When people of great measure apply them, they’re the same; when people of little potential hold to them, they’re different.” All produce their functions from one nature, but differences in potentials and perceptions make them into three. Confusion and enlightenment come from the person; they are not in the difference or sameness of doctrine.
To generalize about the paths of Shinto, Confucianism, and Taoism, bodhisattvas teach in response to the times—there has never been a fixed doctrine. Since ancient times the perfectly good have illustrated the Way to their generation, so it was possible to get the essence without use of precepts or formalities. This is why they were of benefit in ancient times. The inferior potentials of later ages are so bound up that they’re hard to free, so first they give up social involvements to enter into the path with their whole bodies.
It is like the case of someone traveling a steep road. If he has a lot of baggage, as he runs out of strength he gets so weary he can’t get past that stretch of the road. If he has no heavy burden, alone and free, really resolved, he passes directly through the hard incline and is able to reach the end. So cultivating the path in lay life is like traveling far with a heavy load; it takes a long time and hard work, and it is difficult to gain independence. If you give up the world to enter the Dharma, it’s like crossing the mountains without baggage; because you’re traveling light, it’s easy to take the high road.
Now in the method of seeing nature of which I speak, there’s no issue of monastic or lay—it’s just a matter of setting out as best you can. When the time comes, you’ll shed the burden. If you say there are no hindrances in lay life, this is preferring to carry a burden, increasing bondage all the more, tired and suffering forever. Yet those who don’t even set out because they’re afraid they have a heavy load at present are even further away from home.
Passing a whole lifetime for naught is like water sinking down, eventually to disappear. If people don’t cultivate it, their will for enlightenment will eventually die out. If you’re like this today, you’ll be like this lifetime after lifetime. It would be better to set out as best you can to get onto the right road; then someday the time will come when you shed your burden. Then you can act unconventionally or go with the flow, unimpeded, independent. This is why Buddhism has discipline, concentration, insight, and relinquishment, transcending worldly involvements.
Another problem with lay life is that even if you pass the steep road, even though you enter into knowledge of essential nature, the principles of differentiation will be hard to understand completely.39 It’s like a merchant who has capital but can hardly make a profit because his business strategy is inexpert. Craving and love, emotions and desires, inwardly waste away character, while illusions of name and gain outwardly corrupt behavior. When you are physically and mentally belabored by such things, not only is your strategy with nature inexpert, your consumption is excessive. The thieves are inside, draining your assets, so you cannot succeed in developing rich character.
In this sense, students should not lose their time, whether they’re laypeople or monastics. If you’re in lay life today, it can’t be helped; so you should free yourself as soon as you get the opportunity. On this account there may be those who say there will be no one in the world if all become monastics. This is the theory of earthworms begrudging soil. Now there’s no one in the world who doesn’t seek wealth and status, but if everyone were wealthy aristocrats, who would be their employees? Who would be the ordinary citizens? But the rich everywhere are decreasing daily, while there are more and more poor. What is that all about?
Everywhere doctors are formulating potent medicines to cure others’ illnesses, but there is no end of patients. Hunters chase birds and beasts every day, but they don’t diminish. Why would this be considered strange only in Buddhism? The Buddhas and bodhisattvas made universal vows to liberate all beings and never regress, yet the realms of living beings have not ended, because they are infinite.
For these reasons, Shinto, Confucianism, and Taoism can only be fulfilled to the maximum extent if you first manage to see nature. If you study all the Buddhist teachings, that can be called being fully equipped. Even attainment of expertise in all the arts of the world is based on the ocean of fundamental nature.
If you’re lost and don’t know it, you wear out your body pursuing shadows. Therefore if all learners just turn to their own nature and clarify it, investigate it, then the essentials of all the schools will spontaneously become evident. If you seek them outside, that’s like the impoverished son who left his father and ran away, seeking food and clothing at random.40 Can we not feel sorry?
It’s like a sickness that has persisted for many years so the mind and energy are exhausted in the extreme, and the spleen and kidneys are drained and depleted. Even acupunc
ture, moxibustion, and medicine will hardly have any effect. The human body originally has no disease; when there is an empty place inside, then external abnormalities invade it, and that creates the root of disease.
Medicine quells abnormal energies, not mental energy; when abnormal energies are eliminated, mental energy is inherently robust. Even so, when mental energy is exhausted in the extreme, abnormal energies increase, so that the strength of medicine can hardly match it, and therefore the disease cannot be cured. If you yourself nurture your spirit within your body, then your mental energy will gradually fill and won’t be affected by abnormalities from outside. Therefore you will also find medicine effective.41
It is like the rise or fall of a nation depending on the leadership. If the leadership is right, outsiders dare not invade. So it is with Buddhism; first turn to your own mind and look deeply into its original nature, and then conditioned consciousness disappears and enlightened insight appears. All the teachings are understood, without exception.
For this reason, it is not only our school that is based on seeing nature; the other schools in essence all must be based on seeing nature. If you want to study the ideas of a school without seeing nature, even if you study all the Buddhist doctrines, your conditioned consciousness will be as deep-seated as ever, so enlightened insight cannot appear.
When the spirit is not nourished, the torment of sickness increases. When buddha-nature is not revealed, conditioned consciousness increases. The strength of medicine does not overcome the strength of disease; the power of the path does not overcome the power of conditioning. Please use the principles of curing disease to examine thoroughly and contemplate objectively; the paths of difficult practice and easy practice culminate here!
The only exceptions are the inconceivably liberated bodhisattvas who come riding great vows of compassion and temporarily teach lesser doctrines. They sometimes show miraculous powers to open people’s minds, taking in those of lowest potential, startling those lacking faith into wakefulness, to create conditions that will produce liberation. This too is one approach to Buddhism, an example of great compassion that is to be valued.
Our school only discusses genuine realization for ordinary people; we do not discuss the domain of secular power. We only choose leaders of Buddhism; we don’t ask about other things. If ordinary people don’t actually experience it, the true Dharma will die out. If the leaders are intelligent and enlightened, since everything comes from oneself, they directly uphold the doctrine of progressive transcendence to deal with people of the highest potential. For those in middling and lesser categories who hear and believe it, it becomes the finest seed, so they will surely attain the Way in this lifetime or the next life. For those who hear but don’t believe it, it will still become a seed of faith, which someday will become deep faith.
Since no one is left out and those of higher, middling, and lesser faculties all attain true genuine Buddhism, what doctrine could add to that? Compared to educating the whole world in hopes of success, educating one ruler is wise, since then everyone in the land will resort to the true teaching. Compared to permanently working for a ruler, discoursing on that path, it is better to inherit the throne yourself and rule the land. When wherever you live is your capital city, wherever you reside is your palace, and your treasury is also as you will, this is called the work of the great person.
As for those in various quarters who are partial to particular scriptures or treatises, or seek the Pure Land arbitrarily, without finding out the fundamental, they become middling and lesser types, so they believe middling and lesser doctrines life after life, generation after generation, attaining middling and lesser paths. Even if they’re born in buddha lands, they can’t believe the supreme teaching and can’t attain the fundamental path.
It is like if you use a fruit for seed, it produces sprouts according to type. For this reason it is said that those who are intense about precepts but lax about the vehicle are alike in the Buddha’s congregation even if they become listeners or individual illuminates, but in the realm of buddhahood they are as if deaf and mute. Those who are intense about the vehicle but lax about precepts, seeing and hearing, believing and accepting, will all realize the Way, even if they are of different kinds.
Also, for bodhisattvas of the three vehicles, attainment of buddhahood is remote, after three incalculable aeons, because they neglect the root and pursue the branches, not clarifying their own nature. Bodhisattvas of the One Vehicle realize true awakening at the time of their initial inspiration, because they see nature clearly and can comprehend reality.
Also, the keys of all the schools depend on dominant conditions of accumulated virtue, whereas in the context of seeing nature it’s all a matter of a single moment of faith. It’s like when you want to go to another province you first need a lot of money, and if you want to enter another’s home you first need to establish a good relationship. But to go to your own province you don’t need a lot of money, and to return to your own home you don’t need a relationship. Everyone, without exception, is endowed with the fundamental great wisdom and great virtue of the buddha-nature—isn’t that the best of connections?
1. This is not Wuzu Fayan, but Fayan Wenyi (885–958). See “The House of Fa-Yen” in The Five Houses of Zen; Book of Serenity, cases 17, 27, 51, 74; Unlocking the Zen Koan, case 26.
2. Nanyuan was a third-generation Linji master; he was the teacher of the more famous Fengxue, cited earlier in this work. See The Blue Cliff Record, commentary to case 38.
3. “Paths of sages” is a term used in Pure Land Buddhism to refer to other types of Buddhism.
4. That is, either some sort of quietism, nihilism, or devotion to meditation states as ends in themselves.
5. “Affliction” is a technical term for mental conditions, behaviors, or complexes that cause misery. While said to be innumerable, the six main afflictions as traditionally defined in Buddhist psychology are greed, hatred, pride, ignorance, indecisiveness, and inaccurate perception.
6. For the bases of spiritual powers in a One Vehicle context, see The Flower Ornament Scripture, p. 730.
7. This refers to the concept of three periods of a teaching—genuine, imitation, and terminal. A genuine teaching meets the needs of its time; an imitation teaching mimics in hopes it will work; a terminal teaching is a token. According to the Scripture of the Great Demise, the defining characteristic of the last age, or the terminal era, is when the teaching is sold in pieces like a commodity.
8. “Six bandits” refers to the six major afflictions, noted above. “Five desires” refers to the five elemental senses, as the doorways of desire.
9. This refers to the doctrine of tariki, or other-power, of Pure Land Buddhism. The “Expert Physician” is Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is also called Amitayur, the Buddha of Infinite Life; the Pure Land, Sukhavati, or Blissful, is said to be in the West, the direction of the setting sun, in Zen taken to symbolize the cessation of thoughts.
10. This is a famous line of the Lotus-sutra, introducing the Ekayana or One Vehicle.
11. Hakuin used to say that people who succeeded in Pure Land practice turned to Zen, while people who failed at Zen turned to Pure Land practice. The Zen meaning of “elsewhere” here is not that people shouldn’t study other schools, as indeed this treatise insists that Zen students should study all schools; rather it is a reminder that otherworldly visionary experiences induced by Pure Land methods are not goals in themselves.
12. For a One Vehicle view of “the four truths,” see “The Four Holy Truths,” book 8 of The Flower Ornament Scripture, and stages three and four of “The Ten Stages,” book 26, pp. 721–35. For “the twelve causes and conditions,” see stage six of “The Ten Stages” in book 26 of The Flower Ornament Scripture, pp. 745–49.
13. The first six of ten perfections or ways of transcendence; see Buddhist Yoga, chapter 7, “The Transcendent Ways of the Stages.”
14. This refers to the scripture on the visualizati
on of the Buddha of Infinite Life, one of the main texts of Pure Land Buddhism. Lady Vaidehi is the figure who receives this teaching in a dream vision while she is imprisoned and unable to meet the Buddha in person.
15. “Amida” is the Japanese rendering of Amitabha, the visionary Buddha of Infinite Light, also taken to refer to mind itself. This Buddha is the main object of devotion of Pure Land schools. According to the most popular versions of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism, people immersed in ordinary life generally can’t perfect the sixteen visualizations of Infinite Life, and that is why for them the so-called Special Vow of Amida Buddha provides that even those who simply recite the name of the Buddha will be reborn in that Buddha’s pure land. Munan called this practice a sharp sword to cut off random thoughts; in Zen it is understood as an expedient to purify the mind, but it is also combined with the introspection of who is doing it.
16. This does not refer to the tranquil nirvana of the lesser vehicles, but to buddha-nature; here “nirvana” alludes to the Mahaparinirvana-sutra, in which buddha-nature is symbolized by ghee, clarified butter being the most quintessential and refined realization of the potential in milk.
17. The Shingon or Mantra school is based on two Vajrayana texts, the Mahavairocana-sutra and the Vajrasekhara-sutra. Esoteric Vajrayana texts are represented as mystically projected.
18. An epithet of Buddha. “The completion of tasks” refers to the cycle of teachings of his lifetime.