Transmission of the Light Case #38 "Teachings of the Insentient"
The Pointer: Followers of the Way, understand clealy that it cannot be given nor can it be received. Yet everywhere I go, I encounter it. Teaching, preaching. It is now me. I now am not it. To see it in this way is to realize being just as it is.
Master Tozan called on Ungon and asked, “Who can hear the teaching of insentient beings?” Ungon said, “It can be heard by the insentient.” Tozan asked, “Do you hear it?” Ungon said, “If I heard it, you wouldn’t hear my teaching.” Tozan said, “If so, then I don’t hear your teaching.” Ungon said, “If you don’t even hear my teaching, how much less the teaching of the insentient?” Tozan was greatly enlightened at this. He spoke a verse to Ungon: “Wondrous, marvelous. The teaching of the insentient is inconceivable. If you listen with your ears, you won’t understand. When you hear the sound with your eyes, then you’ll know.” Ungon approved.
Kazan Zenji’s Poem: Extremely subtle mystic consciousness. It is not mental attachment. All the time it causes that to teach in great profusion.
This account of Tozan’s enlightenment experience, and most of the koans — you know, you read that a monk asks the question and then the teacher either answered or shouted, or hit him, or pointed, and the monk was enlightened, and then went on to be a teacher in his own right. It all seems very, very simple, very direct, and why isn’t it constantly happening? A point, or a shout. — Well, what’s not evident in the koans is the years of training that preceded the actual experience. And when that experience happens, it’s usually at a very critical time, what Maslow called ‘peak experience,’ a very ripe time, like the time when the fruit falls from the tree by itself. It’s not green and it’s not overipe — it’s just the right time. And if you happen to shake the tree right around the right time, the fruit will fall. But if it’s not ready, no matter how much you shake it, the green fruit still clings. And if it’s too late, it’s already fallen to the ground and rotted. It’s got to be right at the right moment.
With Tozan, his training goes way back. If you look into the record of Master Tozan, it goes back to when he was a child. Once as a child, reading the Heart Sutra with his tutor (it doesn’t say how old he was), he came to the line, “no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,” and immediately he felt his face with his hand and said to his tutor, “I have eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and so on; why does the sutra say they don’t exist?” And this took the tutor by surprise and, recognizing that this was an unusual youngster, he said, “I’m not your teacher,” and sent him off to the Zen master of one of the nearby mountains. There he took the robe and shaved his head. And then when he was twenty-one, he went to Sung Mountain and took the complete precepts. Probably the first time was when he became a novice monk. And that first master was Master Gosetsu, who was a second-generation teacher in the line of Basso, the great Master Basso.
Then after that taking of the precepts, he set out on a pilgrimage. First he went to visit Master Nansen. Now, this was the golden age of Zen. It was very, very visible in China at the time. Many of the very powerful people of China were supporters of the dharma and the monasteries were the seats of learning. I mentioned once before I had asked my teacher isn’t it unusual for someone like Basso to have eighty-seven enlightened disciples? Nowadays, if a teacher finds one or two, he considers himself lucky. Basso had eighty-seven. He said you need to understand that at that time in China, there was nothing competing with the monasteries. If you were bright and intelligent and success-oriented, or whatever the things are that draw people into the different professions, the only place to really go . . . there were a handful of places, and one was the monastery. So a lot of the finest minds of the period found themselves in Basso’s monastery studying with Basso. So that his succession of transmission was enormous, among them some of the greatest masters that every lived, such as Nansen and Yakujo and Mayoku, Bonzan, Daibai. And those resulted in four of the five major lines that emerged in China.
And what was going on is a lot of communication between these two different lineages. There was the Soto lineage on one side, and then there was what later became the Rinzai lineage on the other side, and these two main lineages the monks were visiting back and forth. So there was a lot of cross-fertilization going on. In fact, much in the same way that happens today. I think I counted maybe ten or twelve people in this sesshin who have or are studying with other teachers. So there’s like a cross- ? that’s happening here too.
So Tozan set out on a pilgrimage and the first place he went was to visit Nansen. Nansen was one of the successors of Basso. So was Master Gosetsu that he took the precepts with. And chances are Gosetsu said why don’t you go see Nansen, or mentioned Nansen in one of his talks or something. So Tozan went off to see Nansen and when he arrived, preparations were underway for Basso’s memorial. Basso evidently had died. Basso was Nansen’s teacher.
So Nansen — and I mentioned before that always, everything that we do is the teaching, has to do with the teaching; all of the liturgy that we do has to do with the teaching; everything that we do has one point and one point only and that is to realize the self; so whether we’re doing an ordination ceremony, a birth ceremony or a death ceremony, or a marriage ceremony, or regular service, or renewal of vows . . . always within it is the teaching; always it’s pointing; always it’s, it’s almost like a koan. Even the sutras that we chant — And so at Basso’s memorial, Nansen posed the following question to the assembly. He said, “Tomorrow we’ll pay homage to Master Basso. Do you think he will return or not?”
No one offered a reply. So Tozan came forward and said, “He will come, as soon as his companion is present.” Nansen said, “This fellow, though young, is suitable for being cut and polished,” referring to the diamond ability that he had. Tozan said, “Teacher, don’t crush what’s good into something awful.” And with that he left.
He next visited Issan, another great master of that period of time. Issan was a successor, I believe, to Master Ubaku, who was also a teacher of Rinzai. No, Issan was a successor of Yakujo, so the same dharma uncle of Master Mo that he took the precepts with. And when he got to Issan, he said to him, “I recently heard that the national teacher maintains the doctrine that nonsentient beings expound the dharma. I have not yet comprehended the subtleties of this teaching.”
Now, nonsentient beings means rocks and mountains and rivers and trees and buildings and bridges and all things. “I have not yet comprehended the subtleties of this teaching.” Issan said, “Can you remember the details of what you heard?” “Yes I can,” said Tozan. “Then why don’t you try to repeat it for me,” said Issan.
Tozan began, “A monk asked ?-chung, ‘What sort of thing is the mind of the ancient buddhas?’ The national teacher replied, ‘It’s wall and tile, rubble.’ ‘Wall, tile, rubble? Isn’t that something that’s nonsentient?’ asked the monk. ‘It is,’ replied the national teacher. The monk said, ‘And yet it can expound the dharma?’ ‘It’s constantly expounding it, radiantly expounding it, expounding it without ceasing,’ replied the national teacher. The monk asked, ‘Then why haven’t I heard it?’ The national teacher said, ‘You yourself haven’t heard it, but this can’t hinder those who are able to hear it.’ ‘What sort of person acquires such hearing?’ asked the monk. ‘All the sages have acquired such hearing,’ replied the national teacher. The monk said, ‘Can you hear it, teacher?’ ‘No I can’t,’ replied the national teacher. The monk said, ‘If you haven’t heard it, how do you know that nonsentient beings expound the dharma?’ The national teacher said, ‘Fortunately, I haven’t heard it. If I had, I would be the same as the sages and you, therefore, would not hear the dharma that I teach.’ ‘In that case, ordinary people would have no part in it,’ said the monk. ‘I teach for ordinary people, not sages,’ replied the national teacher. ‘What happens after ordinary people hear you?’ asked the monk. ‘Then they are no longer ordinary people,’ said the national teacher. The monk asked, ‘According to which sutra does it say that nonsentient beings expound the dharma?’ ‘Clearly, you shouldn’t suggest that it’s not part of the sutras. Haven’t you seen it in the Avokatamsa Sutra, where it says the earth expounds the dharma, living beings expound it, throughout the three times everything expounds it.’” Thus the master completed his narration.
Issan said, “That teaching also exists here; however, one seldom encounters someone capable of understanding it.” Tozan said, “I still don’t understand it clearly. Will the master please comment?” Issan raised his fly whisk, saying, “Do you understand?” “No I don’t. Please, teacher, explain,” replied Tozan. Issan said, “It can never be explained to you by means of the mouth of one born of mother and father.” Tozan asked, “Does the master have any contemporaries in the Way who may clarify this for me?” “From here, go on to Ungon, a monk who is living in the caves. If you are able to push aside the grass and gaze into the wind, then you will find him worthy of your respect,” said Issan.
“Just what sort of man is he?” asked Tozan. Issan replied, “Once he said to this old monk, ‘What should I do if I wish to follow the master?’ This old monk replied, ‘You must immediately cut off your defilements.’ He said, ‘Then will I come up to the master’s expectation?’ This old monk replied, ‘You’ll get absolutely no answer as long as I’m here.’”
So then Tozan left Issan and proceeded directly to Ungon and found him, as he expected, living in a cave in one of the mountains. Making reference to his previous encounter with Issan, he immediately asked, “What sort of person was able to hear the dharma expounded by nonsentient beings?” Ungon said, “Nonsentient beings are able to hear it.” “Can you hear it, teacher?” asked Tozan. Ungon replied, “If I hear it, then you would not be able to hear the dharma that I teach.” “Why can’t I hear it?” asked Tozan. Ungon raised his fly whisk and said, “Can you hear it yet?” Tozan replied, “No I can’t.” Ungon said, “You can’t even hear when I expound the dharma; how do you expect to hear when nonsentient beings expound the dharma?” And then Tozan asked, “In which sutra is it taught that nonsentient beings expound the dharma?” Ungon replied, “Haven’t you seen in the Avokatamsa Sutra, it says water, birds, trees, groves, all without exception recite the Buddha’s name, recite the dharma.” Reflecting on this, Tozan composed the following gatha. ‘How amazing. How amazing. Hard to comprehend that nonsentient beings expound the dharma. It simply cannot be heard with the ear. But when the sound is heard with the eye, then it’s understood.’
Two different masters, two completely different lineages, separated by many, many miles — these weren’t monasteries next door to each other; they were in the northern and souther, almost as if they had gotten it from the same source. That’s the true dharma. It doesn’t change, the teaching doesn’t change. The methods of presenting it may be different. There are things that Buddha had to do, in accord with the circumstances that existed in India 2,500 years ago, that definitely wouldn’t work here, today, in America. Other things had to happen in China because of the circumstances that existed there, again in Japan, and again here. And even though on the surface it may seem different, when you really see what’s being said, it’s exactly the same: that truth, that principle, that great matter that’s been realized by all the buddhas and ancestors, the men and women who have preceded us, remains the same, the same truth. And that truth is each of our own lives. It’s not something that comes from the outside. It’s not something that can be given.
That’s what makes it so difficult to teach, because you actually can’t teach it. To teach implies some sort of giving and receiving, some sort of communication, and that’s not the case. We already have it. It needs to be uncovered, it needs to be realized. And so these extraordinary methods are resorted to in order to get the student to turn it around themselves. Anything less than that would make the student some sort of a prisoner of the teaching or the teacher. And that’s not what the teaching is about; it’s about liberation, your liberation.
It didn’t end here for Tozan. It continued. Because after this conversation, he said, “I still have some habits that are not yet eradicated.” Ungon said, “What have you been doing?” Tozan said, “I have not concerned myself even with the four noble truths.” Ungon said, “Are you joyful yet?” Tozan said, “It would be untrue to say I am not joyful; it’s as though I have grasped a bright pearl in a pile of shit.” Tozan asked Ungon, “When I wish to meet you, what shall I do?” Ungon answered, “Make an inquiry with the official,” replied Ungon. The official interpreter — it’s kind of like the secretary of state. Tozan said, “I’m inquiring right now.” “What does he say to you?” asked Ungon.
And it goes on. He stayed with Ungon for quite awhile and then, just before leaving him - taking his leave, going off on his own — Tozan asked, “If after many years someone should ask if I’m able to portray the master’s likeness, how shall I respond?” To portray the master’s likeness means to have developed an intimacy with the teacher; in other words, to have received the transmission from the teacher. It’s said that only a person who has received from the teacher his likeness, is able to transmit that teacher’s dharma. After remaining quiet for awhile, Ungon said, “Just this person.”
And that word ‘just this person’ — there’s an interesting footnote that has to do with the Chinese word ‘just this person.’ The characters for it means ‘just this man of Han,’ and according to medieval Chinese legal custom, this is the phrase by which a criminal formally confessed his guilt in court. If you wanted to say you were guilty, you didn’t say ‘guilty,’ you said ‘just this man of Han.’ So what he was saying, in a sense, is: “After many years, if someone should ask me if I’m able to portray the master’s likeness, how shall I respond?” and after remaining quiet for awhile, Ungon said, “Guilty.”
Tozan was lost in thought. Ungon said, “Having assumed the burden of this great matter [and again, the word that was used was the ‘guilt’ of this great matter], you must be very cautious.” Tozan remained dubious about what Ungon had said and later, as he was crossing the river, he saw his reflected image and experienced a great awakening to the meaning of the previous exchange, and he composed the following gatha.
“Ernestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am now not him. It must be understood in this way in order to merge with suchness.”
And that happens a lot: usually a breakthrough will happen either in a sesshin or within a few days following a sesshin. It’s kind of interesting that there’s a kind of a lag in the samadhi that was going on in the sesshin and, after you kind of step back from it in a couple of days, there’s suddenly a clarity. And that’s what happened with Tozan. “Ernestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him [him: the teacher, the teachings, the Buddha, the lineage, all beings . . .]. He is now no other than myself, but I am now not him. ” You and I are the same thing, yet I am not you and you are not me.
And that’s very difficult to grasp intellectually. It seems contradictory, just like form is emptiness/emptiness is form seems contradictory, just like all the dualities seem contradictory, because our minds are dualistic. That’s the way they function: they separate things into this and that. And yet this and that are mutually arising; one can’t exist without the other. They derive their meaning from each other: good needs bad in order to be good and bad needs good in order to be bad; up needs down; heaven needs earth; heads and tails are two parts of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. So, that mutual arising is also a mutual dependency, or interpenetration. And, in fact, that was the teachings of the Avokatamsa Sutra. When you begin to look at the universe in terms of that interpenetration of the dualities, and the mutual non-hindrance of the dualities — that is, they function freely within each other, with no hindrance — then you realize that all of the dualities function that way. All of the things that we have difficulties with; I mean, look at the dharma itself: what’s better, monk’s practice, lay practice? Monk practice, lay practice interpenetrate; they’re mutually interdependent and mutually non-hindering. Monastery and the world, mundane and sacred, wholly and profane, good and bad, man and woman, up and down, in and out, all of these dualities mutually interpenetrate. They don’t hinder each other when you really see how it works. But the problem is, is that we attach to one or the other. Either we’re attached to the profane and the whole universe sucks or we’re attached to the holy and everything is wonderful, nothing’s wrong — you know, the house is on fire and we’re killing each other and polluting the earth and declaring war . . . well, that’s okay. So those two extremes, neither of them hold the truth any more than form holds the truth or emptiness holds the truth. The truth can be found in neither of those extremes. That’s why so many koans deal with those dualities. They create, in the koan, the conflict of the duality. Like the question of the stick: what is it? If you call it a stick, you miss it, you’re caught up in the words. If you say it’s not a stick, you miss it, you deny it’s existence. What is it?
So somewhere other than those two extremes is where the truth can be found. What is that truth?
When we go through the actual training itself, the beginning part of it deals with the dharmakaya — the absolute, because we go into training completely taken with the phenomenal world. We’ve spent a lifetime, up to the point that we’ve entered practice, learning how to take advantage of the phenomenal world. We get caught up in it and get completely tossed about by circumstances, completely at the mercy of circumstances, and after awhile a lot of pain, confusion happens. And we somehow say to ourselves, ‘this doesn’t seem right; there must be a way of doing this.’
And the fact is that I’m constantly confronted with the fact that we’re so incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to practice the dharma. And it may be that because a long period of time in my life, the dharma wasn’t accessible. It’s only recently — you walk into a little bookstore in Woodstock and you can find fifty books on Zen, to say nothing of Buddhism. Well, thirty-five years ago . . . one book, if you could find it. You had to go to New York Public Library to find it; no local library would ever have Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, for example, by Soen Shaku. Or a little paragraph in the Encyclopaedia Britannica about Zen. I was teaching a course in the fifties on world religions and I was desperately looking for more information on Buddhism, particularly because what little I found sounded interesting.
And when I was facing the questions of life and saw that Science didn’t have the answers to it — I already rejected Christianity and Catholicism; I looked to Judaism and that didn’t seem too much different than Christianity — and I began looking at these other religions, Buddhism wasn’t even there to look at. Philosophers didn’t have the answers to my questions. So I came to the conclusion that nobody knows what the hell is going on. Everybody’s talking about it, but nobody really knows what’s going on. It’s like, you know, like being on an intercontinental flight and finding out there’s no pilot, it’s on automatic pilot somehow.
And then one day, much later, in the fifties — late fifties — I discovered yes, indeed, people had figured this out. And it wasn’t some modern figuring out; it’s been around for 2,500 years. Thousands of people knew about it; thousands of people had experienced this enlightenment. And there were books written about it; there were people practicing it. And then in a short period of time, here it was in this country and finally available. And it’s an extraordinary practice, particularly when you realize that there was a time not too long ago that it was totally unknown in this country, practically totally unknown.
So we start off with the dharmakaya, the absolute basis of reality. And once a student has a good grounding in that, we then again look at phenomenal existence and see how that absolute reality functions in the phenomenal world. But it doesn’t end there. After looking at differentiation and the absolute basis of things, we then look at the words and the ideas that are used to describe reality, words and phrases. There are many koans that deal with that, and how that catches us up and confuses us. And then we look at koans that are particularly difficult to pass through. And then finally we look at the five ranks of Master Tozan, where the absolute and the relative are integrated.
We look at the absolute itself, we look at the relative within the absolute, we look at the absolute within the relative, and the mutual integration and non-hindrance of both. Only then are we able to appreciate the precepts. Because following that are 120 koans on the precepts to see if the student really, truly understands the moral and ethical teachings of their own accord. Not some rules passed down or some commandments that somebody gave us to follow, but their own life. And it’s only at that point that the transmission occurs. That’s been our tradition since the sixth ancestor, in China.
“Don’t seek it from others or you’ll be a stranger from yourself. I now go on alone. Everywhere I encounter it. It now is me; I now am not it. One must understand it in this way to merge with being as it is.” As for the story of the teaching of the insentient, someone asked the teacher, “I’ve heard that you say the inanimates teach. I don’t understand this and ask for your instruction.” The teacher said, “If you would ask about the teaching of the inanimate, you should realize the inanimate. Only then will you be able to hear my teaching. Just ask after the teaching of the inanimate.” Fen/? said, “At the moment I’m just going by expedience for animate beings; what is the relationship of inanimate beings?” Again that duality: animate/inanimate; mundane/sacred. The teacher said, “All present activities, as long as the twin currents of profane and holy do not appear and disappear; this, then, is mystic consciousness which is not in the realm of being or non-being, yet it is fully perceptive and aware. It’s just that it has no attachment to feelings.”
Now we have to be careful of the way some of these words are translated. Someone reading this thinks that Zen practitioners should walk around like robots. In fact, many of them do, many of us do walk around like robots or zombies, totally without feeling. That’s not what it means, without attachment to feelings. Without attachment to feelings could also be interpreted no bondage of emotion. It doesn’t mean no emotion; it doesn’t mean not feeling or caring. It means no bondage; it means no attachment.
So how do you interpret no bondage to emotion? No bondage to emotion means when you cry, just cry. It’s neither being nor non-being. And that’s why the sixth patriarch said, “The senses discerning objects is not consciousness.” That’s why Master Wan-shi said, “There is a wisdom apart from intellectual assessment and discrimination. There is a body which is not the four elements and the five clusters. In other words, it is this mystic consciousness. Always teaching clearly means it’s always manifest. This is called teaching. It has one raise the eyebrows and blink the eyes. It makes one walk, stand, sit, recline, rushing, hurrying, dying here, being born there, eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, all this is teaching. Speaking, working, all activities are also teaching. It’s not just spoken or unspoken teaching, there is something which appears obviously and is clearly never hidden. Everything, down to the chirpping of insects, is all revealed; therefore, everything is always teaching, clearly, unceasingly. If you can discern minutely — at that moment, you make yourself free. At that moment, you merge with Master Tozan, Bodhidharma, Buddha.
They had the same equipment that each of us has. There’s nothing standing in our way of realizing that same freedom, other than the way we use our mind. It’s just a turn, like that. We’re habitually looking at things in terms of separation. We habitually separate ourselves from it. That’s why it’s important, in this sesshin, to be the barrier; because if you can be the barrier, sometimes just once you get the idea of it. That’s what the breakthrough is, that’s what the glimpse is: be the pain for a second, a minute; be the koan; be the breath; body and mind fall away and you experience reality in a different way long enough to know that it does happen, that, indeed, it’s possible to experience no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
And when you come back from that, your way of seeing things is transformed, it’s different. And even though you lose it again very quickly, you’re able to return to it; and each time you return to it, it becomes stronger and stronger. And at first, it’s almost like learning to walk all over again, because it’s hard to deal with the world from that point of view, until you begin to see that the world functions according to that point of view, that it’s not what you thought it was. And soon it becomes easy, and that non-hindrance, that interpenetration and non-hindrance of all things becomes part of your normal, spontaneous way of relating, of living.
It’s your heritage. It’s the heritage of all beings. It would be a shame, once having the opportunity, to go to our graves — eventually — not having realized it. So please, let’s use the few days that remain of this sesshin. Take advantage of it every moment. Use this incredible zazen, gateway, to make ourselves free. When you liberate yourself, you liberate all sentient beings, you liberate all sentient and insentient beings. That’s what it means to give life to the Buddha. So let’s do it.
