Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel

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СКАЧАТЬ the Chan school declined in China, it continued to flourish in Japan, where it had its fullest flowering. Finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, Zen took its longest stride east, across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America.

      In this, the first of three projected volumes, I retell some of the most significant Zen stories to come from China. The second and third volumes will recount the Zen tales of Japan, the United States, and Canada.

      For some people, the stories in this collection form a kind of Zen canon. Even today certain teachers accept them as historically accurate. Scholarship, however, has not only called into question the historicity of individuals such as Bodhidharma but even details about the lives of historically verifiable individuals such as the Sixth Patriarch, Huineng. The story of the Buddha’s flower sermon and the transmission of the dharma (the teaching) to Mahakasyapa does not appear in any Indian source; it is a Chinese invention first recorded in the eleventh century.

      The stories, however, were not originally collected as historical records. They were collected because they had the potential to help Zen practitioners attain “awakening” or “enlightenment,” the same experience that Siddhartha Gautama had had and because of which he came to be called the Buddha—the “Awakened One.” Insofar as they accomplished that end, it did not matter whether they described actual events or not—in much the same way that the significance of the parables of Jesus were not dependent upon whether the stories he told were based on events that had actually taken place or not. To be too concerned with the historical accuracy of the events described would probably result in one failing to understand the purpose of the stories.

      Compared with the writings of other religious traditions, including the sutras of Indian Buddhism, Chinese Zen stories are refreshingly unique. One does not find in them exhortations to morality or discussions of points of doctrine. When first encountering them, one may fail to see any religious, philosophical, or moral content at all. For example, the story is told of a new student who came to work with the ninth-century master, Zhaozhou Congshen. He presented himself, saying, “I have just entered the monastery, and I beg you to accept me as a disciple and teach me.”

      Zhaozhou asked him, “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

      “Yes, I have. Thank you.”

      “Then you had better wash your bowl,” Zhaozhou told him. And we are informed that upon hearing those words, the new monk attained awakening.

      Whether one understands how this conversation brought about the result it claims to have done or not, one certainly recognizes that the method being described is exceptional in both global religious and philosophical traditions.

      D. T. Suzuki was the Japanese Zen scholar primarily responsible for introducing Zen to the non-Asian world. He posited that the character of Zen was the result of the way Indian Buddhism adapted itself to the Chinese mentality in order to be relevant in that land. To demonstrate what he meant, he compared stories used by Indian and Chinese Buddhism to convey certain basic doctrines:

      Buddhism . . . is a religion of freedom and emancipation, and the ultimate aim of its discipline is to release the spirit from its possible bondages so that it can act freely in accordance to its own principles. This is what is meant by non-attachment. . . . The idea is negative inasmuch as it is concerned with untying the knots of the intellect and passion, but the feeling implied is positive, and the final object is attained only when the spirit is restored to its original activity. The spirit knows its own way, and what we can do is to rid it of all the obstacles our ignorance has piled before it. “Throw them down” is therefore the recurring note in the Buddhist teaching.

      The Indian Buddhist way of impressing the idea is this: a Brahman named Black-nails came to the Buddha and offered him two huge flowering trees that he carried each in one of his hands through his magical power. The Buddha called out, and when the Brahman responded the Buddha said, “Throw them down!” The Brahman let down the flowering tree in his left hand before the Buddha. The latter called out again to let them go, whereupon Black-nails dropped the other flowering tree in the right hand. The Buddha still kept up his command. Said the Brahman: “I have nothing now to let go. What do you want me to do?” “I never told you to abandon your flowering plants,” said the Buddha. “What I want you to do is to abandon your six objects of sense, your six organs of sense [sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing, and mind], and your six consciousnesses. When these are all at once abandoned and there remains nothing further to be abandoned, it is then that you are released from the bondage of birth-and-death.”

      In contrast to this plain, though somewhat roundabout, talk of the Buddha, the following case of Joshu [Zhaozhou] is direct and concise and disposes of the matter in a most unequivocal manner. A monk came and asked the master, “How is it when a man brings nothing with him?” “Throw it away!” was Joshu’s immediate response. “What shall he throw down when he is not burdened at all?” “If so, carry it along!”¹

      In a second example, Suzuki dealt with the question of who or what the Buddha was. This was a question that naturally arose in China as the teaching associated with him struggled to establish itself alongside native traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism. Suzuki’s example from India told of a woman, during the Buddha’s lifetime, who had formed an aversion to him and went out of her way to avoid him. However, no matter in which direction she turned, there he miraculously appeared. Finally, in desperation, she covered her eyes with her hands only to find him in her own mind.

      The contrasting Chinese story is one of my favorite Zen tales, one of the tales that first drew me to this tradition. An inquirer asked Yanguan Qian, “Who was the Buddha?”

      Yanguan replied by requesting of his visitor, “Would you please pass me that water pitcher.”

      The inquirer looked around, saw the pitcher, and passed it to the master. Yanguan poured himself a cup of water and then asked the visitor to replace the pitcher. The visitor did so, then, thinking that perhaps Yanguan had not heard his original question, put it again: “About the Buddha—who was he?”

      “Oh, yes,” Yanguan said. “Well, you know, he’s been dead a long time now.”

      The contrast between the Indian and Chinese stories does more than demonstrate cultural differences between the two peoples. It emphasizes a difference in perspective. The Indian stories seek to make a point, to convey information. The Chinese stories, even when making a point, do so without trying. The Chinese stories are not about conveying information but about helping one achieve a different way of seeing things, an experience.

      That experience has traditionally been associated with the practice of meditation. The terms Chan and Zen are derived from the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means “meditation.” The Zen tradition as it developed in China, Japan, and now in North America is not a doctrine so much as it is, and always has been, a practice. It is the meditation school of Buddhism. And to that extent, it is—as Bodhidharma was supposed to have defined it—a teaching outside the scriptures, not dependent upon words or letters.

      Words and letters, on the other hand, can be intriguing, and it is in that spirit that these stories are retold. Collected together as they are here, the stories are little more than the folklore of Zen, but perhaps that folklore will draw those who encounter it to the practice of Zen.

      There is no new material in this collection. All the stories collected here have been told in English elsewhere (they can be found, for example, in the books listed in the bibliography). My only contributions—minor ones at that—have been to arrange them in roughly chronological sequence and to present them in a style more in accord with Western narrative traditions than the originals were. Written Chinese is a much more terse language than English, often implying as much as it states. In order to retell the tales in English, СКАЧАТЬ