Author: Zen Fools

Tanka Osho was so good at playing with the bead, sometimes hiding it and sometimes revealing it that all students who came to him were scolded by him.

Commentary:

‘Tanka Osho was so good at playing with the bead, sometimes hiding it and sometimes revealing it that all students who came to him were scolded by him’ means that he was so good at hiding and revealing the bead, the true-Self that all students who came to him would be scolded for failing to recognise the true-Self he showed to them. There is an example that shows well how good he was at playing with the bead.

Once he lodged in a temple overnight. He was provided with a cold room. It was so cold during the night that he couldn’t stand the cold. He tried to get some firewood only to fail, so he chopped up a wooden Buddha statue and burnt it to heat his room. All the monastics of the temple, including the head monk, were so surprised that they lost their tongues. Then, the head monk shouted with anger, “What are you doing?” He answered, “I’m looking for beads.” The head monk responded, “How foolish you are expecting to get beads by burning a wooden Buddha statue!” Tanka Osho asked back, “What is the use of keeping a wooden Buddha statue without beads?” This, as one of best known koans, is a good lesson that we should not be deluded by illusions of the Buddha.

Student: “Why did Tanka Osho say that he was looking for beads while aware that they were not there?”

Master: “In order to show the real bead.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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A. Let us suppose there was once a wise and charitable arithmetic teacher who has since passed away. He, when alive, always advised people to realise the arithmetic rules and did his best to teach them to as many people as he could. In the course of encouraging them to learn the rules he would speak of the benefits that they could enjoy and how their lives would be changed when they had mastered the rules.

Now how can we enjoy the benefits he said we could enjoy; by praying to him or by mastering the rules? However earnest and sincere our prayer may be, it has nothing to do with the benefits that the late teacher mentioned.

It is not because we have worshipped and prayed to previous great scientists but because we have mastered the laws of nature or the laws of science they discovered and utilise them to improve our lives that we can enjoy the benefits scientific advance has brought.

In the same way, the Buddha, while alive, always advised people to see things as they are so that they might escape from their suffering and did his best to teach how to see things as they are to as many people as he could. In doing this he would speak of the benefits they could enjoy and how their lives would change when they had mastered the way of seeing things as they are. He always encouraged them to make the best effort to realise the way.  However, he never told them to blindly believe, worship or pray to him.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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Longshan met Dongshan and Shenshan when they were travelling together. Seeing a vegetable leaf floating down a valley stream, Dongshan said, “There must be a Zen practitioner deep in this mountain.” They followed the stream up the mountain and met a hermit.

The hermit Longshan said, “There is no path in this mountain. How did you two Zen practitioners get here?” Dongshan said, “Let’s put aside the matter of no path. Reverend, from where did you enter?”

Longshan said, “I did not come following clouds or water.”

Dongshan said, “How long have you lived in this mountain?”

Longshan said, “I am not concerned about the passing of spring or autumn.”

Dongshan said, “Which started to be here earlier, you or the mountain?”

Longshan said, “I don’t know.”

Dongshan said, “How come you don’t know?”

Longshan said, “I did not come here for humans or devas.”

Dongshan asked further, “Why have you been living on this mountain?”

Longshan said, “I saw two clay oxen fighting with each other until they fell into the ocean. Ever since then, all fluctuations have ceased.”

Student: “How is everything when the clay oxen don’t fall into the ocean?”

Master: “You are anxious and nervous about which ox will win.”

Student: “How is everything when all fluctuations have ceased after the clay oxen fall into the ocean?”

Master: “The ox that you lost a long time ago walks out of the ocean.”

Commentary:

Don’t forsake the ox you are looking for by being absorbed in seeing the clay oxen fighting.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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Followers of the Way, my Dharma has been passed down as orthodox. It spread though Mayoku Osho, Tanka Osho, Doitsu Osho, Rozan Osho and Sekikyo Osho throughout the world as a single strand, but no one believes it, and everyone reviles it. Doitsu Osho’s teaching was pure and not coarse. None of his three hundred or five hundred students could make out his meaning. Rozan Osho’s teaching was true, and he was so good at displaying it that his students couldn’t help but be at their wits’ end before his action of revealing and concealing.

Commentary:

In this part Rinzai says that his teaching is orthodox having been transmitted through the narrated outstanding masters and that their teaching was great.

‘No one believes it, and everyone reviles it’ means that in those days just like today, most Buddhists, including monastics, were involved in worshiping and praying to the Buddha for blessings rather than pursuing enlightenment.

‘Doitsu Osho’s teaching was pure and not coarse. None of his three hundred or five hundred students could make out his meaning’ means that Doitsu Osho’s teaching was so refined and sophisticated that his students couldn’t understand his meaning through their knowledge. Let me introduce an example that shows how refined his teaching was. Once a monastic asked him, “What is the true-Self?” He answered, “Everyday mind.” This is how one of the most well-known phrases ‘everyday mind is the Buddha’ came into being. This may seem very simple to understand but you should know that you are still only groping around the surface of this saying unless you are enlightened, because it is beyond intellectual understanding.

Rozan Osho was also so adept in teaching; revealing and concealing the true-Self that his students couldn’t grasp it through their knowledge. For example, once harvesting vegetables in a vegetable garden, he drew a circle around a plant and said to his students who were working with him, “No one should touch this” and left the garden for a while. No one dared to touch it. When he returned and found the plant remained untouched, he scolded the students, “There is no one in this party who is wise.” How wonderful it is! If you understand what the master meant, you can be said to be enlightened.

Considering that teachers should do their best to make their students understand their teaching as easily and quickly as possible, the fact that both masters were so skilled in using expedients that their students had difficulty grasping their meaning may sound paradoxical, but this implies that their teaching methods were excellent since it means that they presented their students with various questions and references that their students couldn’t grasp through their knowledge, in order to prevent them from clinging to mere intellectual understanding.

Student: “How can you reveal the true-Self?”

Master: “I produce it from my pocket.”

Student: “How can you conceal it?”

Master: “I put it into my pocket.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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A. Having a lot of feelings and emotions is very normal. I wonder what you mean by the state of pure joy and oneness you have experienced. If you happen to think that the enlightened should feel happy and joyful all the time, perfectly free from all other feelings such as sadness, anger, sorrow, compassion and so forth, you have a misunderstanding of oneness.

When you want to cry, cry to your fill. If you want to laugh, laugh to your fill. If you cling to joy and avoid sadness, you are still unaware of what oneness is and are deluded by the illusions of joy and sadness. Feeling oneness means seeing that all emotions are one as Emptiness in essence. Feeling oneness symbolises that you can enjoy all emotions without being deluded by the illusions of them.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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Once a monastic asked Mayoku during a Dharma talk, “I know Buddhist doctrines roughly, but what is it that is transmitted beyond the doctrinal teaching?” Mayoku descended from the high seat, moved his cane around himself, stood on tiptoe and said, “Do you know?” The monastic couldn’t answer, and Mayoku hit him with his cane.

Student: “What did Mayoku mean by his strange behaviour?”

Master: “He materialised the doctrinal teaching before the monastic.”

Student: “Why didn’t the monastic who knew the doctrinal teaching grasp it?”

Master: “Because he didn’t know the doctrinal teaching.”

Commentary:

The doctrinal teaching that is different from the teaching beyond the doctrinal teaching is not Buddha’s words but Mara’s.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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Followers of the Way, in an instant one enters the Lotus Paradise, Vairocana’s realm, the land of deliverance, the domain of the supernatural powers; the Pure Land, the Dharma world, enters the tainted, the worldly, the sacred, the condition of Hungry Ghosts and of animals. In all of those, however much you search them, nowhere will you find the existence of life and death – for those are but empty names. “Changing phantoms, flowers in the empty sky, why tire yourself in trying to seize them? Gain and loss, right and wrong, let go of them all at once.”

Commentary:

All the diverse realms, domains and worlds mentioned here are not multiple and separate from each other but just one. Where you are standing can appear in many different ways depending upon your perspective. This is why Rinzai said that he could go those places in an instant without moving even a step. It means that they are not real but illusionary and imaginary. Likewise, life and death are just illusions. We don’t have to make useless efforts to follow the former and run away from the latter. If we can see them as they are by letting go of the names all at once, we can realise that we are eternity itself.

Student: “How can I enter the Lotus Paradise?”

Master: “Don’t get out of there.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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A. Let suppose you’ve got something special from your parents which you hear you can do a lot of nice things with as you please. Now you are wondering what you can or should do with it. In order to know what the use of it is, you should learn the nature and the characteristics of it first of all; what it is like, how large it is, whether it is portable or not, what it is made of and so on. When you have enough knowledge about it, you can use it as you please.

Likewise, if you are anxious to know what you are supposed to do with your life, try to know what you are, what your life is above all. Trying to know what you are supposed to do with your life without knowing the essence of your life is no better than putting the cart before the horse.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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When a master was asked if there were any difference between the Buddhism of the Sutras and Zen Buddhism, he said, “When the weather turns cold, wild fowl fly up into the trees and ducks go down to the water.”

Student: “What does ‘When the weather turns cold, wild fowl fly up into the trees and ducks go down to the water’ mean?”

Master: “Climb up a tree and you will fall to your death. Go to the water and you will be drowned.”

Commentary:

He who says one thing and does another is not a saint.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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And yet, venerable ones, you run outside carrying your bag of excrement and rush about looking for the Buddha and the Dharma. Do you know him who thus runs about seeking? He is as lively as a fish in water and has neither root nor trunk; though you try to fold it up, it never shrinks; though you try to unfold it, it doesn’t spread. The more you seek him, the further away he is; and if you do not seek him, he is right before your eyes and sounds divine in your ears. If a man has no faith in it, in vain will he labour for a hundred years his whole life.

Commentary:

‘Your bag of excrement’ implies our physical body. ‘You run outside carrying your bag of excrement’ means that we, unaware that we, including our physical body, are also part of the Buddha, wander about following words. We should know that he who is running about in search of the Buddha is none other than the Buddha. ‘Has neither root nor trunk; though you try to fold it up, it never shrinks; though you try to unfold it, it doesn’t spread’ means that he has neither body nor limbs because it is formless. This is why he neither shrinks nor spreads himself.

However, he is always active before you since there is nothing that is not him. Everything you can see, hear and feel is the Buddha. Even you yourself are part of it and can escape from it no more than winds can from air. This is why all your efforts turn out to be futile if you try to find it somewhere else other than where you are, or from something else other than what you see and hear. The core of Buddhist teaching is not how to find and reach the Buddha somewhere far away out of our sight, but how to realise that you are the Buddha or that the things in your sight and hearing are the Buddha.

Student: “What is the Buddha?”

Master: “That’s it.”

Student: “I don’t understand.”

Master: “That’s it, too.”

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

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