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Q. What is the difference between attachment and enjoyment? If you enjoy doing something, is this likely to be classed as attachment?

A. You seem to think that people without attachment ought to have no enjoyment in their lives. If we have no joy when we have no attachment, why should we try to remove it from ourselves? The purpose of removing attachment is not to make ourselves emotionless but to make ourselves happy.

To enjoy doing something is one thing and attachment is another. Attachment means to cling to possessing or doing something and then we feel unhappy and even frustrated when it is impossible to possess or do it. This happens since we don’t know that everything is empty. Attachment is not a matter of whether you enjoy doing something or not, but a matter of whether or not you have realised that everything is empty.

 

Only when you are aware that both the thing you enjoy doing and you yourself who enjoy doing it are empty can you be free from attachment. That is because then, you don’t cling to enjoying doing it and are not disappointed or frustrated even if you can’t enjoy it. However, not only clinging to enjoying doing something but clinging to rejecting enjoyment is also a kind of attachment when you are not aware that everything is empty.

©Boo Ahm

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Monastic Shen’s Fish and Net

One day Senior Monastic Shen and Senior Monastic Ming visited the river Huai. They saw a fisherman pulling in a net from which a carp escaped.
Shen said, “Brother Ming, look how splendid the fish is! It is just like a skilled practitioner.”
Ming said, “It is indeed. But how come the fish did not avoid being trapped by the net in the first place? It would have been much better.”
Shen said, “Brother Ming, there is something keeping you from being enlightened.”
At midnight Ming understood the meaning of the conversation with Shen.

 

Student: “Ming didn’t seem to be wrong in saying that to avoid being trapped by the net in the first place would have been much better. What is wrong with Ming?”
Master: “In what Shen spoke about there is nothing better or worse, nor is there anything to avoid or go after.”

Commentary:
Doing good is not as good as doing nothing.
Having a good idea is not as good as having no idea.

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Hsin Shin Ming: “34.  Leave everything alone and you will become one with the Way and be free from disturbances.”

‘Leave everything alone’ means putting no labels on things or seeing all things without labelling them. ‘The Way’ means emptiness, non-duality or Oneness.

 

Labelling things is to the Way as labelling different winds such as breeze, storm, hurricane, etc and differentiating them from one another is to air. Whatever names they may have, whatever directions they blow in and however strong they are, all of them are air in essence without exception and oneness as air. What they look like is just how air is.

 

Likewise, we are one with the Way, that is, we are the Way itself just as winds are air itself. We can’t cease to be the Way even for a moment. Although everything has a different name and a different shape and looks and sounds different from one another, the essence of its being is emptiness, the Way, just as the essence of all winds is air.

 

We don’t realise this fact because we don’t leave things alone or cease labelling things. In other words, we have separated ourselves from the Way by labelling, or drawing imaginary lines and try in vain to return to it. Therefore, when we leave everything alone, we are said to become one with the Way. However, in fact we don’t become one with the Way but confirm that we are already one with the Way simply by leaving things alone. What or who would disturb whom in Oneness, the Way?

 

Student: “What happens when I become one with the Way?”

Master: “The Way disappears.”

Student: “Why does it disappear?”

Master: “It is not the Way anymore when you are the Way itself.”

 

Image: 20180225_120721a_thumb_thumb.jpg

 

©Boo Ahm

 

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Q. What does ‘hear what can’t be spoken’ mean?

A. When you say that you know the right side, it means that you also know that there is also the left side. Arguing that you know the right side without knowing that there is the left side means that you don’t know what the right side is. Likewise, if you can’t hear what can’t be spoken, you can’t be said to hear what can be spoken.

When you speak, there is your speaking because there is also what is not your speaking. Your speaking becomes what is spoken by you because there is also what is not spoken by you just as red is red because there is also non-red colour. When you understand that your speaking is based on what is not spoken just as the right is based on the left, you can see that what can be spoken is one with what cannot be spoken. So, when you can hear what is spoken and what is not spoken at the same time, you are said to be able to hear things as they are and to hear with your eyes.

 

Student: “Can you hear what is not spoken now?”
Master: “Of course.”
Student: “Can you say what is not spoken?”
Master: “Sure.”
Student: “Please, say what is not spoken.”
Master: “How can I say what is not spoken?”

©Boo Ahm

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Yunyan’s Lion

Guishan asked Yunyan, “I hear that you played with a lion when you were at Yaoshan’s. Is it true?”
Yunyan said, “Yes, it is.”
Guishan said, “Did you always play with it, or did you sometimes stop?”
Yunyan said, “I played when I wanted to. I stopped when I wanted to.”
Guishan said, “Where was the lion when you stopped?”
Yunyan said, “Stop! Stop!”

Student: “Why did Yunyan say, ‘Stop! Stop!’?”
Master: “He played with the lion.”
Student: “Why did he play with it when asked where the lion was when he stopped playing with it?”
Master: “Because it is always where it plays even when it stops playing.”

Commentary:
Playing is to stopping as the right is to the left.

©Boo Ahm

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Hsin Shin Ming: “33. Just let things be in their own way as they are, and there is neither going nor staying.”

‘Let things be in their own way’ means ‘Don’t put labels on things’, or ‘Don’t discriminate things’. ‘There is neither going nor staying’ means that there are no relative concepts such as going and staying, or good and bad. So, this scripture implies, ‘If we don’t put labels on things, there are no relative concepts such as going and staying’.

For example, the moment we put the label ‘table’ on a thing, relative concepts related to it such as old, new, large, small, good, poor and so on never fail to follow it, because we think that, in order for a thing to be what the table represents, it should be equipped with certain conditions.

However, in fact the table neither says nor thinks that it is a table, that it is small or that it is old. It is a small, old table because we think so and put such labels on it. Before we put labels such as table, small and old on it, it is not a table, not small and not old. When we don’t put any labels on it, it has no identity, no merits and no demerits, and it is neutral. It is perfect as it is. It may look nice, poor, sometimes broken and imperfect, but it looks so not because it really is like that but because you think so. That is just the way it is. Therefore, if you let things be in their way, there is neither going nor staying.

Student: “How can I let things be in their own way as they are.”
Master: “Remove all the labels from them.”
Student: “How is it when there is neither going nor staying?”
Master: “Then oneness appears.”

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Q. Trying to be compassionate all the time can become a mental burden. It can be oppressive. Is there another way one can think about it?

A. Don’t try to be compassionate. Compassion maintained by your artificial effort is not compassion but an illusion of compassion. True compassion is a natural emotion like the maternal love mothers feel for their children, like the friendship you feel when you have a good friend and like the fullness you feel when you have had enough food.

No woman tries to have maternal love without having a child, but she comes to have it spontaneously as soon as she has a child. No one tries to have friendship without a friend, but we can feel friendship when we have a good friend. No one tries to be full without eating food, but we can feel full spontaneously when we have eaten enough food.

Likewise, true compassion is the emotion toward others that comes to you as you feel oneness with them. In other words, when you feel oneness with others, you come to see and feel others’ suffering as yours, which is compassion. So, trying to be compassionate without feeling oneness is like trying to have maternal love without having a baby.

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Mimoyan’s Pitchfork

Priest Mimoyan of Mount Wutai always held a two-pronged pitchfork. When he saw a monastic coming, he would hold up the pitchfork and say, “What kind of demon has made you leave the household? What kind of demon has caused you to wander? If you can say it, you will be killed with this pitchfork. If you can’t say it, you will be killed with this pitchfork. Say it now, quickly!”

Student: “What should the monastic say in order to avoid being killed with the pitchfork?”
Master: “He should snatch it away from the master and threaten back to kill him if he couldn’t say.”

Commentary:
If you can say what can be said, you will be killed.
If you can’t say what can’t be said, you will be killed.
You should be able to say what can’t be said.

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Hsin Shin Ming: “32. If you cling to anything, you are subject to losing the true-Self and going the wrong way.”

Enlightenment is to realise that things are to the true-Self as winds are to air. That is to realise that everything including us is not different and separate from the true-Self but one with it just like winds are not different from air but one with it even though there are countless types of wind. If you believe that there is something special other than what you see, hear and feel, and cling to it, that is losing the true-Self and going the wrong way. That is like winds trying to see or become air. The harder they try, the vainer their effort is and the further they are off the mark.

The objects that we, as Zen practitioners, are most likely to cling to are Buddha, the true-Self and enlightenment. In order to warn us of the mistake of clinging to them, ancient masters would advise their students to kill Buddha when they saw him and ignore enlightenment if they encountered it.

Student: “How can I realise the true-Self without clinging to it?”
Master: “Do you know what the true-Self is?”
Student: “No, I don’t. How could I know it when I am not enlightened?”
Master: “Clinging to what you don’t know is a problem, which is to cling to an illusion.”

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Q. If I try not to discriminate, isn’t that still making discrimination?

A. It is true that trying not to discriminate is still making discrimination. You are advised to focus all your attention on the given questions in order to stop you from discriminating. Your discriminations reduce noticeably when you are involved in your question. In other words, all your thinking can stop whilst you are lost in your question. However, this doesn’t mean to stop discriminating in Zen meditation, although it is regarded as non-discrimination by many people. If this stopping of thinking were non-discrimination, how could we live our lives without thinking?

In fact, to stop discriminating is not to stop thinking but simply to realise that everything including our thoughts is empty. When everything is empty, our discriminations are also empty. When we have realised that our discriminations are empty, we are not deluded by them anymore, whatever discriminations you may make. What would it matter to make discriminations if we were not deluded by them? This is true non-discrimination.

©Boo Ahm

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