knowing and not knowing: nothing to prove shoyoroku: case 69 by robert aitken, roshi
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KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING: NOTHING TO PROVE
Shoyoroku: Case 69
by Robert Aitken, Roshi
This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious issues.
Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful way.
Originally published in MOON MIND CIRCLE, Summer 1994 pp.14-16.
Text digitised by Don Brown, Canberra Zen Group.
Copyright (c) by Robert Aitken and Sydney Zen Center
251 Young St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia.
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KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING: NOTHING TO PROVE
Shoyoroku: Case 69
by Robert Aitken, Roshi
(A teisho from a 1994 Rohatsu Sesshin, at Palolo, Hawaii)
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Nansen said: "the Buddhas of the three worlds do not know it is.
The otter and the white bull do know it is."
Nansen was the ancestor of many of the ancestors that we talkedabout earlier in this sesshin. One of the great early teachers
of Zen in the Chinese T'ang period, he was the brother monk of
Hyakujo, teacher of Joshu, uncle in the Dharma of Obaku or
Huang-po and great-uncle of Rinzai.
One day he addressed his assembly and said, "The Buddhas of the
three worlds - past, present, future - do not know it is. The
otter and the white bull do know it is". Sometimes those animals
are rendered, "fox and badger know it is." Thomas Cleary
translates "cats and cows know it is." Anyway, the graphs used
for those animals are very obscure and ambiguous. Maybe it
doesn't matter much.
Knowing and not-knowing. So much is made of this among
contemporary teacher to a degree that one fears for one's
intellect and "I don't know" becomes a stock response in koan
study. But all this points to the place or the depth ofconsciousness where not-knowing or "I don't know" might be the
only true expression. "All Buddhas of the three worlds do not
know it is."
When the emperor asked Bodhidharma "What is the first principle
of the holy teaching?", Bodhidharma replied, "Vast emptiness,
nothing holy." A very unsatisfactory answer for the Emperor, who
was known as the bodhisattva emperor because he immersed himself
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in Dharma studies and surrounded himself with courtiers who were
knowledgeable about the Buddha Dharma and frequently held
exchanges and discussions with them.
Of course, philosophically, one can say the first principle ofthe Buddha Dharma is that form is emptiness and emptiness is
form, but how abstract can you be? "Nothing is to be called
holy, there is nothing there at all," Bodhidharma said. "Then,"
the Emperor asks, "who is this standing there before me?" Who
are you in your fine robes, your distinguished bearing, your
venerable age, to say that the first principle of the holy
teaching is vast emptiness, nothing holy? "I don't know,"
Bodhidharma replied. Mutual disappointment.
The Tao-te ching says, "the one who speaks does not know, the one
who knows does not speak." It's a little different, isn't it.
Or maybe we can take that to the ultimate too. It seems to me
that the true teacher is always on the alert for that level of
expression that is not too far away from the truly modest.
A monk came to Kassan, you remember, and said, "What if one
sweeps away the dust and sees the Buddha?" Kassan said, "You
must brandish your sword." Yes. Cut it down a li ttle.
A monk came to Unmon, and said, "What if one realises, that's
it!" Umon [Unmon ????] said, "Golden-haired lion." Just reading
this without any previous exposure to Unmon, or to Zen
literature, one might suppose that Unmon is praising the monk for
realising, "that's it." But you'll look in vain throughout
Unmon's vast opus for any example of praise. Is this likely to
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be the exception? Well, no, not bloody likely.
In his one appearance in our study, Suigan addressed his assembly
and said, "Al l summer I have been preaching to this assembly.
Tell me, do I still have my eyebrows?" It is said that preaching
false Dharma causes the eyebrows to fall off. Suigan was a
brother in the Dharma of Unmon, Chokei, Hofuku, Gensha and other
luminaries, who were all disciples of Seppo. What a wonderful
assembly that must have been. Well, the great ones all became
teachers and Siugan [Suigan ???] was the youngest. He led the
first training period and his brother monks, now teachers, Unmon,
Chokei, Hofuku, came along to help out.
That was the occasion for him saying, "All summer I have been
preaching to you brothers, tell me do I still have my eyebrows?"
Hofuku said, "The robber is in a funk." The Zen master who
steals everything away is called a robber. The robber is
dithering but Engo, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Record , says
Suigan is a clear jewel with no flaw.
I think of Tokusan also, Seppo's teacher. Kaku the attendant
said, "Where have all the past Buddhas and ancestral teachers
gone?" Tokusan said, "What did you say?" Kaku said, "I
commanded an exceedingly fine racehorse to spring forth, but only
a lame tortoise appeared." Tokusan said nothing. Next day when
Tokusan emerged from his bath, Kaku served him tea. Tokusan gave
his shoulder a gentle pat and Kaku said, "Oh, the old boss has
noticed for the first time." Tokusan again said nothing.
Conveniently deaf, deliberately not using skilful means, and yet
presenting clearly the best possible response to Kaku's initial
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question.
I have told this story before about going with Anne and Taisan,
who later became Eido Roshi, in 1957 from Ryutokuji [is this
correct spelling???] to Kyoto. Taisan had been born and raised
in Kyoto and his father had been a lay resource person, an
accountant really, for Nanzenji, so Taisan had grown up admiring
the administrator of Nanzenji from afar but had never met him.
Those big temples in Kyoto have two roshis, one the
administrator, the other the teacher. So we went to call on him.
Here he was in his middle eighties and Taisan made raihai before
him, saying, "It is a great honour at last to be in the presence
of the distinguished Roshi." And the Roshi was sitting there,
saying, "Come on....don't do that."
It's so interesting for me, going back to the occasional
observances at Ryotakuji [is this correct spelling???] where I
trained so long ago, forty-four years ago, to meet the monks with
whom I trained. I think the last time was at the installation of
Sochu Roshi as the abbot, some of them coming in the most
gorgeous finery - silk and brocade robes, gorgeous colours - and
some of them much more modest, Soshu Roshi himself in a very
modest outfit, and Soen Roshi too, of course.
But ie this a matter of mere modesty, pretending to be unskil ful,
pretending to be deaf? Is it an act, or is it something really
neurotic? The reason that many people are in prison is that they
are convinced they are criminals. You can't get to then by
appealing to a so-called "better-nature". I remember when I
worked as a counsellor in a juvenile hall in San Bernadino in
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California, one of the squares in my chequered career, I very
quickly found if I praised a kid, he would immediately mess up.
But if I took a kid to task and gave him hell, two minutes later
he was coming around and saying, hey, do you want to play a game
of ping-pong? No, that's not the case here.
One of the things I had noticed at Ryotokuji [is this correct
spelling???] and at Enkakaju before that was the confidence with
which those monks comported themselves. I couldn't really
understand that. I thought, "Aren't they being a little
arrogant?" Well, for sure some were. Those were the ones who
went on to become such successful priests in the hierarchy and to
wear such beautiful robes. But they were proving something,
weren't they? A true teacher is the one with nothing to prove,
it seems to me. The truly mature Zen student has nothing to
prove.
When Nansen was a young monk, he went to call on Hyakujo Nehan.
Hyakujo Nehan's teacher was Nansen's brother in the dharma, but
twenty-eight years older than he was, so more experienced. So
Hyakujo Nehan asked him, "Is there a secret and supreme Dharma
that has never been expounded for people by any of the holy ones
from the past?" Nansen said, "Yes, there is." You see, really
confident. What is this secret and supreme document that has
never been expounded for the people?" And Nansen said, "It is
not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not being," quoting indirectly
from the Lotus Sutra, and that much of the case appears in the
Mumonkan. But then in the Blue Cliff Record we have the rest of
the story, Hyakujo Nehan saying, "Oh, you have expounded like
that!" "How about you Achariya, how about you honoured priest?"
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Oh," said Hyakujo Nehan, "I am not a great Zen master, how should
I know whether or not there's a secret and supreme Dharma that
has never been expounded for people?" Nansen said, "I don't
understand." Hyakuji [Hyakujo???] Nehan said, " I have already
expounded fully for you."
There are many stories of this kind. One is another about Joshu.
A monk came to Joshu and said, "I have long heard about the great
stone bridge of Joshu, but I have come and found only a simple
log bridge." Joshu said, "You don't see the stone bridge, you
only see the simple log bridge." Joshu lived in the town by that
name, and just outside the town was, and still is an
architectural wonder called the Bridge of Joshu. It had been
built two-hundred or more years before Joshu's time, and still
stands. And Joshu, in keeping with the custom of China and
Chinese Buddhism, had been honoured with the name of his
locality, the way we used to call Duke Kahanamoku, Mister
Honolulu - we were very proud of him as an Olympic champion. So
of course you see the metaphor here - I have long heard about the
great stone bridge of Joshu but I have come and found a simple
stone bridge, two logs bound together, a poor excuse for a
bridge, this shrivelled-up old priest, a poor excuse for a Zen
master, the monk was thinking. So Joshu said "You don't see the
stone bridge you only see the simple log bridge." If he was
speaking in Japanese, he would say, "Ah so....I see, is that so?"
I remember going to one of the early Roshi conferences. These
were organised by Abe Masao Sensei, a great scholar of Zen
Buddhism and they continued for about three years annually and
then fell apart when the scandals broke in San Francisco first,
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then Los Angeles and New York. Anyway, on this occasion we had
our conference at Bodhi Mandala which is Sasaki Roshi's centre in
New Mexico, way up in the mountains, pretty cold at that time of
the year, which I think was spring, and pretty rude too, not very
elegant accommodations at all. And we had an evaluation meeting
at the end, and one of the teachers, a man originally from Japan
said, in Japanese, "Well, with this kind of service I don't think
I'll come to another teacher's meeting." You know he used the
Japanised English word, sabis, which means more than the English
word "service", it means generally food, lodgings, and all the
rest of it. Well, O.K. Nobody said much about that but he
doesn't qualify here as one who is conveniently deaf and acts
unskilfully.
Yamada Roshi used to say, there is nothing to distinguish the
truly realised person from anybody else, and he himself realised
that truth going to work every day on the train in his blue suit,
white shirt and tie and trilby hat, completely indistinguishable
from the hordes of other businessmen going to Tokyo to work. And
one day when I came home from Tokyo, and was on the bus riding to
our apartment, somebody tapped me on the shoulder one stop before
mine, and I looked up and here it was, Yamada Roshi, who had been
on the same train and on the same bus and I hadn't even noticed
him and he was getting off at his stop. But he still appears in
my dreams as my true teacher.