AWAKENING TO ZEN: The Teachings of Roshi Philip Kapleau

Book by Kapleau Roshi Philip

Chapter 1
Living Zen in America
What Is Zen?
(1973)
Rather than give you a detailed explanation of Zen doctrine and history, which could mislead and even bore, and in any case would be contrary to the spirit of Zen, let me put before you three typical Zen koans, or spiritual problems. These koans are Zen's method of demonstrating truth directly and concretely without recourse to logic or reason. Were you to reflect on them deeply and awaken to their innermost meaning, you would come to understand Zen.
Here is the first koan. A monk came to the Master Ummon (Yun Men in Chinese) and said, "Suppose you meet up with someone deaf, dumb, and blind. Since he couldn't see your gestures, couldn't hear your preaching, or, for that matter, ask you questions, you would be helpless. Unable to save him, you'd prove yourself a worthless master, wouldn't you?"
"Bow, please," said the master. The monk, though taken by surprise, obeyed the master's command, then straightened up in expectation of having his query answered. But instead of an answer he got a staff thrust at him and leaped back.
"Well," said Ummon, "you're not blind. Now approach closer." The monk did as he was bidden. "Good," said Ummon, "you're not deaf either. Well, understand?"
"Understand what, sir?"
"Ah, you're not dumb either."
On hearing these words the monk awoke as from a deep sleep.
Before going on to the next koan, let us reflect a moment on this one. Some people can never get away from theoretical, abstract questions, perhaps with the sense that the way to learn is to ask questions -- the more the better. Questions frequently asked me are "What does the Zen person think of the Vietnam War?" or "What does Zen think of sex?" or "What does Zen have to say about morality?" The "Zen person" is an abstraction; he or she doesn't exist; only a specific person with Zen training does. One person's enlightenment may be deeper and training more thorough. One person may be wiser, more compassionate, and steadfast. This is all you can say. So the questions are really meaningless. More often than not, such questions are a dodge, a subterfuge to avoid facing up to one's own life problems. When a Zen teacher hears such questions, he must quickly determine the state of mind of the person asking them and treat them accordingly.
Observe how masterfully Ummon handles this student. He wastes no words probing or analyzing his motives, engaging him in a Socratic dialogue, or challenging his sincerity. In a direct, concrete, existential manner that would be the envy of any contemporary pedagogue (and remember, this incident took place in ninth-century China), he makes the student realize that he has the power of sight, speech, and hearing: everything, in fact, he needs to save himself. Why, then, doesn't he do so and stop engaging in speculations? Moreover, this koan points out a fundamental doctrine of Zen, namely, that in our essential nature each one of us lacks nothing, but is like a circle to which nothing can be added and nothing subtracted. We are each of us whole, complete, perfect, and so is everything else. Even a blind man, as a blind man, lacks nothing.
Why then do we suffer? Why is there so much greed, folly, and violence in the world? The Zen answer is that because our bifurcating intellect and our five senses deceive us into postulating the dualism of self and other, we are led to think and act as though each of us were a separate entity confronted by a world external to us. Thus in our unconscious the idea of "I," or selfhood, becomes fixed, and from this arises such patterns as "I hate this," "I love that," "This is mine," "That's yours." Nourished by this fodder, ego -- and this is not the psychological ego whose healthy functioning is necessary, but the delusive sense of oneself standing apart from others, from the whole universe -- comes to dominate the personality, attacking whatever threatens its domination and grasping at anything that will enlarge its power. Antagonism, greed, and alienation -- in a word, suffering -- are the inevitable consequence of this circular process. To see through this mirage and grasp the ungraspable is to realize that "heaven and earth and I" are of the same root, to use a Zen phrase.
The Buddha, the master physician for the ills of the spirit and the heart, deeply understood this question syndrome. Replying to a monk who threatened to quit religious life unless his questions about whether the enlightened man exists after death were answered, he said, "It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, his relatives and kinfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon, and the sick man were to say, 'I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me was tall, short, or of middle height, was from this or that village, town, or city, whether it was an ordinary arrow or claw-headed arrow.' That man would die without ever having learned this." At another time the Buddha stated, "The religious life does not depend on the dogma that the world is eternal or not eternal, infinite or finite, that the soul and the body are identical or different, or that the enlightened man exists or does not exist after death. It profits not, nor has it to do with the fundamentals of religion, nor does it tend to the absence of passion, to supreme wisdom, and nirvana."
Now for the second koan. One day a master was taking a walk in the woods with his disciple. Suddenly a pure white rabbit darted in front of him. The master, taking advantage of the moment, said to the disciple, "What would you say as to that?" The disciple gushed, "It was just like a god!" The master, looking at him in disgust, said, "You're a grown man but you talk like a child." "All right," said the student, slightly miffed no doubt, "What would you say about it?" "It's a rabbit!" replied the master.
A rabbit is a rabbit is a rabbit. How many truly see when they look, truly hear when they listen? Not many. The average person is perpetually weaving ideas and embroidering notions about what he sees or hears. An art student studying a painting probably analyzes the formal structures; another may try to recall what he had read or heard about the painting; to another the painting may turn the mind to the circumstances of the painter's life. A flash of lightning may set a person's mind to thinking, "What a dazzling sight!" If philosophically inclined, he might reflect, "Man's life is as brief as that lightning." If fear was his dominant emotion and he was looking out the window when the lightning struck, he could think, "I'd better pull my head in before I lose it!" The haiku poet Basho has a verse that goes, "How fortunate the man who sees a flash of lightning and does not think, 'How brief life is!'"
With each mental judgment or coloration the viewer or hearer is being taken farther and farther away from the object itself, the experience itself, so his knowledge becomes correspondingly weaker and more distant and limited. Truly to look at a painting, one has to see it with one's own eyes and ears, one's whole body.
Concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz tells about the time he played a dissonant contemporary composition at a private gathering. When he had finished, someone asked, "I just don't understand what that composition means, Mr. Horowitz. Could you please explain?" Without a word, Horowitz played the composition again, turned to his questioner, and announced, "That's what it means!"
The mind of the ordinary person is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, prejudices, fears, and anxieties, so that his life, far from being centered in reality, is grounded instead in his notions of reality. The rabbit koan is urging us to empty our minds of all false values and notions and directly experience things in their wholeness and purity. To one who enters into every action with no separation, empty-minded, so to speak, yet filled with attention and awareness, a rabbit is the whole universe. Or if you like, it is everything and it is nothing. This koan celebrates a life of truth, a life of Zen, a life of full, undiluted participation at every moment and in every circumstance. It proclaims that to experience the core of a person or a thing we must ourselves be fully, wholeheartedly, present without reservation.
The responsible life is the responsive life. As long as we stand apart weighing, analyzing, and judging, people and things confront, even menace, us. So we feel, as the poet A. E. Housman wrote, like "a stranger and afraid in a world I never made." But embrace the whole world, take it and all things into your hara, your belly, and you have the Buddha's "Throughout heaven and earth I am the most honored one." With this realization birds fly in the sea, a cow gives birth to a calf on a flagpole, the Rocky Mountains stride over the Mississippi River. Is this not true, limitless creativity?
Now for the third and best-known koan, one that illustrates the Zen principle that from unity flow freedom and creativity, while from separateness come pain and confusion. A Zen master said, "Zen is like a man up in a high tree hanging from a branch with his mouth. His hands can't grasp a bough, his feet won't reach one. Under the tree is another man who asks him, 'What is the innermost truth of the Buddha's teachings?' If he doesn't answer, he evades his duty. What should he do?" Zen, we must remember, is not a philosophical game or a literary embellishment, but life itself, absolute life. The problem posed by this koan is central to every life, namely, when to speak and when to remain silent.
It's a vital problem between a teacher and pupil, a husband and wife, a parent and child, between friends and lovers. So much of our lives, personal and professional, is about communication, isn't it? What could be more vital to understand truly? In Zen, of course, there are dead words and there are live words. Words that merely analyze and explain are dead, while words that issue from the heart and gut, that st...