The Zen Experience Part 16

_A monk besought him to tell him the most vitally important principle of Ch'an. The master excused himself by saying, "I must now go to make water. Think even such a trifling thing I have to do in person."28

_Chao-chou was of a unique breed of "Golden Age" masters, who created Ch'an's finest moment. Even Chao-chou knew this, for he is quoted as recognizing that Ch'an had already pa.s.sed through its most dynamic epoch.

_"Ninety years ago," he said, "I saw more than eighty enlightened masters in the lineage of Ma-tsu; all of them were creative spirits. Of late years, the pursuit of Ch'an has become more and more trivialized and ramified. Removed ever farther from the original spirit of men of supreme wisdom, the process of degeneration will go on from generation to generation._"29_

_

Chao-chou died in his one hundred and twentieth year, surely one of the most venerable Ch'an masters. Fortunately his pessimistic a.s.sessment of Ch'an's future was only partly correct. Although he himself had no ill.u.s.trious heirs, there were other Southern Ch'an masters who would extend the lineage of Ma-tsu into what would one day be the Rinzai school, among these a layman named P'ang and the master Huang-po.

Chapter Nine

P'ANG AND HAN-SHAN:

LAYMAN AND POET

_Han-shan

_

Each of the better-known disciples of Ma-tsu exemplified some particular aspect of Ch'an: Whereas Po-chang Huai-hai advanced Ch'an's organizational and a.n.a.lytical side, Nan-ch'uan embodied the illogical, psychologically jolting approach to the teaching. But what about the Ch'an outside the monasteries? Did Ma-tsu's influence extend to the lay community? Although little has been preserved to help answer these questions, we do have the stories of two Ch'an poets who operated outside the monastic system: Layman P'ang (740?-811) and Han-shan (760?-840?). They were part of a movement called _chu-s.h.i.+h_, lay believers who were drawn to Buddhism but rejected the formal practices, preferring to remain outside the establishment and seek enlightenment on their own.1 However, P'ang studied under Ma-tsu himself, and Han-shan sometimes echoed the master's teachings in his verse.

Layman P'ang

The man known to history as Layman P'ang was born in the mid-eighth century.2 He grew to manhood in the city of Heng-yang, where his Confucianist father served as a middle-level official. Although he was educated in all the cla.s.sics, he became a practicing Buddhist early and never faltered in his devotion. Sometime after marrying he became so obsessed with the cla.s.sic Chinese ideal of a spiritual-poetic hermitage that he actually had a thatched cottage built adjacent to his house.

Here he spent time with his wife--and now a daughter and son--meditating, composing poetry, and engaging in characteristically Chinese musings. A story relates that he was sitting in his thatched cottage one day when he became exasperated with the difficulties of his path and declared, "How difficult it is! How difficult it is! My studies are like drying the fibers of ten thousand pounds of flax by hanging them in the sun."

His wife overheard this outburst and contradicted him, "Easy, easy, easy. It's like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed. I have found the teaching right in the tops of flowering plants."

His daughter, Ling-chao, heard both outbursts and showed them the truth with her a.s.sertion, "My study is neither difficult nor easy. When I am hungry I eat. When I am tired I rest."3

Then one day, thought to have been sometime between the years 785 and 790, P'ang decided to go the final step and sever his ties with the materialism that weighed him down. After donating his house for a temple, he loaded his remaining possessions into a boat--which he proceeded to maneuver into the middle of a river and sink.

We do not know if his wife and son welcomed this final freedom from material enslavement, but his daughter seems to have approved, for she helped him wend his now-penurious way through the world by a.s.sisting him in making and selling bamboo household articles. Free at last, P'ang traveled about from place to place with no fixed abode, living, so the legends say, "like a leaf." The image of P'ang and his daughter as itinerant peddlers, wandering from place to place, made a searing impression on the Chinese mind, and for centuries he has been admired in China--admired, but not necessarily emulated.

Whom did P'ang go to visit? He seems to have known personally every major Ch'an figure in China. The first master visited was the famous s.h.i.+h-t'ou (700-790), sometime rival of Ma-tsu. (It will be recalled that the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, had among his disciples a master called Huai-jang (677-744), teacher of Ma-tsu and head of the lineage of now j.a.panese Rinzai. Another of the Sixth Patriarch's legendary followers was Hsing-ssu [d. 740], whose pupil s.h.i.+h-t'ou is connected to the line that became j.a.panese Soto. Ma-tsu and s.h.i.+h-t'ou headed the two major movements of Southern Ch'an in the eighth century.)4 In 786 P'ang appeared at the retreat of s.h.i.+h-t'ou on the mountain called Nan-yueh.

He greeted s.h.i.+h-t'ou by asking him one of the standard Ch'an questions, which s.h.i.+h-t'ou answered by quietly placing a hand over P'ang's mouth-- causing the Layman's first enlightenment experience. P'ang studied under s.h.i.+h-t'ou--although probably in a nonmonastic capacity--for some time, until one day s.h.i.+h-t'ou decided to test him.

"Tell me," began s.h.i.+h-t'ou, "how have you practiced Ch'an after coming here to this mountain?"

P'ang shot back in a characteristic manner, saying, "There is really nothing words can reveal about my daily life."

s.h.i.+h-t'ou continued, "It is just because I know words cannot that I ask you now."

At this, P'ang was moved to offer a verse:

_My daily activities are not unusual,

I'm just naturally in harmony with them.

Grasping nothing, discarding nothing,

In every place there's no hindrance, no conflict.

[My] supernatural power and marvelous activity:

Drawing water and carrying firewood.(5)

_

The declaration that drawing water and carrying firewood were miraculous acts demonstrated P'ang's understanding of "everyday- mindedness"--the teaching of no-teaching, the approach of no-approach.6 The story says that s.h.i.+h-t'ou acknowledged the Layman's enlightenment, and went on to inquire whether P'ang wished to exchange his pauper's robe of white for a monk's raiment of black. P'ang reputedly answered him with an abrupt "I will do what I like." Apparently concluding that he had absorbed all of s.h.i.+h-t'ou's teaching, P'ang arose and absented himself, heading for Kiangsi and the master Ma-tsu.

P'ang's adventures with Ma-tsu are not particularly well recorded, given the two years he reportedly studied under the master.

However, the account of their meeting has become a Ch'an standard.

According to the story, P'ang asked Ma-tsu, "What kind of man is he who has no companion among all things?"

Ma-tsu answered, "After you swallow all the water in the West River in one gulp, I will tell you." It is said that when P'ang heard this, he was suddenly aware of the essence of Ch'an.7

If this exchange seems puzzling, with its subtle wordplay that weaves in and out between realism and symbolism, what about another recorded exchange between the two:

_One day the Layman addressed Ma-tsu, saying: "A man of un.o.bscured original nature asks you please to look upward."

Ma-tsu looked straight down.

The Layman said: "You alone play marvelously on the stringless ch'in [lute]."

Ma-tsu looked straight up.

The Layman bowed low. Ma-tsu returned to his quarters.

"Just now bungled it trying to be smart," then said the Layman.8

_

The modern master Charles Luk speculates that P'ang's request to Ma-tsu to look up at an enlightened man was intended to trap the old master: "In reply Ma-tsu looked down to reveal the functioning of the enlightened mind. P'ang then praised the master for playing so well on the stringless lute. Thereat Ma-tsu looked up to return functioning to the enlightened mind. . . . In Ch'an parlance, looking down is 'function,' which means the mind wandering outside to deliver living beings, and looking up is returning function to 'substance' (the mind) after the work of salvation has been done. P'ang's act of prostrating is 'function' and Ma-tsu's return to the abbot's room means returning function to 'substance' to end the dialogue, for nothing further can be added to reveal substance and function."9