The Zen Experience Part 27

"Then why should you conduct the memorial service for him, if he did not instruct you?" persisted the monk. . . .

"It is neither for his moral character nor his teaching of Dharma that I respect him. What I consider important is that he never told me anything openly._"8_

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Yet Tung-shan does not seem completely against the cultivation of enlightenment, as were some of the other, more radical Ch'anists. Take, for example, the following reported encounter:

_A government officer wanted to know whether there was anyone approaching Ch'an through cultivation. The Master answered: "When you become a laborer, then there will be someone to do cultivation._"9_

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The officer's question would have elicited a shout from Lin-chi, a blow from Huang-po, and advice from Chao-chou to go wash his rice bowl.

Although Tung-shan may have avoided the deliberate absurdities of the Lin-chi masters, his utterances are often puzzling nonetheless. Part of the reason is that he preferred the metaphor to the concrete example.

Unlike the repartee of the absurdist Lin-chi masters, his exchanges are not deliberately illogical. Instead we find a simple reluctance to say anything straight. But if you follow the symbolic language, you realize it is merely another clever way of never teaching with words, while still using language. His frequent speaking in metaphors can be appreciated by the following exchange, which uses language emeshed in symbols.

_

Monk: "With what man of Tao should one a.s.sociate, so that one will hear constantly what one has never heard?"

The Master: "That which is under the same coverlet with you."

Monk: "This is still what you, Master, can hear yourself. What is it that one will hear constantly which one has never heard?"

The Master: "It is not the same as wood and stone." . . .

Monk: "Who is he in our country that holds a sword in his hand?"

The Master: "It is Ts'ao-shan."

Monk: "Whom do you want to kill?"

The Master: "All those who are alive will die."

Monk: "When you happen to meet your parents, what should

you do?"

The Master: "Why should you have any choice?"

Monk: "How about yourself?"

The Master: "Who can do anything to me?"

Monk: "Why should you not kill yourself, too?"

The Master: "There is no place on which I can lay my hands._"10

The Ch'an teachers deliberately avoided specifics, since these might cause students to start worrying about the precise definition of words and end up bogged down in conceptual quandries, neglecting their real nature--which cannot be reached using words.11 But further than this, the monk thinks he will trap the master by asking him if his injunction to kill includes his own parents. (Remember Lin-chi's "On meeting your parents, slay your parents.") But Tung-shan answered by accusing the monk--indirectly--of making discriminations. As for self-murder, Tung- shan maintains his immaterial self-nature is indestructible.12

The dialectic of Tung-shan, subsequently elaborated by his star pupil, Ts'ao-shan, represents one of the last great expressions of Chinese metaphysical thought. He defined a system of five positions or relations between the Particular or Relative and the Universal or Absolute, defined as follows.13

In the first state, called the Universal within the Particular, the Absolute is hidden and obscured by our preoccupation with the world of appearances. However, the world of appearances is in fact a part of the larger world of Absolute reality. When we have achieved a true understanding of the objective world we realize that it is no more real than our senses make it, and consequently it represents not absolute reality but merely our perception. This realization leads to the second phase.

In the second state, called the Particular within the Universal, we recognize that objective reality must always be perceived through our subjective apparatus, just as the Absolute must be approached through the relative, since all particularities merely exemplify the Absolute.

Even good and bad are part of this same Universality. It is all real, but simply that--no values are attached, since it is all part of existence. This, says the scholar John Wu, is the state of enlightenment.14

In dialectical terms, this rounds out the comparison of the Particular and the Universal, with each shown to be part of the other. But they must ultimately be resolved back into sunyata, the Void that encompa.s.ses everything. Neither the Universal or Absolute, nor the particulars that give it physical form, are the ultimate reality. They both are merely systems in the all-encompa.s.sing Void.

The third and fourth stages he defines exemplify achieving enlightenment by Universality alone and achieving enlightenment by Particularity alone. The third stage, enlightenment through Universality, leads one to meditate on the Absolute, upon the single wordless truth that defines the particular around us as part of itself.

(It sounds remarkably similar to the Tao.) This meditation is done without props, language, or any of the physical world (the particular) surrounding us.

Enlightenment through the Particular, through experience with the phenomenal world, was the fourth stage. This received the most attention from the Lin-chi sect--whose masters would answer the question "What is the meaning of Ch'an?" with "The cypress tree in the courtyard" or "Three pounds of flax."15

At the fifth stage, enlightenment reaches the Void, the state that cannot be contained in a concept, since all concepts are inside it.

When you finally reach this state of wordless insight, you realize that both words and wordlessness are merely part of this larger reality.

Action and nonaction are equally legitimate responses to the world.

Tung-shan demonstrated this when he was asked, "When a snake is swallowing a frog, should you save the frog's life?" To this he answered, "To save the frog is to be blind [i.e., to ultimate oneness and therefore to discriminate between frog and snake]; not to save the frog is not to let form and shadow appear [i.e., to ignore the phenomena].16 Perhaps Tung-shan was demonstrating that he was free of discrimination between either option.17

The question of the subjective and the objective, the Universal and the Particular, permeated Tung-shan's teachings.

_Once the Master asked a monk what his name was. The monk answered that his name was so-and-so. The Master then asked: "What one is your real self?"

"The one who is just facing you."

"What a pity! What a pity! The men of the present day are all like this. They take what is in the front of an a.s.s or at the back of a horse and call it themselves. This ill.u.s.trates the downfall of Buddhism. If you cannot recognize your real self objectively, how can you see your real self subjectively?"

"How do you see your real self subjectively?" the monk immediately asked.

"You have to tell me that yourself."

"If I were to tell you myself, it would be seeing myself objectively.

What is the self that is known subjectively?"

"To talk about it in such a way is easy to do, but to continue our talking makes it impossible to reach the truth._"18

There also is a poem, known as the Pao-ching San-mei, traditionally attributed to Tung-shan.19 One quatrain will give the flavor of the verse:

_The man of wood sings,