The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [56]
(Shen-hui:) “All practice of samadhi is fundamentally a wrong view. How, by practicing samadhi, could one attain samadhi?” (1.111)
We have already mentioned the incident between Ma-tsu and Huai-jang, in which the latter compared sitting in meditation to polishing a tile for a mirror. On another occasion Huai-jang said:
To train yourself in sitting meditation [za-zen] is to train yourself to be a sitting Buddha. If you train yourself in za-zen, (you should know that) Zen is neither sitting nor lying. If you train yourself to be a sitting Buddha, (you should know that) the Buddha is not a fixed form. Since the Dharma has no (fixed) abode, it is not a matter of making choices. If you (make yourself) a sitting Buddha this is precisely killing the Buddha. If you adhere to the sitting position, you will not attain the principle (of Zen).46 gg
This seems to be the consistent doctrine of all the T’ang masters from Hui-neng to Lin-chi. Nowhere in their teachings have I been able to find any instruction in or recommendation of the type of za-zen which is today the principal occupation of Zen monks.47 On the contrary, the practice is discussed time after time in the apparently negative fashion of the two quotations just cited.
It could be assumed that za-zen was so much the normal rule of the Zen monk’s life that our sources do not bother to discuss it, and that their teachings are designed solely for advanced students who have so mastered za-zen that the time has come to go beyond it. This, however, does not agree too well with the references to the enormous clerical and lay audiences attending some of the discourses, since it would be somewhat fantastic to suppose that China was swarming with accomplished yogis. The discourses frequently begin by saying, in a rather brief and offhand fashion, that these teachings are for those who are well trained in the Buddhist virtues. But this could mean no more than that they are for mature people who have mastered the ordinary social and moral conventions, and are therefore not in danger of using Buddhism as a pretext for rebellion against the common decencies.
Alternatively, it could be assumed that the type of za-zen under criticism is za-zen practiced for a purpose, to “get” Buddhahood, instead of “sitting just to sit.” This would concur with the Soto objection to the Rinzai School with its method of cultivating the state of “great doubt” by means of the koan. While the Soto is not quite fair to the Rinzai in this respect, this would certainly be a plausible interpretation of the early masters’ doctrine. However, there are several references to the idea that prolonged sitting is not much better than being dead. There is, of course, a proper place for sitting–along with standing, walking, and lying–but to imagine that sitting contains some special virtue is “attachment to form.” Thus in the T’an-ching Hui-neng says:
A living man who sits and does not lie down;
A dead man who lies down and does not sit!
After all these are just dirty skeletons. (8) hh
Even in Japanese Zen one occasionally encounters a Zen practice which lays no special emphasis upon za-zen, but rather stresses the use of one’s ordinary work as the means of meditation. This was certainly true of Bankei,48 and this principle underlies the common use of such arts as “tea ceremony,” flute playing, brush drawing, archery, fencing, and ju-jutsu as ways of practicing Zen. Perhaps, then, the exaggeration of za-zen in later times is part and parcel of the conversion of the Zen monastery into a boys’ training school. To have them sit still for hours on end under the watchful eyes of monitors with sticks is certainly a sure method of keeping them out of mischief.
Yet however much za-zen may have been exaggerated in the Far East, a certain amount of “sitting just to sit” might well be the best thing in the world for the jittery minds and agitated bodies of Europeans and Americans–provided they do not use it as a method for turning themselves into Buddhas.
1 Lankavatara