The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [65]
The masters are resolute in cutting short all theorizing and speculation about these answers. “Direct pointing” entirely fails in its intention if it requires or stimulates any conceptual comment.
Fa-yen asked the monk Hsüan-tzu why he had never asked him any questions about Zen. The monk explained that he had already attained his understanding from another master. Pressed by Fa-yen for an explanation, the monk said that when he had asked his teacher, “What is the Buddha?” he had received the answer, “Ping-ting T’ung-tzu comes for fire!”
“A good answer!” said Fa-yen. “But I’m sure you don’t understand it.”
“Ping-ting,” explained the monk, “is the god of fire. For him to be seeking for fire is like myself, seeking the Buddha. I’m the Buddha already, and no asking is needed.”
“Just as I thought!” laughed Fa-yen. “You didn’t get it.”
The monk was so offended that he left the monastery, but later repented of himself and returned, humbly requesting instruction.
“You ask me,” said Fa-yen.
“What is the Buddha?” inquired the monk.
“Ping-ting T’ung-tzu comes for fire!”16
The point of this mondo is perhaps best indicated by two poems submitted by the Pure Land Buddhist Ippen Shonin to the Zen master Hoto, translated by Suzuki from the Sayings of Ippen. Ippen was one of those who studied Zen to find a rapprochement between Zen and the Pure Land School, with its practice of repeating the Name of Amitabha. In Japanese, the formula is “Namu Amida Butsu!” Ippen first presented this verse:
When the Name is uttered,
Neither the Buddha nor the self
There is:
Na-mu-a-mi-da-bu-tsu–
The voice alone is heard.
Hoto, however, felt that this did not quite express the point, but gave his approval when Ippen submitted a second verse:
When the Name is uttered,
Neither the Buddha nor the self
There is:
Na-mu-a-mi-da-bu-tsu,
Na-mu-a-mi-da-bu-tsu!17
Po-chang had so many students that he had to open a second monastery. To find a suitable person as its master, he called his monks together and set a pitcher before them, saying:
“Without calling it a pitcher, tell me what it is.”
The head monk said, “You couldn’t call it a piece of wood.”
At this the monastery cook kicked the pitcher over and walked away. The cook was put in charge of the new monastery.18 One of Nan-ch’üan’s lectures is worth quoting here:
During the period (kalpa) before the world was manifested there were no names. The moment the Buddha arrives in the world there are names, and so we clutch hold of forms. In the great Tao there is absolutely nothing secular or sacred. If there are names, everything is classified in limits and bounds. Therefore the old man West of the River (i.e., Ma-tsu) said: “It is not mind; it is not Buddha; it is not a thing.”19 l
This, of course, reflects the doctrine of the Tao Te Ching that
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth;
Naming is the mother of the ten thousand things (1).
But Lao-tzu’s “nameless” and Nan-ch’üan’s “kalpa of the void” before the manifestation of the world are not prior to the conventional world of things in time. They are the “suchness” of the world just as it is now, and to which the Zen masters are directly pointing. Po-chang’s cook was living wide awake in that world, and answered the master’s problem in its concrete and nameless terms.
A monk asked Ts’ui-wei, “For what reason did the First Patriarch come from the West?”
Ts’ui-wei answered, “Pass me that chin-rest.”
As soon as the monk passed it, Ts’ui-wei hit him with it.20
Another master was having tea with two of his students when he suddenly tossed his fan to one of them, saying, “What’s this?” The student opened it and fanned himself. “Not bad,” was his comment. “Now you,” he went on,