The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [67]
To its accomplishments it lays no claim.
It loves and nourishes all things,
but does not lord it over them. (34)
The Tao, without doing anything (wu-wei),
leaves nothing undone. (37)
To use the imagery of a Tibetan poem, every action, every event comes of itself from the Void “as from the surface of a clear lake there leaps suddenly a fish.” When this is seen to be as true of the deliberate and the routine as of the surprising and the unforeseen, one can agree with the Zen poet P’ang-yun:
Miraculous power and marvelous activity–
Drawing water and hewing wood!23 o
1 Seng-ts’an, Hsin-hsin Ming.
2 Tao Te Ching, 2.
3 Believe it or not, there is actually a politician in San Francisco who so detests the political Left Wing that he will not make a left turn with his car.
4 The Zenrin Kushu is an anthology of some five thousand two-line poems, compiled by Toyo Eicho (1429–1504). Its purpose was to provide Zen students with a source-book of verses from which to select couplets expressing the theme of a newly solved koan. Many masters require such a verse as soon as the proper answer to the koan has been given. The couplets have been drawn from a vast variety of Chinese sources-Buddhist, Taoist, classical literature, popular songs, etc.
5 Mu-chou Lu, in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 2. 6.
6 Zenrin Ruishu, 2.
7 “The Transcendental World,” Zen Notes, vol. 1, no. 5. First Zen Institute of America. New York, 1954.
8 Pi-yen Chi.
9 Shobogenzo, fasc. 1. For this translation I am indebted to my colleague Professor Sabro Hasegawa.
10 Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 1. 2. 4.
11 Shobogenzo, fasc. 1. Read to the author by Sabro Hasegawa.
12 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 15.
13 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 22.
14 Chao-chou Lu in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 3. 13.
15 Pi-yen Chi, 12, in Suzuki (1), vol. 2, pp. 71–72.
16 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 25.
17 Suzuki (1), vol. 2, p. 263.
18 Wu-men kuan, 40. However, as Wu-men comments, he fell right into Po-chang’s trap, because he exchanged an easy job for a difficult one!
19 Nan-ch’üan Yü-lu in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 3. 12.
20 Pi-yen Lu, 20. The chin-rest is the ch’an-pan, a board for supporting the chin during long meditation.
21 Lien-teng Hui-yao, 22. This is Ruth Sasaki’s elegant translation in Dumoulin and Sasaki (1), p. 48, where she points out that in this context “spiritual” connotes a state beyond expression in words.
22 Yün-men Kuang-lu, in Ku-tsun-hsü Yü-lu, 4. 16.
23 Ch’uan Teng Lu, 8.
Two
“SITTING QUIETLY, DOING NOTHING”
In both life and art the cultures of the Far East appreciate nothing more highly than spontaneity or naturalness (tzu-jan). This is the unmistakable tone of sincerity marking the action which is not studied and contrived. For a man rings like a cracked bell when he thinks and acts with a split mind-one part standing aside to interfere with the other, to control, to condemn, or to admire. But the mind, or the true nature, of man cannot actually be split. According to a Zenrin poem, it is
Like a sword that cuts, but cannot cut itself;
Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.a
The illusion of the split comes from the mind’s attempt to be both itself and its idea of itself, from a fatal confusion of fact with symbol. To make an end of the illusion, the mind must stop trying to act upon itself, upon its stream of experiences, from the standpoint of the idea of itself which we call the ego. This is expressed in another Zenrin poem as
Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.b
This “by itself” is the mind’s and the world’s natural way of action, as when the eyes see by themselves, and the ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself without having to be forced apart by the fingers. As the Zenrin says