The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [80]
This is also the teaching of Bankei:
You are primarily Buddhas; you are not going to be Buddhas for the first time. There is not an iota of a thing to be called error in your inborn mind.… If you have the least desire to be better than you actually are, if you hurry up to the slightest degree in search of something, you are already going against the Unborn.5
Such a view of Zen practice is therefore somewhat difficult to reconcile with the discipline which now prevails in the Rinzai School, and which consists in “passing” a graduated series of approximately fifty koan problems. Many of the Rinzai masters are most emphatic about the necessity of arousing a most intense spirit of seeking–a compelling sense of “doubt” whereby it becomes almost impossible to forget the koan one is trying to solve. Naturally, this leads to a good deal of comparison between the degrees of attainment of various individuals, and a very definite and formal recognition is attached to final “graduation” from the process.
Since the formal details of the koan discipline are one of the few actual secrets remaining in the Buddhist world, it is difficult to appraise it fairly if one has not undergone the training. On the other hand, if one has undergone it one is obliged not to talk about it–save in vague generalities. The Rinzai School has always forbidden the publication of formally acceptable answers to the various koan because the whole point of the discipline is to discover them for oneself, by intuition. To know the answers without having so discovered them would be like studying the map without taking the journey. Lacking the actual shock of recognition, the bare answers seem flat and disappointing, and obviously no competent master would be deceived by anyone who gave them without genuine feeling.
There is no reason, however, why the process should actually involve all the silliness about “grades of attainment,” about who has “passed” and who has not, or about who is or is not a “genuine” Buddha by these formal standards. All well-established religious institutions are beset by this kind of nonsense, and they generally boil down to a kind of aestheticism, an excessive passion for the cultivation of a special “style” whose refinements distinguish the sheep from the goats. By such standards the liturgical aesthete can distinguish Roman from Anglican Catholic priests, confusing the mannerisms of traditional atmosphere with the supernatural marks of true or false participation in the apostolic succession. Sometimes, however, the cultivation of a traditional style may be rather admirable, as when a school of craftsmen or artists hands down from generation to generation certain trade secrets or technical refinements whereby objects of peculiar beauty are manufactured. Even so, this very easily becomes a rather affected and self-conscious discipline, and at that moment all its “Zen” is lost.
The koan system as it exists today is largely the work of Hakuin (1685–1768), a formidable and immensely versatile master, who gave it a systematic organization so that the complete course of Zen study in the Rinzai School is divided into six stages. There are, first, five groups of koan d:
1. Hosshin, or Dharmakaya koan, whereby one “enters into the frontier gate of Zen.”
2. Kikan, or “cunning barrier” koan, having to do with the active expression of the state realized in the first group.
3. Gonsen, or “investigation of words” koan, presumably having to do with the expression of Zen understanding in speech.
4. Nanto, or “hard to penetrate” koan.
5. Goi, or “Five Ranks” koan, based on the five relationships of “lord” and “servant” or of “principle” (li) and “thing-event” (shih), wherein Zen is related to the Hua-yen or Avatamsaka philosophy.
The sixth stage is a study of the Buddhist precepts and the regulations of the monk’s life (vinaya) in the light of Zen understanding.6
Normally, this course of training