Zen 96 Read online

of its unfolding is enlightened or not. It is not spontaneity -- as anyone in the deluded state is capable of any type of spontaneous activity. A mind that is undisciplined is a mind that is unchanneled. An unchanneled mind lacks the direction required for energy to be developed in the correct manner so that it can expand beyond its current limitations of awareness. Discipline has one real purpose, and that is the curtailing of energy wastage in the mind and body, so that the saved energy can be focused (like a laser beam) through meditation, and turned drill-like into the deepest recesses of perceptual awareness. By going inward, eventually, the essence of all perception is understood in a non-dual manner and one becomes equally free of macro- and microstructure, without necessarily rejecting either.

  Zen is something absolutely personal wherein for the development of one's own individual consciousness, one is led towards universality. The first important condition for universality is to organize oneself, summoning up one's full energy and free will. That's why a practitioner of Zen, in every waking moment, has to correct his own experience, making it bright and free from impurities. Otherwise, the dangerous tendency to take an extra-subjective viewpoint can be developed.

  Zen has nothing to do with social life, and the social medium has nothing to do with Zen. However, as all willed action emerges from the empty mind ground, each and every one Zen-practitioner must choose a social path. This is often not a deliberate act, but a spontaneous reaction to prevailing circumstances.

  As the Buddha Gautama advocates compassion and loving kindness, and bearing in mind that the social activity runs counter to these notions, it is obvious that enlightened Zen adepts follow the path of love and avoid the path of hate. Being 'non-social' is to sit on the hundred foot pole and do nothing, which is stagnation and non-progression by definition.

  The only way to prevent this is to use the method of self-examination in order to see constantly the real nature of the self. On the other hand, it is not possible to reach enlightenment through intellectual efforts alone. Since it is something that has no face and no realm, language does not extend to explaining it in detail, so, people have no way to transmit or interpret it. Complete realization (enlightenment, awakening) and its testimony can be grasped only intuitively. The Zen masters understood wisdom not as rational knowledge but mainly as intuition. For this wisdom, it is very important to reach a point of "absence of thought." The mind should free itself from the influence of the external world, bring itself into sharp focus and be alert in order to intuit the truth everywhere, instantly. To this end, special methods have been devised to throw off intellectual work and imagination and allow the pure mind to make its own discovery. And one of such methods can be found in completing poetic works, the task of which is to wake up and sensitize a Zen practitioner's mind so as to stimulate him to seek the truth on his own. This is the first stage, the 'hard way' of educating by enigmatic words to make a disciple of a Zen master cultivate himself. The poetry then sets not so much as a stumbling block for the intellect but as the means or signs of intuition. They are used by the Zen masters in order to test or to verify whether their disciples have achieved realization or not. In the sense, this could be seen as a kind of examination. The only difference is that its form and content change according to the individual, the time and the place.

  Most probably, a main driving force behind this was the Chinese imperial examination. It started by the imperial examination in Tang-period (618-907 CE), in which the composition of poems was included among the important tests of literary ability. By mid-Tang dynasty, even learned Buddhist abbots and monks caught up with the trend of expressing themselves through their poetry which reflected certain stages on the way to final enlightenment, and many of them wrote fine classical poems. I believe this tradition have started much earlier and continues till present days and remains to be so for the Chinese Buddhist communities all over the world.

  As soon as Confucius (c. 551 BCE) also advised his disciples to go on to study the "polite arts" including etiquette, archery, versification/calligraphy, chariot driving, maths/logic and music, when they had the energy to spare. In the next stage, the polite arts become implements, by which the members of the virtuous elite can hope to gain an exquisite sensitivity to the ethical patterns embodied in Classics. Philosopher Xun-zi (c. 300-230 BCE), for example, remarked: "Once the proper arts are mastered, the mind will follow them." This notion may sound somewhat familiar to us, for it corresponds to our own complex definitions of nobility. Still, the Chinese idea of nobility is not entirely equivalent to our own. The European tradition, embracing a more individualistic vision, tends to emphasize noble conduct as a laudable end in itself, while the ancient Chinese never tired of reminding us that personal self-cultivation is merely the first step in a process of forming harmonious communities in a clan, town, country and the world (under the term 'tian-xia,' the world, we should understand 'fraternity' so far). Confucius also edifies, "Cultivate yourself so that you can later contact others."

  As distinct from Chinese classic poetry with its more complex than the English sonnet rhyme pattern when each character of one line must be balanced against the corresponding character in another line, both in meaning and tone, Zen poetry does not have any uniform, neither is it passed through second thought or rationalization. That's why it is sometimes very difficult to understand the reasoning of the Zen verses, through which, I hope, the reader can find his/her Zen mind.

  My Zen Poems

  01

  The Bodhi Tree

  The Bodhi tree, under which

  Prince Gautama Siddhartha

  Attained his moment of truth,

  Makes some go through

  The joyful peak of silence,

  Just like that picked up flower

  Which evoked a ghost of smile,

  But in the eyes of others

  It is simply a Ficus giant,

  Which stands on the pathway

  Among the other thorny bushes, . .

  What else could they say.

  Some see the thorny pathway

  Of complete enlightenment

  As merely a disfigurement

  Of their primal nature, but some

  Even hardly see their primal nature --

  By no means they can do it.

  As for the man of deep insight,

  His nature is the tool he uses

  For common good on the way

  Of his realization outside.

  02

  Continuity of Purification

  By sitting in the lotus position,

  You become like a golden altar

  Of the fragrant incense

  Slowly burnt out in a temple --

  All the divine comes out

  From your concentrated mind

  To be the pure mind

  Completely free of thoughts

  And vain efforts, as though

  The fragrance coming out

  From the sandalwood

  Freed of any decay or rot.

 

  There is no fragrant incense

  That is burnt outside an altar

  Or a temple or a joss house;

  And there is no the divine

  Found outside the pure mind.

  If there is the divine but outside

  Of the purification, it's just like

  A woodblock to be burnt down

  In a stove without any regret,

  As it is something different

  From the joint concentration

  Of the innumerable ancestors.

  03

  Internal Light

  The information that comes

  Through the ears and eyes

  Is comprehended internally

  Whereas the knowledge of mind

  Becomes manifested externally.

  When this is the case,

  The spiritual intelligence

  Comes and takes up

  Its dwelling with you,

  And how much more

 
Will other men do so!

  All things thus undergo

  A transforming influence --

  This is the hinge on which

  The wise move forward;

  It is this which they practise

  All their lifetime.

  Therefore, how much more

  Should men follow this rule,

  By which all the external

  Become the manifest

  Thru the light of internal!

  04

  Interference

  I have heard people say that the leader of this

  Or that poorly ruling state is in the vigour

  Of his years and consults none but himself

  As to his tyrannous course of governing.

  He deals with his country as though it were

  A light matter and has no regret of his faults.

  Such ruler thinks lightly of his people's dying;

  The dead are found all over the country

  As if no smaller space could contain them

  On the plains and about the mountain ranges,

  They are as thick as heaps of bones to fire --

  The people