Daruma's Problem

The Reading:

THE COMMENTARY
    The broken-toothed old foreigner crossed the sea importantly from a  hundred thousand miles away.  This was raising waves when there is no wind.  Daruma had only one disciple, and even he was a cripple.  Well, well!

"Raising waves where there is no  wind: is a favorite expression in Zen, signifying that there is no problem of life.  Things are as they are, and as they are becoming, and once you realize this in its active, not resigned, meaning, there is really nothing to worry about.  Further, our ordinary way of thinking about life in general is like an ingrown toe-nail.  And last, the Buddhas and the Patriarchs of Zen are doctors who cause the disease they pretend to cure.  So, since this is the best of all possible worlds, why all the fuss about Daruma and Ekai [Mumon] and the Mumonkan?  

Case 42, Mumonkan, R.H. Blyth

Discussion:

Irreverence is not central to Zen.  Irreverence is central to man's study of Zen.  It should be clear, that what a man means by certain speech is not the same as what a Zen Master means by the same speech, which isn't the same at all.  Another way the same thing: to men, what is sacred is not ridiculous, but to a Zen Master there is no such differentiation.  It is only possible to be irreverent when there is something to venerate, and to Zen Masters there is nothing to venerate.

But men venerate everything!  Their past, their desires, their dreams of heaven and gods and miracles that will save them from the demons they have venerated into being!  What a fantastical dance that men do, venerating evil in order to venerate good!  I would suggest a hobby to these people, only they would likely venerate that too!

The beauty of this problem, were I to venerate the problem itself, is that it invents the disease and then wonders at a cure.  What shall we do about suffering?  How can we overcome tragedy?  How do we learn to accept the sorrow and loss of life?

There is no such thing as suffering.  It is a trick we play on ourselves, aided by our other favorite tricks, memory and attachment.  We invented these games to help us rise from animal to Man, and yet here we are, bound now by our own games.

I talk too much.  So did Daruma.

Daruma's Four Acts

The Reading:

The Meditation on the Four Acts, ascribed to Daruma (Bodhidharma), is very clear in its teaching though not yet specifically Zen, the Zen that we find in the Platform Sutra, Rokuso-dangyo.  The four acts are first The Requital of Hatred, not only the hatred of people but of all things around us, the sharp corner of the table, for example.  Second, Following Circumstances, which means, "He who would be first among you, let him be the servant of all."  Third, Asking for Nothing, which is, "Not my will, but Thine be done!"  Last, Accordance with Reality, which means the realization that just as things have no self-nature, neither have we (and just as each thing has existence-value so have we.)

R.H. Blyth, Mumonkan

Discussion:

Blyth likes the parallels between Christianity and Zen, but that's just as if you said you like the similarity in the directions used to get to the jail and the grocery store.  "Go down three blocks, take a right, then the next left - it's on the corner."  While the grocery store may be on one corner and the jail on the other, what other relationship do they have?

Zen is understanding of being, whereas Christianity is a worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.  There is no accord between these views.  Zen has no words and sentences.  Christianity cannot exist without words and sentences.

What of the Four Acts?  Don't attach to Hatred, Power, Things, or Self.  Those are good rules.  Don't Attach is a good rule, plus it suggests it's own limit... don't attach to Don't Attach.

What interests me here though is how much I don't know.  I never heard of the Four Acts before this reading, didn't remember if I knew that Daruma was another name for Bodhidharma, couldn't remember any koan associated with Bodhidharma... each page of Blyth is astoundingly well informed.  Again, I wonder why anyone else bothers to write a book about Zen.  Go read Blyth, and if you still have questions, go ask Daruma to free you of them.

Blyth Questions the Bottle

The Reading:

Blyth:  What would Isan have done the second time?  I once grumbled, to a monk, at the Roshi's telling the same joke at every lecture, until I just waited all through it to see if the joke would be repeated.  The monk said to me, "You should laugh every time he tells the story."  Perhaps I should, but I can't, and anyway, every time the same question is asked it must have a different answer.  The point of this problem is not so much what Isan should or would do on a second, similar occasion, when the bottle was placed there on the floor, as to emphasize the fact that though every Zen action is perfect, when it is repeated it must be more perfect, (a verbal impossibility which itself has some Zen in it.)  "look before you leap" is not a Zen proverb, nor is , "Look while you are leaping", or, "Look after you have leaped."  It is Mussolini who said to the British ambassador, when their motor-car had run over a child, "Never look back!"  We must never look back, it is true, never look forward "and pine for what is not," never look at what we are doing at the moment, but always look back-now-forward.

-Blyth, Mumonkan

Discussion:

I don't disagree with Blyth here, but that isn't to say he is completely right.  For example, the easiest way is the easier way: Is the joke funny?  When anyone says, "must never" that is hardly ever right (or useful).  What, never?  No.  Never.  What, never?  Well, hardly ever.

I don't know what Blyth was thinking when he wrote this, but I would offer him the easier way: It is not a matter of Never, it is a matter of non-ever.  If you attach to then or now or soon, then you have lost the way.  You can be in the then or now or soon, and as long as you are just visiting and not renting a room, then you are there, not because you should or shouldn't be, but because you are, and what of it?  Anywhere you are, if you aren't attached to it, is the same as anywhere else.  Gutei's Zen of One Finger was never used up, so who is to say that Isan would tell a different joke the second time?

There you have it then.  Questions assume answers.  There is no question of what Isan would do a second time, because there was no second time - there is only a second time in Blyth's imagination, and was-is-will be there only because, when Blyth imagined it, he attached to it, he carried it around with him like a pretty girl, and he desired an answer.

The only answer to Blyth's question, and to all such questions, is Mu.  But don't say it twice. Then you are just imitating Ummon.