Gateless Barrier Case 15 Tung-shan’s Sixty Blows
Tung-shan came to see Yün-men. Yün-men asked him, “Where were you most recently?”
Tung-shan said, “At Ch’a-tu.”
Yün-men said, “Where were you during the summer?”
Tung-shan said, “At Pao-tzu Monastery in Hu-nan.”
Yün-men said, “When did you leave there?”
Tung-shan said, “August 25th.”
Yün-men said, “I spare you sixty blows.”Next day, Tung-shan came again and said, “Yesterday you said you spared me sixty blows. I don’t know where I was at fault.”
Yün-men said, “You rice bag! Do you go about in such a way, now west of the river, now south of the lake!” With this, Tung-shan had great satori.Aitken, Robert. The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) (p. 127). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
You and I are Tung-shan, coming to sit virtually and in the dojo, traveling away from our daily lives to sit sesshin. In Tung-shan’s case he travelled from northwest China to study with Yün-men in the south in hopes of just such an opportunity as in this story, to sit before Yün-men and receive teaching.
I take Tung-shan’s responses as sincere, direct, and without pretense. He answered that he spent the last evening in the village by Yün-men’s place. Yün-men asks another question and learns where Tung-shan studied in the summer intensive practice period and when he left that training center. In Yün-men sparing him sixty blows we and Tung-shan know that Yün-men was looking for something else. Where was Tung-shan’s fault?
If the fault was in seeking what we call “Zen,” why would Yün-men live in a Zen center, why meet with Tung-shan at all? Why give talks or meet with any Zen students?
Or maybe this exchange wasn’t about fault or blows but about offering a door. An old teacher of mine told me of meeting someone new in dokusan and however he asked, the student assumed the questions were testing the student’s understanding. My old teacher laughed, telling me as hard as he tried, he never got the person’s name. Might Yün-men have spared this individual sixty blows as well? I think not.
Again, you are Tung-shan, now walking away from the meeting with Yün-men. I walked across China, and huh? Good! Reading these texts and walking away with confusion is the fresh air blowing away the constructs of our idea of ourselves and the world. It is for this confusion that you walked across China. Now is not the time to seek relief, but to look again – what IS going on?
We, that is Tung-shan and us, couldn’t make sense of it and instead of leaving through the front gate, we again sought Yün-men . “Please help me, where was I at fault – what am I not understanding?”
Yün-men ’s reply is clear and direct, blunt:
“You rice bag! Do you go about in such a way, now west of the river, now south of the lake!”
If Yün-men were saying Tung-shan shouldn’t have left home, there would be no need for robes, rakusus, and jukai ceremonies to ritualize home-leaving. If so, Yün-men could have just told him to get out, go home. But what he said was, “do you go about in such a way…” here and there, to sesshin and weekday sitting. Of course we might be discouraged in this moment, even with the “such a way” qualifier. Hanging with Yün-men here, we can see that home leaving is encouraged, but not in such a way. There is no way to leave home without blundering along, no way to sit a period without blundering along.
Pilgrimage began when Buddhism began. Buddha saw suffering, picked up a begging bowl, and walked away from home and family. He blundered along for years before the Venus star, and giving his first teaching at Sarnath. Men and women left home to follow him. After trainings in various places during the rainy season, monks and nuns would come see the Tathagata to pay their respects. As he was dying, Ananda asked what they should do for inspiration after his passing. The Buddha advised, according to one translation, that they visit four sites to “arouse the emotion in the faithful.” The four were the place of Buddha’s birth in Lumbini, India, his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, his first teaching in Sarnath nearby, and his death in Kushinagar. To visit all four is about 600 miles.
Pilgrimage can be a lark, an indulgence, a relief from the rigor of monastic routine. Pilgrimage has been misused in rigid ways – the crusaders were called pilgrims. In our tradition there are many stories of ancestors assailing the slack nature of rice bags going here and there for little more than a meal and calling it practice. And maybe the most seductive misuse of pilgrimage shows up in our stories admonishing us for being on pilgrimage to get somewhere else. …or something else.
In 1994 I traveled to Bodh Gaya where pilgrims were abundant. Most were Asian, though westerners were not rare. We gathered in the gardens of the Mahabodhi tempe where the bodhi tree reputed to be an ancestor of the one under which Buddha sat for seven days and seven nights. Through the hours of the day, groups arrived, each with their own practices of chanting, circumambulating, bowing, and sitting in silence. All were sincere. All there expressed gratitude and respect for the Tathagata. All were there to see the Venus star with their own eyes.
None of them needed to have left their kitchens to find the Venus star.
I offer my respect to each of you for having left your kitchens to join in this pilgrimage today – in response to your own thirst born from reading the words of the Buddha and all the followers of the way, born of your own seeking heart, bringing your spirit of kindling to Yün-men to see if he offers a spark. It is the Venus star meeting the bottom of your foot with each step, and again with the sound of each bell. It is the Venus star again that you call sheets when lying down at night.
While in Bodh Gaya I stayed in a Buddhist monastery near the Mahabodhi Temple. For all I could tell, the monastery was slack in its practice; I heard no bells calling for assembly and saw no one in meditation. It appeared there were monks living there who didn’t take inspiration from the Temple, the tree, nor the pilgrims visiting. Seeing no regularity of or welcoming to practice, it seemed to me that just being at an iconic place was not enough day-to-day to inspire these monks. For any of us, our actions can become perfunctory anywhere we are. For each of us travelers gathering there, we’d come distances, and the bodhi tree was not routine. Each of us traveling found our inspiration together and in each other.
Pilgrimage is in the walking, not the arriving. It is done in community, and each with our own impetus. I did not expect the visit to change me, and if anything was surprised that in some quiet way, it did.
Pilgrimage can be the falling away of identity, place, purpose – attachments. I use the word “attachments” with reservation. It can be used as if a criticism; I don’t see it that way. Because of our open hearts we hear the cries of the world – which are not separate from our own cries. Of course we care. Zen is not about shutting down our empathy, but opening to it without argument with what is true in the world. Once walking, sitting in pilgrimage, moment by moment in the quiet of the day, we release ambition and join what is, as it is.
We are on pilgrimage coming to the dojo in the morning. Travelling the ancient way with ancestors near and far to arrive at this place with its altar and fellow practitioners. The figure on the altar is less important than what is evoked by it for you. We are on pilgrimage in walking kinhin and sitting in silence.
Falling away of body and mind is embodied in the pilgrimage, already fallen away with each step. Falling away with body and mind is embodied and sitting on your cushion, each breath is giving it all away. Practice and presence stand together.
This very place is the lotus land, this very body the Buddha. Here is the endpoint of the pilgrimage. It’s always right here – true for every pilgrimage.
Verse of the Faith Mind is attributed to Chinese master Jianzhi Sengcan, who died in 606 CE. It is one of the longer sutras in our book, so we don’t chant it daily. But it is rich in many ways and has a section that relates to our topic today that goes like this:
The Great Way is in essence broad,
neither easy nor difficult.
To hold narrow views causes apprehension;
the more you hurry, the longer it takes.
If you cling to such views,
the right measure is lost,
and you are sure to go astray.
Let go of them and everything is natural;
in essence there is neither going nor staying.
Just act according to your nature,
and you will accord with the Way,
walking it leisurely, free from care.Jianzhi Sengcan [Chien-Chih Seng-ts’an].
There are many of our sutras and stories that talk about coming and going, wandering and going astray. Through them we see many facets of the jewel of Yün-men’s admonition about our going “… about in such a way, now west of the river, now south of the lake!” Jianzhi exposes the point in “Verse of the Faith Mind,” line by line in the excerpt I read, starting with the first lines.
The Great Way is in essence broad,
neither easy nor difficult.
Don’t doubt that you are on the great way; don’t doubt your reasons for being here. You are in good company, thirsting for something such that you have left home. You can thirst and act on thirst without needing to authenticate it. Returning to the sutra and taking license in excerpting it…:
…To hold narrow views causes apprehension;
the more you hurry, the longer it takes.
If you cling to such views,
…you are sure to go astray. [End quote]
Though on the great way, if we hurry, we are trying to get away from here to find somewhere else, caught in our goal for something else. Quoting again:
Let go of [narrow views] and everything is natural;
in essence there is neither going nor staying…
What kind of pilgrimage is this? We’ve left home, we thirst, only to find ourselves neither going nor staying. Our ancestors are not offering such statements to confuse or baffle us. In deep respect for the great way and our journey, they repeat Buddha’s gesture under the Bodhi tree, touching the ground. All of this path, all these words are about nothing else, nowhere else. I’ll end with the next lines from “Verse of the Faith Mind.
Just act according to your nature,
and you will accord with the Way,
walking it leisurely, free from care.