Touch the Mind
Leland Shields – September 15,2022
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The Glory and the freshness of a dream,
It is not now as it hath been of yore; –
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more
I begin the talk today not with words of our ancestors from the east, but with an early 19th century poem by William Wordsworth. In Wordsworth’s reflections of early childhood, he echoes themes from Zen tradition, now with descriptions of every common site appareled in celestial light. Even with the poet’s longing for this innocent perspective of never-failing essence, I’m encouraged by the remembrance that remains.
What it says to me is that there is nothing esoteric or foreign about the open-minded embrace of every particle of dust we see. It is utterly human, on the scale of me and you today, 19th century poets in England, and 12th century Chan Master Hongzhi Zhengjue. In our tradition we bring recognition of the innocent, open mind, with means of bringing that open mind to the place we stand now. As Hongzhi said:
Face Everything, Let Go, and Attain Stability: Vast and far-reaching without boundary, secluded and pure, manifesting light, this spirit is without obstruction…You accord and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications. Facing everything, let go and attain stability. Stay with that just as that. Stay with this just as this. That and this are mixed together with no discriminations as to their places. So it is said that the earth lifts up the mountain without knowing the mountain’s stark steepness. A rock contains jade without knowing the jade’s flawlessness. This is how truly to leave home, how home-leaving must be enacted.
Zhengjue; Cheng-chüeh. Cultivating the Empty Field (Tuttle Library Of Enlightenment) (p. 31). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
There are three aspects of this writing that stand out. First, Hongzhi declares that far-reaching pure light is manifest without obstruction. This can sound as if obscure and mysterious, as if a goal outside to reach. In contrast, Wordsworth’s reflections are of that appreciation being our original nature. He may bring too romantic a view of youth, still he makes a point familiar in our own hearts. I’m delighted almost every time I’m in public when encountering the exuberance a boy takes in seeing and inadvertently chasing off a bunny rabbit with his enthusiastic attempt to hug it; or a girl immersed as if a bird in full flight, up and back on a swing. A child of course is equally engaged in sobbing after skinning a knee chasing that rabbit.
The second aspect from this quote from Hongzhi is that we accord in our response without either laboring or hindrance, by staying with that just as that, and with this just as this.
In the world of art, our attention to the radiant in each thing is illuminated by Andy Warhol’s oversized painting of a Campbell’s Soup can. As it is in the story of Buddha twirling a flower before the assembly. Soup can just as soup can, and flower just as flower.
When staying with just this and just that, this and that intermingle. But for the intermingling, only the Cambell’s soup people would have been interested in Warhol’s painting – instead, many people saw something more in it.
Third, we meet this and that with effortless effort. As Hongzhi put it:
So it is said that the earth lifts up the mountain without knowing the mountain’s stark steepness. A rock contains jade without knowing the jade’s flawlessness.
You are already the earth, lifting a mountain with each inhale, and forming a canyon with each exhale. You are a flawless rock not knowing it is flawless; how could you know, when flaw and flawless are beyond definition?
A hummingbird flits from flower to flower, choosing the red, yellow, and blue flowers it likes, its sharp beak briefly finding nectar before moving to the next. Its wings beat 50 times a second or more giving it the ability to hover in the air as it goes about its business. As fast as its wings beat, I don’t imagine its tiny brow as furrowed, or that it goes home and talks about what a tedious day of work it was, bobbing to feed in flowers moving with the wind.
As I wrote this talk, my first grandchild was two days old and 2,500 miles away in the NICU. My daughter was in tears when I spoke to her at the time, not worried, just longing to hold her son, and, pained by the distance down the hall. She held him 24 hours before the baby was taken for that additional care, yet that was plenty of time for love to set. Baby lies in another room so soon after the excruciating extrusion of birth. (No need to worry – the baby is healthy and went home to be held a couple days later.)
And this is as it’s always been in the dance of life, inseparable from our own dance and that of every ancestor back before humanoids. We sit here. There is nowhere else to go, nothing different to become. We and all beings sit here.
Whether looking at the macro of climate and hunger, or the micro of the birth and death we each know intimately, we see the wonder of this one dance of life. A mother’s body becomes progressively sore weeks before delivery, to loosen and make space to release a baby. Baby’s skull is malleable for a time to accommodate a small passage. We begin with pain and wonder. And all is as it has been and can be.
It’s the 5th day of sesshin, and we each have our cushion in the birthing room, and by the bed in hospice. You know what to do with body-mind; you know when to rise, sit, eat, bow, and walk. We don’t need words to recognize distraction, and respond in accord.
We sit here.
I’ve seen definitions of the Japanese word “sesshin,” as meaning “to touch (receive, and convey) the mind” (Robert Aitken).
Returning to the passage from Hongzhi:
Facing everything, let go and attain stability. Stay with that just as that. Stay with this just as this. That and this are mixed together with no discriminations as to their places. So it is said that the earth lifts up the mountain without knowing the mountain’s stark steepness. A rock contains jade without knowing the jade’s flawlessness. This is how truly to leave home, how home-leaving must be enacted.
Zhengjue; Cheng-chüeh. Cultivating the Empty Field (Tuttle Library Of Enlightenment) (p. 31). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
No need to go anywhere in order to touch body-mind, and receive that as just that, breath as just breath, and longing as just longing. Sit here as earth, stable, facing everything; letting go completely, mountains will lift on their own. The earth doesn’t need to do anything to be earth. Just sit here. By letting go we leave the home we have learned, and come to rest in the home that is not described by knowing and not knowing. Nor does it need description any more than the hummingbird needs a protocol.
Yet letting go implies an activity, an effort, even if that activity is to release the grip of fingers to drop the sack of our own ideas. This release is effortless when done like the cloud releases rain after rising up the side of the mountain. Hongzhi says it like this:
You must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of your ingrained ideas. If you want to be rid of this invisible [turmoil], you must just sit through it and let go of everything. Attain fulfillment and illuminate thoroughly, light and shadow altogether forgotten. Drop off your own skin, and the sense-dusts will be fully purified, the eye readily discerning the brightness. Accept your function and be wholly satisfied.
Zhengjue; Cheng-chüeh. Cultivating the Empty Field (Tuttle Library Of Enlightenment) (pp. 22-23). Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
In the first line of that quote, Hongzhi tells us we must completely withdraw from the invisible pounding and weaving of ingrained ideas. In our culture it’s all too easy to take that imperative, “we must,” and overlay an “or else” of judgment. I don’t believe that was intended by Hongzhi. If so, these words would break from the flawlessness already affirmed, and we would fall into the classifications he warned us against. Any evaluation of our practice, ourselves, or each other is another weaving of ingrained ideas from which we can withdraw by letting go of everything. By accepting our function, we take the nectar of this one flower, and this one, no matter the schedule of flowers to come.
To completely withdraw, requires the releasing of these words I speak. You can take them like the chirping of birds, letting them fade away with the decaying sounds.
When Dongshan performed a memorial service for his teacher Yunyan Tansheng, he was asked why he bothered. Afterall, Dongshan had studied with the more famous Nan-chüan and others. Dongshan said it was because “Yunyan had never directly explained anything to him” (ibid, p. 12).
The first part of case 8 of the Blue Cliff Record goes like this:
At the end of the summer retreat Ts’ui Yen said to the community, “All summer long I’ve been talking to you brothers, look and see if my eyebrows are still there.”
Thomas Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, p. 53
The story references the lore that when a teacher misleads, his or her eyebrows fall out. The commentary then includes this:
People today, when questioned, immediately turn to the words to chew on them, making a living on T’sui Yen’s eyebrows.
Thomas Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, p. 55
Whether misleading teaching or not, the commentary calls us out for how we receive even the words about eyebrows, and the questions of false and true teaching.
We need only to straighten our spines, put left hand over right. Doing so we enact sesshin in a literal way, receiving the mind. I’ve used Robert Aitken’s definition here, recognizing it leaves open how one might understand “the mind.” To side-step that question, I would say we enact sesshin by taking our seats, and receiving. Or as Hongzhi said, “facing everything.”
Facing everything is to open our eyes before object permanence, surprised and awed anew by each bird crossing the sky, and the mysterious sound we might somehow recognize as the closing of a door. Like the amusement of a baby when discovering that kicking a right foot moves the mobile over a crib, whether or not we understand the role of the ribbon tied to a toe. Cognitive scientists tell us that newborns in a crib are fascinated by the edges of objects as they learn how to distinguish one object from another, reminding us that the visual distinction of one to another is not innate.
Sit here.
I’ll end with this from chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching:
Thirty spokes converge on a hub but it’s the emptiness that makes a wheel work
pots are fashioned from clay but it’s the hollow that makes a pot work
windows and doors are carved for a house but it’s the spaces that make a house work existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it workLao Tzu. Lao-tzu’s Taoteching (p. 22). Copper Canyon Press. Kindle Edition.