Guro Shoshin Huby – These Old Zen Masters: a rant and a reflection.

Soto, Rinzai, accuracy of aim and ways to desperation – By Guro Shoshin, Annoyed of Norway

Zen lore goes back 1000s of years and reaches into the realm of myth. It is full of tales of wonder and mystery that are beautiful, puzzling, provoking and poetic. But then some of it can be unbelievably and downright irritating. Some of it gives Zen a bad name. It provides fuel for hopeless know-it-alls without social skills and understanding who go on about Zen and its many wordless mysteries, clapping with one hand and raising one finger.

Koan collections are in a class of their own. Take the Mumonkan. Honed in the Rinzai tradition, I assume; here is warrior Zen on steroids.

The koans are about old Zen masters and their sayings and doings. All male, and all wonderfully wise, free and accomplished, possessing the true eye of Zen, without which, according to commentaries provided by other Zen masters, you have no chance of ever getting close to the koans’ inner secret. Well, I am working on the koans to acquire at least a bit of a Zen eye, but it seems I am doomed at the outset and should just give up. And I have been tempted!!!

Of course, I understand that paradox is precisely the point of koan work, and the paradoxes intrigue and provoke at every level, from the intellectual to the existential. But still, I sometimes wonder if it is all too clever, and a ruse by these Old Zen (and maybe Newer Ones, what do I know?) Masters to create an inner circle that keeps the great unwashed out of it. Since the great unwashed clearly includes this increasingly unhinged 73-year-old Norwegian woman trying to hang on in there and get to grips with the challenges life throws at you, I reserve the right to be annoyed!

They can be unbelievably violent, these Zen masters who populate the koans. Slapping each other and their students, killing cats, wielding sticks, chopping off limbs, apparently all done with the deepest of compassion. Hello? Excuse me!!? Gutei’s hapless young apprentice had his finger cut off, all because he dared raise it in imitation to explain to others what his master Gutei’s teaching was all about. He ran screaming out of the room, blood gushing. It must have been quite a sight. Gutei cried out to him, the boy turned his head, Gutei raised his finger, and the boy was enlightened. Well, how sweet, and good for them both. The story celebrates his all-encompassing wisdom that he knew his action would produce the goods, enlightenment, but here’s a paradox. Most koan Old Master commentators exhort us to struggle night and day and get lost in the depths of despair before we can dare hope for even a chink of light, and was this boy desperate enough? And what was his understanding? He was only a boy. In his heart of hearts, did he really think his understanding was worth the price of a finger or that maybe he would have got there in other ways, although slower, taking more of life with him? And what did his mother have to say about it???

Master Tokusan Senkan, another celebrated old master, was apparently known for his stick. No matter what his students brought to his interviews, they were given 30 blows of this stick. “Thus, he encouraged his students to plunge directly into the Truth”, wrote Zenkey Shibayama, a newer Zen Master who keeps telling me I have no hope in hell to get these koans unless I am a true Zen man (sic) to begin with. Honestly!! I suppose that being beaten with a stick would keep his students on their toes, but really, is purposely inflicting fear and pain the only way to bring students to insight?

PHEW!!

So far, I have got away with my koan practice, such as it is, relatively unscathed. I have all my fingers and bear no physical bruises from my efforts. Maybe I should count myself lucky that my koan practice is done remotely, by email and Zoom. Or maybe my teachers are just being too lenient and gentle—things have moved on from mediaeval China and Japan. Be that as it may, am I missing out on a vital ingredient that has driven students of yore to understanding: pain and fear? Am I doomed to wander aimlessly around in the Zen undergrowth without getting anywhere because I lack that vital drive? There’s always the irritation, but somehow, I suspect it won’t take me all the way there, although it’s clearly doing something.

In my saner moments (and yes, I do have them, it’s all relative), I see my rant thrashing about in the landscape between Rinzai and Soto Zen. A Soto teacher with a brilliant knack of generalisations once explained that while Rinzai, warrior Zen, aims to draw out the ego to cut it off in a single blow, Soto, farmer Zen, aims to beckon it out and wear it down by smaller but relentless skirmishes. I suppose it comes down to temperament. Some go for the single blow, albeit with varying accuracy, and those, like me, who go for a longer-term muddling through with the odd and variously well-directed ambush here and there. One does not exclude the other, of course, and Maezumi Roshi, I think, knew what he was doing when he introduced koans into Soto practice. The combination, at least for me, does increase the accuracy of the aim.

“The koan appears naturally in daily life”, according to Dogen. And koans do “work on you”. They have an unnerving way of burrowing their way into the parts of your existence that need a bit of oiling and attention, parking themselves there with a merciless insistence that you address the issue and not budging until you do. That process is not without its desperation. Life manages the fear, pain and desperation quite well on its own; you don’t need a teacher for that bit, although somebody who keeps you to task is vital to the enterprise.

And I must admit, to my annoyance! that the doings and sayings of these Old Zen Masters are relevant and applicable to the life of a Norwegian woman in the autumn of her days, although you have to struggle and sit with it a while to get there.

Take Master Tokusan, the one with the stick. There clearly was more to him, or maybe he mellowed a bit with age. This is my take on a koan that involves him:
One lunchtime, three years before his death, he shuffled down to the eating hall with his bowls, even though the gong was late and had not yet struck. A younger Seppo, probably slightly full of himself and perhaps relishing this opportunity for a put-down, however well-intended, of an old master, asked him what he was doing. Master Tokusan shuffled back to his room without saying anything. Ganto, a not-so-old master at the time, but Tokusan’s brother in arms, it would seem, observed the monastery’s reaction to what may be seen as the older master losing it and orchestrated a situation where Old Tokusan was challenged to “show he knew the last word of Zen”. “Tell’em Tokusan”, I think Ganto whispered to the old man. “Show’em what an Old Master is made of!” The next day, Tokusan did just that. Utterly sure of himself, in front of the assembled monastery, he stuck up a thin and scrawny arm to catch the challenge mid-air, and with a delighted laugh threw it up in the air, where it dissolved, put-down and all, into a song of being, space and silence. The monks listened in wonder.

I have to hand it to Tokusan with a deep bow. It takes an Old Zen Master to do that.