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Commentary on a verse of Layman P’ang by Melissa
Myozen Blacker Verse translated by Ruth Fuller Sasaki,
Yoshitaka Iriya and Dana R. Fraser When
the mind’s as is, circumstances also are as is; There’s
no real and also no unreal. Giving
no heed to existence, And
holding not to non-existence – You’re
neither saint nor sage, just An ordinary man who has settled his affairs. Easy,
so easy! These
very five skandhas make true wisdom. The
ten directions of the universe are the same One Vehicle. How
can the formless Dharmakaya be two! If
you cast off the passions to enter Bodhi, Where
will any Buddha-lands be? To
preserve your life you must destroy it; Having
completely destroyed it you dwell at ease. When
you attain the inmost meaning of this, An
iron boat floats upon water. “When the mind’s
as is…”
When
we first begin to practice zazen we may be
surprised to discover that our minds are busier than we had ever imagined. Settling down into our meditation practice is
not necessarily a peaceful experience, and sometimes we become impatient
with ourselves, and we wish for an end to the fervent activity of the
thinking mind. This impatience is a subtle form of aggression and anger
towards ourselves. When we sit
with the desire for a quiet mind, we develop a sense of greed for something
that does not exist in the present moment.
This desire is based on a delusion, because it is never possible
for things not to be as they are. Of
course, in the very next moment, we can be assured that things will
be different, since change is a fundamental characteristic of reality.
Knowing this, we may be tempted to construct fantasies of how our mind
and life could be, and become lost in states of ignorance and dreaming.
As
we become more intimate with our minds through the practice of zazen,
we may be surprised to see how often we cycle through some variety of
these mind-states: aversion, impatience or anger, desire or greed, and
delusion or ignorance. The Sanskrit
term for these groupings of mind-states is klesha,
and the three traditional groupings are sometimes called the three passions
or poisons. Alone and in various combinations, they lead to suffering. We usually consider them to be something to
move beyond, or to transcend. But
the teaching of Layman P’ang emphasizes being
with the mind “as is.” When we practice zazen,
we have an opportunity to become intimate with our ordinary mind. We learn its habits and patterns: how it repeatedly
reacts to circumstances with anger, fear, despair, greed and delusion,
and how it concerns itself with the past and future and makes the present
into a series of judgments, opinions and comparisons. P’ang invites us to
understand and to embrace our mind as it actually is, rather than spend
our time constructing a fantasy of how it could be. “…circumstances also are as is…” Our
life is simply what is so in this moment. Nothing is lacking, and nothing is in excess.
The only way we can perceive and comprehend circumstances as
they actually are is to embrace both our own mind, without any kind
of alteration, and our life as it is, without interpretation, fantasies
or constructions. However, it
is normal for the mind as it is to be full of these elaborations, full
of thoughts and stories, so our task of embracing is a subtle one. We must understand that the thoughts that make
up the landscape of our minds are completely real as thoughts, and part
of our task is to embrace their “thoughtness.” And we must also understand that thoughts are
not accurate representations of circumstances.
A thought is a production of the mind, and no more. Things in the world exist, but not because of
our thoughts about them. Directly
comprehending circumstances does not require thought.
It does, however, require the intimacy of presence, of abiding
in everything as it is, of allowing the mind and circumstances to be
embraced and not rejected. “There’s no real and also no unreal.” When
we have an experience, we tend to quickly form a concept, construction
or fantasy about it. However,
because we are not omniscient, we base these constructions on a perception
that is necessarily incomplete. We
also come to recognize that everything is in a state of flux and change
and cannot be pinned down in time or space.
Based on our recognition of our perceptual limitations, we can
understand what the Layman means when he says that “there’s no real.”
On the other hand, everything we encounter in the world and in
ourselves is thoroughly real in the moment in which we encounter it.
To deny the reality of a stone or a moment of sadness would be
misguided and not very useful for navigating through our lives. Things are both real and unreal, and not real
and not unreal. The Layman is
echoing what the Buddha says in the Lankavatara
Sutra, “Thing are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise.” The chair in which I am sitting is real enough
to keep me from falling onto the floor, but if I imagine that the concept
I call “chair” is sufficient for me to fully comprehend and thoroughly
know the actual chair, I am lost in a limited view. Getting to know the world that both includes and transcends real and unreal, form and emptiness,
is a continuing exploration, with no final moment of full and complete
comprehension. It is an ongoing
relational discovering, in which revelation moves beyond whatever we
can imagine or conceptualize. “Giving no heed to existence, and holding not to non-existence – You’re neither saint nor sage, just an ordinary man who has settled his affairs.” We
may long to be special, holy or wise, but true freedom can only be found
here in this moment, in this place, with everything and ourselves just
as we are. To have settled our affairs, to have nothing
to do but to be, is to truly be in an exalted state. And if we are honest with ourselves, we already
know this from our own experience. True
contentment is not to be found in some experience that we wish to hold
onto forever, but in the ordinary experiences that demand nothing from
us – the light on the wooden floor, the sound of the breeze, the smell
of food cooking. These delights
are available to us when we settle our affairs, when we stop wanting
things to be different. “Easy, so easy!” In
my favorite story about Layman P’ang, he says
to his wife and daughter one day, “Difficult, difficult, difficult! It’s like trying to scatter ten measures of
sesame seed all over a tree!” His
wife replies, “Easy, easy, easy!” It’s just like touching your feet on the ground
when you get out of bed!” But
their daughter has the final words: “Neither difficult nor easy. On the hundred grass-tips, the Patriarchs’ meaning.”
This path can certainly feel difficult.
The mind’s delusions seem unending and persistent and we struggle
to return to our meditation practice. Life itself can appear to be a continual experience
of pain and struggle. Still,
there are moments when we can clearly understand the Layman’s wife’s
“easy” -- after all, the basic teaching is so simple!
All we have to do is be here, be present in the body and mind,
and let go of everything that isn’t here.
We only have to feel our feet on the floor.
As tempting as it might be to dwell in a life that promises such
ease and directness, this point of view can be extremely, and sometimes
dangerously limited. When we
focus on the simplicity of the practice and our own ease of being, we
tend to ignore the reality of suffering.
The work of Zen is to integrate difficult and easy, form and
emptiness, duality and non-duality. “Things are not what they seem, nor are they
otherwise.” Layman Pang’s daughter
reminds us that this understanding and integration is available to us
in every moment, if we don’t get stuck in opposites.
The teaching of the Patriarchs, our ancestors in Zen, is not
an abstraction. Their meaning
is revealed everywhere and is always available to us.
We are surrounded and held by the world and its varied forms,
which, like the hundred grass-tips, demonstrate the integration of form
and emptiness in every moment. We
only have to learn how to see this for ourselves.
“These very five skandhas
make true wisdom.” “Skandha” is a Sanskrit word that means heap or aggregate.
In Buddhist psychology, the functions of the mind are divided
among the five skandhas of form, sensation,
perception, mental formations and consciousness. Most of us identify with a sense of ourselves
as fairly solid. The word “I”
is the name we give to the skandhas as they
work together to create our sense of ego, our particular personality
as it manifests in the world. But
when we practice zazen, we come to see the separateness of the arising and
disappearing of the skandhas, and we come
to realize that what we believed was a solid sense of self has no permanence,
and is essentially empty. When
we divide up our sense of identity with a personal self into these five
heaps, we come to realize that our seemingly solid personality is an
illusion, and is essentially a set of processes that arise and disappear
in relationship to the phenomenal world.
But here in this line, Layman P’ang encourages us to turn the traditional understanding
of the five skandhas upside down. He invites us to experience these aggregates
of self that constantly arise and pass away as a manifestation of true
wisdom. In order to follow P’ang’s advice, we must abandon all theory and philosophy,
and find our true home in this very life as we actually live it. As Nanchuan told Chaochou, our ordinary mind is the Way. “The ten directions of the universe are the
same One Vehicle.” Wherever
we go, we arrive here, in the only place and time that exists. Everywhere, in all ten directions, up and down
and the eight directions of the compass, we encounter our true self,
the one great vehicle, the Mahayana.
This teaching of the Mahayana is not special or secret, but available
to us in every experience, in every form and sensation, in our minds
and hearts. The pure Lotus Land is right beneath our feet.
The truth we have been seeking is immediately revealed before
us. “How can the formless Dharmakaya
be two?” P’ang urges
us to clearly see our tendency to divide the world into this and that,
and to recognize the limitations of this view.
The Dharmakaya, the body of the truth,
the formless realm, can never be divided.
And yet he also warns us to not dwell in this formlessness with
the mistaken notion that the undivided world is a void or nothingness. To realize emptiness and then to integrate this
realization into our ordinary lives is the great task of Zen training. “If you cast off the passions to enter Bodhi, where will any Buddha-lands be?” When
we truly become one with whatever is arising in our lives, there is
no need to cast anything off. The
Buddha-lands may be, in our imaginations, somewhere far off, but the
Layman is asking us to look deeply into this assumption.
Opening to whatever is here now, in our own body-mind and in
our life experience, allows us to realize that everything is a gateway
into Bodhi, into wisdom, into the land of
awakening, including our irritation, sadness, fear and anger.
When we limit our experience to what is good (as the opposite
of bad) we become lost in comparing and judging, and we can do great
harm to ourselves. Opening our
arms wide to the entire universe allows us to live freely in all circumstances.
“To preserve your life you must destroy it;
Having completely destroyed it you
dwell at ease.” Although
at first this passage may appear to advocate nihilism or even suicide,
P’ang’s intention here has nothing to do with physical death.
He is showing us the way to be fully alive and at ease in this
world. When we “destroy” our
life we stop giving power to our old habits of thought, reaction and
story making. We end our fascination
with all the mistaken ideas that get in the way of the actual experience
of what is here, now. To live
a life without these created delusions of the mind is to live a life
of ease and freedom. “When you attain the inmost meaning of this, An iron boat floats upon water.” The
inmost meaning is your own true self manifesting itself. It is a complete integration of form and emptiness,
of duality and non-duality. When
this is realized, we enter a world where an iron boat, which should
sink in the world of consensual reality, stays afloat. Here there is no sinking or floating, no heavy
or light, nothing that opposes anything else. Everything is simply and beautifully differentiated,
and Layman P’ang, his family, and you and
I enjoy our ordinary lives in this perfect world where everything manifests
its true self in every moment. © Melissa Myozen Blacker 2004
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