A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (43 page)

4 11 CH'ANISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF

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There were Ch'an Masters who used silence to express the idea of Wu or the First Principle. It is said, for example, that when Hui-chung (died 775) was to debate with another monk, he simply mounted his chair and remained silent. The other monk then said: "Please propose your thesis so I can argue.

Hui—chung replied: I have already proposed my thesis. The monk asked: What is it? Hui—chung said: I know it is beyond your understanding," and with this left his chair. (Record of the Transmission of the Light, chiian 5.) The thesis Hui—chung proposed was that of silence. Since the First Principle or Wu is not something about which anything can be said, the best way to expound it is to remain silent.

From this point of view no Scriptures or Sutras have any real connection with the First Principle.

Hence the Ch an Master Yi —hstian (died 866), founder of a group in Ch anism known as the Lin—chi school, said: If you want to have the right understanding, you must not be deceived by others. You should kill everything that you meet internally or externally. If you meet Buddha, kill Buddha. If you meet the Patriarchs, kill the Patriarchs.... Then you can gain your emancipation." (Recorded Savings of Ancient Worthies, chiian 4-)

Method of Cultivation

The knowledge of the First Principle is knowledge that is nonknowledge; hence the method of cultivation is also cultivation that is non-cultivation. It is said that Ma-tsu, before he became a disciple of Huai-jang (died 744), lived on the Heng Mountain (in present Hunan province). There he occupied a solitary hut in which,all alone, he practiced meditation. One day Huai-jang began to grind some bricks in front of the hui. When Ma-tsu saw it, he asked Huai-jang what he was doing. He replied that he was planning to make a mirror. Ma-tsu said: "How can grinding bricks make a mirror? Huai-jang said: If grinding bricks cannot make a mirror, how can meditation make a Buddha?" By this saying Ma-tsu was enlightened and thereupon became Huai—jang s disciple. (Recorded Sayings of Ancient worthies, chiian 1.)

Thus according to Ch anism, the best method of cultivation for achieving Buddhahood is not to practice any cultivation. To cultivate oneself in this way is to exercise deliberate effort, which is yu—wei (having action). This yu-wei will, to be sure, produce some good effect, but it will not be everlasting. The Ch'an Master Hsi-yiin (died 847), known as the Master of Huang—po, said: Supposing that through innumerable lives a man has practiced the six paramitas [methods of gaining salvation], done good and attained the Buddha Wisdom, this will still not last forever. The reason lies in causation.

When the force of the cause is exhausted, he reverts to ihe impermanent." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chiian 3-)

Again he said: "All deeds are essentially impermanent. All forces have their final day. They are like a dart discharged through the air; when its

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CH'ANISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SILENCE

strength is exhausted, it turns and falls to the ground. They are all connected with the

Wheel of Birth and Death. To practice cultivation through them is to misunderstand the Buddha s idea and waste labor. (Ibid.)

And yet again: "If you do not understand wu hsin \_ absence of a purposeful mind], then you are attached to objects, and suffer from obstructions.... Actually there is no such thing
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as Bodhi [Wisdom]. That the Buddha talked about it was simply as a means to educate

men, just as yellow leaves may be taken as gold coins in order to stop the crying of children....The only thing to be done is to rid yourself of your old Karma, as opportunity offers, and not to create new Karma from which will flow new calamities. (Ibid.) Thus the best method of spiritual cultivation is to do one's tasks without deliberate effort or purposeful mind. This is exactly what the Taoists called wu—wei (non—action) and wu-hsin (no—mind). It is what Hui— yuan s theory signifies, as well as, probably, the statement of Tao—sheng that a good deed does not entail retribution." This method of cultivation does not aim at doing things in order to obtain resulting good effects, no matter how good these effects may be in themselves. Rather it aims at doing things in such a way as to entail no effects at all. When all one's actions entail no effect, then after the effects of previously accumulated Karma have exhausted themselves, one will gain emancipation from the Wheel of Birth and Death and attain Nirvana.

To do things without deliberate effort and purposeful mind is to do things naturally and to live naturally. Yi-hsilan said: "To achieve Buddhahood there is no place for deliberate effort. The only method is to carry on one s ordinary and uneventful tasks: relieve one s bowels, pass water, wear one's clothes, eat one's meals, and when tired, lie down. The simple fellow will laugh at you, but the wise will understand." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chiian 4.) The reason why those who try to achieve Buddhahood so often fail to follow this course is because they lack self-confidence. Yi-hsiian said: "Nowadays people who engage in spiritual cultivation fail to achieve their ends. Their fault is not having faith in themselves....Do you wish to know who are the Patriarchs and Buddha? All of you who are before me are the Patriarchs and Buddha. ' (Ibid.) Thus the way to practice spiritual cultivation is to have adequate confidence in one s self and discard everything else. All one should do is to pursue the ordinary tasks of one's everyday life, and nothing more. This is what the Chan Masters call cultivation through non-cultivation.

Here a question arises: Granted that this be so, then what is the difference between the man who engages in cultivation of this kind and the man who engages in no cultivation at all? If the latter does precisely what the former does, he too should achieve Nirvana, and so there should come a time when there will be no Wheel of Birth and Death at all.

To this question it may be answered that although to wear clothes and eat meals are in themselves common and simple matters, it is still not easy to do

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them with a completely non—purposeful mind and thus without any attachment. A person likes fine clothes, for example, but dislikes bad ones, and he feels pleased when others admire his clothes.

These are all the attachments that result from wearing clothes. What the Ch an Masters emphasized is that spiritual cultivation does not require special acts, such as the ceremonies and prayers of institutionalized religion. One should simply try to be without a purposeful mind or any attachments in one s daily life; then cultivation results from the mere carrying on of the common and simple affairs of daily life. In the beginning one will need to exert effort in order to be without effort, and to exercise a purposeful mind in order not to have such a mind, just as, in order to forget, one at first needs to remember that one should forget. Later, however, the time comes when one must discard the effort to be without effort, and the mind that purposefully tries to have no purpose, just as one finally forgets to remember that one has to forget.

Thus cultivation through non-cultivation is itself a kind of cultivation, just as knowledge that is not knowledge is nevertheless still a form of knowledge. Such knowledge differs from original ignorance, and cultivation through non-cullivation likewise differs from original naturalness. For original ignorance and naturalness are gifts of nature, whereas knowledge that is not knowledge and cultivation through non-cultivation are both products of the spirit.

Sudden Enlightenment

The practice of cultivation, no matter for how long, is in itself only a sort of preparatory work.

For Buddhahood to be achieved, this cultivation must be climaxed by a Sudden Enlightenment, such as was described in the last chapter as comparable to the leaping over of a precipice. Only after this leaping has taken place can Buddhahood be achieved.

Such Enlightenment is often referred to by the Ch'an Masters as the "vision of the Too. P

u-yiian, known as the Master of Nan-ch tian (died 830), told his disciple: "The Too is not classifiable as either knowledge or nonknowledge. Knowledge is illusory consciousness and non—knowledge is blind unconsciousness. If you really comprehend the indubitable Too, it is like a wide expanse of emptiness, so how can distinctions be forced in it between right and wrong?'"

(Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chiian 13.) Comprehension of the Too is the same as being one with it. Its wide expanse of emptiness is not a void; it is simply a state in which all distinctions are gone.

This state is described by the Ch'an Masters as one in which "knowledge and truth become undifferentiable, objects and spirit form a single unity, and there ceases to be a distinction between the experiencer and the experienced." (Ibid., chiian 32..) "A man who drinks water knows by himself whether it is cold or warm. " This last expression first appeared in the Sutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch (Hui-neng), but it was later widely quoted by

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the other Ch an Masters, meaning that only he who experiences the non-distinction of the

experiencer and the experienced really knows what it is.

In this state the experiencer has discarded knowledge in the ordinary sense, because this
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kind of knowledge postulates a distinction between the knower and the known.

Nevertheless, he is not without knowledge, because his state differs from that of blind unconsciousness, as Nan—ch iian calls it. This is what is called the knowledge that is not knowledge.

When the student has reached the verge of Sudden Enlightenment, that is the time when the Master can help him the most. When one is about to make the leap, a certain assistance, no matter how small, is a great help. The Ch'-an Masters at this stage used to practice what they called the method of stick or yell to help the leap to Enlightenment. Ch an literature reports many incidents in which a Master, having asked his student to consider some problem, suddenly gave him several blows with a stick or yelled at him. If these acts were done at the right moment, the result would be a Sudden Enlightenment for the student. The explanation would seem to be that the physical act, thus performed, shocks the student into that psychological awareness of enlightenment for which he has long been preparing.

To describe Sudden Enlightenment, the Ch an Masters use the metaphor of "the bottom of a tub falling out." When this happens, all its contents are suddenly gone. In the same way, when one is suddenly enlightened, he finds all his problems suddenly solved. They are solved not in the sense that he gains some positive solution for them, but in the sense that all the problems have ceased any longer to be problems. That is why the Too is called "the indubitable Too."

The Attainment of Non-attainment

The attainment of Sudden Enlightenment does not entail the attainment of anything further. The Ch an Master Ch'ing-yuan, known as the Master of Shu-chou (died II2.O), said: "If you now comprehend it, where is that which you did not comprehend before?

What you were deluded about before is what you are now enlightened about, and what you are now enlightened about is what you were deluded about before." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies,chiton 32.) As we have seen in the last chapter, the real is the phenomenal, according to Seng—chao and Tao—sheng. In Ch anism there is the common expression that "the mountain is the mountain, the river is the river." In one's state of delusion, one sees the mountain as the mountain and the river as the river. But after Enlightenment one still sees the mountain as the mountain and the river as the river.

The Ch an Masters also use another common expression: Riding an ass to search for the ass. By this they mean a search for reality outside of the phenomenal, in other words, to search for Nirvana outside of the Wheel of Birth and Death. Shu-chou said: "There are only two diseases: one is riding

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an ass to search for the ass; the other is riding an ass and being unwilling to dismount. You say that riding an ass to search for the ass is silly and that he who does it should be punished. This is a very serious disease. But I tell you, do not search for the ass at all. The intelligent man, understanding my meaning, stops to search for the ass, and thus the deluded state of his mind ceases to exist.

"But if, having found the ass, one is unwilling to dismount, this disease is most difficult to cure. I say to you, do not ride the ass at all.You yourself are the ass. Everything is the ass. Why do you ride on it? If you ride, you cannot cure your disease. But if you do not ride, the universe is as a great expanse open to your view. With these two diseases expelled, nothing remains to affect your mind. This is spiritual cultivation. You need do nothing more. (Ibid.) If one insists that after attaining Enlightenment one will still attain something else, this is to ride an ass and be unwilling to dismount.

Huang—po said: "L If there be Enlightenment J, speech or silence, activity or inactivity, and every sight and sound, all pertain to Buddha. Where should you go to find the Buddha? Do not place a head on top of a head or a mouth beside a mouth." (Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies, chtian 3.) If there be Enlightenment, everything pertains to Buddha and everywhere there is Buddha. It is said that one Ch'an monk went into a temple and spat on the statue of the Buddha. When he was criticized, he said: "Please show me a place where there is no Buddha." (Record of the Transmission of the Light, chiian 1J-) Thus the Ch an sage lives just as everyone else lives, and does what everyone else does. In passing from delusion to Enlightenment, he has left his mortal humanity behind and has entered sagehood. But after that he still has to leave sagehood behind and to enter once more into mortal humanity. This is described by the Ch'an Masters as "rising yet another step over the top of the hundred-foot bamboo."