UnMind 35. Lotus Sutra Quartet 3: What’s In a Lie?

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A little white lie
can go a long way — stopping
fools dead in their tracks

In the lifespan chapter, “Life of the Tathagata,” from “The Threefold Lotus Sutra” in the Kosei Publishing in Tokyo, the seventeenth (!) printing in 1999, which in itself is remarkable, we find a parable related by Buddha of a physician who has some number of recalcitrant sons, who drink his medicines while he is out of the country, apparently in an ill-advised attempt to get high. Upon returning they entreat him to help them, so he prepares an antidote to the poisonous effects they are suffering, which so far are fortunately less than lethal.

Some, however, are unwilling to take their medicine, attributed to the deeper effect of the poisons. So he contrives a scheme to leave them with the medicine, and stressing his advanced age and approaching death, departs for yet another country (demonstrating that they got around a lot more than we might suppose, in those days, prior to the inventions of modern transportation). He then, quote:

“…sends a messenger back to inform them: ‘Your father is dead.’”

“Continuous grief brings them to their senses” the story goes on, and they finally “take their medicine.” This may be the origin of this modern trope. “The father, hearing that the sons are all recovered, seeks an opportunity and returns so that they all see them.” After the conclusion of the story, the Buddha asks the crowd:

“All my good sons! What is your opinion? Are there any who could say that this good physician had committed the sin of falsehood?”

To which the crowd roars, “No, World-honored One!” I take the exclamation points to mean the reaction of the crowd to Buddha’s exhortations was very much like the mob hysteria that sets in at a contemporary rally, whether for sports or politics, basically the same kind of game. Then the capping verse, so to say, in which Buddha draws the not-so-obvious comparison to his take on his own death:

The Buddha [then] said: “I am also like this. Since I became Buddha, infinite boundless hundred thousand myriad kotis of nayutas of asamkyeya kalpas ago, for the sake of all living beings, by my tactful power, I have declared that I must enter nirvana, yet there is none who can lawfully accuse me of the error of falsehood.”

Note the addition of asamkyeya to the boilerplate litany of numerical references meant to bring about a kind of cognitive dissonance in contemplating eternity. It means — what else — “innumerable” as defined on Google, or “1 followed by 140 zeroes.” So the basic take-home is — once a buddha, always and forever buddha.

Between the time I began composing this third movement of the Lotus Quartet, and the time of this writing, I came across an interesting experience, perusing Wisdom Publications’ 2004 edition of “Dogen’s Extensive Record,” a contemporary masterwork of translation by Taigen Dan Leighton — one of the leading luminaries of American Zen, and Shohaku Okumura Roshi — one of my handful of direct Zen mentors. Okumura Roshi graciously performed my formal transmission ceremony, thus securing the credentials of our Silent Thunder Order, and cementing the Zen legacy of Matsuoka Roshi, my original root teacher. This segment is a kind of bow to mentors in general, and to mine in particular. Thus the emphasis on attribution.

The Extensive Record is my bedside reading, meaning I digest one of the brief utterings of Master Dogen each night before sleeping and dreaming. There are hundreds of them in this one collection alone, so I calculate at this rate I will likely finish the book on my deathbed, which reflects a certain, appropriate kind of irony.

On page 312 of this 700-plus page tome, about halfway through the main text, setting aside the extensive appendices, I came across the following, quoted not only in terms of content, but in printed form replicating the typographic layout to a respectable level:

Like a Lotus in Flames
348. Dharma Hall Discourse
The sitting cushions of seven buddhas are now about to be worn through: the sleeping stick of my former teacher [Tiantong Rujing] has been transmitted. Eyes and nose should be upright and straight, headtop reaching up to the blue sky, and ears aligned above the shoulders. At this very time, how is it?
After a pause Dogen said: Do not control the monkey mind or horse will. Make an effort like a lotus in fire.

A footnote on this page explains that:

“Sleeping sticks” (zenpan), literally “Zen boards,” were flat sticks placed between the seat and one’s chin to prevent monks from falling over when they slept sitting up all night. Apparently this was the practice at Eiheiji in Dogen’s time.

What was particularly startling, to me, in this particular discourse, is that there are no less than four — count ‘em, four, five, counting the title — major teachings that I have come across in other contexts, and passed on to my long-suffering audience, in some cases I think received with some degree of skepticism as figments of my overweening enthusiasm, perhaps. But here is proof positive that I kid you not.

The four are:

Wearing out sitting cushions (J. zafu), as Dogen was said to have done in China, finally resorting to sitting on a rounded stone. Which story I took with a grain of salt, but apparently this was a common trope in Dogen’s time, the seven buddhas being those of prehistory.
The “sleeping stick” — not to be confused with the kyosaku — I first became aware of in a video documentary of a relatively recent overnight sesshin in Japan. I assumed it to be a recent innovation for contemporary Zen namby-pambies, but now I grok that it goes back to 13th century China, at least.
“Eyes and nose straight,” as Master Dogen is said to have responded when asked what he had brought back from China, I conflate with his “headtop reaching to the sky,” which Matsuoka Roshi updated to pushing your head into the ceiling, a tactile vision of the solidity and stability of zazen.
“At this very time, how is it?” is a wonderful, all-penetrating question that Master Dogen raises again and again, particularly in “Uji: Being-Time.” So let me ask you — at this time, how is it?

And then there is the obvious point that this wonderfully compact and dense teaching is titled — by the translators, I am sure — “Like a Lotus in Flames” — a serendipitous conjunction with the Lotus Sutra, which we are investigating here, and a reminder of another Dogenism — to practice zazen as if your hair is on fire.

Zen Buddhist teachings that we find very familiar — to the point that they have become subliminally second nature for us — when we come across them in black and white, as we say, often stop us dead in our tracks, as if we are hearing them for the first time, and deeply. As if we have finally found the ancient treasure we have been seeking for so long.

All along, in our practice path, we may have been mouthing the same ideas, thinking that we personally discovered them, and even originated their expression. This is most startlingly true of our personal mentors’ utterances and writings, particularly your root teacher in Zen. Their words become so ingrained that, like the sayings of our biological parents and grandparents, we come to own them.

But when we come across them in writing, like the tracks of the ox in the oxherding paintings, it is a bit embarrassing to realize that we have lost track of their true source. We have not forgotten our teacher’s teaching, but had temporarily lost track of its authorship, which seems disrespectful. But actually, it is the highest expression of respect. We have assimilated these timely tenets, and made them our own. It is not the same as simply parroting our teachers’ words, and/or taking credit for their wisdom intentionally.

When we have assimilated the teachings to the degree that they seem to come from within, rather than from without, we are humbled by the discovery that — while we are not exactly mistaken in embracing them as true for us as well as for everyone else — Zen is for everyone, after all — we feel guilty of appropriating them without attribution.

In the world of letters, the scholarly discipline of stressing accurate attributions to the authors of origin is an ethical principle, a measure of professionalism. It has not been so strict a rule in the history of Buddhism, most likely because in the early going, the teachings were transmitted orally, and later, when they were finally written down, it was with ink and brush, or stylus, on leaves (or later in China, on paper), and adding footnotes would have been a bridge too far.

Nowadays it is important to pay due respect to the origins of the teachings to the extent practicable, but it is less so in Zen than in other disciplines. It is not that Zen is not scholarly, but simply that the true teaching in Zen, its actual message, is to be found only in the realm of direct experience, which does not lend itself to attribution. One would have to attribute any such revelation or realization to God, or to the cosmic buddhas and bodhisattvas, as Dogen often does. It is only in the context of expression in print — or, these days, in audiovisual media — that diligent attribution makes any sense. Experience still trumps expression.

This particular instance of being humbled by the discovery of preternatural clarity of expression in the literary legacy of Zen is its own kind of medicine. Humility in the face of the truths of Zen is not a choice. It is a fact. Like compassion, if humility is congruent with anything real, it is already true and existent. We can willfully resist, as in not coming into harmony with the Tao. But woe will be unto you, owing to your own horse will or donkey/monkey-mind stubbornness. Incidentally, here the horse represents willfulness, where it is usually contrasted favorably with the donkey, as in the ancient trope, the horse arriving (insight) before the donkey (stubborn ignorance) has left.

Speaking of stubbornness, in the next, fourth and last movement of the Lotus quartet, we will take up the parable of the prodigal son, which Matsuoka Roshi always related as part of his sermon accompanying the Initiation ceremony (J. jukai), which is where I first came across this famous tale, long since appropriated by other religious and philosophical systems. Again, from the mouth of my living teacher, to the ancient written record, all speaking with one voice.