It Just Can’t Be Discussed
Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi
Master Dogen’s 300 Koan Shobogenzo*, Case 295
Yunmen’s
“Treasure”
Featured in Mountain Record 20.2, Winter 2002
The Main Case
The Commentary
The Capping Verse
A frosty autumn moon
Floats golden on the pond.
Quiet night.
The
fish are cold,
Hook and bait useless.
Footnote: *300 Koan Shobogenzo is a collection of koans gathered by Master Dogen during his study in China. The koans from this collection, often called the Chinese Shobogenzo, appear extensively in the essays of Dogen’s Japanese Shobogenzo. These koans have not been available in English translation but are currently being translated and prepared for publication by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Abbot John Daido Loori. Abbot Loori has added a commentary, capping verse, and footnotes to each koan.
Yunmen was one of the extraordinary masters of the Zen
tradition. It is said that every phrase he offered presented
three distinct aspects of the dharma. His answers
always “encompassed heaven and earth,” “followed after the waves,” and “cut away
the myriad streams.” “Encompassing heaven and earth” means that his statement
embraced the whole universe. “Following after the waves” indicates that it
responded precisely to the immediate needs of the audience. “Cutting away the
myriad streams” refers to Yunmen’s ability to disrupt the process of
intellection, freeing us to make direct contact with the heart of the matter.
“In the universe there is a treasure that is hidden in this heap of flesh,” the
first sentence of this koan, is a good example of Yunmen’s teaching style.
This case appears in the 300 Koan Shobogenzo, The Blue Cliff Record and The Book of Serenity. Clearly, collectors of these koans considered it an important teaching. In The Blue Cliff Record, the “treasure” is translated as “jewel,” referring to Master Zhou’s Jewel Treasury Treatise. Master Zhou was a legendary Chinese sage. Late in his life, having offended the emperor, he was sentenced to death. Supposedly, he asked for a stay of the execution so he could collect his thoughts and spirit, and composed this treatise. In it there is a passage, “Within heaven and earth, in space and time, there is a jewel hidden in the mountain of form. It cognizes things, emptily shining, empty inside and out, alone and still, invisible, its function is a dark mystery.” Yunmen picked this up and presented it to his sangha. What was he pointing to?
Looking at this case line by line, I added footnotes to clarify the key points. Yunmen said to the assembly, “In the universe there is a treasure that is hidden in this heap of flesh.” The footnote says, “The heap of flesh is itself the treasure.” That’s the heart of the koan. This body is the body of the Buddha. In the context of Buddhist dogma, this is easy enough to understand. I think most Buddhists understand that, or if they don’t understand it, they believe it. But Yunmen’s teaching has nothing to do with understanding and believing. It has nothing to do with principles and doctrines. It has to do with reality. What is this reality? That is what our practice is about.
Upon his own enlightenment, the Buddha started to turn the dharma wheel with the statement, “All sentient beings, the great earth, and I have at once entered the Way.” With his realization, he was acknowledging the fact that each one of us is perfect and complete, lacking nothing. What he was looking for, what we’re looking for, we already are. But this needs to be realized. Only then can it function; only then can you make use of it in your life. When this truth of our perfection is not realized, it remains just so much religious rhetoric.
The “heap of flesh” refers to the gross elements of earth, air, fire and water, and the aggregates of form, sensation, perception, conception and consciousness — the components that define the totality of human existence. When we carefully examine the nature of the self, we discover that it is made up of aggregates. When we examine the nature of anything, we come up with aggregates. What is a tree? Roots, trunk, branches, leaves, fruit — aggregates. What is a self? History, thoughts, memories, ideas, body, mind — aggregates. What is it that exists beyond these aggregates? This is the fundamental religious question. Most eastern and western philosophies declare that beyond aggregates lies an essence — the essence of a tree, the essence of a self. And the essence of a self has been frequently referred to as the soul. In his practice of self-exploration, the Buddha found, however, that when he went beyond all the aggregates, he found nothing. The self is essentially empty. It is only a perpetually shifting collection of aggregates. This realization has been verified by tens of thousands of Buddhist men and women who for over 2,500 years have undertaken the rigorous practice of studying the self. The self is empty. It is not fixed. It is a mental construct, an illusion.
So what was Yunmen talking about when he said, “Within this heap of flesh, there is a treasure”? What is the treasure? In the next line, he continues, “It holds up the lantern and goes inside the Buddha Hall.” The footnote adds, “Easy to do; difficult to understand.” What’s the point of the statement? Then, “It brings the monastery gate to the top of the lantern.” The monastery gate is sometimes called the triple gate. It is the entrance into practice. He brings this and puts it on top of the lantern. The footnote elaborates, “Easy to understand; difficult to do.” It’s easy to take a lantern and bring it into the Buddha Hall, but difficult to understand the true point of doing that; easy to imagine a gate on top of the lantern but impossible to accomplish. What does this all mean? What is the relationship of these two statements to Yunmen’s original point? What is that treasure hidden in this heap of flesh?
This heap of flesh is each one of us. What is the treasure? The truth of the universe. The truth of the nature of the self. The commentary begins: Although you may understand Yunmen’s “It holds up the lantern and goes inside the Buddha Hall,” the question is how do you understand “It brings the monastery gate to the top of the lantern?” It just cannot be discussed. It is here that Yunmen demonstrates his skill at shattering intellection and dualities. He pulls out the nails, kicks out the wedges, and lets the whole construct collapse. What is the construct? It is our notion of who we are. That notion usually centers on this bag of skin — everything inside is me and everything outside is the rest of the universe. When we make that division, we create pain and suffering, not only for ourselves but also for everyone else. In locking out everything, we create desire; all the things we want and need are somewhere out there and we see ourselves as separate from them. Thirst is born, and with thirst comes suffering.
We attach to our bag of skin. We create a shell around it, an armor that won’t let anything in or out. And then we protect it. Because we have not yet settled the fundamental question of life and death, we’re afraid of life and we’re terrified of death. Yunmen is leading us home to see that and resolve the question. And he’s doing this by shattering the intellection. You can’t figure this koan out; it just doesn’t compute.
He pulls out the nails, kicks out the wedges, and lets the whole construct collapse. The nails and wedges are our belief systems, ways that we define ourselves. We define ourselves by our possessions — our ideas, prejudices, notions and opinions. Is that who we really are? Are we so limited? What did Dogen mean when he said, “In birth, nothing is added; in death, not a particle is lost”? That being the case, what is this heap of flesh? This mountain of form? How does it relate to the rest of the universe? How do you understand that? This just cannot be discussed and because it can’t be reached by words, Yunmen doesn’t even try. He just strips away everything that we could possibly hold on to. Cutting away the myriad streams he reveals the treasure that encompasses heaven and earth. What remains? Only the wonder of the mystery remains. We should enter here. But we are accustomed to shying away from the mystery. It frightens us. We are a civilization that relies on definitions — we nail everything down. Or so we think. All we actually do is frame reality with words. Doing that, we have not yet even entered reality. To enter the mystery is to enter the realm of not knowing and trusting that. Trusting yourself. Only then is this wonder revealed.
At one point in my training at Zen Center of Los Angeles, I was instructing some people on liturgy. Somebody was asking a lot of questions, and I was going to give them some practical information, fill them with data. As I started, I heard Maezumi Roshi, my teacher, roar behind me, “That’s not what liturgy is.” He snatched everything away from the student and from me. What’s really going on in liturgy? What’s really going on when we invoke during invocation? Bodhidharma said, “Invoking is not done with the voice; it’s done with the mind.” What does it mean to invoke with the mind? How does such mind manifest? Only the wondrousness of the mystery remains. We should enter here. How? The commentary continues: An old master once said, “The spiritual light shines alone, far transcending the senses.” This light, the mystery, is not even approachable through the senses. It’s not approachable because it’s not a physical reality. By definition, the mystery is intangible. Not even palpable. Undiscussable. And it doesn’t arrive from the outside. It’s a teaching that in reality has no teacher. That means you already have it. The only thing that any teacher can do is take away the things that you construe as the mystery. When all these definitions are taken away, then the mystery itself remains. And you discover it for yourself. The mystery can’t be taken away. It’s you. The spiritual light shines alone, far transcending the senses. Yunmen has snatched the senses away for you. Are you willing to trust and enter the mystery? All it takes is that trust. In dokusan I regularly hear from people who are on the verge of entering into samadhi or seeing a koan, teetering at that edge of the unknown, afraid to let go. They lean forward, then pull back. You need to trust yourself; you need to trust the Buddha; you need to trust the process. All the ancestors are pointing to that place. They may articulate it differently, but they’re all pointing to the same place. What is that place?
Real teachers of the Zen school don’t just present Buddhist principles and doctrines. They cut away the complications. The doctrines are clear. They define the nature of the self and the mind. They describe how we perceive reality. And, these days, you can master these notions by taking Buddhist Studies courses at many universities across the country; a few years of study and you have a degree. You won’t have to spend the rest of your life doing zazen. But you also will not transform your life. You will have filled your mind with a whole new set of ideas. Your mental filing cabinets will be now packed with Buddhist data. But that has nothing to do with the mystery or the very heart of these teachings.
These days, within our increasingly secular world, the mystery is being extracted from religion. We want to make religion more accessible, popular and palatable. Most people don’t want to work at immersing themselves in the depths of a tradition. We drop the liturgy and the ritual and settle for the doctrines and the principles. Or we synthesize religions: a little bit of Native American Shamanism, touch of Zen, a dash of Taoism, some Catholicism, and voila, here is my new religion. That kind of religion doesn’t function or heal.
In The Blue Cliff Record, Yuan-wu said, “The great meaning of Yunmen’s teaching is to show that everyone is fully endowed, each individual perfectly complete. People can acknowledge radiant spirituality, the mystery as a jewel. But they cannot make use of it and they have not realized its wonder. Therefore they cannot set it in motion, cannot bring it out in action.” And that’s where it counts. We can spend years in a training matrix, imitating the forms, mouthing the sutras, memorizing passages and commentaries — a sangha of trained monkeys. Our spiritual practice matters in life itself, especially during times of trauma, shock, tragedy, and death. Do we know how to heal ourselves? Do we know how to heal others? Have we experienced the healing of our liturgy? Of our zazen? Have we realized it in our own body and mind?
The Eight Gates of training in the Mountains and Rivers Order form a framework of skillful means for practice and realization, ways to make practice real in our lives. Students are encouraged to take up these practices at home and at the monastery, and most of our programs are built around the various gates. The key to appreciating how the Eight Gates work is that the teaching they offer is not always cognitive. In fact, the basis and the bulk of it is non-cognitive, relying on and cultivating other dimensions of our consciousness.
Liturgy, for instance, functions on many levels, like the progressively ascending, or deepening, levels of prayer that Evelyn Underhill described in her classic book Mysticism. The Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Dharani, chanted everyday at the monastery, is part of the healing service. This chant is pure sounds, not words. There’s no translation for it. It is a sequence of sounds that dates back to Sanskrit sources, a series of linked mantras designed to create a healing state of consciousness. Sounds do that. “Auuummm…” creates a certain mind-set. “Yeeeeeppiii!” creates a very different kind of mind-set. In the Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Dharani we invoke the healing mind. All the different voices of the sangha set up a resonance, a synergy. When the chanting is right on, it goes beyond sound. You can actually feel it. Simultaneously, the officiant is using mantras and mudras to create the same type of focus, to reinforce that connection, the harmony, the healing. That’s the great function being awakened.
In face-to-face teaching, there’s an obvious dialogue between the teacher and the student. Yet, the most important aspect of the communication is nonverbal. The essence of the connection is not in what is said, but in what is transmitted. Most of it happens within yourself. Much of it happens before you even enter the interview room. It happens in your zazen, or as you wait on line to see the teacher. So much is going on! And I am not talking about the surface content of your mind — the plans, the judgements, the commentary. There are other things that are being processed and are ripening that are not visible, not even noticeable. When we try to evaluate our zazen based on what is observable, all we’re doing is adding more mental activity where we’re committed to letting go of mental activity.
There’s no hope whatsoever that you’re going to notice anything while it’s happening. You are not going to notice the wisdom while that wisdom is germinating. To measure spiritual evolution is like trying to watch yourself grow. When I was a kid, I wanted to get bigger fast, and I kept on measuring myself hoping that this would spur my growth. I also used to hang in the doorway thinking that I would stretch and get taller. The measuring and the stretching didn’t help. I didn’t sprout up until later, when my body was ready. You can’t force your zazen. You need to trust the form and the process; place yourself in it and be open to it. Allow the process to unfold.
Soon after entering Zen training, I bought a copy of the Diamond Sutra and started reading it. The book drove me crazy. No matter how much effort I made to comprehend it, I just couldn’t understand what it was talking about. The text was in English. I read English. And I didn’t get it. I kept reading it over and over and over, figuring that since I could deal with chemistry, physics and math, I should be able to grasp this religious teaching. But I was getting nowhere. Finally I noticed that in the introduction of one particular edition, the translator recommended to read the sutra not for information but as contemplation, just to absorb the words. So I started doing that. It took about two years and it began to make sense. It was the same with the koans. I used to listen to discourses on koans and had no idea what they were communicating. Then one day they started making sense somehow. Something shifted, but I was not aware what that was. Pieces fell in place. Suddenly things that didn’t make sense before made sense. And it wasn’t the kind of sense that I could communicate to somebody else. It was a kind of sense that I felt with my total being.
That’s the way spiritual training takes place. That’s what is being transmitted. That’s what has been transmitted and continues to be transmitted. It’s not stuff that’s in the books. If you try to create Zen practice that’s dependent on ideas, nothing much is going to happen except that you will have more ideas. Zen is practice. It is doing.
An ancient master said, “This is why, when completely and thoroughly understood, there is nothing to understand, and the most abstruse profundity of the mystery is still to be scorned.” Consider this deeply. Real teachers of our school don’t just present Buddhist principles and doctrines. They cut away the complications. Don’t you see? Self-nature is Buddha nature. The true nature of ignorance is at once Buddhahood. The pure body of illusion is in itself the pure Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the body of reality. So the pure body of illusion is in itself the pure body of reality. The question remains, where do you find yourself? How do you understand yourself? What is the true nature of ignorance? It’s not that ignorance is Buddhahood; it’s the true nature of ignorance that is Buddhahood. It’s not illusion that is pure Dharmakaya; it’s the pure body of illusion that’s the pure Dharmakaya. How do you understand that? You understand that by looking into the question, “Where do you find yourself?”
To realize means to make real, to manifest truth as your own body and mind, without an effort. In the beginning, the practice of realizing yourself takes a lot of effort. Just like it takes a lot of effort to learn to write or to play a violin. But then, after a while, it becomes part of your own body and mind. You don’t think about writing; you just write. You just play the violin. You willingly enter the mystery when you play, not knowing what’s going to happen next until it happens, trusting and entering that area of not knowing. When you throw the rulebook and the maps away, and you trust your heart, the spiritual light shines, and its radiance encompasses the whole universe.
The capping verse:
A frosty autumn moon
Floats golden on the pond.
Quiet
night.
The fish are cold,
Hook and bait useless.
A frosty autumn moon — complete, lacking nothing. The moon is a metaphor for enlightenment in Buddhist poetry and writings. This is a particular full moon. It’s cold, perfectly round, autumnal, glowing golden. And it floats on the stillness of the pond. How this feels when you encounter it and any depiction of it are quite different. How do you feel it?
Quiet night, the fish are cold, hook and bait useless. In the shallows, a school of fish has gathered. The water is freezing; they’re dormant. You can fish for hours with all kinds of succulent bait but they’re not interested. Who are the fish? What’s the bait? What’s the hook? No takers. The congregation of Yunmen is dull and listless. What about you? What is the wonder of the mystery? How do you bring it out? How do you make use of it in your life? Once you enter the mystery, the question of how you bring it out is no longer a question. It begins to function spontaneously, without reflection. That’s what it means to give life to the Buddha. It’s up to each one of us to rise to Yunmen’s challenge and give life to the Buddha.
It’s only through the process of raising the Bodhi mind, practice, realization, and actualization that we will keep creeping secularization from encompassing the heart of religion. We keep it alive in our life, our work, our practice, our very being. In order to keep it alive we must give it life; we must realize it — not the words and ideas, not the principles and doctrines, not the sutras and forms — but the mystery itself.
1. The heap of flesh is itself the treasure.
2. Easy to do; difficult to understand.
3. Easy to understand; difficult to do.
John Daido Loori, Roshi is the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery. A successor to Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Roshi, Daido Roshi trained in rigorous koan Zen and in the subtle teachings of Master Dogen, and is a lineage holder in the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen.
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