Empty Hand Zen Center

Han inscription: Great is the matter of Birth and death; Life slips quickly by; Time waits for no one;  Wake up, wake up; Don't waste a moment!

Susan Jion Postal, January 10, 2010 

Background:  A Zen teacher in the lineage of Deshimaru, who was a disciple of Kodo Sawaki, is building a zendo in rural Missouri.  He wrote to his fellow AZTA teachers, sharing his question as to what kind of inscription to put on the doorway, or on the gate, of his new place. All the initial responses were about The Verse of the Han.  It was fascinating to see the slight variations on a common theme as well as different cadences or rhythms from zendo to zendo.

But wait a minute, I thought, he asked about ideas for an inscription at the doorway, at the gate, not for the Han.  So I piped up and questioned that, and then came another flurry of responses of various verses which might be suitable to have outside, over the door or on a gate, some traditional, some modern.  These were all different, but with a shared point of view.

And so this morning I would like to make use of this “thread” of teacher to teacher conversation to talk together about what seems needed Outside the Door and Inside the Zendo - as a teaching, perhaps not an actual written inscription - if we are truly to enter the Way.

All of the Outside the Door examples, even those from contemporary poets, expressed the essential aspect – the unconditioned and already-existing reality.  Keizan Zenji, often referred to as the “mother of Soto Zen” (Dogen being “the father”) who wrote the great Denkoroku (The Transmission of the Lamp) in around 1300, is said to have written something like the following over the door to his zendo:  Any One Who Wants to Gain Enlightenment, Do Not Enter.

Nothing to gain here - your Enlightened nature is already here, only not yet realized. A strong statement of the principle of “no gain”, that’s for sure. Gee, I bump into gaining ideas all the time here. Students want to “get something” from this practice.  Natural perhaps in the beginning, but really almost dangerous in more experienced students when it becomes about “being somebody” here in the Sangha, about gaining some status.  I see ambition and pride around being a good student.  I see subtle and not so subtle “decoration of self” happening right here, as though being a Zen student was something you could now list on your resume.   

Dainin Katagiri once said, “You take care of your life as if it were a vending machine. You put the coins in from the top and then get the soda at the bottom.  You do meditation and you expect something. But life doesn’t always go well. The vending machine goes out of order. Then you are mad and kick the machine.”  Michael Wenger cites this in his wonderful contemporary koan collection, 33 Fingers, and he comments “Have you made your world into a vending machine?”*  Would Michael suggest that the inscription over the door read Not a Vending Machine ?

Our good friend Nonin, from Nebraska, suggested a favorite verse by T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploring,

      And at the end of all our exploring

      Will we arrive where we started

      And know the place for the first time.

And another teacher suggested still another verse from T.S. Eliot for over the doorway, outside the zendo:   …and it costs not less than everything.

Another proposed that a simple Abandon All Hope would be perfect right there over the door, to stop us all short before we enter.   This might give us pause, lest we try to carry all our baggage through the door.

Last year we enjoyed a visit from Guest Teacher Susan O’Connell from San Francisco Zen Center. She shared with us here musings on this question of hope.  Some in attendance were actually kind of upset to hear that the letting go of hope was considered a Zen teaching.  My thoughts on this right now are first, we need to acknowledge that in our language and our culture the concept of “hope” is central to all notions of “positive thinking” or “having courage”.  But also, at the same time, I find myself needing to really question this.  As long as we hope for a particular future outcome, we are in trouble, all tangled up in expectations.  Letting go of Hope actually frees us to fully engage in whatever is happening now. Abandon All Hope seems a wonderful front door sign. If it makes us squirm, all the better. 

Having an inscription on the outside has traditionally served to shine a spotlight on the intrinsic side, the emptiness side, the no-gate of Dharma.  In the old days they didn’t have Wednesday nights with instruction, just an inscription. Most have heard this phrase, the Gateless Gate.  This is not just the title of a Koan collection, it is also a fundamental and principle teaching of Zen.  In master Mumon’s preface he states:

Zen makes the words and the mind of Buddha its foundation. It makes no-gate the gate of dharma. It is no-gate from the start.  How can we pass through it? **

Master Mumon is encouraging his disciples to dare to really enter the essential world which cannot be grasped philosophically. As seekers, we humans do perceive a barrier which separates us from what is. We find that we have work to do, experientially, even though intrinsically everything is already whole and complete.

Stepping inside the practice hall, we meet the inscription on the Han.  Immediately it is pounded into us that life and death are of supreme importance, that time quickly passes by, that opportunity can be lost, that we should strive to awaken.  The young Dogen was deeply puzzled by the seeming contradiction of the teaching of intrinsic Enlightenment and the need for such hard practice, for striving to awaken. Finally, on completing his work with his Master in China, he came to see that it is because we are already awake, essentially, that we have to practice.  We practice in order to fully realize what has been there from the beginning. This takes strong diligent effort – what Dogen called effort without desire, takes discipline and finally deep surrender.  Not easy.  Whether in the style of sitting called Shikantaza or working with koans, there is at a certain stage a kind of pounding of our head against this barrier.  Maybe it is even more frustrating because we have been taught that it is no-barrier, and yet we bump our hard heads.  Worst of all, at least for me, was the sense that I was a complete failure as a Zen student.  Oh, such self-condemnation arose.  Looking back, it almost seems absurd and funny, but at the time there were dark clouds of discouragement and despair.

Soko Morinaga Roshi wrote so eloquently:

Buddhism does not teach just to drop our desires; especially in the Zen sect, we also continuously knock and ask until our very bones are ground to powder. Buddhism also assures us that by repeatedly knocking and asking, we will at long last realize deep within ourselves that even before we began to ask, it was already given, and even before we began to knock, it was always open. ***

So I see the Han as a stimulus to knock and ask. The message of the Han is about our own tasting of our own impermanence, the impermanence of all things. Not as something on the lists of Buddhist teachings, but as the actual living fact. We are all dying, right now.  That process began with our birth. Discovering the immediacy of this can galvanize our intention, set fire to our heart’s desire. No one has much time.  To quote Mary Oliver, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ****  

So back side/front side -  intrinsic/experiential -  inseparable.  Maybe the Mississippi Han will have inscriptions front and back.  My choice would be that the intrinsic no-gain message be the first thing one sees, and the pounding teaching about life’s brevity is met in the practice hall, calling all to take their seats and give it their all. 

***

*Michael Wenger, 33 Fingers: A Collection of Modern Zen Koans, San Francisco, Clear Glass Publishing, c. 1994, "Vending Machine," p. 19.

**The Gateless Gate:  The Classic Book of Zen Koans, Koun Yamada, trans., MA:  Wisdom Publications, C. 2004, p. 7.    
***Soko Morinaga Roshi, Pointers to Insight: The Life of a Zen Monk, Jim Stokes, trans., London: The Zen Centre, c. 1985, p. 29.

****  Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day," from House of Light, 1990, Boston, Beacon Press, c. 1990, p. 60,

 Unpacking Manjushri after the move to 45 Lawton, we searched for the very best place, and found this niche in the brick wall behind our Han.