Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop
Bop or Fa is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit term “dharma.” More literally, in Chinese, it means “the law.” The character has an interesting etymology: it’s the combination of the character 去, meaning “to go,” with the radical 氵 for water—we might say the three drops on the left represent three drops of water. A poetic interpretation of this character would be the law, or dharma, is like water flowing—a very common metaphor in Chinese thought… [Read more.]

Know Your Characters: Kwon
This character looks more intimidating, doesn’t it? Kwon or Guan means “gate,” “checkpoint,” or “border entry,” as in Zen Master Seung Sahn’s Ten Gates, or the famous collection of kong-ans, the Mu Mon Kwon, which is sometimes translated as “No-Gate Checkpoint,” “Gateless Gate,” “Gateless Barrier,” and so on…[Read more.]

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang
Just like if we sat down to eat and we each had a plain bowl of rice and there was no salt shaker there and you began to develop a negative attitude about the fact that we had to eat the rice with no salt. That would be problematic. Likewise, if someone becomes overly attached to some particular kind of occurrence, whatever it is, that becomes a hindrance… [Read more.]

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN

Know Your Characters: A Zen Glossary

Editor’s note: This an occasional series introducing some of the basic words and expressions used in Zen practice in their original form, as Chinese characters. Although the Kwan Um School of Zen is a Korean school, the root vocabulary of Zen is classical Chinese, shared by all traditions in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (and now around the world).

Character 3: Bop, 法

 Bop (Korean)
Fa (Mandarin)

Bop or Fa is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit term “dharma.” More literally, in Chinese, it means “the law.” The character has an interesting etymology: it’s the combination of the character 去, meaning “to go,” with the radical 氵 for water—we might say the three drops on the left represent three drops of water. A poetic interpretation of this character would be the law, or dharma, is like water flowing—a very common metaphor in Chinese thought.

Because classical Chinese has no plural forms, 法 means “dharma” or “dharmas,” depending on context. “Dharma” refers to the great body of the Buddha’s teaching, that is, the Buddhadharma:

佛 法
Buddha Dharma

“Dharmas” is another way of describing individual manifestations of the teaching, which is really the same thing as saying any individual object, being, or experience. In early Buddhism, the Abhidharma (epitome of dharma) tradition, a highly detailed form of analysis of mental experience, developed categories of many different dharmas—that is, different objects of mind, or “possible cognitive experiences.” This later developed into the Mind-Only school, or Yogacara, a major influence on the development of Zen. This Mind-Only teaching is reflected in a piece of calligraphy displayed next to the main altar at Providence Zen Center, which reads:

無 法 心 外
Without / dharmas / mind / outside
[There are] no dharmas outside the mind

Zen Master Seung Sahn often referred to the kong-an, “The ten thousand dharmas return to the One. Where does the One return?”:

萬法歸一
Ten thousand / dharmas / return / one
一歸何處?
One / returns / what / place?

In the Chogye International Zen Center, the calligraphy behind the Buddha in the dharma room includes these two lines.

One of the interesting things about the expression “Ten thousand dharmas” is that it echoes a Taoist expression often used in Chinese philosophy and poetry, 萬事 or “Ten thousand things.” This is really another way of saying “all things” or “everything”—that is, everything that exists, the world in all its dizzying variety and multiplicity. In a Buddhist context, these expressions are synonymous, and Chinese Buddhist poets like Han Shan use them almost interchangeably.

Although it would be more accurate to use the Chinese definition, “law,” when translating Chinese Buddhist texts, English translators from very early on decided instead to revert to the Sanskrit word “dharma” instead. This is most likely because the word “law,” in English, can’t capture all the variations of meaning in “dharma.” In Chinese, 法 can mean “method” or “principle” (somewhat like our use of the term in a phrase like “law of thermodynamics) but in English “law” almost always has the connotation of something that has been invented and imposed by a government or other organization. In the Zen tradition, especially, “dharma” means something that can be transmitted and discovered, but never imposed from the outside. As So Sahn Tae Sa puts it in The Mirror of Zen:

禪門惟傳見性法

Zen / gate / only / transmit / see / self-nature / dharma
The Zen tradition only transmits the dharma of seeing your true nature.

法 is a very easy character to learn to write. Try it! Remember that 氵(water) goes on the left and 去 (to go) goes on the right. That’s dharma, flowing like water. Can you taste it?

________________________

Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop

Know Your Characters: Kwon

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN

Know Your Characters: A Zen Glossary

Editor’s note: This an occasional series introducing some of the basic words and expressions used in Zen practice in their original form, as Chinese characters. Although the Kwan Um School of Zen is a Korean school, the root vocabulary of Zen is classical Chinese, shared by all traditions in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (and now around the world).

Character 4: Kwon, 關

Kwon (Korean)
Guan (Mandarin)

This character looks more intimidating, doesn’t it? Kwon or Guan means “gate,” “checkpoint,” or “border entry,” as in Zen Master Seung Sahn’s Ten Gates, or the famous collection of kong-ans, the Mu Mon Kwon, which is sometimes translated as “No-Gate Checkpoint,” “Gateless Gate,” “Gateless Barrier,” and so on.

In this case, as with many Chinese characters (but not all), the different parts of the character can explain how we understand this word. Kwon is made up of two parts: 門, which means “door” or “gate,” and is pictographic, meant to look like two sides of a swinging door, and an archaic form of 幺, which means “to weave with threads.” So this word combines the meaning of “gate” with a sense of connection or intersection. In ancient Chinese, it referred to a frontier pass or checkpoint where documents or identification would have to be produced. In modern Chinese, it is used in the common expression guanxi, which means “connections” or “relationship.”

Kwon is an apt word for Zen teaching, because it embodies the spirit of kong-an practice, where the student and teacher meet at a checkpoint (the kong-an interview) where the student must demonstrate her or his understanding. If the teacher approves, the student can go forward. But, of course, originally there is no teacher, no student, no checkpoint and nothing to check! The title of the Mu Mon Kwon (which is a play on words based on the name of the monk who compiled it, Mumon or Wumen) conveys this sense:

無  門   關
Without/no  gate checkpoint

Mumon explains this further in his introductory poem. Look for the way he uses “gate” and “checkpoint” as parallel expressions:

大道無門
Great / way (Tao) / without / gate
The great way has no gate;

千差有路
Thousand / directions / is, has / road
Its roads go in a thousand directions.

透得此關
Cross, travel through / attain / this / checkpoint
Pass through this checkpoint,

乾坤獨步
Heaven and earth, the world / alone / walk
And you will walk alone between heaven and earth.

Zen Master Seung Sahn’s book Ten Gates also contains an introductory poem called “Ten Gates,” which ends like this:

Originally, there is nothing.
How do you open and close?
The mouse eats cat food but the cat bowl is broken.
DO!
Through the gates—north south, east west.

The “Do” here is the character 道, that is, Tao, path, or way, pronounced “Do” in Korean. (Stay tuned for another edition of Know Your Characters about 道 and its many uses).

Here is a highly stylized calligraphy of the characters Mu Mon Kwon by the Japanese calligrapher Tōjū Zenchū.

________________________

Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop

Know Your Characters: Kwon

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation
Zen Master Wu Kwang

September 18, 2013

Question: I’ve heard stories where someone, after intensive sitting has an experience like they can see through the wall, they see a guy gardening outside, and they run to the Zen Master:“I can see though walls!” There are other versions like that where someone has an unusual perception and the Zen master’s reaction is to hit the student—konk on the head.  So the student then feels, “Oh, I’m not really enlightened at all.” And goes back to sit in meditation some more. If your perception includes this miraculous saltshaker that can miraculously move three inches to the right, how is that different from an experience where suddenly you can see through a solid wall? Each one, if it happens is just an occurrence one day, Why does he get konked on the head by the Teacher?

Zen Master Wu Kwang: You would have to go ask the teacher.

Q: It’s a repeated pattern through a lot of stories.

ZMWK: But you see the way you put it is: yes, if that occurs then that’s just an occurrence, no different than the saltshaker – “Please pass the salt.” And “I can see through the wall!” That’s also just an occurrence.  But usually what’s inferred in these kinds of stories when the monk comes running to the Zen Master – “Zen Master! I can see through walls! Isn’t that marvelous!” It is not just an occurrence. He is very attached to that unusual experience. That’s what’s sometimes referred to as you still have the stink of Zen, or still have the stink of something unusual. You’re clinging to that.

Just like if we sat down to eat and we each had a plain bowl of rice and there was no salt shaker there and you began to develop a negative attitude about the fact that we had to eat the rice with no salt. That would be problematic. Likewise, if someone becomes overly attached to some particular kind of occurrence, whatever it is, that becomes a hindrance. So the teacher meets the unusual with another unusual—pcchht!—a whack on the head. Then suddenly, “Oh, the floor is brown, the wall is white.” There, there is no attachment, there is just what is, occurrence by occurrence by occurrence. That is non-attachment living. There is one chapter in the book Dropping Ashes on the Buddha where Zen Master Seung Sahn says something like this—I’m paraphrasing it—“If enlightenment comes, wonderful; if enlightenment goes, that’s also wonderful.“ And then he says, “That very attitude is enlightenment.” That very attitude is different from some unusual experience that someone has and gets elated about or gets attached to. Not that there is anything wrong with those kinds of experiences. Those are just different kinds of experiences. But the basic attitude of “When something comes wonderful. When something goes, no problem.” That free-flowing attitude is an enlightened way of being, which is different from some particular experience.

So, yes, if you practice seriously and steadily for a long time, maybe you will have some unusual experiences too. Whether they be seeing through the wall or not, that’s not so important, but you will have some unusual experiences sometimes. But if you begin to look for those unusual experiences and can’t be as satisfied with the ordinariness of just sitting, not planning anything, not pushing anything away, not desiring anything in particular, but, just, as Suzuki Roshi says in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, practicing with no gaining idea, then that becomes a problem. Everything is complete as it is. The cultivation of that way of being, you could say, is enlightened existence. Is that clear?

Q: Yes.

ZMWK: Anyone else?

Q: What if you are practicing and benefitting enormously from the practice and becoming attached to the practice and realize that . . ., I mean I’m realizing I don’t want to have that feeling of easy-come, easy-go, not having attachments. I’m fine with having attachments. I don’t want to become attached to seeing through walls, but I’m realizing I don’t have any problem with becoming attached to people, to certain principles.

ZMWK: That’s the same attitude. “I have no problem.” OK? When I was in Korea shortly after Zen Master Seung Sahn died I spent some time with an American monk who had been one of his attendants. He said that shortly before Zen Master Seung Sahn died, while in the hospital, this monk went to visit him, and asked, “How are you? Do you need anything?” Zen Master Seung Sahn looked up at him, and said “Everything no problem.” So if you’re fond of some people, and you don’t find any problem in that? That’s wonderful. That’s no-problem practicing.

Q: But what if then. . .

ZMWK: What if! You know, the function of the word “but” in sentences is to act as an eraser to everything that has gone before.

Q: No no no no no no . . .

ZMWK: No no no, I insist. Grammatically, it functions that way. And words are tricky. Words have their own kind of magic.  We construct the world out of words. So if you say, “But what if,” that negates everything that went before.

Q: No, I’m not negating. I totally hear what you’re saying.

ZMWK: Well, let’s see. Go ahead.

Q: OK, just a little non-violent communication then: I hear you’re saying that if I don’t have a problem with having attachments to people and having attachments to principles, that’s no problem.

ZMWK: Yes.

Q: But what if something happens that threatens a person I care about or goes against a principle I’m attached to. Do I then have a problem?

ZMWK: Not necessarily.

Q: I wouldn’t say “no problem” at that point.

ZMWK: Of course not! Because if you did you would be attached to your own contentment.

Q: Excellent! OK.

ZMWK: I remember one time we had an international conference of the Kwan Um School of Zen in Singapore. The Singapore Zen Center, besides having Kwan Um people as speakers, invited some guest speakers. A Theravadin monk, I think he was Australian or British, gave a long talk about practice from his perspective, the Theravadin perspective, and when he got to the end of it the final stage was contentment. Zen Master Barbara Rhodes was sitting next to me and she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Is that all? Contentment?” Because contentment means, just as you said, if I see someone getting killed over there, “No problem. I’m contented.” In its extreme form, there is no compassion in that view or attitude or practice. There is no room for righteous indignation when you see something wrong being done. Righteous indignation comes out of the perception that we are all interconnected, if something is being done that is not in accord with interconnected and one big family; if harm is being done, that will mobilize something in you to act out of compassion or even to act militantly. So no problem is one side of it, but if you look at nonviolent protest movements, Martin Luther King’s movement or Gandhi’s movement, or anyone else like that, you will see a certain degree of cultivation of “no problem” to be able to let someone spit in your face and not react violently to it. You need that as part of your ability to take a stand.  But if you see something unjust being done and you say, “no problem, I’m keeping my contentment,” that’s not true Bodhisattva practice; that’s not the path of altruistic no-self. That’s “I want a contented self.” That’s not correct, in my opinion.

________________________

Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop

Know Your Characters: Kwon

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN

•

A Diminished Marginal Propensity to Mourn
                                                                                     celebratory verses

 Day turns to
Night turns to
Day’s turn!
Night’s turn!
Day’s turn!
Night’s turn!
Wow

*

Fluttering leaves have long
Since…

Fluttering leaves have long
Ceased…

Fluttering leaves have long
Longed to flutter longer

Under drifted snow they
Merely crisply

Ah!  Could I but too!

*

Seasoned surviving senior scion
Surreptitiously sublimates
Subterranean surges
Sheesh!

*

We mostly miss the missing
Missing the presence of the present
Presents a more mystifying missingness
Missing me missing you missing me

*

Worn out
Worn down
Worn in
Worn on
Worn through
Worn beyond

Recognition!

*

Sunbeams
Promise
Transcendence

When? When?
I await

*

Economies of scale
Economies of wrinkles
Economies of ligaments
Connective tissues
Gesundheit

*

Like my breath
Passing over the candle flame
Lives loves legacy
Lithesome lessons
What counts
Is not counting

*

Happy you
Happy you
Happy dear you
Happy you

•

South Florida Zen Group Fifteenth Anniversary Poem

Host and guest
Breathe the same air
Walk the same earth
In their own shoes

One size fits one
No size fits all
Originally no movement
Inside, everyone
Wiggles their own toes

In the land of perpetual
Mangoes and alligators
Only one question

How has it lasted
Fifteen years?

Those who walk
The path together
Understand

Breakfast
Kimchee and oatmeal
Lunch
Seaweed soup

Kam Sa Ham Ni Da
Song Bul Ha Ship Shi Yo*

*”Thank you very much.  May you become Buddha.”

•

Witnesses

 written during a moderated discussion with
African writers at the Bronx Museum

Old bones
Travel far
Encased in
Skin whose
Changes all
Can see
Whereas

The testimony
Of the bones
Themselves
Speak in voices
Only heard
Within the skin

Once was a woman blessed
With the curse
Of forgetting
Every morning
All that had transpired
In her days and years
Which ended just
The night before

With nothing
Left to witness
Any longer
Than the very
Day’s events

While the present
Elders cursed
With the blessing
Of recalling
All the moments

The light
On the dust
Through the leaves
The silent cries

________________________

Woodfish, Spring 2015

Know Your Characters: Bop

Know Your Characters: Kwon

On Magic, Attachments, and Righteous Indignation by Zen Master Wu Kwang

Three Poems by Ken Kessel, JDPSN

Know Your Characters: A Zen Glossary

Editor’s note: This an occasional series introducing some of the basic words and expressions used in Zen practice in their original form, as Chinese characters. Although the Kwan Um School of Zen is a Korean school, the root vocabulary of Zen is classical Chinese, shared by all traditions in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (and now around the world).

Character 2: Shim, 心

What makes everything?

Shim (Korean)
Xin (Chinese, pronounced “sheen”)

In Chinese, this character means both “mind” and “heart.” Although generally Zen teachers and texts use the English word “mind,” in the original vocabulary of Zen (as well as classical Chinese thought generally) there is no distinction between the two. “Mind” in the Buddhist sense includes our emotions, memories, associations, and analytical or conceptual capabilities. It is much more expansive than the conventional Western concept of mind.

 Like the English word “heart,” shim can also be used to refer to the core or essence of something. For example, the

心經

 or “Heart Sutra” (shim gyong). (This is actually the shorter form of the original title, which is “Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra”).

References to shim occur in many of the major kong-ans and teaching texts we use in the Kwam Um school. Here is a very simple example (case 30 of the Mu Mun Kwan):

Tae Mae once asked Ma Jo, “What Is Buddha”?
Ma Jo answered, “Mind is Buddha.”

In the original Ma Jo’s answer is

即心即佛
to say / mind / [is] to say / Buddha

 In the 33rd case of the Mu Mun Kwan, Ma Jo clarifies his answer:

A monk once asked Ma Jo, “What is Buddha?”
Ma Jo answered, “No mind, no Buddha.”

 Here the original is

 非心非佛
not / mind / not / Buddha

So remember, 心 makes everything, but don’t make 心.

Know Your Characters: A Zen Glossary

Editor’s note: This an occasional series introducing some of the basic words and expressions used in Zen practice in their original form, as Chinese characters. Although the Kwan Um School of Zen is a Korean school, the root vocabulary of Zen is classical Chinese, shared by all traditions in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (and now around the world).

First character: Mu, 無

If you only want to learn one character used in Zen practice, it should be this one:

Mu (Korean, Japanese)
Wu (Mandarin)

Mu is a negation that can mean “no” in some cases, but most often means “does not have” or “without.” It is most famously used in the kong-an known as “Joju’s Dog” or sometimes “Joju’s Mu”:

A monk asked Joju, “Does a dog have Buddha nature (or not)?”

Joju answered, “Mu!” (It does not).

An interesting aspect of this kong-an is that mu or wu is not normally used without an object unless you’re answering a question. The question that the monk asks, in Chinese, is literally,

 狗子還有佛性也無 ?

Dog / have / Buddha nature / does / [or] does not have

The way you answer this kind of a-or-b question in Chinese is to respond with either a or b. So in grammatical terms, Joju is not doing anything special; he’s simply answering the question in the negative: “mu.” (無) Of course, why he says mu is the challenge of the kong-an. How do you respond?

In some traditions of kong-an practice, students meditate on this response, and on the word mu, for years. Partly for this reason, mu has taken on an enormous significance in the history of Zen, as a way of summing up the Zen teaching of not relying on conventional language, tradition, or conceptual thought. It is often used in dharma names and temple names. For example, the New Haven Zen Center’s Korean name is Mu Gak Sa:

無覺寺

Does not have / enlightenment / temple

Mu also comes up in another of Zen’s most famous stories, about the encounter between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu of Liang. (The name of the emperor and the word wu are different characters). Emperor Wu asks Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” Bodhidharma replies, “Great emptiness, no holiness.”

廓然無聖

Great emptiness / does not have / holiness or wisdom

Here is a video demonstrating the calligraphy for the character Mu:

1. The chapter “Madhyamika and Zen” from the book Empty Logic: Madhyamika Buddhism from Chinese Sources. Readers can find the book at this link and use the website tools to locate the chapter (there’s no direct link to the chapter):
http://books.google.com/books/about/Empty_Logic.html?id=LaIjggzisi8C

2. The “Madhyamaka” entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka

Zen Master Seung Sahn and Zen Master Su Bong.

Editor’s note: Zen Master Su Bong Mu Deung, originally See Hoy Liau, began practicing with Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1974, received inka from him in 1980, and in 1992 was one of the first three Zen Masters to receive transmission from Seung Sahn in the Kwan Um School of Zen. He died suddenly in Hong Kong at age 51 while giving a kong-an interview in 1994. After his death, the Hong Kong Zen Center was renamed Su Bong Zen Monastery. In celebration of its twentieth anniversary, Su Bong Zen Monastery recently published a collection of Su Bong’s teachings in English and Chinese.

When you come to practice, you are sitting and your legs are sore, your brain hurts, your whole world is one form or another of pain, and the only thing you can think of is struggling. But who are you struggling for? You are struggling for “me.” “I want no pain, I want no thinking, I want a good feeling.” We always say, take away this “I.” If you take away this “I,” your meditation will be what we say in Hawaii is “like a breeze,” meaning very good, very easy. If you take away this “I” and you don’t make this practice for yourself, you have nothing to lose. You have no investment for yourself. It’s like somebody gives you money, and this is not your money, and you use it for others and not for yourself.

If your practice is not for you, then very strangely, you don’t care if you are practicing hard or not. Also you don’t care whether it is correct or not correct. You have nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Then you only relax. Very interesting, you know. The name for that is freedom.

In 1970, in America, one very famous singer [Janis Joplin] died early. The last song she made was very interesting. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” If you lose your “I, my, me” you have nothing left to lose, and the name for that is freedom.

The other day at the Buddhist Youth Center I said, “Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Zen Masters do not want your money, do not want your husband, do not want your wife, do not want your car, but they want your life.” What is the meaning of that? The meaning is: “take away your Small I and catch your Big I.” That’s what “wanting your life” means. The bodhisattva’s freedom is absolute freedom. If  water spills on the floor, he wipes it up, no choice. We call that freedom. When the moktak master hits the chukpi during practice she cannot decide whether she wants to hit it four times or only one time. She must only hit it three times because the head dharma teacher says, “Only three times.” The name for that is freedom, but nobody understands that kind of freedom. Everyone says that a monk is a leaver of home, one who goes away from this world. Many people say monks are those who have freedom from this world. If you ask Zen Master Seung Sahn, “what is a monk?” he would say, “only follow situation.” Only following situation for others is true freedom.

*

“Becoming independent” doesn’t mean “I become independent.” Truly “becoming independent” means this world can depend on me. Understand? My parents, my family, my friends and my country can depend on me—that means becoming independent. “I am independent so I can do whatever I like” is not correct independence. Becoming independent means “this world can depend on me.” Then what? Everything can depend on you, so you and everything become harmonious. Also, “everything can depend on me” means “I am dependent on everything.”

Here is a simple example, OK? I am driving and a red light appears, so I am dependent on the red light. This red light directs my life. Then I stop, so this world is dependent on me, and the other drivers can trust me. This driver is coming this way; I am going that way. Red light, I stop, so this driver can believe me. He can depend on me, but my action is dependent on this red light.

Zen means correctly perceiving the situation clearly. Then what is my relationship? Then what is my function? This is correct life.