Host and Guests: A Retreat Talk

(Given at a Western Zen Retreat in 1988) 

We have been doing a meditation called searching the heart in which we have been allowing the experiences of our lives as they are remembered to rise within us – to tell us their story and bring us their feelings. In this way we have been reviewing and uncovering and allowing to emerge that which we are. Maybe we have also been seeing that, when that isn’t happening, there is a quality of silence. 

How does all this happen? Well, there’s a very old description of the nature of mind which is quite helpful. That is, that we have the senses – the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch – and each of those senses feeds into a consciousness in the mind. So the mind is made up of awarenesses which come from the eyes, ears, nose, and these experiences which come in through the senses are sometimes remembered and stored in a storeroom. When we sit in meditation, what happens is that at the same time as the simplicity of the white wall and the sounds of other people in the room and the feel of the carpet beneath us as we sit, at the same time as these sensations are arising within our consciousness, so memories come up and paint their picture for us. In the mind there is this kind of picture-painting going on. 

But there’s an additional kind of consciousness and that’s called the trickster and the trickster says to us, ‘Ah, all this consciousness, all this activity, it must be me, and this thought, this show, this cinematographic show, is belonging to me’ – makes me possessive and careful, and protective. So that everything that arises within this show appears to have some bearing upon this person, me, who is vulnerable. And so we seek to edit out from our pictures that which is painful and try to look at that which is beautiful and pleasing. And so we go on being preoccupied with feelings, attachments and pains which are rooted in this notion that this whole cinematographic show which we are experiencing is somehow Me. 

And that is why in this meditation there’s a peculiar quality about much of our searching of the heart: the quality of attachment, so that as the memory comes up we feel the hurts and the pains – we feel as if something is being done to us – we feel victims. And that is because of this attachment, because of the trickster, which makes us feel as if there is something in here – a thing called ‘me’. If you go hunting for it, you will find it difficult to locate: you will find the pictures; you will find the sensations of smells and hearing and vision and memories and story-telling. But if you go looking for the ‘me’, that may be difficult to find. 

In fact, you are asked to look for it. In the Chinese teachings there is an instruction which a Chan Master may give in a retreat, he will say: ’Tsan!’ Tsan means ‘investigate’. It means, ‘OK, you think there’s a ‘me’ there – so look for it! Find it. Dig in’. 

So you search and you will find memories: pains, hurts, insults, joyous moments, happinesses, blisses, smells, tastes, a day on the river, a day on the yacht, a flight across the Atlantic. You will find all these things. But where will you find the me? And occasionally when the mind gets tired something appears – a gap, a silence. And you become aware that all this going on – these consciousnesses of the senses, these memories, these pictures – all of it is going on, as it were, on a kind of screen, but you can’t see the screen because there are only pictures on it, except when the gap happens. Then you find that there isn’t a screen there at all, but an open window, and beyond that window is a strange landscape through which strange winds blow on remote wild mountains and in which there are the sounds of great oceans. But before you have had more than a glimpse up comes a picture, obscures the window, and there’s the great scenario of Tom, Dick and Harry in full force.

So one has a feeling that maybe there is something else about mind than just this perpetual, attached, painful, sometimes joyous story-telling, which is the history of ‘me’, which seems to be somebody inhabiting this carcass, which has a rather short duration – lucky if it makes 70 years. There seems to be a hint and the Chan Master will say ‘Tsan – investigate – find out! Have you seen something in that gap?’ When suddenly the whole phantasmagoria disappeared and you looked as if through a window. Investigate.

And the Chinese Chan Masters tell a useful metaphor – a useful story. They say ‘It’s like this, you see. If you are visiting an inn, the things you see most of the time are the guests – fellow guests. There they are, having their meals. There they are sleeping in their bedrooms. There they are visiting the toilets. There they are, quarrelling. There they are, smiling. There they are, putting on their best manners. There they are, eating. There they are, speaking to the waiter. There they are, paying their bills. The inn is full of guests and that’s what you see most of the time, in the inn, the guests. And these guests are like your thoughts. They float through the inn doing all their different things. But where is the owner? Where is the host?’

We spend most of our waking consciousness in the position of being a guest – filling our minds – buzzing around – being preoccupied: the guest mind. But imagine what it would be like to be the host, who entertains these guests. The inn-keeper – silent, quietly there – while the guests float through. The silent mind is the host, is the inn-keeper. The guests are the moving thoughts and the painful feelings. They come and they go – but the host remains. But the host is rarely seen, as the foyers are full of the guests – the dining rooms are full of the guests. Where is the host? Where is the inn-keeper? Tsan! Investigate! Find the inn-keeper! Find the host!

Because it is said that the mind which we normally see, the mind of the guests rattling about, is a born mind - it’s born and it’s created. It is always making new pictures and new stories. But there was also at one time an unborn mind which was silent, and the strange thing is that that unborn mind has not disappeared. It lies behind; it is always the background for the show which the guests are making.

And this unborn mind – so-called unborn because it is not contaminated by thoughts, feelings and the rushings about of guests - the unborn mind, behind it, is the host. Tsan – investigate! Discover the host! Do not always be attached to the activities of the guests. You can watch the guests as you search your heart; they rise within you, they circle about, they play their games, and they pass away, and another one comes up and another one goes. But have you seen the inn-keeper? Is he in the garden, outside the window?

To find the inn-keeper when one has such a very noisy hotel is quite difficult, and so the Chinese have given us a method to do that. The method is like this. They say, well, thoughts are usually haphazard and all over the place and you get attached to them so easily, you get caught up in the thoughts and there you are, away you go. So why not give the mind a fixed thought, a very simple fixed thought, like one guest. If there is only one guest in the inn, it might be easier to find the inn-keeper.

So we have one thought and that one thought is the name of Buddha, say, it might be ABCD, but one normally uses the name of Buddha. It doesn’t matter, you can choose any name. The name of Buddha normally used is Amitabha. 

So you set up a pattern in your mind – you feed it through, and you say in your mind’s eye, ‘Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha’ and you set up a repetitive pattern: Amitabha – Amitabha – Amitabha – Amitabha. The guest keeps going down the foyer, through the dining-room, all over the place. Amitabha, nothing but Amitabha everywhere. Amitabha. 

Just keep it turning, Amitabha. And then at some point, Amitabha, you don’t say it. 

Amitabha… 

And you look into the hole out of which the word might have come but didn’t. 

Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha… 

Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha… 

Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha… 

This is called looking into the space before the thought arises. The Chinese ‘huatou’ – a huatou is a pre-thought. So, tsan, investigate – what is a pre-thought? We can find out. 

Amitabha, Amitabha, Amitabha… 

Look into the gap created, and when one looks into that gap that is created, with practice and as the mind becomes still, so one begins to see that there is an expanding silence. You are discovering the host. Everything is going on holiday – the corridors are silent – the windows are open – the host is relaxing. Just be an inn-keeper – investigate! 

In today’s practice, if you so wish, you may take up that method this morning and explore it and see if it gives you some insight into the way in which the mind can be silent, that you can be a host to your own thoughts. And the host is very quiet – it is the guests who are disturbed. It is an activity of witnessing. You get yourself into the position of witnessing the activity of the mind instead of being identified with it. 

Probably yesterday, as the thoughts arose, we identified with it. Some image would come up and we identified with it. ‘Hah, how beautiful, how nice that is – I’d like that.’ Or, something the opposite: ‘Oh dear, oh dear’ – so a negative identification. But whichever it is, you are in there. You are caught up in it, your feelings come up. But as soon as you begin to create a little gap and witness it, already your centre of gravity is swinging somewhere else. You are no longer caught up; you are becoming the witness. So up comes something and, ‘Um, that is interesting – well, here we go again. We seem to have been there before’. And you witness it. 

But the witnesser is not caught up, is not imprisoned, is not the prisoner of his or her own thoughts, is not the guest, captured as it were within a hotel. The witnesser is the host: free to watch one come – watch another go – passing through. Witnessing is a crucial aspect of this type of meditation. To practice shikantaza you have to discover how to move your centre of gravity – out of being identified with your thoughts and feelings into being the one who witnesses, because it is the one who witnesses who can fall still and thereby see.