Based on a talk given at the Scout Hut, Canton Cardiff May 2014
There are many Zen stories that are important for us to know. These stories are often dialogues between Masters and their students with the most well-known of them found in the collections of koans such as ‘The Book of Serenity’ and ‘The Blue Cliff Record’. These collections were assembled by the compilers, who then provided commentaries and to do this they took bits of interactions that were reported in written biographies and accounts of Chan Masters. Hence, the initial origin of these stories was in older biographies, not the koan collections which are the basis of formalised koan practice.
Sometimes particular stories do not appear in these koan collections but still the stories are well known and used by many teachers to illustrate points that they wish to make. Master Dogen used his own compiled collections of dialogues to inform his teachings and he did not provide commentaries as such but he made reference to these dialogues in his talks. One story that it is important for us is about Chan Master Chuanzi Dechang who was known as the ferryman or the boat monk.
This story was first presented in the classic history collection about Masters known as ‘The Five Lamps Merged in the Source’.1 It was taken up by Dogen and is particularly mentioned in his ‘Mountains and Water Sutra’ (Sansui-kyo)2 and also in other places in his talks. It might be that this use of the story has given it its popularity amongst teachers. Whatever its source, elements of it are referred to by numerous teachers both ancient and modern: for example, Master Sheng Yen refers to it in his book, ‘Attaining the Way: A Guide to Chan Practice’.3 The story of Dechang and his student Jiashan Shanhui provides us with numerous metaphors about practice; many teachers pick up themes related to the nature of the relationship between student and teacher and others on the way teaching can be considered. At a more straightforward level, we can focus on what the story may have to say about our own practice and how we consider it.
Chuanzi Dechang was a student of Yaoshan and he studied with him for about 30 years. After this time, he received Dharma transmission but shortly after his transmission, he told his Dharma brothers that he did not consider himself fit to lead a monastery or a group of monks. He thought that the nature of his mind and his behaviour was a bit too undisciplined for the formalities and regularities of monastic life and so in terms of the idiom of the day he ‘broke the rice bowl’ and left holy orders. To ‘break the rice bowl’ was a term used about ancient Chinese monks when they gave up monastic life not because they were fed up of it or disappointed with where they had got to (referred to as ‘discarding the robes’), but as in Dechang’s case because he clearly felt that his path was outside the formal rigours of the monastery.
So even with considerable attainment recognised by his teacher he took up rowing people across a river, working as a self-employed ferryman. Undoubtedly, in terms of the saying, he was ‘going to the marketplace and beating the silent hammer’. However, before he left his Dharma brothers he told them that if they came across somebody who had the clear ability to realise and actualise the Dharma but who needed help, then they should send this person to him. Certainly, Dechang understood that even though he was no longer a monk in a formal way, he, as a bodhisattva, could still impart the Dharma to those that required it. We can also imagine that as he rowed his boat across the river, Dechang would talk to his passengers about their daily life and introduce the Zen perspective and Buddhist ethics into the conversation. This is perhaps how he got his name the ‘boat monk’.
Whilst he was a simple ferryman Dechang wrote a well-known poem ‘Angling for the Great Function’ which is full of beautiful symbolism about Zen practice. In fishing terms it refers to trying to catch the golden fish of enlightenment. Perhaps also this poem led to this story’s frequent references by Zen teachers.
Angling for the Great Function4
Thirty years on the river bank,
Angling for the great function,
If you don't catch the golden fish, it's all in vain.
You may as well reel in and go back home.
Letting down the line ten thousand feet,
A breaking wave makes ten thousand ripples.
At night in still water, the cold fish won't bite.
An empty boat filled with moonlight returns.
Sailing the sea for thirty years,
The fish seen in clear water won't take the hook.
Breaking the fishing pole, growing bamboo,
Abandoning all schemes, one finds repose.
There's a great fish that can't be measured.
It embraces the astonishing and wondrous!
In wind and thunder transformed,
How can it be caught?
Others only seek gathering lotus flowers,
Their scent pervading the wind.
But as long as there are two shores and a lone red boat,
There's no escape from pollution, nor any attainment of emptiness.
If you asked, “Is this lone boat all there is in life?”
I'd say, “Descendants will each see the results.”
Not depending on earth or heaven,
When the rain shawl is removed, nothing's left to pass on.
It is in these images that we find our first lessons; when we begin practice we are undoubtedly fishing for something. We have a clear idea what this fish looks like, it's big, golden, powerful, not angry, not depressed, gets on with its parents, has no problems with its partner, it is a wonderful, well liked being etc etc. It is indeed a sublime fish. Sometimes when we are fishing, something gets on our hook and when we reel it in, we find it is a big dragon that frightens us and wants to bite off our head and we stop fishing for a while. Sometimes we catch a tiddler, look at it quickly and discard it by throwing it back into the water - of course this may be a mistake as there -might be value in that tiddler. But basically, even though we think we can see a big sublime fish in the water, we don't catch it and the harder we try the further it dives below the surface. Dechang teaches us that perhaps we should break the fishing pole and abandon desires and wishes as it might be then that we find repose.
So here is Dechang rowing back and fore across the river, sometimes fishing, sometimes not, and after a period of time one of his Dharma brothers comes across someone who may need help, Jiashan. It was obvious that Jiashan had a great intellectual understanding of the Dharma but he was clearly one of those Zen practitioners who when asked ‘what is Zen?’ would say something like “the nothing of everything and the everything of nothing”.
Now we have all met somebody like this, who just trots out platitudes and the things they read in books or heard in Dharma talks. “Oh yes I have a beginner’s mind” - whatever that means. Intellectualisation is a great problem amongst those who wish to follow Zen practice, particularly those who read a lot or like to listen to teachers. It is so easy to believe that you understand something from the written page or a talk but Zen practice is much more. Realisation, actualisation and one's own personal experience and practice of your own life are central to what we do, and you do not find these things in books or in pictures of fish!
So another important lesson in this story is the danger of intellectualisation. But our zenhead friend, Jiashan, had great determination and great commitment and when Dechang’s Dharma brother pointed out his problems to him Jiashan asked what he could do about this and how he could extend his true appreciation of the Dharma. Another lesson. Commitment and an awareness of one's faults and problems are companions that are constantly with us on our Zen path. The Dharma brother realised that this was a case ‘of different strokes for different folks’ and that he himself could not help this person but he knew a man who could. And so he sent him to Dechang, telling him not to go along in his teaching robes but just go along as an ordinary monk traveller.
So off goes Jiashan and meets Dechang and straight away Dechang asked him in which temple he lives. Jiashan considers this to be the beginning of a Zen dialogue and so he wishes to answer in as clever a ‘Zen way’ as possible, so he says something like “I do not abide in a temple. Where I abide is not like…” Of course, Dechang instantly recognises the meaningless, almost rehearsed, answer and says the ancient Chinese equivalent of “don't give me that bullshit”. Jiashan tries to say something else and Dechang asks him where he acquired his understanding. Off into zennyness again, Jiashan says, “not in a place which the eyes or ears can perceive”. Dechang has had enough of this trite phraseology and tells him that these are just intellectual phrases which have resulted in him being like a donkey “tied to a post for 10,000 years”. Dealing with the Dharma from a purely intellectual foundation is the same as being tied up, with there being no development of practice from that position.
To counter the intellectual approach of Jiashan, Dechang uses some of the imagery from the poem that he had written “you've let down a 1000-foot 1,000 foot fishing line, you are fishing very deep, but your hook is still short by 3 inches”. Dechang has clearly recognised Jiashan's ability, but he lacked that move away from intellectualisation that would allow him to integrate all his understanding into actualised reality. Dechang shouted at him “Say something, say something”.
Then in usual Zen master fashion before Jiashan can say anything Dechang hits him into the river with the boat oar. Wet through, the great intellectual teacher scrambles back into the boat. “Say something, say something” Dechang shouts at him again. With water dripping all over his face Jiashan opens his mouth to speak but Dechang hits him with the oar again and again he falls into the river. Slightly unusual for these types of Zen stories this only happens twice rather than the typical three times as it is after the second hit that Jiashan attains great enlightenment.
Beyond words. Beyond intellectualisation. Beyond seeking. Just wet in a rocking old boat with a slightly crazy ferryman.
We are of course familiar with the ways that these stories impress on us the immediacy of enlightenment, being hit by a stick, kicking a pebble against the bamboo, breaking a bowl and now being pushed off a boat into a river. But all these things happen after that student has studied for many years with great persistence and great endeavour.
In this story Dechang and Jiashan continue their dialogue in terms of a fishing rod and line. In one way this is about how important it is to help people attain the way and it is also about how you have to use words and some intellectualisation to help people understand the Dharma. But then, Jiashan pulls us firmly back onto the experience path as when they are talking, he covers his ears as he wishes to hear no more words. So another lesson, we need some words but it is also beyond words. With this action, Dechang approves the way in which Jiashan now understands the Dharma and encourages him to go and establish his own teaching place away from the city. So Jiashan leaves Dechang but keeps looking back and Dechang sees this and wondered if he has any doubt for he then shouts to Jiashan “do you think there is anything else?” What else could there be? We need great doubt but, as we have found out, actualisation of the Dharma is beyond this. Is there anything else?
The story ends after Dechang shouts out his question, for he then goes to the middle of the river in his boat, rolls it over and disappears into the water forever. Just a metaphor for how an enlightened person can come and go as he or she wishes. It also signifies that in the histories it is the last we hear about Dechang. Jiashan went on to become a very well-known Chan master and he was considered to be the first that made the close link between Zen and drinking tea; “Zen, tea, one taste”. After his death, he was given the name ‘Great Teacher Transmitting Clarity’.
This story like many others in the Chan/Zen canon offers us instructions on important points about our own practice. For us today, if there is one lesson to take away, then it is the next time you have water on your face, experience the wetness not as wetness, but just as it is.
Notes
- This book was initially published in 1253. There does not appear to be an accessible modern version.
- Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo translated by Gudo Nishijima & Chodro Cross (1994). Windbell. Woking
- Master Sheng Yen (2006) Attaining the Way: A Guide to Chan Practice. Shambala. Boston.
- Translated by Andy Ferguson (2000) in Zen’s Chinese Heritage. Wisdom. Boston.
