John Crook used to like to say that the essence of Chan is self-confrontation. I’ve already spoken about Dogen’s saying, “to study the Buddha way is to study the self ”. And on the first evening here a few of you mentioned you came here to understand who you are. Why this emphasis on self, who we are, confronting ourselves. What’s the use of it?
I’ve spoken about how your koans bite back on you, start investigating you. You start off thinking you’re investigating a koan but it ends up with the koan investigating you. Why is it set up in this way? Why is that useful?
You could say that the truth of the teaching of the Buddha is available to be witnessed in our own experience of ourselves. We are exemplars of the teaching of the Buddha. Consider the teaching on the Four Noble Truths. Most of you know this teaching but I’ll recap it briefly as I go along. It arose out of the Buddha considering how he could explain what he’d discovered. For some time after he first had his enlightenment he didn’t think that it would be possible to share it with people, because he couldn’t find a way to explain it. In the Four Noble Truths he wasn’t explaining the experience itself but he was explaining, pointing out, a way of seeing things which helps lead you in that direction. Because he was teaching humans he was pointing out characteristics of human beings. We can follow this teaching deeply into ourselves and when we do that we find the truth of it. It’s quite straightforward and we can witness this in the operation of our own experience. This is why it’s so valuable to be led in this way, to be prodded in this direction.
The First Noble Truth
Let’s take the first of the Four Noble Truths; dukkha. Life is experienced in a way which is unsatisfactory. Often this is translated with the somewhat stronger word ‘suffering’, but the weight of that word may distract you from the essence of the message and a better word may be ‘unsatisfactory’. It points out that we are ill at ease most of the time. We don’t feel at ease. We feel dissatisfied. This could be in a big way if there’s something major going on in our lives. It could be in a much more minor way such as the raspberry jam being at the wrong end of the dining table – that’s unsatisfactory isn’t it? – for some people at least. It creates a little niggle, “I’ve got to do something about that”. You point at it but no-one notices. You whisper but no-one notices. You speak out on a silent retreat because you must resolve this dissatisfaction of there being no raspberry jam within reach. And jam appears and satisfaction is gained. Or is it? There’s more yet to fix in the world, isn’t there?
Lots of things are unsatisfactory in our experience. We know that many of these we cannot do much about so we niggle along and put up with them. But it’s very much a sense of ‘putting up with’ rather than just saying, “it’s ok”. Hence the Buddha pointing out that we’re dissatisfied with the way things are. I think that as you’ve been working on your koans, for most of you the koan has touched something in you and you realise that there is some aspect of you, of your life or of your experience of life, that’s unsatisfactory, that could have been better, should be better. “It’s not fair.” “It’s not right.” “I’m not as successful as I could be”, and so on and so on. Different phrasing for different people and different circumstances but there’s a sense that it’s not quite how it could be or should be or ought to be or might have been. It’s not satisfactory the way it is. That’s what the Buddha was pointing out with the first of the Noble Truths and we are discovering that in our own experience.
We may brush over it because we have a sense that we can’t do anything about it, and therefore it’s not worth fussing about. It might be that we find it uncomfortable to face so we hide from it. We realise that we can’t fix it so we ignore it and we overlook it. We don’t realise it’s there until maybe something like a koan points it out to us. This is where the resonance with the koan is very interesting. Some of you don’t know why you’ve picked your koan but you’ve probably picked it because there is some resonance with something and it’s probably a resonance with something in you that doesn’t feel very comfortable.
The Second Noble Truth
he Second Noble Truth of the Buddha pointed out that this unsatisfactoriness was basically due to the three poisons; ignorance, craving, aversion. It tends to get phrased mainly as craving and aversion but ignorance comes in there too. Craving, wanting something. Wanting it to be something other than it is. Wanting it to be other than it is because it’s unsatisfactory as it is. You can see how this works out can’t you? If it’s unsatisfactory the way it is, naturally you want it to be some other way. Craving. Grasping. Greed. Wanting it to be some way other than it is. If you reflect on what the koan has touched in you, I think you will see a taste of that. And its opposite, or its complement depending on which way you look at it, aversion. Craving is wanting what you haven’t got, aversion is not wanting what you’ve got – it’s the same thing, just in negative. It’s wanting things to be other than they are; “I’ve got this but I don’t want it. How can I shake it off?”. Having something you don’t want is as unsatisfactory as not having something you do want. Looked at in this way these Noble Truths are really straightforward. They’re testable in our own life experience. And they are testable in your own experience as you’re sitting here on the cushion with your koan. The koan is prodding you saying, “You don’t like this, do you? You’re not very comfortable with this, are you? You wish this had turned out differently, don’t you? You wish you’d got that promotion. You wish that partner you wanted, wanted you. You wish the jam was closer.” (I’m not picking on the jam person, it’s just a good story!)
You can see that happening in you every day, many times a day. And you see your response is to try to fix it, to want it to be fixed. Sometimes that can be achieved but there are other things which we can’t fix. The koan rubs our nose in those as well, and this is where it gets more confrontational.
Some of you have chosen koans with words like impermanence in. Can you fix impermanence? That’s more challenging! Something out of reach can be fixed, maybe, with the cooperation of others, but impermanence, can we fix that? How are you when you’re left with something which isn’t satisfactory and can’t be fixed? This is when the practice gets rather more confronting and rather more difficult and potentially more painful. How do we deal with that? We have all sorts of strategies for dealing with difficulties in life and often these are to do with avoidance: we switch off; we face the other way; we distract ourselves. Indeed we find ourselves doing that in meditation too, don’t we? Can’t we go off on some wonderful day dreams as a way of distracting ourselves when the practice looks like taking us to a darker corner of ourselves? What wonderful stories we can create – but are they doing the work that needs to be done? Are they confronting what needs to be confronted? If the mind is wandering off, is it really exploring the koan or is it avoiding the koan? Is it really investigating you or is it avoiding investigating you?
When the mind goes off like this be very sensitive to what’s going on here. It’s not that you have to trap the mind. The exploration of yourself and of your koan can go quite wide so you’re not necessarily off-course when other ideas begin to arise and you let them through, and emotions present themselves and you allow yourself to experience them. You’re not necessarily off-course, so don’t be cutting them off. But when you’ve let them through, fully experience them, be with them, and then you may get a sense of whether this is something that you’re creating as an indulgence, as a smoke screen, or whether it really is informing your investigation. Quite subtle and quite difficult to get right. But be aware it could be wrong or it could be right, and get a sense of that by being very intimate with it, really experiencing it. As the work with the koan progresses it gets more difficult, in the sense that it gets more subtle, and it’s also less familiar territory. This is new, maybe you’ve not been here before, maybe you’re not really sure what’s going on, but still you have to persist.
The Third Noble Truth
Remember the Third Noble Truth of the Buddha, the possibility of release from unsatisfactoriness, from suffering, from being ill at ease. Now that’s an interesting one when we’ve just said that some of these unsatisfactory situations can’t be resolved, they can’t be fixed – yet somehow we can be at ease with them? How might that happen? How might it be that we could be at ease with impermanence when we tend not to be at ease with some of the manifestations of impermanence such as death? How could it happen? How could the Buddha say that was possible? This is what he’s pointing at with the Third Noble Truth. You have to find your own way through here, but for example maybe it’s your attitude to impermanence which is the problem, not impermanence itself. Maybe that’s what needs to give way. You may not be able to deliberately change that but you could be open to the possibility.
Picking on the example of impermanence, that’s another manifestation of grasping, grasping onto something, not wanting it to change. Holding on, craving. If we can let go of craving and grasping, maybe impermanence is not such a big deal and we can be at ease with it. But in our everyday way of looking at things it’s a very challenging investigation. Still, the Buddha pointed out the Third Noble Truth; it’s possible.
I often say this Third Noble Truth is miraculous because it might not be possible. It might be that we’re hard-wired into craving and aversion and dissatisfaction as part of our biological survival instinct. It might be that it’s hard-wired into us and it’s not possible to step outside of it. But in the Third Noble Truth the Buddha says it is possible to step outside of it. Indeed many people who’ve followed the Buddha have confirmed it is possible to step outside of it.
This teaching gives hope. It might seem rather difficult. It might seem rather impenetrable when we look at it in terms of the harder examples, but we can look at it in terms of the easier examples and see that we’ve already had examples in our life of genuinely letting go of craving. We’ve been bothered about having something and we just, “Ah! Forget it”, and feel at ease with not having it. I hope we’ve all had that experience at least once in our life, in a small way. So it is possible to be experiencing craving, for it not to be fulfilled, and for that to be satisfactory. Huh! It is possible! Maybe that’s a clue to the way forward. So, again, the koan is working its way in you and through you and it’s illustrating the Noble Truths.
The Fourth Noble Truth and Right Effort
The Fourth Noble Truth is the Eightfold Path: various attitudes and ways of being, including the practice of meditation which we’re engaged on here. We put in the ‘right’ effort, Right Effort being part of the Eightfold Path. We put the right amount of effort into practice. We don’t slack off. But we also don’t need to overtire ourselves and overdo it. We’re mindful of our effort and we apply the appropriate effort according to the state of our practice and the state of our body and mind. If we’re rather tired and slumping we might need to apply more effort to continue to practice, or we may need to respect the tiredness of the body and rest a little. If we’re in a good space and practice is just flowing then to apply effort might be harmful, it might be forcing it, creating a duality between now and some imagined future achievement, rushing ahead.
Tune the effort. Tune the practice. This requires you to be sensitive to the state of your practice and the state of your mind and make the appropriate adjustments. Be clear about what you’re doing and whether you need to review. Ask some questions so you understand what you’re doing. Are you approaching the practice with the correct attitude. What is the correct attitude? Are you approaching it with the correct amount of effort and diligence? Maybe you are approaching it too tensely, too seeking, too striving? Or are you too casual, lazy?
Practice can reach a point where practice is just automatic, but if it’s not there yet you need to apply the method. Sometimes people get the idea, “meditation should just happen, I shouldn’t be doing anything, if I’m doing something I’m interfering”. If you’re at the point where meditation is looking after itself then that’s great, but mostly that’s not where you are. You actually need to do something. You need to remind yourself to practise. Maybe you need to straighten up your posture. You need to bring yourself out of daydreams. You need to pick up the koan. There are certain things you do need to do to practise effectively when the practice is not running totally automatically completely by itself. You’re not usually in the state of automatic practice, so do be prepared to put some effort into the practice.
Master Sheng Yen used to talk about two opposite approaches to practice, but it’s more a continuum than opposites. You could indeed have a relaxed approach to practice. Or you could have a very energetic determined approach to practice. If you’re taking the determined energetic approach then you make a vow, “I will not move at all during the sitting, however much my legs hurt I will sit here. I will not move for three sittings in a row, I will just sit there through the breaks. I will not let my mind waver at all. I will stay firmly with the koan the whole time”. Quite a solid, determined, vigorous approach to the practice. Or you could take a more relaxed approach, “I’ll sit here and I’ll pick up my koan and I’ll notice what goes on, and my mind will probably generate some noise and I’ll allow that to wander through the mind. I’ll pay attention to it. I’ll experience it”. And that’s it. Just hanging about with your koan somewhere in the offing. Both are perfectly valid approaches. Both can go wrong. The vigorous approach can get too tense, too striving, too goal-orientated. You’re fixed on a future success, that’s where your mind really is, it’s not on the koan at all. You overtire yourself and you collapse and you’re not able to practise for the next twelve hours. Overdoing it is not good. But too casual, too relaxed, and it can just slip into laziness; might as well just get out a deck chair and a novel mightn’t you? Sit by the fountain and, yeah! Aha, around the room there seems to be some recognition of that one!
There is a deliberate practice to be applied, there is a method, and we pick up the method and we make use of it. But we have to tune it appropriately to our situation. If we’ve got a lot of energy and stamina we could indeed practice more vigorously and that’s what Master Sheng Yen recommended if you had the energy to do it. But equally if you haven’t got the energy to do it, don’t try and do it; you’ll just tire yourself out and collapse and waste lots of time recovering. Practise according to your ability.
Self-confrontation requires a certain amount of energy and commitment and dedication and determination, and there are some strong phrases used in relation to this practice: Great Vow; Great Determination; Great Doubt. Great Vow means that you really are determined to push through with this practice. It’s not something you’re treating lightly, casually, just as a cultural experience. You’re here to practice. You’re here to get somewhere. Where that somewhere might be shouldn’t be too fixed in the mind because you might be having the idea of getting enlightened, whatever that means. You might be having the idea, “I’m going to fix something in myself ”. The practice isn’t fixed in that sort of way. It takes you, as you’ve already discovered, around some surprising routes and corners. Don’t have an idea of a specific destination, instead have an idea of doing the practice. The vow is to do that practice, it’s not to reach a specific goal. You’ve got a sense of the practice being worth doing, based on your own personal experience and perhaps also on your understanding of and confidence in the Buddha’s teaching. We could use the word ‘faith’ as well, Great Faith, though ‘faith’ is a tricky word for some of us. We have a confidence that this method is worth persisting with. We have a confidence that meditation is worth doing. With Great Faith, Great Vow, we’re going to make good use of the time. We’re not going to waste it.
Great Determination is sometimes phrased as Great Angry Determination, which gives you a sense of the vigour of it. You don’t have to go around the place shouting and raging, it’s not that sort of a thing, but you have to have that sense of strength, of energy, “I really am going to stick at this and push it through”.
And then the Great Doubt. This is not something you can create, but it’s something which may arise from what you might call the smaller doubt. It starts from just being intrigued, curious about the koan. Curious even about, “What made me pick this koan? What was going on there? Hmm, this one stood out to me more than the others, I wonder why?”. Maybe an inkling of something in you is revealed. “Hmm yeah, there’s something unresolved in me. I can’t find a way to resolve it. I’ve spent years trying to resolve it”. And ‘doubt’, not in the negative sense of, “I’m never going to resolve it”, it’s more in the sense of, “I don’t know, I need to know, I need to sort this out. I can’t carry on not knowing”.
As we penetrate through these various layers of our personality, and our twists and history and so on, there’s still yet more unknown. Even though we make discoveries, and we do make discoveries, we find ourselves still up against not knowing. The traditional phrasing in Chan is not knowing about birth and death. Not knowing where we come from at birth, not knowing where we go to at death. We might phrase it differently. We might say we don’t know who we are. We don’t understand life. We don’t understand death. We come up against things that we find we can’t break through, but we feel that we must break through. How can we live if we don’t know what life is? How can we live without an understanding of who we are, and what birth and death are. How can we know how to live? Of course we can just bumble along, but are we living the right way? These are not so easily pushed through. The sense of ‘not knowing’ increases as we realise we are not going to pass through so easily. Also the sense of ‘needing to know’ increases.
This is now edging towards the Great Doubt. There are various descriptions of this and one of these is that it’s like having a red hot iron ball stuck in your throat. You can’t cough it up; that will burn your mouth. You can’t swallow it; that will burn your stomach. That may be a rather violent image but it conveys that sense of, “I’ve got to do something but I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do, but I can’t just do nothing”. It conveys that sense of urgency but also of stuckness, there’s no obvious way to go; “I don’t know, but I must know”.
The red hot iron ball is a rather violent image, and Master Sheng Yen once changed it. He said, well it doesn’t have to sound so violent; it could be you’ve got a sweet stuck in your throat and you can’t move it. Still this sense of something stuck – something has got to be fixed but can’t be fixed. The Great Doubt.
If you reflect upon some of the issues you’ve been touching in yourself, in some cases these are very significant issues in terms of how it is to be you in the world. Are you being you, or are you somehow being not you? This is important, maybe this is very important. Maybe the Doubt arises in relation to, “I’m just not the way I could be or should be. This is not me. I’ve lost me. I can’t find me”. Practice can take you to that point and then you may get to feeling, “How ridiculous, I don’t know who I am. This has got to be sorted. I can’t find a way through, but I can’t ignore it”. This relates to what I mentioned previously about the attention getting sharper and sharper. You're desperate for clues to resolve this doubt, so you're paying attention to everything in case it helps you to break through. So you notice everything, but nothing helps you. It's just, “Oh yeah, it was that”. Thoughts arise and are noticed but they don't help you. It's not to be solved through thought.
The practice pushes you in this direction, for different people at different speeds and with different intensities, different strengths. This is all very very individual – this isn't a prescription that you should end up in this way. This is a description of what might happen so that if it happens you have a sense of what's going on. It's not something you can make happen, but you can set yourself up for an intense practice by practising diligently, consistently, persistently, not slacking, not weakening. But where it actually goes is entirely individual so we have to see how that turns out. At some point this doubt can shatter – suddenly, you have broken through, you do understand, you do see, you do know how to live, you do know what life is. It didn't come about through ideas, through thought, through anything. You just reached a point where you just stopped getting in the way. Up until then you've been in the way. Your ideas and fixed views have been in the way, and the koan has pointed them out to you, and you have relinquished them – you are free.
The Four Noble Truths
- The Four Noble Truths offer us a useful way of understanding this process. The first truth is that we tend to never be satisfied with what is, the strength of that dissatisfaction varying from little niggles to heavy suffering. We may cope with this, in part, especially where it is particularly painful or seemingly unresolvable, by suppressing awareness of it. But the poetry or imagery of the koan may penetrate our defences and bring our dissatisfaction to awareness.
- When the mind is provoked by the koan into awareness of its own state, we perceive the second truth, that we are mired in ignorance craving and aversion. We notice how we tie ourselves in knots, wanting things to be different, wanting impossible things, ruminating and scheming and despairing.
- The third truth tells us it is possible to be free from all this. This may seem hard to believe, particularly when we are in the midst of suffering. But we do each have small experiences of release, from occasions when we have let go of our fight with reality and accepted things as they are. We can see, theoretically at least, that it may be possible to extend this principle to more challenging matters.
- Fourthly we are offered a path, an Eightfold Path covering wisdom, ethics, and mental cultivation,which helps usto release our troublesome fixed views and attitudes. In a retreat there is clearly an emphasis on mental cultivation, but all other parts of the path are also in play and taken together we can find liberation. Admittedly it isn’t always easy to find our way through but it is possible if we persist and are willing and able to experience and confront whatever presents itself to our awareness.
With thanks to the transcriber: Sian Thomas
