In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha predicted a future Buddhahood for most of his followers yet both his cousin and personal attendant, Ananda, and his son, Rahula, had to wait until after the others before the Buddha made predictions concerning them. In his "A Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra," Nikkyo Niwano interprets this as indicating the difficulty inherent in teaching those close to oneself. Mere words are then insufficient because those close to us will be more influenced by our everyday behaviour and manner, and are exposed to all our conduct, not just our guarded best.
In the Lotus Sutra the Buddha predicted a future Buddhahood for most of his followers yet both his cousin and personal attendant, Ananda, and his son, Rahula, had to wait until after the others before the Buddha made predictions concerning them. In his "A Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra," Nikkyo Niwano interprets this as indicating the difficulty inherent in teaching those close to oneself. Mere words are then insufficient because those close to us will be more influenced by our everyday behaviour and manner, and are exposed to all our conduct, not just our guarded best.
"However exemplary our conduct may be at times, if we are ordinarily selfish and hateful in our dealings, we may hardly expect much effect for good. Only if we are good examples through the twenty-four hours of the day, may we expect to bring to our way the people who live and work around us."
Although I am not concerned here with predicting the Buddhahood of anybody, the message is clear: as lay practitioners who do not yet have the stature of the Buddha, we should anticipate difficulties in our relationship with others, and especially with our families, friends, and colleagues. Whilst we train (because we are aware, and perhaps to some extent have experienced that there is much value in training) those close to us see only the outward signs, which may be weak at our stage of training. If we try to explain in "mere words", it may be that our behaviour contradicts us and we end up not convincing anyone.
Of course the answer to this is to continue to deepen our practice until we manifest our inward progress unselfconsciously. Unfortunately that doesn't answer the question of how to deal with the world in the interim!
If we wish to facilitate lay Zen training these are important areas which we must address. If we do not, then we will risk distraction to our own practice as we deal with an environment which may be unsympathetic, perhaps even hostile. Unless we are skilful in our interactions we also risk misleading others about the value of Zen. Probably this is one of the main values of a monastic system for those who are able to enter it: namely a supportive environment relatively isolated from unsympathetic and hostile influence.
For most of us monasticism is not an option. There is not as yet a strong culture of Zen in the West and by the time most of us discover it we already have entanglements with families and so on. This is why it seems so important to address the issue of facilitating lay training, as there will always be many for whom lay training is the only reasonable path. Yet there appears to be no model from the past or from elsewhere that seems fully appropriate.
Let us not fall into the trap of saying "Poor me, I can't be a monk and so I can never do very well." The majority of the apparent differences between monastic and lay training lie in our own perceptions and stereotypes, which don't bear closer analysis. For example; "Monks are dedicated, professional, full-time practitioners, whilst we are amateurs, part-timers, with many distractions." But, varying in exact style according to their particular tradition, monks have many "household chores" to do, administration of monasteries, interactions with other monks and lay people, planning of teaching sessions etc. True, monks may find it easier to get extra time for sitting meditation, but sitting is not the only form of practice, and lay practitioners have the advantage of their training being based in the rich variety of experience of everyday life, and are much less likely to be lulled into a sort of "false serenity," as they are challenged every day by their lives. Perhaps coming to understand and experience that "vexation is Bodhi" is likely to be ultimately more thorough in the testing environment of the marketplace than in a monastery.
I am not intending to decry the monastic system, but simply to point out that lay persons need not be second-rate practitioners. Whilst we may appear to have some extra difficulties compared to monks, in many cases if these are properly understood we can use them to our advantage. Even so we should clarify and respond to those areas where we could be at a disadvantage, and I would include the following:
- As indicated in the introduction, we must learn how to be practitioners in a social environment which may not understand our intentions and may not be supportive. This includes both the problem of how we may feel isolated in our practice, and how others see us and learn from us.
- Feeling isolated may lead to us splitting our lives into a duality of meditation sessions versus ordinary samsaric life, without realising that it is possible and important to integrate the two. If we allow such a split then we are truly part-time hobbyist practitioners.
- To guide us away from such errors we need teachers who are accessible to us, and who understand these problems. We could include as teaching the lay support derived from meditation groups and their members as well as from more formally recognised teachers. Should we then look to have teachers who are also lay practitioners, and what difference would it make compared to having a monk as a teacher?
No doubt there are other issues, but I choose these partly because they seem to stand out from my own personal history. I have in the early years been very isolated in my practice, and thus I acquired initially a rather skewed view. Although I seem to be coming through alright so far, I wonder how many others with a similar history may have fallen by the wayside, and whether this could have been avoided if there was a better system of lay training available.
In common with many other practitioners, my practice started rather haltingly, and I was initially a "hobbyist" practitioner. I came across Zen virtually by chance and was curious to see if there was anything in it. I was open-minded enough to consider it a possibility that people could have experiences for which there were no words, since words can only convey meaning in relation to something which is already held in common between the participants. I then heard of Maenllwyd and the Western Zen Retreats and was offered the tantalising hint that perhaps here was a place where I could personally have such an experience rather than just reading words which always admitted that they were failing to describe it properly.
I was fortunate enough to have such an experience, in a small way, on my first retreat, and, whilst this encouraged me to return, I was enough of a sceptic to not accept that this proved all of Buddhism to be correct. May be, I thought, this was merely the result of a few days away from home in a strange place doing unusual things and hardly talking? But, as I continued to return to Maenllwyd, I felt that it was right to continue meditating for a while after a retreat in case that deepened or continued the experience. Later it seemed good to restart meditating before a retreat so that I arrived already partly calmed at the beginning. But even when the end of the meditation after one retreat ran into the meditation leading up to the next retreat, so that my sitting was regular over a longer period, I was still just considering retreats as being proper meditation, regarding this as separate from the rest of my life, and so I was a hobbyist rather than one following a path. Perhaps I was aware that to take it any more seriously could have major implications for my life, and perhaps require confronting the disinterest or animosity of others, and so I managed to ignore John's nudges in that direction.
It is difficult to say at what point my attitude changed. I do remember that after one particular retreat, it occurred to me that I was finding so much in my meditational experience that had parallels in Buddhist doctrines that it was becoming unreasonable to remain a sceptic. And yet I was not yet ready to say that I was Buddhist, and in fact I wasn't even sure what it meant to say that I was Buddhist. I wasn't so sceptical that I had to wait until I had absolutely everything my own way, and I was able to accept the uncertainty of knowing that there were some doctrines that seemed as though they were never likely to come to life for me. (For example I suspected that ideas of rebirth were "skilful means" useful in the cultures in which Buddhism developed and that it didn't matter that I wasn't prepared to take them literally). Even so, I felt a huge gap between acknowledging that my experiences of being on retreat were related to Buddhist practice, and calling myself a Buddhist (which might imply changes in my life, and taking on concepts and commitments which I only hazily understood and preferred not to get involved with).
I started to read avidly from many different traditions to get a wider grasp of what Buddhism was about. As I had been splitting practice from my daily life, and avoiding any aspects that threatened to impinge on it, I found great emphasis on aspects which diverged widely from my practice so far. For example, I had been practising out of a sense of curiosity, perhaps even adventure, and finding interesting experiences and solutions to personal problems. Now I found myself reading about Precepts, Compassion, Gratitude, and other manifestations of religiosity which until now I had been studiously ignoring whenever they were pointed out to me. In one sense I wanted to run a mile to avoid all this, and yet I was reading and being reminded that these issues were very important in a tradition which I had more or less proved to myself and accepted. This became my next koan, and, although in a sense it was solved as I came to see that it was unrealistic to try to solve all my problems and be happy myself whilst neglecting all around me, it continues as the koan of daily life. How indeed do I live my life seeing suffering all around and yet being unable to relieve it all?
I find it difficult to say how things could have been better for me. Although perhaps through my selfish blinkers I delayed a broader understanding, if this had been thrust upon me too soon I might well have run away and got no understanding at all. And whilst I was lacking support from others I was at least able to proceed at my own pace. But I can't help feeling that there must be others for whom lack of support could lead to a lapsing of practice which is not restarted, and others who don't get beyond a one-sided view. There is a balance to be struck, and it is different for different people. This is a matter of skilful means, and there probably is no single ideal system of lay training which would be right for all. Just as there are varieties of systems of monastic training which are suited to different individuals, there need to be different lay models available.
Looking at the stereotypes of different traditions, we see the militaristic Japanese Rinzai contrasted with the softer, more gradual Soto, which yet may be more firmly based in daily life. Within Soto in the U.K. we find the again more Japanese style of the International Zen Association, using scriptures untranslated and emphasising posture, contrasted with the perceptual, humanistic and more devotional style of Throssel Hole Priory, which uses translated scriptures set to Western religious music. We also, of course, find the Western Zen Retreats, blending methods from various cultures, and the Chan practice of Master Sheng Yen orthodox, traditional, and yet seemingly flexible enough to blend comfortably into the modern West, partly translated and partly untranslated, and using a variety of methods according to the individual need.
All of these approaches have their adherents and may be right for them. Some practitioners may feel comfortable from the outset with an approach which may be scriptural or devotional, and which may have foreign cultural trappings, whilst others may rebel against this and benefit from a more gradual introduction. Some (such as myself) may gain an interest initially in exploring the psychological aspects, but if these people are not to get "stuck" in psychologising they will need to have a teacher who, whilst respecting and understanding this approach, has gone beyond it himself and can lead others beyond it when they are ready. Whatever the approach, it seems advisable to have flexibility so that it is not necessary for someone to lose contact with the basis of his training just because he finds it appropriate at that time to explore new methods, as will be the case from time to time. This is one reason why a teacher must "vow to master limitless approaches to Dharma."
This is perhaps why I feel particularly comfortable with Master Sheng Yen's school of Chan, as there seems to be a flexibility over method and approach, yet with a firmness of deep understanding which can see through difficulties without resorting to "toeing the party line" to hide areas of weaker understanding.
Does it matter whether the teacher is a lay person or a monk? Ultimately, of course, it doesn't matter at all. But there are differences before one reaches that ultimate understanding. For example, taking a monk as a teacher may for some people generate the feeling that only monks are proper practitioners, and that they themselves are second-rate and should really aspire to be a monk, but, "Oh dear, I can't, because of such-and-such, and so I will never be any good..." Some monks may have a good understanding of the problems of family life, and some lay teachers may not, but it will perhaps nevertheless be more readily taken for granted by the trainee that he is better understood by a lay person. Also, if it continues to be the case that the majority of practitioners in the West are laymen, then it seems likely that the main pool of those available to be teachers will likewise be laymen.
This raises the question of lineage. Respect for lineage has protected the transmission of the Dharma from corruption by self-proclaimed teachers. But whilst there have been and continue to be examples of lay teachers, in the main the lineage has been passed down through a monastic line. There are practical reasons for this - a master will have closest acquaintance with, and therefore a more sure judgement of, those with whom he is regular contact in a monastery, rather than with lay people. But it does not have to be so. As I have tried to emphasise, lay practitioners are not second- rate and can receive transmission when appropriate. An early historical example is that of the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-Neng. Although he had been pounding rice in a monastery kitchen for some months, when he received transmission he was still a lay man and was not ordained until many years later. In recent times Master Sheng Yen has felt able to transmit the authorisation to teach to a lay practitioner who was not even Chinese(1). And yet some who have examined this issue present a view against recognising lay teachers. Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennet has stated that she would not confirm kensho in a lay person, because, she assumes, the purpose of confirming kensho is to confirm that a priest is qualified to teach, and a lay person might misuse such a confirmation. There is logic in her view, but it appears to exclude the possibility of a lay person becoming a teacher other than by becoming a monk first. The Roshi here uses "monk" and "priest" almost interchangeably, as is perhaps understandable coming from the Japanese tradition, and follows Vinaya definitions of monk and priest which would appear to exclude laymen. The "Lay Ministers" in the meditation groups affiliated to Throssel Hole are specifically denied authorisation as teachers. Whether there is scope for this position to be reversed in future if individuals subsequently prove themselves fit is not stated.
Other ancient and modern authorities, including Master Sheng Yen, express a different view. The experience of kensho, "seeing the nature", is a moment of enlightened awakening revealing an individual's insight independently of whatever role or social position that person may have. It does not follow that such an individual can make a good teacher in a lineage or should be authorised to be one. Indeed many mistakes in transmission in the USA have pivoted around this issue.(2) A transmission as a teacher depends upon other matters besides the individual's insight such as ethical behaviour, balanced understanding of others and continued cultivation in humility as well as his or her situation and opportunity. It seems to be a mistake to suppose that an enlightenment experience, which may in any case be quite shallow, in some way implies perfection of conduct, awareness and ability to teach needy persons safely. Continued cultivation of the path is essential.(3)
Lay meditation groups can fall between their two functions of social support and Dharma teaching. If there is no authorised teacher, then respect for lineage can make sharing of Dharma rather tentative and superficial. A meeting of practitioners which studiously avoids Dharma discussion and provides only social support can seem a little frustrating, failing to respond to perceived needs for sharing difficulties in training, and risks seeming as superficial as social groups of non- practitioners.
None the less lay groups appear to be the way forward, and would be enhanced certainly if they had their own fully authorised teacher to give ready access to teaching for those who need it, perhaps as a sort of parallel of the monastery in the community. There is a balance to be struck here between welcoming those who are newcomers with only a tentative interest (but with a potential to progress), as against providing an environment which can respond to the deeper needs of more established practitioners. Leaders of lay groups may thus offer a variety of approaches according to needs e.g. introductory talks and meditation instruction for newcomers, with perhaps discussions and teachings which assume more background knowledge reserved for more experienced practitioners. This may seem rather elitist, but I have seen newcomers apparently frightened away because of being "thrown in at the deep end," when some simpler introduction might have helped them feel more comfortable. There may be several groups within an area, each following a different tradition as suits their members, and these should allow movement between groups as individuals feel open to different methods, but always remembering the value of persevering with a method rather than changing too readily because of apparent lack of success.
Opportunity for formal sitting is of course crucial. Lay practitioners often find difficulty getting to retreats (time off work, leaving the family, child-minding arrangements, etc.), but there is nevertheless no getting away from the importance of intensive retreat. Withdrawing from the world and going on retreat is not to deny the advantages that I have indicated of lay practice, but complements it. A place such as the Maenllwyd gives the opportunity for intensive practice with less risk of distraction from outside concerns, in preparation for returning to the world with practice strengthened and therefore more ready to engage the distractions of the world, hopefully even to no more consider them as "distractions". But daily practice is arguably even more important, and meeting fellow practitioners regularly for group sitting can have a peculiar power. Perhaps it is the discipline of sitting with others knowing that there is a schedule and that you are stuck with it and so you might as well get on with it, or maybe it is the intensity of knowing that you are with a group of like-minded practitioners when the rest of the week you feel isolated in your practice, or it could be simply that this is protected time in which you just know that you are definitely going to get on and practice, whereas at home there is always the possibility of distraction. If practice is erratic, attending a regular meeting provides the opportunity and stimulus to restart your practice, and this is reinforced with each attendance, even if attendances too are erratic. But ultimately daily practice has to be done by oneself, minute by minute, and one must come to cope with the isolation of practising alone whilst in a crowd. In the end one comes to see that whilst one is never actually truly alone, one must always do one's own practice completely alone.
The final topic that I would like to address is the "outward" aspect of training. Ultimately our training is to be done for the benefit of others, and we must thus ensure appropriate relations with others to facilitate this. The introductory quotation points to this problem, and it is not an easy one to solve. Many practitioners have families who do not understand or take an interest in their training. How should we respond to this situation? I remember John quoting a story of a Tibetan Geshe who felt that he was not conveying the teaching as well as he might have done had he stayed in Tibet. The Dalai Lama advised him simply saying that he should "manifest" better. This is appropriate advice, but unfortunately our audience may be less perceptive than those whom the Geshe was addressing, and our training not as deep. We must be extra mindful of our outward appearance which is what others judge us by. Alienating others does not help them or ourselves, and the lack of a national culture and background understanding of Zen and Buddhism means that we have to devise ways appropriate to our situation to introduce our path to our spouse, our children, and Western society generally, without imposing ourselves and our foreign seeming views on them.
If Zen is to flourish in the West, these issues of lay training must be faced. In the Western world I do not foresee a wholesale move towards monastic training yet, as Dogen remarked, "Pure zazen must be done" and the experience of intensive retreat is vital. Today there is much interest and serious intent amongst lay practitioners, and these deserve whatever support and teaching is appropriate to their needs. For some this may be simply tolerance as they make their own path, whilst others will need more social support and Dharma instruction. As far as possible we must find ways to accommodate all practitioners.
References
1 See NCF 1994. Transmitting the Lamp. p1-4.
2 See Lachs, S.1994. A slice of Zen in America. NCF 10,12-20. Bristol Chan Group.
3 See useful discussions in Buswell, R.E.1983. The Korean Approach to Zen: collected works of Chinul. University of Hawaii Press. Honolulu.
