Seon Dogs Play Chain Gang Shastras by Matthew Dewey

I think everyone feels to the marrow of their bones the longing to be free of suffering. That longing is the wellspring of all art, true religion, and science. We all want to be free of having to go through this endless cycle of sickness, old age, and death. Enough already! In our fear of old age, sickness, and death, we shine our devotion on birth and place our hopes in youth, forgetting that without death, there could be no birth, without sickness, no health, and without old age, no youth. But with practice, we can re-integrate these extremes into one natural, whole, undivided mode of experience where birth and death are merely points in a continuum, like the poles of a globe. Round and round we go! On closer inspection, you can begin to see, too, that those polar points aren't necessarily the most meaningful -- aren’t even necessarily real poles. What if birth and death are nothing more than shadows of an illusion? If so, what is that illusion, and why does it exist? Where does it come from?

Temples are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

-- William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”

In the American prison system, inmates are sometimes forced to do physical labor. In fact, there is a long history of prison labor in America. Many stretches of that country’s railroads were built by men, mostly Black, chained together at the ankles, swinging sledgehammers. To stay together, and to make the torture more bearable, these chain gangs would often sing or chant together, using the madness of their situation to drive the song, and using the measures of the song to regulate the hammer swings. Slaves also practiced this music-making in the cotton and tobacco fields of the Old South. As you can imagine, most of the songs and chants they invented had a highly spiritual nature. In fact, the Negro Spiritual, born in slavery, is considered a major genre of American music. In it are real voices of real prisoners and slaves with the most urgent imaginable yearning to be free.

In Zen traditions it has often been said that a practitioner should hunger for liberation as a person dying in the desert craves cool water and shade.

The canon of Buddhist scriptures is divided into three pitaka, or baskets, which is why it is called the Tripitaka. The first “basket” contains monastic regulations. In the second basket are all the (more than ten thousand) sutras, or discourses, of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived in modern-day Nepal and northern India around 2500 years ago. The third basket contains shastras, or explications of the sutras, many of them written not by monks, but by lay practitioners, scholars and the like.

When Bodhidharma (5th – 6th century CE) went east from India into China, he was appalled to find that Buddhism in that country had been reduced into a pointless system of politics and merit. When the Emperor of China pointed out to Bodhidharma how many temples he had built and how many monks he supported, he asked, “How much merit have I earned for myself? Which heavenly realm will I be reborn into?” Bodhidharma told this Emperor, to his face, that he had bought himself a long-term round trip ticket to hell. Bodhidharma then went north and sat in a cave above the legendary Shaolin Temple. He sat in that cave staring at a blank rock wall for nine years. One day a monk named Hui K’o came to the cave entrance. He stood and waited there in heavy snowfall. He waited for several days. Bodhidharma did not acknowledge him. Finally, Hui K’o is said to have cut off his arm and thrown in at Bodhidharma’s feet. “Master!” he cried, “The pain is killing me! Please, ease my mind!”

“Show me your mind,” replied Bodhidharma, “and I’ll ease it.”

“But I've searched everywhere for my mind, and I can’t even find it!”

“Then it appears I have set it at ease.”

At these words, in the language of Dyana (Sanskrit), Ch’an (Chinese), Seon (Korean), or Zen (Japanese) Buddhism, Hui K’o’s mind shot open like lightning, which is a fancy way of saying, he Got It.

Bodhidharma became Ch’an Buddhism’s First Patriarch. Hui K’o, his first student, became its Second.

Dyana means “concentration”, reflecting the emphasis in the Zen tradition on meditation and continual presence of mind.

Seon is pronounced “sun”.

In one major lineage of Seon Buddhism, the master gives his or her student a riddle and tells the student that he or she must solve it. The riddle cannot be solved through rational thought. This riddle, called in Japan a koan and in Korea a kong-an or hwadu, defies dualistic categorizations. If the student offers an intellectual answer, he or she will be rudely rebuffed – sometimes even hit with a stick! In the words of Seung San, a recently deceased Korean master, “If you say ‘Yes’, I’ll hit you 30 times! If you say ‘No’, I’ll hit you 30 times! If you remain silent, I’ll still hit you 30 times!” There is no exit left or right, up or down, north, east, west, or south. Somehow the student must “penetrate” the deepest mystery of the riddle on a completely intuitive level, and then demonstrate that attainment. This method forces the student to exhaust the possibilities of logical reasoning, step into the Great Unknown beyond its bounds, and thereby sever the addiction to concepts. It's a dangerous method. An unready student in the hands of an incompetent or unethical teacher runs the risk of serious psychological harm. As the Indian mystic Osho put it, koan practice culminates in a kind of assisted metaphysical suicide. A proper environment and correct guidance are essential. A koan should never be undertaken alone.

Here is a very popular koan in Korea – it’s called the Mu kong-an:

A monk went up to Master Joju and asked, “Does even a dog have Buddha-nature?”

In typical fashion, Joju hollered: “MU!!!”

Joju (Jp. Joshu, Ch. Chao Chou) was a great Ch’an Buddhist master who lived centuries ago in China. “Mu” is a Chinese character meaning “no, not, has not”. The Buddha claimed that all beings, from the tiniest bugs to the mightiest mammals, have Buddha-nature. So who is correct – Joju, or the Buddha? If you say “Joju”, I’ll hit you 30 times! If you say “The Buddha”, I’ll hit you 30 times! Even if you remain silent, I will hit you 30 times! Who is correct? What is the meaning of “Mu”? You don’t know? Go drink tea! You already drank tea, you say? Then you didn’t really drink it, did you? Now, go drink tea!

This is the same Joju who was once coming out of the outhouse, hitching up his pants, when an earnest young monk rushed up and implored him, “Master, what is Buddha?” At that moment, Joju just happened to be looking at some sticks nearby that were used to mix the monks’ urine and feces in buckets before treating it for fertilizer.

“Master, master, what is Buddha? I must know! Tell me, please!”

“Dry shit on a stick,” was Joju’s reply.

A sun dog is an optical illusion that occurs under special atmospheric conditions. Sort of like me and you.

A camera crew from Korean Broadcasting System were on location to tape the sessions for a documentary, "Zen Story", celebrating the Buddha’s birthday in May.

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