Escaping the Trap of Delusion
by
Jan Chozen Bays
"What is the difference between Rinzai and Soto Zen,"
an earnest student asks me, "and which is better?" My simple answer
is that Rinzai practice is characterized by the study of koans, while Soto practice
is founded upon the practice of shikantaza. Because my teacher, Taizan Maezumi
Roshi, was taught by both Soto and Rinzai masters, he trained his students in
both styles. Here is a brief explanation of the two practices as I have come to
understand them.
Koans are a mysterious and diabolical device for drilling
down through layers of delusion, confusion, personal strategies and karmic tangles
to arrive at an experience (not an idea) of a stunningly simple and fundamental
truth. The goal is transforming, not collecting.
Training with koans is like
a game of pin the tail on the donkey, only in game, you are the donkey, who is
led blindfolded into a pitch-black room, spun around and told to go at it. You
stab and stab again, bump off walls you cannot see, fall down and pick yourself
back up and keep on groping. When you're exhausted and completely off guard, a
pin appears from nowhere and punctures you.
A koan is like a Chinese puzzle
ball made of opaque glass. You know there is a way to the center, but as many
times as you turn it over in your hands in any kind of light, you cannot see a
seam or feel a crack. You discard the ball in frustration, but then you find that
it has worked its way into your hara, your lower belly, where it sits, ticking
away like a time bomb in the machinery of the constructed self. It bides its time,
waiting for the mind to be at utter rest. Not a single human thought. Then an
unexpected jar or jolt-it could be the slightest thing, the sound of a key on
a table, a breeze or the sight of a single flower petal-and suddenly it explodes.
It takes a while before the mind realizes that something has occurred.
You
never know what will trigger the explosion. You never know what piece of the delusion
of "I, me and mine" it will take out. Koan work is like psychic surgery.
After it is over, the surface is intact, but something deep and diseased inside
has been removed.
A koan is not a problem you can "solve" with the
intellectual mind. Koans bypass the mind in order to solve the problem of "you."
Koan work is a lifetime process. You don't ever finish one of the old koans.
Although
shikantaza means "just sitting" it is far from meaning "just to
sit." I think that most people use the word to mean sitting without striving,
letting go of the ego's involvement in doing meditation with a goal in mind. This
is a very important aspect of practice in the success-driven West-to sit, relax
the mind and let go of the one who so badly wants to become someone different
and better. It is embodied in Uchiyama Roshi's saying, "Zazen is good for
nothing."
But I was taught that shikantaza is something different. Here's
how I explain it. We begin shikantaza with just one sense modality. Listening
is the easiest for most people. Start by listening to all the sounds within your
own body-the gentle sigh of your breath and soft thump of your heart and whatever
else you can hear. Don't miss a single sound. Thus begins the study of the self
of sound.
Now expand the container of listening to include every sound in the
room. Include all the subtle sounds as well as the obvious ones. People swallowing,
the hum of the air circulation system and lights, everything. Don't let the mind
label or talk about any of the sounds. Just listen to every sound, from its arising
through its full manifestation to its cessation. And don't stop listening to the
sounds in your body.
Now expand again as if the walls were transparent, and
make the container of listening as large as possible. Stretch the ears as far
as you can in all directions, not missing a single sound. Listen to all the sounds
within and without you, overt and subtle, without labels or thoughts, not missing
a single sound. And if someone comes into the room and makes a sharp noise or
talks loudly, include that but don't let the wide hearing collapse one bit. Keep
it extended out infinitely.
Now you are beginning to taste shikantaza, but
only with one sense. Next we add another sense, let's say touch. First be aware
of all the sensations of touch and temperature and movement on the scalp. For
example, can you be aware of individual hairs? Now add all the sensations of touch,
tension, temperature, etc., on the forehead. But while paying attention to the
forehead, be sure not to let go of clear awareness of the sensations of the scalp
or of all the sounds within and without you.
If you are able to expand to include
all of that, and then you bring in smell, taste and sight, you are going for broke.
Which
is the point. When you spend hours and then days completely absorbed in everything
outside of you, and remain completely uninterested in what goes on inside of you,
the individual self becomes a tiny and rather uninteresting icon down in the corner
of the immense screen of all that is. Finally, the individual self disappears.
Thus begins forgetting the self, and a great reversal occurs, like a glove
turning inside out. That which was "out" and "other" becomes
the all. You are suddenly aware that you have been paying attention to the wrong
body and mind all the years of your life. Your awareness begins to explore the
huge body and mind that we call the buddha body and the buddha mind. Everything
that is shows it to you-flashing it blindingly, shouting it deafeningly. No one
and nothing is excluded from this wondrous realm. Thus begins the freeing of our
own and everyone else's body, heart and mind from the trap of our delusion.
Jan
Chozen Bays is a resident teacher at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Oregon. She is
the author of several books, including Jizo Bodhisattva: Guardian of Children,
Travelers, and Other Voyagers.