Another meditation on Hongzhi's Acupuncture Needle of Zazen

A meditation on Hongzhi's Acupuncture Needle of Zazen

Hongzhi likes untouched function.
Action said to be action of Buddhas
past and present is to see all

in the ten directions without
reaching for the pry bar.
Without reaching for the pry bar,

just appreciate. See, appreciate,
settle in, sip tea. Fearlessly sipping tea
is a tiger's roar. The squirrel

out there watches a jay bury acorns.
He relentlessly digs and eats them.
The jay returns with more acorns.

The squirrel returns and digs.
I set down my cup, chuckling.
 

Hongzhi taught at the Tiantong Monastery for 30 years. He then emerged from the gates to thank his supporters, and returned inside and died. This reminds me a little of Huiyuan, Tao Yuanming and Lu Xiujing laughing together when they realized they had crossed the bridge over Tiger Creek, the boundary of Huiyan's temple's grounds, which he had vowed never to leave. [image: wikiart]

Acupuncture Needle of Zazen

The essential function of all buddhas,
the functional essence of all ancestors,
is to know without touching things
and illuminate without encountering objects.
Knowing without touching things,
this knowledge is innately subtle.
Illuminating without encountering objects,
this illumination is innately miraculous.
The knowledge innately subtle
has never engaged in discriminative thinking.
The illumination innately miraculous
has never displayed the slightest identification.
Never engaging in discriminating thinking,
this knowledge is rare without match.
Never displaying the most minute identification,
this illumination is complete without grasping.
The water is clear right down to the bottom,
fish lazily swim on.
The sky is vast without end,
birds fly far into the distance.

— Tr. Leighton and Wu

 

Dogen re-wrote Hongzhi's poem a couple of generations or so later:

The Needle of Seated Meditation

The important function for Buddha after Buddha
And the pivotal moment for ancestor after ancestor
Is to let it manifest without deliberately thinking about anything
And to realize it without creating complications.
 When one lets it manifest without thinking about anything,
Such a manifestation is naturally close to us:
When one realizes it without creating complications,
Such a realization is naturally a direct experience.
When that manifestation is naturally close to us,
There is not the least bit of defilement:
When that realization is naturally a direct experience
There is not the least difference between host and guest.
When the closeness is without the least bit of defilement,
That closeness is put aside and falls away:
When one directly experiences that there is not the least
distinction between host and guest,
Out of that experience come no set plans, as we diligently continue to train.
The water is so clear you can see down to the bottom,
 As fish swim by, just as fish do:
The sky is now boundless, penetrating the heavens,
As birds fly off, just as birds do.


— Tr. Nearman

Reality gives me cold toes.

 

Chiyono’s No Water, No Moon. Hidden Lamp, p. 37. Chiyono was a servant in a Zen convent who wanted to practice zazen. One day she approached an elderly nun and asked, “I’m of humble birth. I can’t read or write and must work all the time. Is there any possibility that I could attain the way of Buddha even though I have no skills?”

The nun answered her, “This is wonderful, my dear. In Buddhism there are no distinctions between people. There is only this – each person must hold fast to the desire to awaken and cultivate a heart of great compassion. People are complete as they are. If you don’t fall into delusive thoughts, there is no Buddha and no sentient being; there is only one complete nature. If you want to know your true nature you need to turn toward the source of your delusive thoughts. This is called zazen.”

Chiyono said, with happiness, “With this practice as my companion I have only to go about my daily life, practicing day and night.”

There are varied stories of Chiyono's life. Richard Bryan McDaniel, in Zen Masters of Japan, says: "One of Bukko’s students was the first Japanese woman to receive a certificate of inka. Her Buddhist name was Mugai Nyodai, but she is remembered by her personal name, Chiyono. She was a member of the Hojo family by marriage and a well-educated woman who long had an interest in the Dharma. After her husband died and her family responsibilities had been fulfilled, she went to study with the Chinese master."

He goes on to recount a longer version of the story told in Hidden Lamp, after warning us it is apocryphal, as Chiyono was of the lower samurai class, rather than of the Hisabetsu-buraku (discriminated hamlet class) as implied in both the story and in Hakuin's illustration above. 

Was she perhaps in a servant-like role as many new students are, in a training-monastery setting? Whether as a servant or a somewhat respectable widow, there is the implication that Chiyono must seek enlightenment with the handicap of actual or temporary (for training purposes) low status to be overcome.

There is also a story that when Chiyono was ready to begin her koan study with the master, her presence in the zendo was at first objected to by the monks, on the grounds that her beauty would distract them. And that to overcome this she burned her face with a hot iron rod. Some have noted an apparent sag in her face as depicted in her lifelike portrait sculpture as evidence of the truth of this story.

 

These two stories are related. But to continue.

Zen is grounded in work, both on and off the cushion. Work off the cushion is called samu. Monks and nuns are famous for their samu: sweeping, chopping wood and carrying water. Chiyono is known to have carried water.

After months of wholehearted practice, she went out on a full moon night to draw some water from the well. The bottom of her old bucket, held together by bamboo strips, suddenly gave way, and the reflection of the moon vanished with the water. When she saw this she attained great realization.

She wrote a realization poem.

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together,
And then the bottom fell out.
Where water does not collect,
The moon does not dwell.

I have been asked three questions in the presence of this koan.

1. What are you trying to keep together at this time of your life?
2. Where does the moon go when its reflection disappears?
3. Where do we go when we let go completely?

1. What I am trying to keep together at this time of my life is my body, with its diminishing capacity for activity/work, awareness, compassion, and kindness, largely because I feel I still have some responsibilities to family and community, including the sangha. My life has been greatly simplified due to bodily conditions: I don't drive or shop or handle finances, and am praised for shuffling around the block with my two sticks. "Got your phone? Okay, have fun."

I have grief and regret. There's not much to do about that but carry a few tiny blossoms to a cairn nearby. Some self-indulgence in this, I think, may be excused.

It's easy to vanish into an easy chair. Letting go, now, would be as simple as the decision not to try to stand up. But also I'm still capable of spouting verbal abuse, which originates right here in the body, a part of nature. Channeling my speech (and facial cues) away from such may be my final exercise in letting go.

2. I reflect on the moon's beauty in its path across the sky, and then I don't. The moment a thought is over, it's nowhere, especially as near-term memory paths erode in one's cortex.  In resting from even reflection we come to ground truth -- not by seeking to rest, but by the simple expedient of absent-mindedness. This could be called the practice of not practicing, for which, for our purposes, we may use the model of a pet rock.

3. We don't go anywhere at all.

The bucket's bamboo strap unwinds and its moldy bottom falls out. Icy well water sluices down mossy stone steps. My feet are wet. Reality gives me cold toes.

Hermiting

The heat having abated somewhat (may reach 80F next 2 days -- in Eugene OR in Oct!! -- but to continue) I'm spending a lot more time in the hut. It's a tool shed dating back to the 50s, rebuilt for zazen practice and teleconferencing with the sangha (we mostly only meet online). I grow vegetables close at hand, pick "weeds" for tea, and use the tiny kitchen quite a lot. The leukemia seems to be in stasis for now. I greet crows outside my window.

 

Makeshift interior walls, makeshift altar, makeshift nun. At 75 and newly fragile health-wise, I sit here at the computer and commingle with my peers in the form of streams of electrons.

The altar table behind me was my grandmother's telephone table. The veneer secretary at left once belonged to the neighborhood landlord in my grandmother's time; don't know how she ended up with it! Picture frames, left to right: Prajnaparamita, Dogen and Keizan, Manjushri, an Enso, and Mugai Nyodai.

The kitchen is just a rice cooker, micro sized microwave, electric kettle, and a few jars and cans and utensils, most of them in a little hand-me-down butcher block table. I do most of my cooking in my eating bowl set inside the rice cooker liner in an inch or so of water. Works great. Table in the left foreground was my grandmother's from the 1930s. I ran my forehead into it on my scooter when I was three and just about knocked myself out. 

I'm told I got up and tried again and again. Whirr, wham! Whirr, wham! There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Stepping outside. The han is a plaque a friend made for me. I don't use it very often as there is no one to call with it and it's too near the neighbors. But I like having it. The mallet is a leatherworker's mallet that I retrieved from a dumpster somewhere.

Manzoku-an (Hermitage of Enough) is a former tool shed at the end of what was once a long carport. It's nine by thirteen feet. I've built a little courtyard for it using framed reed mats. I have used this hut for part-time hermiting off and on for nine years, overlapping with the previous hut, Gogo-an (10X10'), which I used for about the same span, or for a combined total of eleven years.

 What have I learned from this activity? Not so very much; the skills for living simply -- even somewhat starkly -- were acquired in childhood, as my parents encouraged me in running wild in the woods. At thirteen I camped for a week on an island in a swamp in subzero weather, building a kind of beaver lodge for myself of sticks and leaves. I kept a fire going at the entrance, and chopped ice for water from the frozen creek with a hatchet.

As a young adult, I lived in a succession of yurts, vehicles and small travel trailers, moving from place to place for forestry contracting, and did not return to "civilization" until I was thirty-six. I then worked at a university for twenty-two years and retired, at fifty-nine, to farm an acre. Hand tools were the order of the day -- a return to simplicity.

When I began to study Zen with a teacher, I looked around the farm for a place to sit quietly out of the way, and the children's abandoned playhouse filled the bill. It did not take me long to move in a few items and begin cooking and even sometimes sleeping there as well as sitting zazen. This sort of thing just felt natural to me, and the family supported my efforts.

When I discovered an online sangha to sit with, I brought a laptop out to Gogo-an and practiced with them, even participating in an online ango and rohatsu. This was a change from hermiting -- or was it? Our routine was much like that of the Discalced Carmelite sisters, each in her own hut but gathering with the others for ritual. 

Along came the pandemic and my local sangha moved online as well, where it has stayed ever since. These groups have a bit of a Carmelite flavor. Many of the people with whom I sit zazen or sesshin live alone. Many others practice with the assent of family members, but most do sit alone in their choice of room (or sometimes outdoors), as teleconferencing tends to place each person in a box, containing mostly a face, with perhaps an altar and bookcase in frame.

This mode of being isolated in company is not unfamiliar to monks and nuns in a monastery or local sangha. Benedictines gather, but each is alone with God in the company of others, perhaps to the extent of wearing a hooded cowl, or in the case of nuns, a coif, wimple and veil. Muslims have the sajada, or prayer rug, again alone with God amid the multitude. Zen practitioners tend to sit in a row, all facing the same direction, each alone with Dharma. Every religious person is already a hermit.

Religion, as we tend to define it, may not be the whole Venn diagram here.

People who live alone generally, or find themselves alone with or among others (there are many single beds in apartments, houses and ship cabins), or even who find themselves walking to the waterfront to commune with gulls and the stench of the wharf, are also hermits. Never make the mistake of supposing that someone who stops only briefly to admire a daffodil has no important business there.

Some may think they do not have hermiting skills, but I think we all do. What we may lack is the expectation that we'll have to live simply for an extended period of time, which can take some planning and prioritization. And in fact, though I have done that, it's not really what I'm doing right now; the hut is fifty feet from a shared modern kitchen. 

But I like to practice living simply in the hut, to keep the skills up (y'know "just in case," or in case someone else needs to know the little that I know) and to support my Buddhist practice. I'm doing a lot of sits. I find they're good for me; I need centering. It's cheaper than psychotherapy.

As we find ourselves more and more constrained by our unwieldy modernity, with the likelihood of catastrophic weather events, pandemics and crop failures, we may make some effort, as is always commendable, to ease the burdens of those around us but cannot hope, as individuals, to remedy all. 

What we can hope to do on our small scale (along with whatever else we're up to) is recognize that much of the time, what we might call down time or at least our in-between times, is what Buddhists call practice, which I will provisionally term as hermiting. Prayer, recollection, meditation, sittin' at the dock o' th' bay, admiring a daffodil, these are things that most anyone can do as they come to them, but I think we also, many of us, recognize that there are skilled ways of going about solitude. We know skilled loners when we see them, whether in films, videos, or sidewalk encounters.

Your bedroom, your kitchen, your study (if you have one), your creekside path, your hut attached to the family home or in its back yard (see under hermitary) -- your brief alone time "amid the noise and the haste" is your practice place. Whatever practice you do there, may it flow as a spring of water of life for you, and may you, in your short time here, find whatever you may recognize as blessing.