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The Buddha's Second Koan [1]
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Date: 2023-07-16
All Buddhists know the koan of suffering, and the Great Awakening. We pay far less attention to what came next, the koan of teaching. Without it there would have been no Buddhism. Most of us don’t get past the first deep kensho to teaching others, but we all need to know about it and express our extreme gratitude at every opportunity.
The Mucalinda Sutta describes the newly-minted Buddha continuing his meditation with a bit of help from a Cobra King. He continued this further meditation for more than two months, wrestling with the question of explaining the inexplicable, aka effing the ineffable, before the Blessed one found the method of Skill in Means to lead people to the Truth without being able to describe it.
We often compare it to explaining color to a man born blind, who then has an operation to gain sight, and is amazed to see what colors really are, compared with the inadequate descriptions.
In Zen we do not have such an operation to perform. We have to first interest people in learning the truth and in penetrating their own koan themselves, and teach them the technique of meditation and the other methods of training. As I have explained before, the training gradually deepens, as attachments reveal themselves and can be set aside. We can explain a bit of that, but when it gets to the red-hot iron ball stage, where the trainee can neither swallow it nor vomit it out, we are beyond that. The thing itself has a few outer manifestations, but it remains the thing itself, or I should say not a thing, with no self.
The best we can say is, try it. You’ll like it.
All koans are upaya, as are all of the Buddhist scriptures and a multitude of other forms of teaching. There is therefore, in the Zen koan tradition, no single upaya koan to pass.
Among the notable nagas of Buddhist tradition is Mucalinda, nagaraja and protector of the Buddha. In the Vinaya Sutra (I, 3), shortly after his enlightenment, the Buddha is meditating in a forest when a great storm arises, but graciously, King Mucalinda gives shelter to the Buddha from the storm by covering the Buddha's head with his seven snake heads.[20]
This is also recounted in the Mucalinda Sutta.
Thus have I heard. At one time the Lord was staying at Uruvela beside the river Nerañjara at the foot of the Mucalinda Tree, having just realized full enlightenment. At that time the Lord sat cross-legged for seven days experiencing the bliss of liberation. Now it happened that there occurred, out of season, a great rainstorm and for seven days there were rain clouds, cold winds, and unsettled weather. Then Mucalinda the naga-king left his dwelling place and having encircled the Lord's body seven times with his coils, he stood with his great hood spread over the Lord's head (thinking) to protect the Lord from cold and heat, from gadflies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and the touch of creeping things. At the end of those seven days the Lord emerged from that concentration. Then Mucalinda the naga-king, seeing that the sky had cleared and the rain clouds had gone, removed his coils from the Lord's body.
We don’t have to bother ourselves about these mythical accretions, but the tradition that the Buddha continued meditating after his Awakening is genuine. It was only after he penetrated the method that he sought out his former disciples and preached to them, as recounted in the Dhammacakkappavatana Sutta, the Sutta of Turning the Wheel of Dhamma. This was his first application of upaya, and the sutta tells us that all five disciples awakened on the spot, creating the Bhikkhu Sangha.
The Burning House
The most famous case of upaya is the Burning House parable in the Lotus Sutra. One end of a large house is on fire, and there are children in the other end who refuse to come out when warned. So the Blessed One proposes that their father offer them big, beautiful toys (goat-carts, deer-carts and ox-carts) to entice them out, and in the tale, it works. Then he presents each one with a large bejeweled carriage drawn by a pure white ox.
Did he lie to them? Some choose to argue this point rather than rejoice at saving the children, and giving them far more than they were expecting. Never mind the easily distracted.
Now, we have a vicious, singleminded minority stuck in the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion,
and we cannot offer to rescue them with empathy and unselfishness and Wokeness. But we can help, and we are offering to rebuild their world and their society around them to the betterment of all. They love the results that come to them, even as they reject the process and object vehemently to Those People getting a share.
x Bidenomics is so successful that Congressional Republicans are taking credit for its results. pic.twitter.com/Bwk3f3kgaV — The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 13, 2023
How many of the viciously entitled will actually come out of their fires and vote for President Joe the Coolest of His Name we don’t know. But we for sure have a third of their GenZ children, and increasing numbers of their oppressed women and elders.
In the Sutra we are talking about leading people to and through the koan to awakening, which can be done by several means. We can talk about the disciple’s route, as in the 18 schools of ancient Buddhism, and the surviving Theravada. We can talk about awakening through one’s own efforts, as in the Buddha’s first kensho. But stopping there, at the pratyekabudda level, without teaching, would be a great shame. And we can talk about returning to samsara to assist all other sentient beings, as the Buddha did when he was a Bodhisattva.
Short Morning Service at Shasta Abbey
Now, it is a grievous error to be proud of whichever path you choose, and to look down on those following another virtuous path. Many fell into this error in the past, disparaging the disciple’s path as the Lesser Chariot, Hinayana, and puffing up the Greater Chariot, Mahayana.
Oh, you can’t get to Heaven
In a char-i-ot
‘cuz a char-i-ot
Don’t make the cut. I ain’t gonna grieve my Lord no more.
I AIN'T GONNA GRIEVE MY LORD NO MORE-YOU CAN'T GO T HEAVEN Rockin Chair Roller Skate Lyric Word song
As Dogen Zenji put it,
When the opposites arise, the Buddha Mind is lost.
In Japan they say that Other Power Buddhism, notably Pure Land, is for those suffering from the delusion of inadequacy, while Self Power Buddhism, notable Zen, is for those suffering from the delusion of adequacy. There there is Buddhism without getting tied up in Self and Other.
Well, good. That’s what we can explain about upaya. Now for the koan.
The question is how to explain the inexplicable. So first you have to find that inexplicable yourself, whether through the koan of suffering, or Mu, or One Hand (NOT clapping, as we have noted) or just the Koan of Daily Life and pure meditation, allowing thoughts to come and go while not getting tangled in them.
So let’s assume that. If not for you, then at least for whoever else has made that beginning.
The inexplicable can be expressed in many ways that make sense to others who have encountered it.
My barn has burned down.
Nothing hides the Moon.
where the barn is the repository of useless thoughts, and the Moon stands for reality, truth, Dharma.
or
There is, Oh, Monks, an Unborn, Uncreated, Not Made, Not Formed. If there were not an Unborn, Uncreated, Not Made, Not Formed, there would be no escape from the Born, the Created, the made, the formed.
Nibbana Sutta
Upaya can be expressed in every form of teaching: The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Noble Path, the Precepts, the Perfections, compassion for all sentient beings, every koan in the koan books, the Koan of Daily Life…
But you must find your own version, first for yourself, with the help of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, then for others.
Now, more than ever, we must be mindful of the often-repeated advice
Study in detail.
THE THREE REFUGES & THE FIVE PRECEPTS| CHANTED BY BHANTE INDARATHANA 三皈依 五戒
Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi
Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi
Saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi
I go to the Buddha as my refuge.
I go to the Dhamma (His Doctrine) as my refuge.
I go to the Saṅgha (His Holy Order) as my refuge.
For the second time…
For the third time…
I undertake the rules of training, to teach myself not to create suffering.
Saṅgha : Appamādena sampādetha
Strive on diligently with mindfulness at all times.
[END]
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