The other day someone who was planning to give a class on Zen asked me what I thought about the stories of the old Zen masters.
Strange Stories
He wanted to know just how seriously he should take all the strange and often absurd examples they make as enlightened teachers: the unprovoked hitting of students with a stick, the speaking in paradoxes or just plain nonsense, the unpredictable swinging between shouting and silence.
In one story a master cuts a cat in two to make his point, in another the renown teacher ignores any question asked to him, while another famously states that you should kill the Buddha if you meet him on the way.
My friend wanted to know what to do with all of this. Should he take them seriously, or just brush them off as the bizarre antics of another time and culture? Or perhaps he should use them as the funny and irreverent lure that will interest new students in Zen teachings and practice?
While he was speaking I thought of the saying of the great ninth century Chinese Zen master Yunmen as an example of what he was worried about. He was asked by a student, "What is Buddha?"
The question can be understood as asking what is enlightenment, what is the path, what is the meaning of life or what are we doing in the world?
The student was asking the big question - What is it all about, anyway? Why am I here? It's a question that comes to everyone at some point in their lives, and for some, on a daily basis.
'Buddha' translates as 'awakened one,' and so asking what is Buddha means asking what is it to be fully awake in life.
One Liners
Yunmen gave his famous one-liner: "A shit-wiping stick." In ancient China a stick was used to wipe one's behind after going to the toilet, so the modern equivalent would be a piece of toilet paper.
What do you do with a statement like that? Laugh at it, okay, that's a start. Throw it away, into the toilet; perhaps.
But there's something to remember here with all of the masters' sayings, and it is that they have been preserved by the tradition and passed down over many hundreds of years. There must be something more to this answer of Yumen's than its shock value.
That would have lasted as a joke for a few years, but it's not enough to have it passed down from generation to generation of serious seekers.
The Zen masters of old wanted one thing from their students - that they would wake up to their original nature, their Buddha nature. They didn't want to amuse or frighten, unless doing so would help the student become more aware and sure of her path of awakening.
The Effect Of Abrupt Sayings
The abrupt sayings are teaching tools derived from the teachers' compassionate attitude towards their students. If a student was slapped across the face, or hit with a stick, or told to bug off, this was not as an example of what should be done to others. It was a specific case of knowing what to say and do for an individual student at her unique juncture in life.
Usually the stories end up with the student becoming awakened after the interaction. The example the teacher is handing down across the ages as the common approach to all students, to all people, is one of great compassion for their individual needs on their unique paths. Each story is a beautiful example of how compassion adapts from person to person to help them best.
The student who asked Yumen what is Buddha was in need of the answer he received. Perhaps he had a very exalted idea of what the path was, that being spiritual meant something so pure and removed from all the daily facts of life. He probably could only meditate in a place that was absolutely quiet, and in total order. If anything disturbed his peaceful corner, like the phone ringing or a car honking outside then his meditation would be ruined. Is this scenario at all familiar?
Yumen shakes him up by telling him, find Buddha in the toilet. If you don't find your path wiping your behind on the toilet, then you won't likely find it outside in your meditation corner or on a mountain retreat.
All Life Is One
Yumen reminds us that the spiritual path is all of life, or it is none of it. That's the essence of Zen, which is non-duality. The whole world is our meditation corner, and all of life is our spiritual path.
So when he said "a shit-wiping stick" he was really giving the most compassionate and helpful answer he could to that student.
If we divide our lives into what is spiritual and what is mundane or secular, then there's a good chance that a certain tension will creep into our lives. The mundane will impose upon the spiritual, and we will end up resenting the time we have to spend in those things. Like washing the dishes, doing laundry, chopping vegetables, or cleaning the toilet.
What the Zen masters offer us is a vision of unity, of wholeness, where the world and our lives cannot be divided up into pieces that don't fit together. Instead, it is all one path, the path of compassionate awakening.
There is not a moment when we are not engaged in spiritual practice, and the more we ask the question, "What am I doing here?" the more life opens up in its infinite possibilities.