Chapter Eighteen

HAKUIN:

JAPANESE MASTER OF THE KOAN

The closing era of the Japanese middle ages, in the decades following Ikkyu's death, is now known as the Century of the Country at War. Japan became a land of quarreling fiefdoms, and Zen, too, drifted for want of leadership and inspiration. The eventual reunification of the country late in the sixteenth century was led by a brutal military strategist named Oda Nobunaga (1534-82). As part of his takeover he obliterated the militaristic Buddhist complex on Mt. Hiei by one day simply slaughtering all its monks and burning the establishment to the ground, thereby ending permanently the real influence of Buddhism in Japanese politics. Nobunaga was succeeded by an even more accomplished militarist, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), who brought to the shogunate a flair for diplomacy and cunning compromise. Hideyoshi solidified Japan only to have yet another warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), maneuver its rule into the hands of his own family--inaugurating the two and a half centuries of totalitarian isolationism known today as the Tokugawa era (1615-1868). He also moved the capital to the city whose modern name is Tokyo, at last leaving historic Kyoto in repose.

Under the Tokugawa a new middle class of urban merchants and craftsmen arose, and with it came a version of Zen for common people, with masters who could touch the concerns of the working class. Among these beloved masters must certainly be remembered the monk Takuan (1573- 1645) from Ikkyu's rebuilt Daitoku-ji temple, who introduced Zen teachings to this new audience, and the wandering teacher Bankei (1622- 93), whose kindly, mystical interpretation of oneness through _zazen _earned him wide fame. Overall, however, Rinzai Zen remained spiritually dormant until the middle of the Tokugawa era, when there appeared one of the most truly inspired Zen teachers of all time.

The master Hakuin (1686-1769) was born as Sugiyama Iwajiro in Hara, a small village at the base of Mt. Fuji. He was the youngest of five children in a family of modest means, an origin that may have helped him understand the concerns of the poor. As he tells his story, he was seven or eight when his mother took him to hear a priest from the Salvationist Nichiren sect preach on the tormenting Buddhist hells. He was terrified and secretly began day and night reciting the Lotus Sutra (which claims to protect from the perils of fire or water those who chant the proper incantation). The fear of hell, with its boiling caldrons, so permeated his young mind that he even became leary of the traditional Japanese bath, then often taken in a round tub fired from the bottom with wood. He claimed this fear of the bath finally convinced him to become a monk.

_One day when I was taking a bath with my mother, she asked that the water be made hotter and had the maid add wood to the fire. Gradually my skin began to prickle with the heat and the iron bath-cauldron began to rumble. Suddenly I recalled the descriptions of the hells that I had heard and I let out a cry of terror that resounded through the neighborhood.

From this time on I determined to myself that I would leave home to become a monk. To this my parents would not consent, yet I went constantly to the temple to recite the sutras. . . .1_

But after several years of study and chanting, he was dismayed to find he still felt pain (when he tested himself one day with a hot poker). He resolved to intensify his devotion and at age fifteen he entered a local Zen temple (against his parents' wishes) and was ordained as a monk. Hakuin pursued his study of the Lotus Sutra, the primary scripture venerated at this temple (an illustration of how far Japanese Zen had traveled from its tradition of meditation and koans), but after a year he concluded it was just another book, no different from the Confucian classics. He therefore began to drift from temple to temple until, at nineteen, he experienced another spiritual crisis. In a book of religious biographies he came across the story of the Chinese monk Yen-t'ou (828-87), who had been attacked and murdered by bandits, causing him to emit screams heard a full three miles away. Hakuin was plunged into depression.

_I wondered why such an enlightened monk was unable to escape the swords of thieves. If such a thing could happen to a man who was like a unicorn or phoenix among monks, a dragon in the sea of Buddhism, how was I to escape the staves of the demons of hell after I died? What use was there in studying Zen_?2

He thereupon took up his staff and set out as an itinerant seeker, only to meet disappointment after disappointment--until finally he decided to put his future in the hands of chance. One day as the abbot of a temple was airing its library outside, Hakuin decided to select a book at random and let it decide his fate. He picked a volume of biographies of Chinese Ch'an worthies and opening it read of an eleventh-century Lin- chi master who kept awake in meditation by boring into his own thigh with a wood drill. The story galvanized Hakuin, and he vowed to pursue Zen training until enlightenment was his.

Hakuin claims that at age twenty-four he had his first really moving satori experience. He was in a temple in Niigata prefecture, meditating on the "Mu" koan (Q: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature? A: "Mu!"), and so intense was his concentration that he even forgot sleeping and eating. Then one day . . .

_

Suddenly a great doubt manifested itself before me. It was as though I were frozen solid in the midst of an ice sheet extending tens of thousands of miles. A purity filled my breast and I could neither go forward nor retreat. To all intents and purposes I was out of my mind and the _Mu _alone remained. Although I sat in the Lecture Hall and listened to the Master's lecture, it was as though I were hearing a discussion from a distance outside the hall. At times it felt as though I were floating through the air.

This state lasted for several days. Then I chanced to hear the sound of the temple bell and I was suddenly transformed. It was as if a sheet of ice had been smashed or a jade tower had fallen with a crash.3_

Elated with his transformation, he immediately trekked back to an earlier master and presented a verse for approval. The master, however, was not impressed.

_The Master, holding my verse up in his left hand, said to me: "This verse is what you have learned from study. Now show me what your intuition has to say," and he held out his right hand.

I replied: "If there were something intuitive that I could show you, I'd vomit it out," and I made a gagging sound.

The Master said: "How do you understand Chao-chou's _Mu_?"

I replied: "What sort of place does _Mu _have that one can attach arms and legs to it?"

The Master twisted my nose with his fingers and said: "Here's some place to attach arms and legs." I was nonplussed and the Master gave a hearty laugh.4

_

Again and again he tried to extract a seal from this master, but always in vain. One of these fruitless exchanges even left him lying in a mud puddle.

_One evening the Master sat cooling himself on the veranda. Again I brought him a verse I had written. "Delusions and fancies," the Master said. I shouted his words back at him in a loud voice, whereupon the Master seized me and rained twenty or thirty blows with his fists on me, and then pushed me off the veranda.

This was on the fourth day of the fifth month after a long spell of rain. I lay stretched out in the mud as though dead, scarcely breathing and almost unconscious. I could not move; meanwhile the Master sat on the veranda roaring with laughter.5

_

He finally despaired of receiving the seal of enlightenment from this teacher, although he did have further spiritual experiences under the man's rigorous guidance--experiences Hakuin interpreted, perhaps rightly, as _satori_. Feeling wanderlust he again took to the road, everywhere experiencing increasingly deep _satori_. In southern Ise he was enlightened when suddenly swamped in a downpour. Near Osaka he was further enlightened one evening in a temple monks' hall by the sound of falling snow. In Gifu prefecture he had an even deeper experience during walking meditation in a monks' hall. He also had a mental and physical collapse about this time, no doubt resulting from the strain of his intensive asceticism. After his father's death in 1716, he studied in Kyoto for a time, but the next year he returned to the Shoin-ji temple near his original home at Hara. Weary of life at thirty-two, he still was undecided about his future. Back at the temple where he had started, he no longer had any idea of what to do. Then a revelation appeared:

_One night in a dream my mother came and presented me with a purple robe made of silk. When I lifted it, both sleeves seemed very heavy, and on examining them I found an old mirror, five or six inches in diameter, in each sleeve. The reflection from the mirror in the right sleeve penetrated to my heart and vital organs. My own mind, mountains and rivers, the great earth seemed serene and bottomless. . . . After this, when I looked at all things, it was as though I were seeing my own face. For the first time I understood the meaning of the saying, "The [enlightened spirit] sees the Buddha-nature within his eye._"6_

_

With this dream he finally achieved full _satori_. He resolved that the old ramshackle temple would be his final home. He had found enlightenment there and there he would stay, his own master at last.

And sure enough, Hakuin never moved again. Instead, the people of Japan--high and low--came to see him. His simple country temple became a magnet for monks and laymen seeking real Zen. By force of his own character, and most certainly without his conscious intention, he gradually became the leading religious figure in Japan. By the end of his life he had brought the koan practice back to a central place in Zen and had effectively created modern Rinzai.

Hakuin was the legitimate heir of the Chinese koan master Ta-hui, and the first teacher since to actually expand the philosophical dimensions of Zen. It will be recalled that Ta-hui advocated "Introspecting-the- Koan" meditation, called _k'an-hua _Ch'an in Chinese and Kanna Zen in Japanese, which he put forth in opposition to the "Silent Illumination" meditation of the Soto school. Hakuin himself claimed that he first tried the quietistic approach of tranquil meditation (albeit on a koan), but he was unable to clear his mind of all distractions.

_When I was young the content of my koan meditation was poor. I was convinced that absolute tranquility of the source of the mind was the Buddha Way. Thus I despised activity and was fond of quietude. I would always seek out some dark and gloomy place and engage in dead sitting. Trivial and mundane matters pressed against my chest and a fire mounted in my heart. I was unable to enter wholeheartedly into the active practice of Zen.7

_

Thus Hakuin concluded that merely following Ta-hui's injunction to meditate on a koan was not the entire answer. He then decided the only way that Zen could be linked meaningfully to daily life was if a practitioner could actually meditate while going about daily affairs.

This idea was rather radical, although it probably would not have unduly disturbed the T'ang masters. Hakuin was again extending both the definition of enlightenment, as it intersects with the real world, and the means of its realization. He was saying to meditate on a koan in such a manner that you can continue your daily life but be oblivious to its distractions. He invoked the Chinese masters to support the idea.

_The Zen Master Ta-hui has said that meditation in the midst of activity is immeasurably superior to the quietistic approach. . . . What is most worthy of respect is a pure koan meditation that neither knows nor is conscious of the two aspects, the quiet and the active. This is why it has been said that the true practicing monk walks but does not know he is walking, sits but does not know he is sitting.8

_

Hakuin redefined meditation to include a physically active aspect as well as merely a quiet, sitting aspect. And under this new definition anyone, even laymen, could meditate at any time, in any place. Hakuin did not exclude sitting in meditation; he tried to broaden the definition to include the kind of thing he believed would really produce meaningful enlightenment. In addition, meditation in action takes away the excuse of most laymen for not practicing introspection-- and what is more, it brings respect from others.

_Do not say that worldly affairs and pressures of business leave you no time to study Zen under a Master, and that the confusions of daily life make it difficult for you to continue your meditation. Everyone must realize that for the true practicing monk there are no worldly cares or worries. Supposing a man accidentally drops two or three gold coins in a crowded street swarming with people. Does he forget about the money because all eyes are upon him? ... A person who concentrates solely on meditation amid the press and worries of everyday life will be like the man who has dropped the gold coins and devotes himself to seeking them. Who will not rejoice in such a person_?9

Hakuin realized that meditating in the middle of distractions was initially more difficult--with fewer short-term rewards--than sitting quietly alone. However, if you want to make the heightened awareness of Zen a part of your life, then you must meditate in daily life from the very first. Just as you cannot learn to swim in the ocean by sitting in a tub, you cannot relate your Zen to the world's pressures, stress, and tensions if it is forever sheltered in silent, lonely isolation. If this is difficult at first, persevere and look toward the ultimate rewards.

_

Frequently you may feel that you are getting nowhere with practice in the midst of activity, whereas the quietistic approach brings unexpected results. Yet rest assured that those who use the quietistic approach can never hope to enter into meditation in the midst of activity. Should by chance a person who uses this approach enter into the dusts and confusions of the world of activity, even the power of ordinary understanding which he had seemingly attained will be entirely lost. Drained of all vitality, he will be inferior to any mediocre, talentless person. The most trivial matters will upset him, an inordinate cowardice will afflict his mind, and he will frequently behave in a mean and base manner. What can you call accomplished about a man like this_?10

Quietistic meditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices it will turn out to be just as insecure and petty as someone not enlightened at all. What is equally important, "leisure-time" meditation that separates our spiritual life from our activities is merely hiding from reality. You cannot come home from the job and suddenly turn on a meditation experience. He cites the case of someone who excuses himself to meditate, but who is then so harried and tense it does no good.

_Even should there be such a thing as . . . reaching a state where the great illumination is released by means of dead sitting and silent illumination . . . people are so involved in the numerous duties of their household affairs that they have scarcely a moment in which to practice concentrated meditation. What they do then is to plead illness and, neglecting their duties and casting aside responsibilities for their family affairs, they shut themselves up in a room for several days, lock the door, arrange several cushions in a pile, set up a stick of incense, and proceed to sit. Yet, because they are exhausted by ordinary worldly cares, they sit in meditation for one minute and fall asleep for a hundred, and during the little bit of meditation that they manage to accomplish, their minds are beset by countless delusions.11

_

But what is worse, these people then blame their careers, assuming they need more isolation. But this is like the aspiring ocean swimmer in the tub mistakenly desiring less water.

_[They] furrow their brows, draw together their eyebrows, and before one knows it they are crying out: "Our official duties interfere with our practice of the Way; our careers prevent our Zen meditation. It would be better to resign from office, discard our seals, go to some place beside the water or under the trees where all is peaceful and quiet and no one is about, there in our own way to practice _dhyana _contemplation, and escape from the endless cycle of suffering." How mistaken these people are_!12

Having determined meditation in the midst of activity is the only meaningful practice, he next addressed the question of how to go about it. He explained that we can do it by making our activities into meditation.

_What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan.13

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He gave an example of how to change the implements of daily living into a Buddhist metaphor, in this case by a warrior's making his clothes, sword, and saddle into a meditation hall of the mind.

_Make your skirt and upper garments into the seven- or nine- striped monks' robe; make your two-edged sword into your resting board or desk. Make your saddle your sitting cushion; make the mountains, rivers, and great earth the sitting platform; make the whole universe your own personal meditation cave. . . . Thrusting forth the courageous mind derived from faith, combine it with the true practice of introspection.14

_

If meditation bears no relationship to life, what good is it? It is merely self-centered gratification. This he condemned, pointing out that if everyone did nothing but meditate on his own inner concerns, society at large would fall apart. And ultimately Zen would be blamed. Furthermore, this inner-directed preoccupation with self-awareness is bad Zen.

Hakuin similarly taught that a Zen which ignored society was hollow and meaningless, and its monks of no use to anybody. He was particularly stern with conventional Zen students, who were content in their own enlightenment and ignored the needs of others. "Meditation in action" for the monk meant the same as for a layman, with one significant difference. Whereas the layman could bring meditation to his obligatory life of affairs, the monk must bring the life of the world to his meditation. Just to hide and meditate on your own original nature produces inadequate enlightenment, while also shutting you off from any chance to help other people, other sentient beings. The ancient masters knew, said Hakuin, that a person truly enlightened could travel through the world and not be distracted by the so-called five desires (wealth, fame, food, sleep, and sex). The enlightened being is aware of, but not enticed by, sensual gratification.

_The Third Patriarch [Seng-ts'an, d. 606] has said: "If one wishes to gain true intimacy with enlightenment, one must not shun the objects of the senses." He does not mean here that one is to delight in the objects of the senses but, just as the wings of a waterfowl do not get wet even when it enters the water, one must establish a mind that will continue a true koan meditation without interruption, neither clinging to nor rejecting the objects of the senses.15

_

But Hakuin asked something of a Zen novice even more difficult than that asked by the Chinese masters of old--who merely demanded that a monk reject the world, turn his back, and shut out its distractions. In contrast, Hakuin insists that he meditate while out in the world, actively immersing himself in its attractions. The older Ch'an masters advised a monk to ignore the world, to treat it merely as a backdrop to his preoccupation with inner awareness; Hakuin says to test your meditation outside, since otherwise it serves for nothing. And today Rinzai monks are expected to silently meditate during all activities, including working in the yard of the monastery, harvesting vegetables, or even walking through the town for their formal begging.

Hakuin not only redefined meditation, he also revitalized koan practice among full-time Zen monks and ultimately brought on a renaissance of Rinzai Zen itself. He formalized the idea of several stages of enlightenment (based on his own experience of increasingly deep satori) as well as a practice that supported this growth. But most of all Hakuin was dismayed by what he considered to be the complete misunderstanding of koan practice in Japan. Monks had memorized so many anecdotes about the ancient Chinese masters that they thought they could signify the resolution of a koan by some insincere theatrics.

_[0]f the monks who move about like clouds and water, eight or nine out of ten will boast loudly that they have not the slightest doubt about the essential meaning of any of the seventeen hundred koans that have been handed down. . . . If you test them with one of these koans, some will raise their fists, others will shout "_katsu_," but most of them will strike the floor with their hands. If you press them just a little bit, you will find that they have in no way seen into their own natures, have no learning whatsoever, and are only illiterate, boorish, sightless men.16

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Hakuin breathed new life back into koan theory. For instance, he seems the first Japanese master to take a psychological interest in the koan and its workings. He believed a koan should engender a "great doubt" in the mind of a novice, and through this great doubt lead him to the first enlightenment or _kensho_.17 Initially he had advocated the "Mu" koan for beginners, but late in life he came up with the famous "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"18 As he described this koan in a letter to a laywoman:

_What is the Sound of the Single Hand? When you clap together both hands a sharp sound is heard; when you raise the one hand there is neither sound nor smell. . . .

This is something that can by no means be heard with the ear. If conceptions and discriminations are not mixed within it and it is quite apart from seeing, hearing, perceiving, and knowing, and if, while walking, standing, sitting, and reclining, you proceed straightforwardly without interruption in the study of this koan, then in the place where reason is exhausted and words are ended, you will suddenly . . . break down the cave of ignorance.. . . At this time the basis of mind, consciousness, and emotion is suddenly shattered.19

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But this is not the end; rather it is the beginning. After a disciple has penetrated this koan, he receives koans of increasing difficulty. From Hakuin's own experience he knew that _satori _experiences could be repeated and could become ever deeper and more meaningful. Although he himself never chose to overtly systematize and categorize koans, his heirs did not hesitate to do so, creating the structure that is modern Rinzai Zen.

How did Zen finally emerge, after all the centuries and the convolutions? As Hakuin's descendants taught Zen, a monk entering the monastery was assigned a koan chosen by the master. He was expected to meditate on this koan until his _kensho_, his first glimmer of satori, which might require two to three years. After this a new phase of study began. The monk was then expected to work his way through a program of koans, requiring as much as a decade more, after which he might meditate on his own, in seclusion, for a time longer.20

The master worked with monks individually (a practice reputedly left over from the time when Chinese-speaking masters had to communicate in writing) via a face-to-face interview (_senzen_) reminiscent of a Marine Corps drill instructor harassing a recruit. The monk would bow to the master, seat himself, and

submit his attempt at resolution of the koan. The master might either acknowledge his insight, give him some oblique guidance, or simply greet him with stony silence and ring for the next recruit--signifying an unsatisfactory answer.

Hakuin made his disciples meditate; he made them struggle through koan after koan; he made monastic discipline as rigorous as possible; and he taught that it is not enough merely to be interested in yourself and your own enlightenment. But he insisted that if you follow all his teachings, if you meditate the right way and work through increasingly difficult koans, you too can find the enlightenment he found, an enlightenment that expressed itself in an enormous physical vitality.

_Even though I am past seventy now my vitality is ten times as great as it was when I was thirty or forty. My mind and body are strong and I never have the feeling that I absolutely must lie down to rest. Should I want to I find no difficulty in refraining from sleep for two, three, or even seven days, without suffering any decline in my mental powers. I am surrounded by three- to five-hundred demanding students, and even though I lecture on the scriptures or on the collections of the Masters' sayings for thirty to fifty days in a row, it does not exhaust me.21

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Hakuin was a prolific writer and always aware of his audience. For his lay followers, he wrote in simple Japanese and related his teachings to the needs and limitations of secular life. For his monk disciples he wrote in a more scholarly style. And finally, we have many long elegant letters composed for various dignitaries of government and the aristocracy.

He also was an artist of note, producing some of the most powerful Zen- style paintings of any Japanese. Like his writings, these works are vigorous, impulsive, and dynamic. He seems to have been an inspiration for many later Zen artists, including Sengai (1750-1837) and the Zen poet Ryokan (1758-1831).22

Hakuin died in his sleep at age eighty-three. During his life he had reestablished Rinzai Zen in Japan in a form fully as rigorous as ever practiced in the monasteries of T'ang and Sung China, and he had simultaneously discovered a way this Zen could be made accessible to laymen, through meditation in activity. Whereas previous Japanese teachers had let koan practice atrophy in order to attract a greater number of followers, Hakuin simultaneously made Zen both more authentic and more popular. His genius thereby saved traditional Zen in its classical form, while at last making it accessible and meaningful in modern life.