Blue Cliff Record (Jundo Comments & Introduction)

[Jundo]

Dear All,

We will now dive into the "Blue Cliff Record" Koan Collection or, better said, the heart of the collection. My reason for sticking with the "heart" is that the vital core of Wisdom is easily lost in a thicket of word games, one-upmanship, creative expression mixed with sheer drivel, brilliant insights tangled with silly side shows, true wit followed by petty jibes and cheap quips, fancy and masterful literary flourishes combined with nobody knows puns, forgotten slang and long lost poetic and cultural references that ... well, the 'Blue Cliff' has frequently been criticized during its history for being "overdone," quite a tangled web at best (not quite Finnegan's Wake, but leaning in that direction).

The book is centered on a collection of 100 Koans, and accompanying poems, presented by Master Xuedou Chongxian (980–1052, aka Hsueh Tou), and a prose commentary later added by Master Yuanwu Keqin (1063–1135) explaining the teachings of the Koans and poems in relatively readable and understandable fashion. So far, so good. However, inserted "jabs" by Yuanwu and others then proceed to ladle on scores of varied and often contradictory "zings, zorts and retorts" written into the margins to such degree, or woven right into the text (literally, penned between lines), that poor Xuedou and Yuanwu's main Commentary can be lost in the maze. The "one liners," either praising or criticizing (or both) Xuedou's and Yuanwu's respective sayings (with later critics further criticizing earlier critics' criticisms of even earlier quipping critics), are all in a very subjective, "eye of the beholder," throwing sticks and stones fashion, such that it comes across as not unlike dozens of angry movie critics with dozens of different opinions about the value of a film or even of a particular line of a film which they are yelling at the screen during the movie!

The problem only became worse in later Zen centuries when such a "pun, punchline and poetic mike drop" style truly came to dominate much of Zen, hiding the fact that many of the Koans express teachings that are not so mysterious after all. In fact, many of the little rhetorical flourishes are wonderful and deserve examination on their own, but we are going to focus on the main Koans from Xuedou and the prose commentary by Yuanwu, ignoring much of the rest.

Thus, next week, we will begin with the Cleary & Cleary translation. For each case, we will read only what is called the "Pointer" and the main "Case," looking at the elements of those. We will then read Yuanwu's prose "Commentary" on that. That will be the main assignment each week.

We will largely omit (although you are welcome to dip in on your own should you wish to try) the so-called "Notes." Good luck.

As an extra assignment, but only for those who wish, we will also assign as added "extra credit" reading Xuedou's "Verse" for that particular case, and then Yuanwu's prose "Commentary" on the verse. However, we will again largely omit the "Notes" interspersed into the Verse.

~~~~

ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK: Please read the Introduction (the Preface by Maezumi Roshi too, if you wish). Small side note, it is very unlikely that Dogen Zenji actually introduced the Blue Cliff to Japan as Maezumi Roshi asserts, although Dogen Zenji certainly was familiar with and taught from many of the Koans that also happen to be in the Blue Cliff. Dogen, and Soto folks, love Koans, but we simply tend not to approach them in the same way as the Rinzai folks (and many of the mixed Soto-Rinzai folks, like Maezumi Roshi.) We tend to see them as actual teaching stories. That is different from the so-called Hua-tou (Head Word) method, later popularized by the Rinzai Teacher Dahui (the fellow who is said to have "burned the Blue Cliff," by the way) in which, pouring oneself intently into a phrase or word of a Koan, one seeks a particular breakthrough experience.

Even so, why are Koans hard to understand even as "teaching stories?" I sometimes say this:

In Soto Zen, Koans are teaching stories with meaning ... BUT ... many many people struggle with Koans because of the "lost in translation" aspects, the forgotten references to ancient poems, old Chinese puns, cultural references, obscure historical references, 1000 year out of date Chinese slang, and the like, plus the performative aspects (where masters try to show something "beyond words" by holding up a stick or like actions). It is as if I wrote a Koan referencing "Thomas the Tank Engine," "Bling" and "Jersey Shore" and added a one-handed "fist bump" and expected someone 1000 years in the future, in Lithuania, to get the references.

That is not the only factor in why they are hard to get: Of course, the Koans are often "logical" and can be explained in words, but it is not our ordinary common sense logic, and sometimes ordinary grammar structure and ordinary words will not do. For example, usually a cup of tea is not a mountain is not Buddha in our ordinary way of encountering the world as separate things yet, in in our "Zen logic" (which is more to be experienced than merely explained) they certainly is/are, and Buddha is the tea mountaining as tea, and the mountain teaing as the mountain. You are the -teamountainBuddha- that's -teamountainBuddhaing- as you, and you them. Our "true nature" is each and all of this! So, understanding a good deal about Mahayana and Zen philosophy and teachings helps us understand where the Koans are coming (non-coming) from.

The Koans are far from "meaningless," but need to be expressed (much as I just did) in ways, such as with creative expressions and symbols, to convey this "not our ordinary" manner of experiencing the profound interidentity and wholeness of this world. Our usual subject/object sentence structure with its judgmental adjectives and adverbs and tenses of time cannot well convey that which leaps through subject/object, judgements and time (yet is simultaneously present as subject/object, judgements and time). They need to be "grocked" (to use SF writer Robert Heinlein's word) in the bones, experienced beyond experiencer and separate thing experienced, not merely understood intellectually in the head.

I will do my best to help folks navigate the slang and such.

Most of the Introduction is actually just a general retelling of the history of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China. Only the last few pages focus on the development of Koans, and the Blue Cliff specifically.

See you next week, as we set sail!

The Blue Cliff Record shines with the moon of enlightenment. So, here is Cliff's Blue Moon Record ...

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Gassho, J
stlah

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[Ryumon]

Small side note, it is not clear that Dogen Zenji actually introduced the Blue Cliff to Japan as Maezumi Roshi asserts, although Dogen Zen certainly was familiar and taught from many of the Koans that also happen to be in the Blue Cliff.

I'm just wondering; as you say, Dogen was at least familiar enough with many of the koans to have used them in teachings and writings. But are scholars certain that this kompilation is not, say, an update of earlier koan kompilations? This may be zen wonk stuff, but could they have been circulating in many forms, and are there alternate versions of some of the koans, with different wordings? I can imagine that traveling zen masters and monks would share their favorite koans at other monasteries, and that these would be like folk tales, so they would have spread slowly before there was a kompilation.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

Sat Lah

[Jundo]

I'm just wondering; as you say, Dogen was at least familiar enough with many of the koans to have used them in teachings and writings. But are scholars certain that this kompilation is not, say, an update of earlier koan kompilations? This may be zen wonk stuff, but could they have been circulating in many forms, and are there alternate versions of some of the koans, with different wordings? I can imagine that traveling zen masters and monks would share their favorite koans at other monasteries, and that these would be like folk tales, so they would have spread slowly before there was a kompilation.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

Sat Lah

Long story short is that, for almost all the Koans, especially the most well known ones, Buddhism historians have been able to trace them back to their earliest sources, where sometimes they had quite different content which was changed and added to over time, took various forms, sometimes with very different meanings. The process basically means that most Koans are largely literary creations, or stories based loosely on a historical event. So, many of the Koans cited by Dogen that are in the Blue Cliff were found several other places too. Dogen expert Steven Heine writes, in his book on the Blue Cliff ...

Another set of myths concerns how the Blue Cliff Record was eventually revived and transmitted to Japan. Reports may be unfounded that the Sōtō sect’s founder, Dōgen (1200– 1253), was the first to bring the collection based on a copy he supposedly made in a single night on the eve of his departure in 1227 from a four- year trip to China that is commonly known as the One Night Blue Cliff (Ichiya Hekigan). Would Dōgen have had access to a text that was otherwise unavailable in China for another seventy- five years? In fact modern scholars have shown that Dōgen cites Yuanwu frequently but never directly from the Blue Cliff Record, and also that the One Night legend probably was not formed until a couple of hundred years after his death.

...

According to Table 6.7, which is based on the research of Ishii Shūdō, Dōgen did not use the Blue Cliff Record as the source for a single one of the kōan cited in the 300 Cases and also probably did not reference the Chinese collection in the Verse Comments collection, even though he cites other works by Yuanwu and Xuedou over forty times in the 300 Cases. There are thirty cases that are the same in the two collections. In addition Dōgen refers to the writings of Yuanwu a couple of dozen times in Treasury of the True Dharma-Eye and Extensive Record, but in these instances he invariably mentions passages from the Record or Essentials of Mind rather than the Blue Cliff Record. The main source for Dōgen is the Zongmen Tongyaoji collection from 1093.

The historical argument about Dogen's contact with the Blue Cliff is a little more tangled than that, with some gray areas, but that will give you a taste.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Anthony]

I read through the introduction today. What I found most interesting was the emphasis on the non-sectarian nature of Chan Buddhism with teachers going from school to school and teaching works produced by other schools! To me, the schools of Zen (and Buddhism at large) feel very rigidly separated but even today we are reading a work produced by an ancestor (Yuanwu) of the Rinzai sect, so maybe we are not so separate after all!

Gassho,
Anthony
satlah

[Jundo]

I read through the introduction today. What I found most interesting was the emphasis on the non-sectarian nature of Chan Buddhism with teachers going from school to school and teaching works produced by other schools! To me, the schools of Zen (and Buddhism at large) feel very rigidly separated but even today we are reading a work produced by an ancestor (Yuanwu) of the Rinzai sect, so maybe we are not so separate after all!

Gassho,
Anthony
satlah

Same yet different, different yet just the same. Same truth, but somewhat different approaches to realize this "truth beyond difference."

Gassho, J
stlah

[Ryumon]

On the book Sitting with Koans, John Daido Loori says:

”In order to see into a koan we must go beyond the words and ideas that describe reality and directly and intimately experience reality itself. The answer to a koan is not a fixed piece of information. It is one's own intimate and direct experience of the universe and its infinite facets. It is a state of consciousness.”

i’m wondering… You say:

”The process basically means that most Koans are largely literary creations, or stories based loosely on a historical event.”

Are koans really as mysterious as we think? Or are the original stories so shrouded in layers of time that we don’t understand them? What’s the Japanese point of view on this? Were they perplexing paradoxes from the beginning, or were they simply a form of mnemonic story whose original meaning was lost? Kind of like “Who’s on first?” or “No soap, radio.”

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Ryumon]

I’ve been reading up on this, and reflecting on something. I’ve never found the translation “public case“ to be very appropriate. Dumoulin says “public notice” or “public announcement.” Could kungan be translated as “decision “ or “precedent?”

Because it seems like it’s much more than just a case, or a trial, or but something that has been decided, recorded, and has entered into posterity. The announcement of a decision, if you use Dumoulin’s translation.

im also thinking about how the 64 hexagrams of the Yi Jing result from records if divination carried out on tortoise shells, the results of which were collated over time. I’m wondering if the codification of koans is related to that approach.

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Jundo]

On the book Sitting with Koans, John Daido Loori says:

”In order to see into a koan we must go beyond the words and ideas that describe reality and directly and intimately experience reality itself. The answer to a koan is not a fixed piece of information. It is one's own intimate and direct experience of the universe and its infinite facets. It is a state of consciousness.”

i’m wondering… You say:

”The process basically means that most Koans are largely literary creations, or stories based loosely on a historical event.”

Are koans really as mysterious as we think? Or are the original stories so shrouded in layers of time that we don’t understand them? What’s the Japanese point of view on this? Were they perplexing paradoxes from the beginning, or were they simply a form of mnemonic story whose original meaning was lost? Kind of like “Who’s on first?” or “No soap, radio.”

Oh, that is Daido Loori's Rinzai based Harada-Yasutani perspective on Koans.

Koans are not to be approached with our normal analytical, ordinarily reasoning mind ... but neither are they simply about "direct experience of reality itself." They contain standard Mahayana and Zen teachings and perspectives on "reality" which often go against our ordinary, common sense reasoning (not unlike how Einstein's Special Relativity goes against our usual "common sense" experience of time), which must be seen, pierced, experienced and understood (I sometimes compare it to those "hidden 3-D pictures" they used to publish in newspapers, where one could not see the strange 3-D image until ... well, there it is.) Some of the modern Koan teachers make Dokusan work with Koans too much just "say what ya feel, eye of the beholder, nothing to nail down there," which is a shame. They contain very specific and standard Mahayana/Zen teachings.

The Japanese struggled with many of the Chinese Koans right from the start because, while the old Japanese were closer in time to those older days, and although some (a minority) of Japanese spoke good classical Chinese, it was still a struggle to get all the subtlety, Chinese puns and cultural references. It is a bit like me as an American, someone not living in France, trying to understand the expression Mi-figue mi-raisin (half fig, half grape, apparently meaning "both yes and no.") I might think that they are actually talking about hybrid fruit!

Gassho, J
stlah

[Jundo]

I’ve been reading up on this, and reflecting on something. I’ve never found the translation “public case“ to be very appropriate. Dumoulin says “public notice” or “public announcement.” Could kungan be translated as “decision “ or “precedent?”

Because it seems like it’s much more than just a case, or a trial, or but something that has been decided, recorded, and has entered into posterity. The announcement of a decision, if you use Dumoulin’s translation.

In fact, "precedent" (like in the law) is exactly what "public case" means. That's what the phrase has always meant, that these are like our Zen "prior court cases which guide us."

im also thinking about how the 64 hexagrams of the Yi Jing result from records if divination carried out on tortoise shells, the results of which were collated over time. I’m wondering if the codification of koans is related to that approach.

Hmmm. I'm not sure, and don't recall anyone who has made that comparison. Folks just like to gather things together into books, collections and systems, yes?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-of-all-time-1062063/neutral-milk-hotel-in-the-aeroplane-over-the-sea-3-1062857/

I will say that, at various times, such as after Dogen's time in Japan, folks did start taking the hexagrams as some mysterious code to "express" the Koans, the Five Ranks (picture below) and such ... and it became quite an esoteric mess sometimes.

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Gassho, J
stlah

[Ryumon]

In fact, "precedent" (like in the law) is exactly what "public case" means. That's what the phrase has always meant, that these are like our Zen "prior court cases which guide us."

Then why don’t English translations use that word? It seems a lot easier to understand than public case.

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Ryumon]

Again, from Heinrich Dumoulin in Sitting with Koans:

”This one character is the rod by which many false images and ideas are destroyed in their very foundations. To it you should add no judgments about being or non-being, no arguments, no bodily gestures like raising your eyebrows or blinking your eyes. Words have no place here. Neither should you throw this character away into the nothingness of emptiness, or seek it in the comings and goings of the mind, or try to trace its origins in the scriptures. You must only earnestly and continually stir it [this koan] around the clock. Sitting or lying, walking or standing, you must give yourself over to it constantly. "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" The answer: "Mu." Without withdrawing from everyday life, keep trying, keep looking at this koan!”

This sounds like early koan practice was a lot like reciting a mantra. Was that the case? I'm thinking of Three Pillars of Zen, describing people sitting going "moo, moo, moo..."

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Jundo]

Again, from Heinrich Dumoulin in Sitting with Koans:

Hi Ryumon,

First, we should note that Fr. Dumoulin is not considered a very reliable historian of Zen. He was a Catholic Priest, interested in Zen, who wrote about 70 years ago, reporting scholarly history as it was understood back then heavily mixed with our romantic legends and sect dogma so that it is totally unclear where history ends and myth begins. He was also very heavily influenced by the Rinzai interpretation presented uniquely by D.T. Suzuki back then. Almost nobody cites Fr. Dumoulin these days as a serious historian.

Second, there are many approaches to Koans. What you quote is a translation of a passage from Tahui, the fellow who pretty much invented the Koan Introspection method of Zazen, focused on a word or phrase of a Koan story intently for a subline Kensho breakthrough, the fellow who is said to have burned the Blue Cliff Record. So, also not a reliable source on how Koans were approached by Soto (and Rinzai!!) folks before Tahui.

I will say that Dogen had his monks reflecting on, grappling with Koan stories, from all indication ... but not DURING Zazen, not with an emphasis on such intensity or booming Kensho experiences, and really to "GROK" (the Heinlein term) their meaning and teachings.

So, the quote from Fr. Dumoulin is really not appropriate to our approach to the Blue Cliff.

Yes, then and now, they can be approached like a Mantra, but there is also meaning there. It is rather how we Chant the Heart Sutra: Of course the Heart Sutra is a Teaching, containing important points regarding basic Mahayana and Zen insights into Emptiness and Enlightenment. It needs to be understood intellectually. However, it is also to be "felt" and, sometimes, just put down and sung for the sound ... were we pour ourself into the Emptiness of the music.

Like that.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Ryumon]

One of the reasons I'm asking is because I know that Dumoulin is not a reliable source. I was just wondering if originally - pre-Dogen and pre-Tahui - this was the way koans were approached. Would Bodhidarma have brought with him the idea of chanting (or sub-chanting) mantras?

Obviously, koan practice has changed, but that bit in Three Pillars of Zen did sound mantra-ish.

Sorry for all the obscure questions; I'm just revisiting a bunch of stuff that I read a long time ago, and my curiosity has been piqued.

An aside: when I dictate on my iPhone or my Mac, something I do fairly ofter, it auto-corrects "koan" to "Cohen."

Gassho,
Ryūmon (Kirk)
Sat Lah

[Jundo]

One of the reasons I'm asking is because I know that Dumoulin is not a reliable source. I was just wondering if originally - pre-Dogen and pre-Tahui - this was the way koans were approached. Would Bodhidarma have brought with him the idea of chanting (or sub-chanting) mantras?

Obviously, koan practice has changed, but that bit in Three Pillars of Zen did sound mantra-ish.

I do not think that Koans were originally "Mantras," but were more like legal cases with real meaning and significance to be understood.

Later, unfortunately, they actually may have become more like Mantras, with folks mumbling things like MU MU MU without real understanding.

Gassho, J

[Tairin]

Fascinating discussion Ryumon and Jundo. Thanks for this back and forth.

For my part I tend to just read the Koans and I either get something out of it or I move on. Sometimes when I revisit a Koan I had read previously I get some new insight.


Tairin
Sat today and lah