THE MASTERY
OF YOUR ATTENTION WILL COME
WHEN YOU WILL START SEEING the truth..
*note* lovely essay from "The Ancient Zen Master as Clown-Figure and Comic Midwife
By M. Conrad Hyers
Philosophy East & West
Vol. 20 (1970.10)
pp. 3-18
Copyright 1970 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA"
This Conrad Hyers is interesting in explaining..read this essay..kisses from the mahayogi to him,and to you also,grasshoppers from heaven..
-added by danny-
..........lyrics to Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals-
Well, he walked up to me and he asked me if I wanted to dance.
He looked kinda nice and so I said I might take a chance.
When he danced he held me tight
and when he walked me home that night
all the stars were shining bright
and then he kissed me.
Each time I saw him I couldn't wait to see him again.
I wanted to let him know that he was more than a friend.
I didn't know just what to do
so I whispered "I love you"
and he said that he loved me too
and then he kissed me.
He kissed me in a way that I've never been kissed before,
he kissed me in a way that I wanna be kissed forever more.
I knew that he was mine so I gave him all the love that I had
and one day he took me home to meet his mom and his dad.
Then he asked me to be his bride
and always be right by his side.
I felt so happy I almost cried
and then he kissed me.
Then he asked me to be his bride
and always be right by his side.
I felt so happy I almost cried
and then he kissed me.
And then he kissed me.
And then he kissed me.
...........
Among the 1700 kooans which are said to be suitable for encouraging the experience of satori, and also for providing a test of its genuineness, is the following question attributed to Kyoogen (Hsiang Yen, ninth century) and provided with commentary by Mumon Ekai (Wu Men Hui K'ai, 1183-1260):
(Zen) is like a man up a tree who hangs on a branch by his teeth with his hands and feet in the air. A man at the foot of the tree asks him, "What is the point of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?" If he does not answer he would seem to evade the question. If he answers he would fall to his death. In such a predicament what response should be given?
[Mumon's commentary and verse] : It is useless to be gifted with a flowing stream of eloquence as to discourse on the teaching in the great Tripi.taka. Whoever answers this question (correctly) can give life to the dead and take life from the living. Whoever cannot must wait for the coming of Maitreya [the future Buddha] and ask (him).
Kyoogen is really outrageous.
The poison (he brewed) spreads everywhere.
It closes the mouths of Zen monks
And makes their eyes goggle. [1]
In the dimension of humor visible in such enigmatic kooans and commentaries as this is to be found a much-neglected side of Zen, as well as of the entire Buddhist tradition -- indeed, ultimately, of religion as such. [2] Because of a long-standing prejudice against associating the comic too closely with the sacred, a prejudice which has been supported by both religious and academic taboos, the function and place of humor in religion has been almost completely ignored by phenomenologists and historians of religion. This "conspiracy of silence" is as much in evidence with respect to Buddhism as to every other tradition. It is apparent upon closer examination, nonetheless, that in Buddhism, and in Zen Buddhism in particular, as in any religious tradition, a place has been granted to the comic spirit and perspective -- a time to laugh and to dance, as well as a time to weep and to mourn (Eccles. 3:4). One very illuminating and seldom explored method, therefore, of approaching a religious tradition, and of disclosing even its innermost features, is to examine what the comic means, and in what ways it has been employed, or at least permitted, in that particular context. The experiences and expressions which we associate with the terms
1. Zenshuu mumonkan (A.D. 1229), trans. Sohaku Ogata, Zen for the West (London: Rider & Co., 1959), pp. 97-98.
2. There are numerous collections of the tales, kooans, and mondoos of the early Ch'an and Zen masters relevant to any extensive study of the role of the comic in Zen. Descriptive references concerning many of these may be found conveniently in the bibliographical appendix to Isshuu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinsai (Lin-Chi) Zen (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966). See especially the notations on Ch'an-tsung Wu-men-kuan (Zenshuu mumonkan), Cheng-fa-yen-tsang (Shooboogenzoo), and Ku-tsun-su (Kosonshuku).
laughter, humor, and comedy often play a far greater and more significant role in relation to religious experience and expression than scholarly inquiry has been ready to admit or careful to recognize. Human existence, in fact, as it is religiously lived and understood, is only given adequate definition in terms of a dialectical interplay between seriousness and laughter, between "holiness" and humor; and apart from an appreciation for both sides of this dialectic, the sacred and the comic, no religion is fully comprehended or interpreted. [3]
It must be acknowledged at the outset that the inclination of a religious tradition, especially insofar as it moves toward an orthodoxy, is often to squelch the comic spirit and perspective, or at least to keep it at a relatively safe and innocuous distance. It is the tendency of the sacred to push away the comic, as it is of the comic to withdraw from the sacred. Consequently specific instances of overt and legitimated comic moments or devices are usually much more difficult to obtain and document than their sacred counterparts. Zen, however, particularly in its earlier and less structured forms, is a happy exception to this rule; for more than any other religious tradition the documents of its classical period are replete with comic data. Certainly instances of the use of humor, and of various types of comic form, may be found elsewhere within the Buddhist cosmos: in the Dhammapada and its commentaries, or the Jaataka tales; in folk dramas and festivals; in popular stories, religious proverbs, and literary pieces; in certain forms of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art; in the comic interludes (kyoogen, literally "mad words") placed between acts of the Noo plays of Japan; and in both the poetry of haiku and the epigrammatic verse of senryu. As in all cultures and religions, some play is given to the comic, and some time devoted to laughter. [4] But it is in the Zen tradition in particular that the relationship between the spirit and perspective of Buddhism and that of the comic is brought into full flower. R. H. Blyth, with his penchant for dashing comment and characterization, has defined the essence of Zen as
3. The terms comedy and humor will be used correlatively, and in the broadest sense, to refer to the same phenomenon. If a distinction is made between the terms it is that humor represents those attitudes and moods -- identified by such words as caprice, frivolity, gaiety, jest, and facetiousness -- that are expressed in or elicited by the various types of comic structure: clowning, joking, storytelling, farce, burlesque, buffoonery, etc. In the comic spirit, humor is the spirit, comedy the form.
4. According to the Buddhist scholastics there are six classes of laughter: (a) sita, a faint smile manifest in facial expression only; (b) hasita, a smile which slightly reveals the teeth; (c) vihasita, a smile accompanied by a modicum of laughter; (d) upahasita, pronounced laughter associated with a movement of head, shoulders, and arms; (e) apahasita, laughter that brings tears; and (f) atihasita, uproarious laughter accompanied by doubling over, hysterics, etc. It is understood that only the first two classes are acceptable in polite society, with the last two in particular being characteristic of the uncultured lower classes. It is interesting that, in this schematization, the Buddha is supposed to have only indulged in sita, the most serene, subtle, and refined form of laughter. Cf. Shwe Zan Aung, The Compendium of Philosophy, a translation of the Abhidhammattha-Sangaha, rev. and ed. by Mrs. Rhys Davids (London: Luzac & Co., Ltd., 1910), pp. 22-25.
humor. [5] Whether or not one might be satisfied to state the matter so bluntly, such an equation of Zen and humor nevertheless points to the possibility of interpreting Zen as that strand within Buddhism in which humor comes to be most fully developed and self-consciously employed as an integral part of both a pedagogical method and an enlightened outlook -- that is, as both one of the stratagems for precipitating enlightenment and one of the consequences of enlightenment.
THREE LEVELS OF THE COMIC IN ZEN
In Zen, as in any religious context, there are three distinguishable levels on which the comic moves in relation to the sacred, [6] three moments or moods which in mythological terms may be seen as corresponding to the laughter of Paradise, Paradise-lost and Paradise-regained. This is not intended to suggest any metaphysical commitment on the part of Zen teaching to such a mythological schema -- for example, an interpretation of maayaa and sa^msaara as a "fall" from some primordial totality that is recollected in satori and recovered in the achievement of nirvaa.na. [7] In analyzing the comic elements in Zen it will be sufficient to understand the stages of the model as a movement from pre-rationality to rationality to "supra"-rationality -- pre-rationality representing the innocence and immediacy of infancy prior to the emergence of rationality with its tendency to split up the world into knower and known, subject and object, mind and body, good and evil, etc.; and "supra"-rationality the experience of transcending the dichotomies and estrangements of rationality in a recovery on a higher plane of that freedom and spontaneity and naturalness which is the special virtue of the child. The underlying thesis of this essay is that the place and function of humor in Zen may be interpreted as corresponding to these three levels, and at the same time Zen itself may be interpreted in terms of the place and function it gives to humor vis-a-vis any of these levels. What is of particular interest in Zen, and therefore what will command the greater part of attention, is the way in which it approaches the problem of moving from the second to the third levels of experience, that is, the problem of satori, and the way in which humor in Zen is both the occasion for and the result of satori.
It will be necessary, first, to characterize briefly the three dimensions of the
5. Oriental Humour (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1959), p. 87.
6. The term sacred is being used primarily in the narrower, specifically religious sense as the sphere which has its focus in ultimate concerns and the ultimate questions of meaning, value, power, and reality, though it is also applicable in the larger and derivative sense to any sphere of concern and significance which is set apart and surrounded with an atmosphere of seriousness and importance.
7. Cf. Mircea Eliade's interpretation of both Hindu and Buddhist mysticism, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London: Harvill Press, 1960), pp. 48 ff.; Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 184-185.
relationship of the comic to the sacred that will be presupposed in the ensuing analysis. At the simplest level humor is a form of playing for the sake of playing; the clown cavorts, the comedian quips, and the spectator laughs out of sheer delight in the playfulness of the game of comedy itself. As such, humor is a movement back into the playful immediacy and spontaneity of childhood, the recovery of the freedom and naturalness of innocent glee. It is the momentary recapture of that world which is prior to the distinction between self and other, subject and object, sacred and profane, prior to the "knowledge of good and evil" and the emergence of shame and guilt; in short, the world that is symbolized by the mythical picture of a primeval Paradise; the "Urzeit" that in Zen comes to be projected onto a higher plane as the "Endzeit" of religious experience.
Humor is not all innocence and play, however. At a more sophisticated and self-conscious level it stands more immediately within the sphere of duality, and in sensitivity to conflict and anxiety, tension and alienation. Here it is not a humor which leaves behind the world of duplicity and rationality in a holiday of innocent abandon, but is a humor which moves within the terms and delineations of the objectified world in comic response to them. It is, consequently, the comic mood as it corresponds to the mythical state of Paradise-lost -- the state of self-assertion, of desiring and grasping, of separation and estrangement, of rational and moral discrimination. Instead of a recapitulation of the playful immediacy and spontaneity of the child, this level of humor is more self-conscious, more reflective, more serious, more mature. In fact, it shares in the very duplicity which elicits it and to which it is an inverted response, on the one hand becoming an act of withdrawal from that which is ordinarily taken as serious and sacred (comic distance and detachment), and on the other hand becoming an act of aggression against that which is ordinarily taken as serious and sacred (comic assertion and rebellion). These two dimensions may be referred to, respectively, as the prophetic or iconoclastic and the promethean or heroic responses. In the freedom of this half-playful, half-serious profaning of the ordinary world of perception, and of its sacred, tragic, and demonic forms, lies, however, the revelatory and redemptive potentiality of humor. And it is this revelatory and redemptive potentiality that is appropriated in Zen as both a pedagogical method and a psychological mechanism for attaining enlightenment and liberation.
Once such an enlightenment and liberation takes place it then becomes possible to speak of a third level of humor in Zen, a comic spirit and perspective which, though it may include the former levels, is not identical with them but decisively transcends them. Here humor becomes the freedom to play and to laugh which is contained within the freedom of enlightenment. Each level of humor implies and realizes a certain type of freedom. Humor on this plane therefore, is distinguishable from a nostalgic humor that leaps backward into
the freedom of simple innocence and immediacy prior to rationality, or from an ambivalent humor that responds to the dichotomies and tensions of rationality in iconoclastic/heroic freedom. It is a humor that moves beyond rationality, as it were, into the freedom of a higher innocence and immediacy. The playfulness of childish spontaneity and naturalness has been recaptured on a higher level, a level which corresponds mythically to Paradise-regained. One has now become free, in the profoundest sense, to laugh.
THE ZEN MASTER AS CLOWN FIGURE
One of the first impressions that one receives in reading tales of the often unorthodox lives and ways of certain Zen masters is the peculiar correspondence between these figures and that of the clown. Regardless of the problem of authenticity, and the separation of legend from fact, this image is too common and consistent to be dismissed as simply a popular embellishment alien to the character and approach of the Zen master. Behind all the fable and fiction there is the persistent form of a personality and role to which the designation "clown" is not inappropriate. This is not to suggest a clown-figure in the sense of the playful buffoon, or of clowning for the sake of clowning -- though this may be involved -- but rather in the sense of the clown who by his queer antics and strange attire, or by his "divine madness," gives expression to the special freedom that he has attained, and who in that freedom reveals some truth through the outlandishness of his performance, or who in some bizarre way becomes the agent of redemption in a particular situation.
One of the earliest representatives of the Ch'an tradition, for example, Fu Daishi (Fu Ta Shih, 497-569), a layman, is said to have been invited by the emperor Liang Wu Ti to expound the Diamond Suutra. As soon as he had ascended the seat for exposition, the emperor listening intently, Fu Daishi rapped the table once with a stick and descended from his seat. He thereupon asked the startled emperor, "Does Your Majesty understand?" "I do not," the incredulous emperor replied. Fu Daishi said simply, "The Bodhisattva has finished expounding the sutra." [8] On a later visit it is said that he presented himself at the palace before the emperor wearing a hat, a monk's robe, and a pair of shoes, it being accepted practice that a monk wears no hat, a Taoist no shoes, and a layman no monk's robe. [9] It is apparent from the host of such anecdotes that have been preserved, and used in subsequent Zen pedagogy, that not only are the early masters depicted as commonly employing various comic techniques in their dealings with monks, laymen, and even local and
8. Lu K'uan Yu, Ch'an and Zen Teaching, 3 vols. (London: Rider & Co., 1960-62), I, 143.
9. Ibid., p. 144. Later, of course, as the consequence of the continuing coexistence of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, it comes to be said that "every Chinese wears a Confucian cap, a Taoist robe and Buddhist sandals."
imperial dignitaries, but as themselves living in the spirit and style of comic freedom. Notorious for their peculiarities and eccentricities, odd in their behavior and unorthodox in their methods, the Zen masters often suggest something of the trickster, prankster, jester, and clown all rolled into one.
This is not to imply that all Zen masters are clown figures and comic midwives, or that all who achieve enlightenment within the tradition of Zen teaching do so in the context of comic techniques. Rather attention is being called to a comic spirit and style which achieves its fullest acceptance and development, among Buddhist sects, within Zen, and to a remarkable procession of individualists -- one might even say "characters" -- who often appear to be as much at home in the comic as the sacred. In perusing their biographies, as well as their kooans and mondoos, one has the distinct impression of being witness to a Buddhist circus. There is Seppoo (Hsueh Feng, 822-908) who, like the clown that plays at juggling, used to toy with three wooden balls, and who, when a monk would come to him to learn of Zen and the Zen way, would simply begin rolling the balls about. [10] There is Sekitoo (Shih T'ou, 700-790) who, when anyone would ask him to interpret some aspect of Buddhism, would likely as not reply, "Shut your mouth! No barking like a dog, please!" [11] There is Tenryuu (T'ien Lung, d. ninth century) who when Gutei, earnestly seeking the true path of the Buddha, solicited his direction, without comment simply lifted up one of his fingers. [12] Or there is Ummon (Yun Men, 862/4-949), who would frequently respond with a meaningless exclamation, "Kan!" and Rinzai (Lin Chi, d. 866), who would shout the equally nonsensical reply, "Katsu!" [13] The motley parade of individuals with their strange antics seems to file almost endlessly through the voluminous accounts of the early Ch'an and Zen masters. Though the purpose is quite serious and the setting acutely authoritarian, nevertheless the panorama has a distinct comic quality intrinsic to it. Through riddles and insults, through laughter and scowling, through ejaculation and silence, through slapping and kicking and striking, the point is made in, to say the least, a most eccentric manner. It is almost as if one were watching the capers of a troupe of clowns in a carnival, or an ancient Oriental version of the slapstick characters in a Marx brothers' film. But as in all profound comedy one soon discovers that the object of laughter is really oneself in the larger predicament and folly of man.
The familiar self-portrait of Hakuin (1686-1769) is illustrative of the intentional projection on the part of a Zen master of the image of the clown. Hakuin does not sketch himself in the idealized form of an enlightened one, or even in the realistic image of an austere zenji, but as a bald, fat, cross-eyed and hunch-backed old man. The poem Hakuin inscribed above the portrait comments:
In the realm of the thousand buddhas
He is hated by the thousand buddhas;
Among the crowd of demons
He is detested by the crowd of demons.
He crushes the silent-illumination heretics of today,
And massacres the heterodox blind monks of this generation.
This filthy blind old shavepate
Adds more foulness [ugliness] still to foulness. [14]
A similar portrait by a disciple, bearing the same poem, depicts Hakuin as looking almost sheepishly, with pursed lips, out of the corner of his eyes -- through all of which, however, one can detect the sagacious twinkle of one who was not easily fooled by sanctimony and pretension. [15]
The figure of the clown which stands out here in relation to the person of the master emerges just as clearly in the various tales of Zen monks at the point of death. The classic instance is that of Teng Yinfeng who, when he was about to die, asked, "I have seen monks die sitting and lying, but have any died standing?" "Yes, some," was the reply. "How about upside down?" "Never have we seen such a thing!" Whereupon Teng stood on his head and died. When it was time to carry him to the funeral pyre he remained upside-down, to the wonder of those who came to view the remains, and the consternation of those who would dispose of them. Finally his younger sister, a nun, came and, grumbling at him, said, "When you were alive you took no notice of laws and customs, and even now that you are dead you are making a nuisance of yourself!" With that she poked him with her finger, felling him with a thud, and the procession carried him away to the crematorium. [16] In this way Teng, assuming what, from the remarks of his sister, was the not unfamiliar role of the clown, expressed his achievement of spiritual freedom, his liberation from a desperate clinging to life and anxiety over self, and therefore his transcendence of the problem of death. There is here an element of both a promethean laughter in the face of death and a comic freedom within the larger freedom of enlightenment. The realization of an authentic liberation, as in so much of the Zen tradition, is attested by humor, and the symbol of that liberation is the paradoxical figure of the clown.
THE ZEN MASTER AS COMIC MIDWIFE
If the Zen master occasionally assimilates himself to the figure of the clown this is not, however, simply an end in itself, or a personal actualization of spiritual freedom alone, but a means to an end. In full accord with the Mahaa-
14. Ibid., pp. 124-125 (including plate).
15. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959), plate 40. There is a difference of opinion as to whether this is a self-portrait or a portrait by a disciple.
16. Blyth, Oriental Humour, pp. 93-94.
yaanist emphasis upon the compassionate concern of the Bodhisattva for the enlightenment of all, the truly enlightened one seeks through a variety of techniques -- including humor -- the awakening of the disciple. In a manner that is analogous to the "Holy Fool" tradition in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, in which the monk assumed the role of the fool, or engaged in bizarre or impious behavior, in order to reveal the folly of the people and to awaken piety, [17] the Zen master becomes a clown and behaves or instructs in unorthodox ways in order to reveal the comedy in a false view of self, and to awaken a new perspective on existence.
In this mode of relationship the master functions as a midwife of truth in the socratic sense, and often this midwifery is of a comic sort. The master does not and cannot teach the truth in the sense of indoctrination, for the truth to be realized -- an intuitive, nondiscursive truth -- cannot be dispensed in this way. It cannot, in fact, be dispensed in any way. In Kierkegaardian terms, the master is not a teacher of truths but an occasion for the truth to manifest itself within the inner being of the disciple. [18] The midwife, as it were, does not pass the baby from the stork to the mother, but assists the mother in delivering the baby. This presupposes, of course, that the truth is present already, though in an obscured form, requiring only an occasion for its realization. The type of occasion afforded by the Zen master, however, is frequently identified by the peculiarity of being a comic occasion.
Many tales have arisen in the Zen tradition illustrating such a maeutic device. A monk asked Toozan (Ts'ao Shan, 807-869), for example, "Are not monks persons of great compassion?" The master indicated approval. "Suppose the six bandits come at them. What should they do?" "Also be compassionate," the master replied. The monk pressed further, "How is one to be compassionate?" The master said, "Wipe them out with one sweep of the sword!" "What then?" asked the monk. "Then they will be harmonized." [19] (Through this wordplay the monk is supposed to come to the realization, through the incongruity of a literal interpretation, that the six bandits are the sensuous desires which must be both eradicated and at the same time harmonized.) There is a distinct element of play and game in such dialogues (mondoos) between master and disciple, many of which move back and forth at length, with each maneuver by the disciple being deftly countered in an effort to bring him to the point at which his resources are exhausted and he is opened to deeper insight. [20] Whether this is the play and game of humor or not --
For a translation of some of the more extensive and elaborate dialogues, see Richard S.Y. Chi, The Importance of Being Intuitive (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), Part II
though one suspects that behind the awesome visage of the master there is a faint twinkle in his eye -- the purpose of the repartee is not to develop the dialectical abilities of the disciple, or to display those of the master, but to reveal the rational approach as a false trail. The master plays with the disciple, like a cat with a mouse, not however to destroy him but to awaken him. Rather than the mondoo being an exercise in sophistry, leading nowhere, it is really an exercise in what might fittingly be called a "comedy of errors." Once the error is revealed the disciple realizes how funny his question had been, as in the case of the monk who asked Chookei (Ch'ang Ch'ing, 854-932), "What is meant by the True Eye of the Law?" only to receive the response, "I have a favor to ask of you: don't throw sand around!" [21]
In a similar vein, there is a comic dimension to many of the paradoxical and seemingly nonsensical kooans given to the disciple to meditate upon as a means of gaining release from an unenlightened way of perceiving the self and the world. This is not accidental, for the very provenance of comedy is nonsense and absurdity. Comedy plays with absurdity, and revels in irrationality, turning it to its own ends. In the Zen use of nonsense there is considerable psychological insight. One may approach a false view of things by rationally pointing out its errors and contradictions in the grand manner of the philosopher, but often a more effective method is to do so absurdly and humorously. For once the ridiculousness of the viewpoint is revealed and appropriated comically, instead of having been driven into a corner and held at bay by the overpowering logic of the master, as in the reductio ad absurdum methodology pursued in the Maadhyamika system of Naagaarjuna [22] -- a position which may only be a position of intellectual bondage in which the rope has been pulled tighter around the neck of the disciple -- one has been freed to laugh, and is therefore truly liberated. On the other hand, there is the distinct possibility in the discursive approach that the disciple will be tempted by the very intellectualism of the approach to seek some new way of overcoming the philosophical dilemma, some nuance that has been omitted or some angle that has been overlooked by the master -- a tantalizing defeat which may only perpetuate the argument, and hence the deception, ad infinitum. Something of the spirit and wisdom of the Zen method is captured in the account of Yoogi (Yang Ch'i, 992-1049) who rose ostensibly to lecture to his monks on the path of enlightenment, but instead began laughing and exclaimed simply, "Ha! ha! ha! What's all this! Go to the back of the hall and have some tea!"
It is because of this comic/socratic character of the Zen technique that one finds such a constant stress in the kooan and mondoo upon contradiction, nonsense and absurdity, or at least apparent contradiction, nonsense, and absurdity. As in Ummon's answer to the searching question of the monk, "When all mental activity is at an end, what is it like?" -- "Bring the Buddha-hall here and we'll weigh it together!" [24] -- it is as if one were suddenly plunged into the world of Lear's nonsense rhymes or of Alice in Wonderland. It is not however, sheer nonsense; a truth is being pointed to obliquely and comically, for to point to it directly and philosophically would be both impossible and misleading. Nonsense does not mean totally without sense, but without sense in the customary view of what constitutes sense, and beyond rationality in the ordinary understanding of reason. In nonsense one refuses to take with absolute seriousness -- that is, with humorlessness -- the world of sense, whether of common sense or sophisticated reason. Nonsense is the question mark placed after the supposedly firm reality of the "real" world of intelligibility, the irrefutable logic of rationality, or the categories and dichotomies of any system. It is this maeutic play upon irrationality in order to move beyond rationality that is expressed in the familiar kooan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" [25] or the mondoo, "What is the essence of Buddhism?" "Three pounds of flax!"
SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE COMIC TWIST
In the emphasis upon "sudden awakening," particularly as found in the Southern Ch'an school and the Rinzai sect, is to be seen a further point of correspondence between humor and Zen. Common to both is the element of abruptness, in the one case an abruptness which precipitates laughter, in the other case an abruptness which precipitates enlightenment. What the Zen masters have often done is to use the one form of abruptness, that of humor, as an occasion for the other. This is by no means purely accidental, since the sudden realization of the point of a joke is directly analogous to the sudden realization of enlightenment. The point of the joke, or the humorousness in the antics of the clown, is something that is caught immediately and effortlessly, or it is not caught at all. It does, of course, require preparation in terms of setting, context, and mood -- and here the "sudden realization" school of Zen includes rather than excludes the "progressive realization" school. Nothing is more awkward and flat than an inappropriate joke, or a joke out of the context that permitted it to be funny, or a joke the surprise ending of which has not been carefully prepared. But when the comic twist comes, like the "twist" of en-
24. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, II, 122.
25. Attributed to Hakuin.
lightenment, it comes spontaneously and uncoerced. If it requires explanation and the effort of understanding it ceases to be funny, even when it is comprehended intellectually, and the attempt is made to force an embarrassed smile. If one does not get the point instantaneously and intuitively laughter does not follow -- that is, it is not funny -- though later one may come to comprehend the humor that was in it in a secondhand, discursive understanding. There is, of course, the case of the proverbial Englishman who gets the point and laughs a day later; nevertheless, the delayed realization of the joke comes, when it comes, abruptly and spontaneously. Explaining a joke, therefore, like explaining enlightenment, is the worst thing that could happen to it, for the rational translation of its irrationality is totally different from getting the significance immediately and naturally; that is, from actually experiencing its humorousness. In the one case it is intellectualized, and though the point may be comprehended nobody laughs; in the other case the laughter is not the result of purposively taking thought about the matter, and everybody laughs effortlessly. It is for this reason that humor and Zen are so suited to each other, and in their spheres of coincidence are often so inseparable.
There is also a further correlation to be seen in the methodology of Zen "midwifery" between the elements of suddenness, surprise, and shock in the abrupt twist of humor and the similar virtues of the abrupt blow of the kyosaku, as well as the slapping, kicking, and shouting frequently mentioned in the anecdotes of the early Zen masters. These are techniques of the same order and intent. Suddenness, surprise, and shock are the very heart of humor, and the stock-in-trade of the clown and comedian. Both the comic and the dramatic techniques (and, as has been argued, even the dramatic techniques have a comic dimension to them) are a form of spiritual "shock therapy" which can serve to break up the patterns of thought and rationality that hold the individual in bondage. At a certain juncture further words and reasonings may only bind the cords more tightly, or perpetuate the illusion that the problem is solvable in these terms. What may be required, therefore, is the sudden jolt of the kooan, the irrational turn of the humorous anecdote, or the absurdity of the comic figure. If the individual has become removed from reality, if he has lost touch with the true nature of things, if he is caught in the web of artificial constructs, the function of humor, like that of the kyosaku, can be that of snapping the bonds of his illusion, and bringing him back to reality.
Hakuin's commentary on the Hannya Shingyoo, which he entitled Dokugo (i.e., "poisonous words of") Hannya Shingyoo, is a case in point. The shock-value of this wry humor, on the surface sacrilegious, is its own justification as a device for awakening the reader to the dangers inherent in a mere intellectual and doctrinal appropriation of any religious teaching: that it may be substituted for the reality toward which it points, like the mistaking of the
pointing finger for the moon. [26] This, in Ummon's blunter way of putting it, would simply be to "swallow the saliva of other people, and succeed in memorizing and accumulating heaps and loads of curios and antiques." [27] The choice however, between a more physical form of abruptness and surprise and a more humorous form, at least in the greater flexibility of the earlier Zen tradition is a matter of accommodating the technique to the situation and individual involved. In full accord with the ancient practice of Indian and Asian spiritual masters of adjusting the approach to the specific personality and need of the individual, in some circumstances a more dramatic method might be required, and in others a more comic method.
ICONOCLASM AND THE FOLLY OF THE DESIRING SELF
There has probably never been a religious movement more sweepingly iconoclastic than Zen; idols of every sort are mercilessly smashed: scripture, doctrine, tradition, meritorious works, ritual, liturgy, ecclesiasticism, reason, self, prayer, gods, and even the Buddha. Much of the humor in Zen is therefore iconoclastic in character; before enlightenment and liberation can occur, all idols must be overturned or -- which is the same -- laughed out of existence. Anything is potentially an idol; therefore anything is a legitimate object of laughter. No aspect of one's existence is to be taken too seriously. This is precisely the function of humor; for to take things too seriously, however important and significant they might ordinarily seem, is to be dependent upon them and therefore to be caught in the wheel (the vicious circle) of attachment, desire, and anxiety. Beginning with the first Ch'an patriarch the comic/iconoclastic motif is central to Zen, as in the legend of Bodhidharma's response to the inquiry of Emperor Wu of Liang: "'Ever since the beginning of my reign I have built so many temples, copied so many sacred books, and supported so many monks and nuns; what do you think my merit might be?' 'No merit whatever, sire!' was Bodhidharma's reply." [28]
This type of humor not only turns outward in a relentless attack upon idolatry, pretension, and pride, but also is permitted to turn inward toward even the most sacred moments of Zen experience itself, as in the episode of Toozan's enlightenment. In the exuberance over his awakening, Toozan exclaimed to his master, Ummon, "From now on I will go where there is no smoke of human habitation, keep not a grain of rice, but will entertain all the people from the ten directions of the world, dissolve the glue [of their attachment] and release them from their bonds!" Ummon twitted him, "Your body is no bigger
than a cocoanut, but what a big mouth when you open it " [29] Perhaps the most sacrosanct elements in Zen, in the formal sense, are its "apostolic succession" of continuous transmission from the Buddha through Mahaakaa`syapa to the present, and the so-called Zen creed which summarizes the essential thrust of Zen teaching. [30] Yet there are instances of both of these traditions being parodied, as in Mumon's summary and commentary:
A long time ago when the World Honored One was dwelling on Vulture Peak, He picked up a flower and showed it to the congregation. They all remained unmoved, but the venerable Mahaakaa`syapa smiled. The Honored One said: "I have in my hand the doctrine of the right Dharma which is birthless and deathless, the true form of no-form and a great mystery. It is the message of non-dependence upon (words) and letters and is transmitted outside the scriptures. I now hand it to Mahaakaa`syapa."
[Mumon's commentary]: Golden-faced Gautama behaved outrageously. He reduced the sublime to the simple. He sold dog meat for mutton and thought it wonderful to do so. Had the whole congregation smiled, to whom would he have transmitted the right Dharma? Had Mahaakaa`syapa not smiled, to whom would he have transmitted it? If you say that the right Dharma can be transmitted, the golden-faced old man deceived the world. If it cannot be, how could he give the message even to Mahaakaa`syapa?
When he held up a flower
His secret was revealed.
When Mahaakaa`syapa smiled
No one in heaven or on earth knew what to make of it. [31]
The fool and his folly is commonly the subject of comedy, particularly the fool who is blissfully unaware of his folly, and, more particularly, the fool who mistakes his folly for wisdom. This, in Zen, describes the self-portrait of man. Humor is therefore not only a permissible but an especially appropriate way of getting at what in Buddhism generally has consistently been identified as the fundamental folly of ignorance, desire, and illusion of self. If the ego, for instance, is understood as one of the elements of the human problem, then humor corresponds to the realization of the comedy of the substantial ego, the refusal to take the ego seriously or absolutely in its pretension of being the one secure point of reference and consciousness -- as in Descartes' philosophy where, when all else is in doubt, one retreats to the seemingly impregnabl
30. Attributed to Bodhidharma, but undoubtedly of later formulation:
"A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence upon words and letters;
Direct pointing at the soul [inner being] of man;
Seeing into one's nature and the attainment of Buddhahood."
refuge of the substantial ego: cogito ergo sum. There is no small irony in the fact that what is taken as the most fundamental axiom of Cartesian thought is the fundamental illusion of Buddhist thought. In Zen in particular it is through humor that the ego is revealed as being only the mask that the actor puts on, or holds in front of his face (as in Greek drama, and the original meaning of persona as "mask"), hiding his true identity, a mask which is both a tragic mask from the standpoint of ignorance and suffering, and a comic mask from the standpoint of enlightenment and liberation.
Similarly, if one takes the Buddhist emphasis upon the problematic of desire, there is something not only pathetic but comic about passion, greed, envy, and hatred, and one is fully liberated only when he sees both its pathetic and its comic side, both the suffering and the folly of his insatiable grasping. Likewise, an aspect of the experience of enlightenment in Zen may be seen as the realization of the forms of one's ignorance as foolish and therefore humorous, so that a part of what the liberation of the awakening may mean is the freedom to laugh at the comedy of one's blindness, and to laugh in the joy of newfound insight.
THE FREEDOM OF HUMOR AND THE FREEDOM OF ENLIGHTENMENT
As has been intimated above, humor in Zen is not only, in various ways, an aspect of the methodology of approaching enlightenment and liberation; it is also the consequence of enlightenment and liberation. To see the world and one's individuality in this new light is coincident with seeing it through the comic perspective at a profounder level, and to be liberated is coincident with experiencing the world and one's individuality in the freest sense of the comic spirit. To the degree that one is free, one is free to laugh in the fullest and most joyous sense. Humor is caught up in the joy of awakening and emancipation. At every level humor spells freedom in some sense and to some degree. Here, however, the ambiguous freedom to laugh which moves within the conflicts and tensions of existence -- the freedom, therefore, which is still within the context of bondage -- becomes the freedom to laugh on the other side of enlightenment and liberation. He who is no longer in bondage to desire, or to the self, or to the law, he who is no longer torn apart by alienation and anxiety, can now laugh, as it were, with the laughter of the gods.
Something of this spirit is captured in the account of the enlightenment of Shui-lao. Upon asking his master, Baso (Ma Tsu, 709-788), "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?" Baso kicked him in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Immediately Shui-lao was enlightened, got up, and began clapping his hands and laughing. Daie (Ta Hui, 1089-1163) reports that when asked about the nature of his enlightenment, Shui-lao re-
plied, "Since the master kicked me, I have not been able to stop laughing." [32] Similarly, at the end of his life, Razan (Lo Shan, ninth century), sensing his end to be near, ascended the rostrum to speak, but instead dismissed the monks. He then remarked simply, "If you wish to show your gratitude for the Buddha's goodness to you, you should not be too earnest [anxious] about propagating the Great Teaching," after which he began laughing loudly, and died. [33] Sometimes in the Zen accounts it is the monk rather than the master who provides the humorous turn, and this is taken as a sign of his progress toward or achievement of enlightenment. There is the story, for example, of the monk who asked Ungo (Yung Cho, ninth century), "Mountains and rivers, the great earth -- where does it all come from?" "From delusive imagination," countered Ungo. To which the monk responded, "Then won't you please imagine a piece of gold for me!" Whereupon the monk was received by the master. [34]
In terms of the mythological schema with which the essay began, the achievement of the comic spirit and perspective in this sense may be interpreted as a corollary of the recovery on a higher level of the spontaneity, immediacy, and naturalness enjoyed by the child -- the freedom that is prior to the emergence of rationality and order, and the dualistic rift in experience between self and world, mind and body, good and evil, sacred and profane. This is not, however, simply a return to infancy, a regression to the primordial womb, but a return, as it were, on a higher plane. It is both identical to and radically other than the prerational plane. The experience that lies between the alpha and the omega of the spiritual pilgrimage is not simply a grand detour which counts for nought. Rather it is carried into a fuller dimension; it is transcended and brought to fulfillment. Nor is this a resolution of opposites through an uneasy compromise, like the precarious "middle way" of the tight-rope walker suspended in midair, but a genuine dialectical transcendence of the opposites. A new world of revelation and redemption has been entered. As Suzuki says of the experience of satori: "The world for those who have gained a satori is no more the old world as it used to be... Logically stated, all its opposites and contradictions are united and harmonized into a consistent organic whole." [35] The humor which corresponds to this level, therefore, is not simply reducible to the laughter of the child -- though it includes this -- but is the laughter of maturity. It is the comic spirit and perspective of one who has passed through Paradise-lost, who has known alienation and anxiety, but who has come out on the other side that is identified in myth as Paradise-regained.
Emptiness is the source - The best home videos are here
To nourish the vital energy, keep watch in silence;
In order to subdue the mind, act with non-action.
Of movement and stillness, be aware of their origin;
There is no work to do, much less someone to seek.
The true and constant must respond to phenomena;
Responding to phenomena, you must be unconfused.
When unconfused, the nature will stabilize by itself;
When the nature stabilizes, energy returns by itself.
When energy returns, the elixir crystallizes by itself;
Within the pot, the trigrams of heaven and earth are joined.
Yīn and yáng arise, alternating over and over again;
Every transformation comes like a clap of thunder.
White clouds form and come to assemble at the peak;
The sweet nectar sprinkles down Mount Sumeru.
Swallow for yourself this wine of immortality;
You wander so freely—who is able to know you?
Sit and listen to the tune played without strings;
Clearly understand the mechanism of creation.
It comes entirely from these twenty lines;
A true ladder going straight to Heaven.-Daoist text -
To us all towns are one, all men our kin. Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill. Man's pains and pains' relief are from within. Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !." - Tamil Poem-
Hakuin does not sketch himself in the idealized form of an enlightened one, or even in the realistic image of an austere zenji, but as a bald, fat, cross-eyed and hunch-backed old man...but then he kissed you:)...Lovely story of the creation purpose...shakti means manifestation,and shiva means the origin of it..the kiss is the joy of emptiness knowing itself...kisses from the mahayogi to you,grasshopper from heaven!
