Case 5 - Hsueh Feng's Grain of Rice
Reflections
Xuefeng
Yicun (822-908) was a student of Deshan. He and
Yantou were close friends and studied together at Deshan’s
place. Before going
to Deshan’s Xuefeng studied with Dongshan where he served as
cook. But Dongshan
told him to go to study with Deshan. At Deshan’s he was the
cook in the koan
about old Deshan who come out of his room, bowls in hand, to eat,
before the
dinner bell had struck. Yantou was the one Xuefeng told about the old
befuddled
Master. Yantou then said the Deshan still didn’t know the
“last word.” And the
rest is found in the thirteenth koan of the Wumenkuan.
Xuefeng
was contemporary of Zhaozhou. It is not known if
they ever met. But it was Xuefeng who call Zhaozhou the
“Ancient Buddha of
Zhaozhou.”
Xuefeng’s
great opening took place while he was on a
pilgrimage with his brother student Yantou. They stayed at an inn
during a
snowstorm. Xuefeng spent his time meditating and studying. Yantou
relaxed and
slept. I imagine they had something like the following conversation.
Xuefeng:
What’s wrong with
you? Why do you spend your time lazing around? Why don’t you
meditate and
study? What kind of a monk are you?
Yantou:
And what’s wrong
with you? Sitting upright like you are you remind me of one of the painted-up clay idols in
the many village
shrines all over China. Why do you spend so much time in idle
meditation? Do
you actually get something out of it? What you learn about yourself?
Xuefeng:
Well now that you
mention it, my mind races around like a windmill. Going round and round
in
circles. Getting nowhere. I don’t know if I know anything at
all about the
teachings. Do you think I know anything or not?
Yantou:
I think as long as
you keep going about it ass-backwards you don’t! The
teachings don’t come by sitting
on your ass. They have to come from your heart. Then you will cover
heaven and
earth with them.
With
these words, Xuefeng
got it.
That
this was the turning point of his life is confirmed
by the saying attributed to him, when he was asked what he learned at
Deshan’s
place. He said, “I went there empty-handed, and empty-handed
I returned.” As an
aside, this saying can also be understood to have the complete opposite
meaning
similar to the famous quote of Dogen’s. Upon his return, he
was asked what he learned
in China. His response was that his nose was vertical and his eyes were
horizontal.
What
I find amazing about this koan is that I have not
been able to find early references to it in any of the other koan
collections,
such as the Dentoroku,
or Andy Ferguson’s Zen’s
Chinese Heritage.
There is another translation made by Thomas Cleary who is one of the
two Cleary
brothers who translated the Secrets
of the Blue Cliff Record. Papa Dogen
doesn’t mention the koan anywhere; not in the Shobogenzo, the Eihei
Koroku, nor his collection of 300 koans, the Mana Shobogenzo .
There
is a translation made by Sekida.
Seppo
addressed the assembly
and said, “All the great world, if I pick it up with my
fingertips, is found to
be like a grain of rice. I throw it in front of your face, but you do
not see
it. Beat the drum, telling the monks to come out to work, and search
for it.”
There
is another translation found online, translator
unknown.
Seppô,
teaching the
assembly, said, "When you pick up the whole earth in your fingers, it's
the size of a grain of rice. I cast it down before you. Like in a black
lacquer
bucket, you don't recognize it any more. Beat the drum, call everyone
to look
for it!"
Finally,
there is the other translation of Cleary in his Secrets
of the Blue Cliff Record.
Seppo
said to a group, “Pick
up the whole world in your fingers, and it’s as big as a
grain of rice. Toss it
in front of you; if you’re in the dark, not understanding,
beat the drum to
muster everyone to look.”
Tenkei,
one of the two commentators in the Secrets
collection says, “This
koan is often misinterpreted to represent the merging
of the great and the small, or the one and the many. This is very
wrong.” He
also suggests that when all discriminating
thinking stops—right and wrong, gain and loss, etc., then the
universe shrinks
to the size of a grain of rice. (Secrets 21)
I
would say “yes” and “no,”
“but more” to Master Tenkei
comments. Yes, to his claim that the diminishing of discriminating
thinking is
analogous to the shrinking of the dualities of the universe. No, to his
claim
that the merging of the great and the small or the one and the many is
and
incorrect understanding of the koan. I find the imagery of the
ricegrain and
the universe to be very much in line with Hua Yen teachings of the
workings of
the Dharma. The entire universe contained on the tip of a follicle of
hair. The
entirety of the moon contained in every drop of water. The imagery of
Indra’s
net where each intersection of the net contains a jewel which reflects
all of
the other jewels of the net. The teaching of Shitou who says in the
“Identity
of Relative and Absolute,”
All
spheres, every sense and
field,
Intermingle
even as they
shine alone,
Interacting
even as they
merge
Yet
keeping their places in
expressions of their own.
And
there is the merging of the one and the many and the
great and the small in this koan. But there’s more. And what
is that more?
There
is that within us which is the Inner Light, The
Unknown, the Unborn, which is BuddhaNature, the Inner Christ, the
Buddha, the
Dharma. It is that which knows. That which understands. That which
loves. That
which feels the pain and suffering of others. That which reaches out to
touch
and heal. That which informs our being. That which informs the entire
universe.
That we are capable of love of compassion of simply being. It is there.
Here.
Within. It is the Dharma.
But
being the fatheads that we are we sometimes lose it.
And one of the ways we lose it is crazy. We simply do not believe in
ourselves.
We do not believe that we have it. We think we’re so stupid
and insignificant
that nothing so wonderful can possibly be here within us. We get depressed. We think
we’re nothing. An
so by being so we throw it away and lose sight of it.
We throw away the riceseed of the universe.
Then realizing what’s happened we panic. We frantically look
for it. We realize
the craziness of what we have done and then we should beat
the drum and get all the help we can to find our lost
treasure. Beat the drum, call 911, go to the emergency rooms of the
hospitals
of our hearts, appeal to all our friends in the sangha, tackle and
plead with
our teachers, go out into the woods to try get again in touch with our
inner
beings. Put our kayaks into a quiet lake and paddle away in silence and
peace.
Do anything everything whatever we can think of to regain our lost
treasure.
Sit hard at our zazen. Make the search the koan focus point of our
meditation.
Put everything into it.
That’s
what I find in this wonderful koan. And it brings
me peace. Even when I look around and see that I have succeeded in
being
nobody.
If
you want bigness and action and meaning and
significance and brocade and great followings and relevance and social
engagement you can easily find it. But not here. You may think
I’m kidding when
I say I teach a zenbuddhism where nothing happens. And that’s
probably why
there are so few people here. Because this is the place where nobody
reigns.
This is the place where everything is small. And everybody counts. And
everybody has that wonderful grainseed of rice.
Hsueh
Feng, teaching his
community, said, “Pick up the whole great earth in your
fingers, and it's as
big as a grain of rice. Throw it down before you: if, like a lacquer
bucket,
you don't understand, I'll beat the drum to call everyone to
look.”