Case 12 - Tung Shan’s Three Pounds of Hemp
A
monk asked Tung-shan,
“What is Buddha?”
Tung-shan
said, “Three
pounds of hemp.”
Reflections
So
what do you make of this koan? What the hell are they
talking about? It sounds like a game. “What is
Buddha?” Everybody knows. It’s
like asking, “What is rain?” And then the answer,
“Three pounds of hemp.”
What
nonsense!
Various
commentators have made exotic explications on
this koan. Shibayama Roshi, Aitkin Roshi, Yamada Roshi, to name a few
of the
most recent ones. Generally, they suggest that the monk’s
question is in code.
What he really means is something like:
“What
have you attained in
your realization experience?”
Or,
the question could be,
“What
is attained in a
realization experience?”
Or,
“What
would I receive in my
realization experience?”
“In what way would
I change? How would I be
different?”
And
so on.
And
Tung-shan’s response is, “Three pounds of
hemp.”
Aitken
Roshi suggests the question could mean,
“What
is the essential
aspect of life in this world?”
“What
is the substance of
life or death?”
“Can
you show it to me?”
“Concretely?”
So
we’re not talking about Buddha we’re talking about
enlightenment—the realization
experience—we’re talking about the very nub of
life itself. This is what the monk is really asking. So why
doesn’t he just say
so? Why does he hide the question under Buddhas robes? One of the
things I love
about the old Zen masters, as revealed in their dialogues that
developed into
koans, is their playfulness. They seem to have virya
or great determination in their practice, but they do not
lose their sense of play. They shower their exchanges with humor. But
usually,
the humor has a sharp edge or a sharp point which pierces into your
heart or
mind. I think that’s one of the reasons we find koans so
engaging, even though
so frustrating, and sometimes, so painful.
Aitkin
Roshi suggests that in those days there were so
many students, that access to the teacher was limited. And so two or
three
times a week the teacher would mount the rostrum, or high seat to make
a brief teisho or dharma talk and
open-up the
session to Hosen, or dharma combat.
Or open daisan. Then monks would
individually come forward, ask their questions, and in this way receive
instruction. Our hemp koan could have come about in this setting.
Tung-shan
needn’t have been in the sewing room weighing cloth for robes. For instance, if you came
up to me during a
break I was taking from mowing the lawn and asked me, “What
is the Buddha?” and
I respond “A patch of unmowed grass.” You would
know what I meant. And you may
even know exactly what my answer meant in response to your question.
So, what
did I mean?
And
Tung-shan may have been weighing three pounds of
hemp, and his response became koan history. In “Tenzo
Kyokun” Dogen says ,“ The incident of
Dongshan’s three pounds
of sesame seed took place when he was a tenzo.” I
don’t know the source of
Dogen’s quote, and his is the only reference I have found in
koan literature
that places Tung-shan in the kitchen weighing sesame seeds.
There
is a similar situation in Chao-chou’s equally
famous response, “The oak tree in the courtyard” in
case thirty-seven of the Wumenkuan.
A
monk asked Chao-chou,
“What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from
the West?”
Chao-chou
said, “The oak
tree in the courtyard.”
Many
believe that like Tung-shan, Chao-chou happened to
be looking out in the garden when he was asked the question and his
response
has reverberated ever since.
So
let’s look at this question and answer again.
I
read as much as I can about the background of the
individuals in koans. But I give precedence to the text. And only with
trepidation would I allow text to be informed by anything that is
outside of
the text. For instance, you may be working with the Wumenkuan.
Often Mumon’s verses and commentary go right to the
heart of the koans. But his comments are not the koan. The koan itself
is what
I’m interested in and I’m interested in your
understanding of the text of the
koan.
So
what are the words of the text of our koan?
A
monks asks Tung-shan “What
is the Buddha?’
Tung-shan
said “Three pounds
of hemp.”
One
of the interesting things about this exchange is that
it is found very often in one form or another during the
T’ang era of koan
literature. There are many examples of this particular type of
question. For
instance, the same case, with almost the same text appears in the Wumenkuan as Case eighteen. Here the
word, “flax” is used instead of
“hemp.”
It
is in Case eighteen, that we find the wonderful
metaphor of, “Clam Zen” in Mumon’s
commentary. He says,
Old
Man Tung-shan attained
something of clam-Zen. He opened the two halves of his shell a bit and
exposed
his liver and intestines. Be that as it may tell me: where do you see
Tung-shan?
And
Case twenty-one of the Wumenkuan is
a similar and famous case which goes like this:
A
monk asked Yun-men, “What
is Buddha”
Yun-men
said, “Dried
shitstick.”
Now
let’s look a little at the biography. Our Tung-shan
was a student of Wu-man. And he also appears in the Wumenkuan,
in Case Number fifteen. The koan goes like this:
Tung-shan
came to see
Yun-men. Yun-men asked him, “Where
were
you most recently?”
Tung-shan
said, “At
Ch’a-tu.”
Yun-men
said, “Where were
you during the summer?”
Tung-shan
said, “At Pao-tzu
Monastery in Hu-nan.”
Yun-men
said, “When did you
leave there?”
Tung-shan
said, “August
25th.”
Yun-men
said, “I spare you
sixty blows.”
Next
day, Tung-shan came
again and said, “Yesterday you said you spared me sixty
blows. I don’t know
where I was at fault.”
Yun-men
said, “You rice bag!
Do you go about in such a way, now west of the river, now south of the
lake!”
With
this, Tung-shan had
great satori.
So,
at last, back to the text.
First
we have the three words. “What is Buddha?” That the
question is phrased in the present tense is significant. We are talking
about a
living, present, reality. Something here, now, immediate, close,
intimate.
The
first word is, “What.” What
is the Buddha? It is not, Who
is the Buddha? Or, How or, Why or, Where.
Each of these words would be a different question. It is, What is the Buddha? So, to paraphrase
President Clinton, what does, what
mean? Let’s turn to the OED. Basically, it says there are
various possible
arrangements of the uses of this word. And after going through many
gyrations
of exotic meanings, it equates the word and meaning of what
with the word who.
So
the question can be rephrased, “Who is the Buddha? Or,
“What is the nature, character, or function of the
Buddha?”
I
think we can dismiss the first, “Who is the
Buddha?” if
we are speaking historically. If not then we’re in trouble.
The second usage of
the word “what,” to describe the nature, character
and function of the Buddha,
is more interesting.
However,
we have yet another problem that is implicit in
the very nature of language. There are basically two levels of words.
There are
high-level abstract words and low-level abstract words. Low-level
abstract
words have referents, i.e., when I say the word,
“table” I can point at
something and you know what I’m talking about. When I say the
word, “dog” you
know what I’m talking about. When I say the words,
“chair,” “zafu,”
“zabuton,”
incense,” you know what I’m talking about. The same
applies to persons. When I
say the word, “Margaret,” and point, you know who
I’m talking about. These are
low-level abstract words. Now there are high-level abstract words. When
I say
the word, “philosophy” what do I point to? When I
say the word, “science,” what
do I point to? The words, “faith,”
“idea,” mind,”
“emptiness,” etc.
There
is also the further complication of metaphor—when
we use a word on one level to point to another word at another level.
For
instance the word, “cloud” in Zen usage, points to
the word, “monk.” The word,
“moon” points to the word,
“enlightenment.” Then in Buddhism there is the
further complication of the relative and absolute. Dogen is constantly
using
low level abstract words in the relative to point to high-level
abstract words
in the absolute. That’s why our eyes often spin when we read
Dogen.
Such
is the case with the words, “Buddha” and
“hemp” in
this koan.
I
think the monk is not using the low-level abstract
sense of the word “Buddha.” He is using the
high-level abstract sense and the
second meaning of the word
“what,”—something which refers to the
nature,
character, or function of the Buddha. So his question could be,
“What is the
nature, character, and function of Buddha?”
Tung-shan
says, “Three pounds of hemp.”
Each
word is specific. Each word on a low-level of
abstraction. “Three.” “Pounds.”
“Hemp.” Yet two of the
words—”three” and
“hemp”—are metaphors which point to the
absolute.
What
can Tung-shan mean by the first word of his
response, “three?”
Informed
by the word, “Buddha,” one of the meanings that
come to mind is the Trikaya, which
is
The Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya,
and the Nirmanakaya.
The Dharmakaya is the body of the
law, or Dharma, the void, or emptiness, the inexpressible. The Sambhogakaya is the body of Bliss; the
body that sometimes inhabits bodhisattvas and buddhas, in this world,
at this
time, as well as in other worlds, at all times. These are the saints,
the
guardian angels. And the Nirmanakaya
is the body of transformation. Where word becomes flesh. Where the Dharmakaya enters into the historical
reality and person of Siddhartha, who becomes Shakyamuni Buddha. All of
this
may be suggested by the simple low-level abstract word,
“three.”
I
would take the word, “pounds” to be and remain a
low-level abstract word.
But
with, “hemp” we have something different.
“Hemp” is
what is used to make cloth, particularly the cloth that the monks use
to make
their robes, their rakusus, and
their
kesas. The Buddha Robe. The Buddha
Kesa which itself is the Dharma. Is the Buddha. And this takes us back
to,
“three” and to the Three Treasures. The Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha.
Three
pounds of hemp becomes the Buddha as experienced in
the Trikaya, and the ritual of the Ti Sharana, the ritual of commitment,
taken daily by monks, to the Three Treasures.
Buddham
Sharanam Gacchami.
Dhammam
Sharanam Gacchami.
Sangham
Sharanam Gacchami.
I
take refuge in the Buddha.
I
take refuge in the Dharma.
I
take refuge in the Sangha.
Three
pounds of hemp becomes the commitment of a life of
service made by those who wear the rakusu or kesa. Three pounds of hemp
becomes
the commitment to the life and way of the Bodhisattva—the way
of life dedicated
to the love and service of all sentient beings, without exception. All
of this
may be suggested by the word, “hemp.”
So,
having counted the sands of the koan, have I said it
all? No! I’ve just begun. Now I can begin to work on the koan
by letting the
koan work on me and let it enter into my heart and feel where and what
the
Buddha is.
Now
I can open myself, like Mumon’s clam, and expose part
of my liver, my intestines, my lungs, and my heart, so that the koan
can
penetrate into the deepest places.
I
can become the koan.
The
koan can become me.
I
can become the three pounds of hemp.
Become
the kesa.
Become
the Trikaya.
Become
the Three Treasures.
Become
the Buddha.
Discover
all the realities within me.
And
then, opening like a clam, I can present the koan in
daisan..
A
monk asked Tung-shan,
“What is Buddha?”
Tung-shan
said, “Three
pounds of hemp.”