Luoshan asked Yantou, “When arising and vanishing go on unceasingly, what then?”

Yantou shouted and said, “Whose arising and vanishing is it?”

Before I go into this any further, let me just comment that this is the epitome of the stupid question. In grade school, they used to tell us that the only stupid question is the unasked question. They lied to us in grade school. I’m not sure why they did. Maybe to prepare us for adult life. Anyway, this is the ultimate stupid question, at least for a Zen student. If you sit Zazen for about ten minutes, you know this is true. One thought fades and the next one rises.

Hardly a nanosecond between them. The inbreath comes, the outbreath follows, in unceasing rhythm. Emotions rise up – seemingly from nowhere – love, anger, pride, remorse, fear, joy. In rapid succession, they arise and recede. The bell is struck, the sound crescendos, decrescendos, and fades out. Arising and vanishing. Unceasing.

We have just celebrated the beginning of a new year, a celebration that makes us more aware of the passage of time. Time moves by in an unending stream. And as we get older, time seems to move much faster. Each year, each week, each day, each instant arises and vanishes unceasingly, leaving no trace.

Every second, our bodies produce two million red blood cells to replace the two million cells that have died in that same second. In the span of an hour, or two periods of sitting. 720 billion – nearly a trillion – red blood cells will have died and been replaced by 720 billion new ones. Arising and vanishing. Unceasing.

I remember a fishing trip my family took when I was a young child. It was to a small lake in Minnesota and it was mayfly season. Each morning, at dawn, a huge cloud of mayflies would rise up in unison from the surface of the lake. They were so thick they obscured nearly everything else. They would land on everything, including us. Then, during the night, they would all die and their corpses were everywhere. Bu at dawn a new cloud of flies would arise from the lake. I was utterly fascinated. Especially by the fact that each fly had spent an entire year underwater to fly up for just this one day. It seemed like such a short time to really be alive, as I saw it then. But we humans measure everything by our own scale. Maybe that day seemed to them as long as our lifetimes do to us. Or maybe that day of flying was the coda to a very exciting year underwater. I’m sure they continue to repeat this performance every year on the small lakes of Minnesota. I would love to see them again. Arising and vanishing. Unceasing.

In our own time, many species of plants and animals are simply vanishing from the planet. Perhaps to be replaced by new undreamed of species. Whole civilizations rise and fall. Even stars and whole galaxies arise and vanish. It is unending. Arising and vanishing. Unceasing.

I have been sitting with this koan for about three or four months now. A long time to sit with a koan. But every time I sat with it, a new dimension of it opened up for me. These two short sentences hold indescribable riches. During this period of time, my beloved dog Rosie became quite ill and it looked as if she might die soon. She and I have been inseparable for over thirteen years. I was grief-stricken at the thought of her dying. But this koan helped me through all this. Helped me to see that when her time comes to die, she will die. And when her time comes, I need to be there for her, to encourage her along her path, and not try to hold on to her. It became okay. Sure, I will be sad. There will be a hole in my life when she leaves. But it is the order of things. And there is a certain joy in the passing. When it is her time, she will leave. When it is our time, we will leave. As simple as that.

Arising and vanishing is the natural order of things. What is unnatural is our clinging, our wanting things to stay the same.

On the one hand, we love change. Many of us love the cycling of the seasons and look forward to the gifts of each season. The cold crispness of winter with the beauty of the snow; the cool freshness of spring and the fresh green grass; the warmth of summer with its luscious fruits and fresh vegetables, and the outings to lakes and streams; the riotous beauty of the autumn colors and the slowing down for winter. Life would be dreary indeed without change, without arising and vanishing.

We all look forward to new birth. To the new growth of flowers and plants. Watching the birds nest and hatching their young. And what could possibly be more exciting than the new birth of a baby into our families, child or grandchild? All of this arising we love.

What we fear, of course, is the vanishing part. Loss and death.

Now all of this arising and vanishing that goes on constantly may be fascinating to some of us, but most of us really think, “So what?” Yantou’s “Whose arising and vanishing is it?” is very much to the point, is it not? What matters to us is our own arising and vanishing and that of those we care about. Mayflies may be of interest to an entomologist, civilizations to the historian, and stars and galaxies to an astronomer, but what really concerns us is the arising and vanishing of the people we love, the places we love, perhaps the animals we love, and most of all our own precious selves. That’s what shouldn’t vanish!

Is this what this koan is all about? In part, yes. Life is constantly arising and vanishing. But the real question is what are we going to do with our own lives?
And why did Yantou shout? What was that all about? In order to understand this koan, we need to ask, “Who is this Yantou?” Well, he was one of the great Zen masters of Ninth Century China. There are many koans in which he appears, usually besting his opponent with his sharp wit.

He was the dharma heir of the great Deshan, or Tokusan in Japanese. For those of you who have worked on the Mumonkan, you will remember the koan in which Yantou, or Ganto in Japanese, and his dharma brother Hsueh-feng, or Seppo in Japanese, have an encounter with Tokusan in the koan “Tokusan Carries his Bowls.”

Yantou lived during the T’ang Dynasty, from 828 to 887. He was in the twelfth generation after Bodhidharma, the sixth after Hui-Neng. During his lifetime, Yantou saw a great deal of arising and vanishing. He lived through the reign of Emperor Wu-Tsung, who was a fanatical Taoist, determined to rid China of Buddhism. Wu-Tsung began the persecution of Buddhism in 842, but it really became serious in 844. Fortunately, he died in 846, before Buddhism was completely exterminated. Nonetheless, according to the official accounts of the time, he destroyed more than 4,600 temples and 40,000 shrines and defrocked more than 260,000 monks and nuns, forcing them back to lay life. These persecutions nearly destroyed and permanently crippled Buddhism in China. During the worst period of the persecutions, Yantou himself left the monastery and became a ferryman.

Later, the Tang Dynasty fell apart and public order broke down. Bands of robbers roamed the countryside. Finally, the monks in Yantou’s monastery learned that a robber band was planning to attack, and they all fled. Only Yantou remained, alone in his monastery. When the robbers entered, they found Yantou sitting in meditation. The robbers were furious when they saw that there was nothing worth stealing. In their anger, they stabbed Yantou to death. As he died, Yantou uttered a shout that reputedly could be heard for thirty miles away.

Yantou saw the arising and vanishing of everything he cared about, of his life’s work, and finally of his life. And he shouted.

What is this shouting about? First of all, Luoshan’s question is a philosophical one. “How are we to understand arising and vanishing?” is what he is asking. Zen is about direct experience – directly experiencing that which is right in front of our eyes. Not about philosophy. Thinking about it doesn’t help. We can philosophize forever and it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the situation and it doesn’t change us. Zen is about living it. Grasping the situation by the horns and living it. In Zen, the shout is seen as a wake up call. Wake up! Stop thinking, stop dreaming! Wake up! Be alert! Be aware! Be alive! Yantou is shouting at Luoshan, “Stop philosophizing! Experience your own life! Live!”

Jesus said similar things. When he first began to teach, his message was, “Wake up! Turn around! Turn your lives around! See what is right in front of your eyes! The Kingdom of God is at hand! It is here! Now! Within you! Wake up! Grab the kingdom with both hands! Live it!”

He also said that keeping the ritual purity does not matter. Keeping the letter of the law is not what counts. Knowing the Scriptures by heart is not what counts. What matters is how you live your life. What counts is how you treat others. You matter! Your life matters! It matters what we do with our lives. Especially now, in our own time. We have the capacity to destroy all of civilization. And the capacity to destroy our own planet. In fact, we are hard at work destroying everything around us.

Whose arising and vanishing is it? Whose indeed. It’s Luoshan’s. It’s Yantou’s. It’s yours. It’s mine. Happening here, now, all around us. Within us.

Both Jesus and Yantou are shouting, “Wake up! The time is now! Live! Your life counts! Live it to the fullest! And live it for the benefit of all!”

Jesus’ final shout from the cross was, “It is accomplished!” I don’t think he whispered it. He shouted it. “My life’s work is accomplished. Now you go, live!” It was a shout to the whole world. Not just to himself or his disciples. No, he was shouting to everyone through the centuries. To us here, now. “Live! Your life matters!”

And old Yantou shouted as he was dying. A shout that could be heard for thirty miles around. A shout of victory. “I have lived my life fully. I have given everything. Now you. It is your turn! Live your lives! Your lives matter! It matters what you do with them! Live!”

YES!

Luoshan asked Yantou, “When arising and vanishing go on unceasingly, what then?”

Yantou shouted and said, “Whose arising and vanishing is it?”