Book of Equanimity Case 48: Vimalakirti's Nonduality
Master Wong Song’s Preface to the Assembly
Even if one’s subtle function is universal, there’s a place where one can’t even begin to act. Even if one’s eloquence is unhindered, there’s a time when one can’t open one’s mouth. Longya was like a handless man boxing. Jiashan made a tongueless man able to speak. Who is it who can extricate oneself midway?
The Main Case
Vimalakirti asked Manjushri, “What is a bodhisattva’s method of entering nonduality?”Manjushri said, “According to my mind, in all things, no speech, no explanations, no direction, no representation, leaving behind all questions and answers, this is the method of entering nonduality. Then Manjushri asked Vimalakirti, “We have each spoken, now you should say. Good man, what is a bodhisattva’s method of entering into nonduality? Vimalakirti was silent.
Master Hongzhi’s Verse
Manjushri inquires after the illness of the old Vaisalian;
The gate of nonduality opens — Behold the adept.
Crude without, pure within — who appreciates it?
Forgetting ‘before’ and losing ‘after,’ don’t sigh.
Struggling to present the gem — the man with his feet cut off in the garden of Chu:
Repaying with a jewel, shining bright — the cut snake of Sui.
Stop checking —
There are absolutely no flaws:
This past week we looked at home practice and I mentioned to the group that was assembled there that although in the Mahayana tradition there is a strong support of lay practice and that there are indeed lay practitioners or white-robed ones in the history of Mahayana Buddhism, the fact is that until the present day there really has been no lay practice per say. Technically you can say that Layman Pang, and laywoman Pang, and the daughter in the Pang family, three very enlightened lay practitioners of the Tang Dynasty were lay practitioners but in actual fact when you look at the way they lived their lives you would have to say that they were really following a monastic lifestyle. Layman Pang had made a lot of money as a merchant but he reached a point in his practice when he took all of his worldly goods and went and sank them in a big lake. And he and his wife and daughter became wandering mendicants in a sense. They didn’t beg for their food, they sold straw sandals on the road for their food. They lived in the woods, they had basically renounced worldly affairs. Vimalakirti who, in this koan is one of the most famous of the lay practitioners, is said to have lived at the time of the Buddha. He was a merchant, very involved in worldly affairs, was as enlightened as the Buddha, equivalent to the Buddha and used as an example of lay practice. But we don’t know anything about how he lived his life. We know his wife’s name, and his daughter’s name, and his son’s name. We know how he made his business, but we don’t know what he did day to day. How he managed to run all his businesses and at the same time come to deep realization equivalent to that of the Buddha. So as an example, it’s not much of an example. We get his teaching, the teaching of the nondual dharma in this sutra, the Vimalakirti sutra, but none of the details.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a history of lay practice though we know that it existed at various times in China and Japan and so on. And it seems that probably one of the reasons is that institutions such as monasteries are the places that would maintain historical records and lineages. But so far as we know, no continuous lay lineages have come down though the ages to this time and this place. Whatever happened to Layman Pang, did he have any disciples? Did Vimalakirti have any disciples? Did Laywoman Pang have any disciples? Did Leng Chow, the daughter have any disciples? We don’t know. We do know that they studied at the monasteries of the time and that they later became wanderers. We know what their teachings were, and they are very fine teachings, no question about it. So in a sense we’re writing in the latter part of the twentieth century in the West, a history of lay practice. We’re putting the chapters in there that have never been put in there, and we’re writing a few other chapters too.
Mahayana Buddhism has always spoken of the equality of men and women and yet the historical records don’t show much activity of that equality. There are isolated cases, but definitely no equivalent to the way the Mahayana teachings speak of the equality of men and women. Discrimination exists against women in all of the schools in one way or another. Individual teachers are the exceptions rather than the rule. So again for the first time in the history of Buddhism, it finds itself in a country where that discrimination is illegal. And so the opportunity for the Mahayana teachings of the equality of men and women now has an opportunity to come to fruition. And now for the first time in the Mahayana tradition, half the practitioners are women, in some places more than half. Women teachers are emerging. Again the same is true of social action, although Mahayana Buddhism speaks of compassion and the bodhisattva, very little opportunity existed in the history of Buddhism for that compassionate action. Monasteries were very isolated in China. Emperors were very touchy about what you had to say or how you interfered in the function of state. If the religion proved to be any kind of a threat whatsoever to the nation or the state, monasteries were burned and the monks were beheaded, it’s as simple as that. Again for the first time in Mahayana Buddhism, it finds itself in nations in the West where religious freedom is an essential guarantee of the State. Separation of Church and State is one of the primary principles in these societies. So social action becomes possible without fear putting an end to the religion.
It’s kind of extraordinary, just this setting, right here today, is unprecedented in all of the ancient history of Buddhism, to have a hall filled with lay practitioners listening to a discourse in the context of monastic practice. There were always public talks, but this is different. The lay practitioners are participating fully in every aspect of the training. Dokusan, service, work practice, everything that the monks do, the lay practitioners have an opportunity to do. It makes you wonder why it took so long.
If you really put yourself into the situation as it existed many years ago at the time of the Buddha or in China or in medieval Japan. Leisure time wasn’t available, people were struggling for a living. If you were a farmer, you and all of your family were constantly tilling the fields, and monasteries and teachers were hundreds and thousands of miles away, deep in the recesses of the mountains. Hard to get to; not so difficult in the 20th century with transportation and communication what it is. Leisure time was something that only emperors and members of the courts had, and they were the lay practitioners. Almost all the lay practitioners in the history of Zen were the high government officials and the emperors, they were the only one’s that had the leisure time to do it, but today leisure time is available to people. We have weekends off, we have a couple of week’s vacation every year at least. People who are lucky enough to be teaching have two months off each year. This is unprecedented. So this provides for the first time an opportunity to do serious practice and not gain merit just by dana, by giving, but rather by one’s own practice. And it’s for this reason that we’re put so much emphasis on lay practice here at Zen Mountain Monastery. I am convinced that a strong core, monastery or center, with a teacher representing a lineage, authenticated, can provide a powerful core for a large group of lay practitioners in the world.
The next question is, how do you support them? Obviously the main means of support is communication. Communication of the dharma, of the teachings, of the Buddha, of the Sangha. And so we create Mountain Record, we took advantage of the modern media and communication revolution and use video and audio. We set up systems that provide human contact such as training advisors that coordinate the activities inside and outside of the Monastery. We create lay practice centers and affiliates wherever there’s a large enough group of students in one place to support it. And we create a form of teaching that can take place on an individual basis, and that’s the Eight Gates of Training. The only thing in the Eight Gates that we haven’t figured out how to get to you through Dharma Communications is dokusan, the intimacy of the teacher–student relationship. But maybe in the not to distant future, I’ll be able to show up in your living room when you want dokusan. We don’t have the kind of teaching that some of the traditions have, that the guru is always present. At any time you just summon the guru and the guru is present. We don’t have gurus, unless it’s you. Each person is their own guru. The teacher can only point. The teacher can only create complications. The teacher ultimately has nothing to give and ultimately you have nothing to receive. But there is a process, the process of going deep into oneself to find the foundations of what this incredible dharma is about. And so I say again and again, that we should keep in mind as we practice this incredible Way, that what we’re doing is not only clarifying our own life but creating a precedent, we’re writing a chapter in the history of this incredible dharma.
In the Preface to the Assembly, Wong Song says, “Even if one subtle function is universal, there’s a place where one can’t even begin to act.” What he’s referring to when he says “…subtle function is universal…” is the totality of human experience, the totality of being, the totality of the universe. In other words he’s talking about the absolute basis of reality. So even if one has realized the absolute basis of reality, there’s a place where one can’t even begin to act. Having realized that, there’s something that is ultimately non-functional. The second line says, “Even if one’s eloquence is unhindered, there’s a time when one can’t open one’s mouth.” No matter how eloquent you are, there are things that cannot be spoken of, that cannot be expressed. The Tao that can be expressed in words is not the true Tao. Then he gives examples from other koans and asks the question, “Who can extricate oneself midway?” How do you extricate yourself from this state? Keep in mind that the Vimalakirti sutra, the thrust of the Vimalakirti sutra is the teaching of the relationship between absolute and relative. The teachings of the nonduality of absolute and relative. And when you speak of the nondual dharma, it’s speaking of all of the nondualities. So whatever applies to form and emptiness also applies to any other duality. Man and woman, heaven and earth, good and bad, monastery and the world, monk practice and lay practice, sacred and secular. And always teachers have used one to illuminate the other. So when you point to the absolute, the teacher will point to the relative. When you point to the relative the teacher will point to the absolute. Understand that the truth of this incredible dharma is found in neither.
Here in this koan, Vimalakirti asks Manjushri, “What is a bodhisattva’s method of entering into nonduality?” Manjushri is the teacher of the past seven Buddhas, and an extraordinary bodhisattva. And there’s an assembly of bodhisattvas at Vimalakirti’s house. Those of you that have read the sutra are familiar with it. Vimalakirti was ill, and the Buddha called all of his bodhisattvas together and all the arhats and the disciples. Many of these disciples were monks of the old school, of the Hinayana school. This sutra is a Mahayana sutra and it’s going to show what the shortcomings of the Hinayana practice are. You see all sorts of things happen, like the goddess showers flowers down on the assembly and the flowers all stick to the robes of the Hinayana practitioners and they’re freaking out because they are not allowed to adorn themselves, and they start tearing at the flowers to try and take them off. But all the bodhisattvas, the flowers just fall right off, they don’t stick. So there’s a big discourse on what that’s all about. In another situation a goddess appears and in the Hinayana teachings, women can’t become enlightened, they have to be reborn as a man to become enlightened. So here’s this enlightened goddess who engages in dharma combat with one of the Hinayana monks who can’t understand that since she’s so enlightened which she proves through this wonderful dharma combat, “Why don’t you leave your woman’s body and become a man?” And she does a number on him with regard to that. So it’s a nice teaching this sutra, of those things that I talked about, compassion, of the equality of men and women in the dharma, of lay practice, in the world in the monastery in the mountain. Being codependent realities, mutually interpenetrating, mutually arising and that’s the way I hope our practice here at Zen Mountain Monastery will continue to develop between the lay practitioners and the monk practitioners. That there will always be a dynamic and supportive relationship on the part of both parts, because it won’t work with either. Both are essential to the dharma staying strong, vital, and touching our lives and everything that we do.
So Vimalakirti was sick at home. Sick because of the sickness of all sentient beings. And he’s laying in bed and Buddha gets hold of Subhuti and says, “Why don’t you take a bunch of the monks and go over and visit Vimalakirti.” They don’t want to go because every time they go, Vimalakirti gets them all entangled in dharma combat which they always end up losing. It reminds me of the dialogs with Plato and Aristotle, kind of like a setup for the master to come out on top. And finally the Buddha says, Go, and they go. Tens of hundreds and thousands of arhats and bodhisattvas, goddesses, and gods fill this little room that he’s in, and of course there’s plenty of room for everybody to fit in. There’s a lot of magic in this sutra. If you’ve never heard Robert Thurman speak on it, he’s a treat to listen to. He gets all excited about it. He starts naming one after another, all these different kinds of beings that are present, and all of the magic. And as he says in his book, the intent of all of this magic is to stretch one’s imagination, not to place any limits of the possibilities. From a Zen point of view all of these extraordinary magical things that take place need to be understood, and many of them are what koans are about. So everybody goes there and each chapter deals with a different aspect of the teaching of Vimalakirti. This particular one deals with nonduality. Vimalakirti asks each of the bodhisattvas to present their understanding. So basically what the whole chapter is about is each bodhisattva getting up and saying what the bodhisattva’s method of entering nonduality is. Of course every one of them is going off at the mouth. They’re explaining the whole thing, including the great master Manjushri, teacher of the Buddha. So Vimalakirti finally gets to Manjushri and the end of the chapter and says, “What is a bodhisattva’s method of entering nonduality?” And Manjushri says, “According to my mind, in all things …” you could really nail this line word after word. “According to my mind, in all things, no speech …” then shut up, “…no explanation…” stop talking, “… no direction …” stop pointing, “… no presentation, leaving behind all questions and answers, this is the method of entering nonduality.” Then Manjushri asked Vimalakirti, “We have each spoken, now you should say. Good man, what is a bodhisattva’s method of entry into nonduality?” Vimalakirti was silent.
There’s many ways to look at that silence. The same koan appears in the Blue Cliff Record. In there, Setcho includes the same wording up to the question of Manjushri, “Tell us what is a bodhisattva’s method of entering into nonduality.” He doesn’t say that Vimalakirti was silent. He says, “What did Vimalakirti say?” And then he also says, “Seen through.” Indeed what did Vimalakirti say. Yesterday’s talk, Lu Tzu Faces the Wall, what did Lu Tzu say? The Buddha teaches the outsider, the Buddha remained seated, what did the Buddha say?
In the footnotes to this koan, what he says, he quotes, “Manjushri, now you should say, good man, what is a bodhisattvas method of entry into nonduality?” The footnote to that says, “Once he’s surrounded and divested or everything …” keep in mind all of this dialog of thirty two bodhisattvas, each one presenting entry of the nondual dharma. So he’s surrounded and divested of everything, they’ve mentioned everything. So once he’s surrounded and divested of everything they don’t count on a violent outburst. Was the violent outburst Vimalakirti’s silence? Thunder filled the whole universe, waves washed the heavens.
The name Vimalakirti means untainted name or pure name. His wife’s name was Golden Woman. His son’s name was Good Thought, his daughter’s name was Moonlike Beauty.
A monk once asked an old master, “Vimalakirti was the golden-grained Buddha.” This was one of the ways that they referred to him. Why did he listen to the teachings of the assembly of Shakyamuni Buddha. “Why did he even bother with listening to these bodhisattvas present their understanding?” And the master said, “He didn’t make a contest between others and self.” He didn’t put himself above them, he didn’t separate himself. He made himself part of that group. And through the entire dialog he remained seated and he listened. And then when they asked him for his presentation, he remained silent, he continued to remain silent. Another master said, “Manjushri’s applauding in this way, still is casting a divining ladle. Listening to the empty sound, Vimalakirti remained silent. Don’t you folks go drilling tortoiseshells or striking tiles.” In other words, don’t go to sorcery to try and figure this one out. Before the I-Ching they used to use a tortoise shell to divine the Book of Changes. They would heat it and it would crack, and they’d study the cracks and lay the yarrow stalks. Now computers are used. Another master said, “Vimalakirti was not silent, did not pause. Argument that he remained seated turned out to be wrong.” All the things they said turned out to be not true. One of the problems about this silence, is that it becomes a nest, and Zen students like everybody else like to make little nests. So inevitably students will present silence and inevitably the teacher will chase them out. Just like the goddess wouldn’t accept silence from Shariputra. When she pressed him on the point of the absolute, he remained silent. She said, don’t give me that! So why was Shariputra’s silence unacceptable and Vimalakirti’s, everyone though it was wonderful? What’s the difference?
Wong Song has a little thing in here. He says, “Even now, in various places when they see this matter brought up, they still say, ‘Remaining silent for a while (so-and-so) said.’” And then he says, “A monk once asked a teacher, ‘In the records it often says liang jiu,” which is the word for silent. “‘liang jiu for a good while,’ who is liang jiu?” The teacher said, “The younger brother of Liang Ba .” This is told as a joke. Wong Song goes on to say. “The last two lines are the most outstanding.” And then I go to the references to find out what’s happening. When you label it as a joke, something’s wrong. Cleary tries this explanation. Scholars are not great joke tellers, particularly when you have to translate it from ancient Chinese into modern English. He gets kind of hung up. But what it’s basically about is that Liang jiu, jiu is also the word that means nine, it sounds exactly like the word that means nine, the number nine. And Ba is the sound for the number eight. So when somebody asks the teacher, “What’s liang jiu?” meaning what’s silence? The teacher took it as what’s liang nine, and he said the elder brother of liang eight. And I wondered how I could say this to make it understandable to you. And the word silence. What is silence? the student asked the teacher. The teacher answers, “Si-lence is Jo-lence’ mute brother.” I thought it was great. After a week of sesshin, that’s a riot. Thank you, thank you.
In the verse on another koan in the Book of Equanimity, the one of Mazu, when Mazu said, “Brother Yakujo’s head is white, and the other brother’s head is black.” In the verse to that koan, Hongzhi says, “Grandly sitting, cutting off the road of the tongue, what a laugh the old awl of Vaisali.” And that’s of course Vimalakirti. And the verse this time, he says,
Manjushri inquires after the illness of the old Vaisalian;
The gate of nonduality opens — behold the adept.
Crude without, pure within — who appreciates it?
Forgetting ‘before’ and losing ‘after,’ don’t sigh.
Struggling to present the gem — the man with his feet cut off in the garden of Chu:
Repaying with a jewel, shining bright — the cut snake of Sui.
Stop checking —
There are absolutely no flaws.
One of the remarkable things about the dharma to me is that, ancient Chinese culture and twentieth century American culture are on two opposite sides of the poles. There are ways of expressing things, their poetry, their stories, what they thought was funny, what they thought was great, what they thought was heroic, the examples using warriors and generals and so on, are very different to what the American practitioner, or the Western practitioner in the twentieth century is in to. Yet the dharma, the teaching that’s hidden in there, if you can get beyond the surface, get beyond the metaphors, get to the heart of it, that dharma is very applicable to everything that we do. It will take a hundred years at least before it begins to manifest itself in a Western form. So one of the things that I’ve also found, is that if you’re working with the Book of Equanimity, the verse, which was written by Hongzhi, and Hongzhi was the one that collected the Main Case, and Hongzhi was several generations before Wong Song who put these all together and added commentaries to it. If you want to get what Hongzhi was talking about, check out the verse before, it’s the only statement he makes about the koan. And Hongzhi is the same person that wrote Cultivating the Empty Field. He was considered one of the finest of the Sung Dynasty poets and a great Zen master. In this verse he says,
Manjushri inquires after the illness of the old Vaisalian;
that is Vimalakirti,
The gate of nonduality opens — Behold the adept.”
And of course again, it’s extolling the virtues of Vimalakirti.
Crude without, pure within — who appreciates it?
He uses an example of this silence of Vimalakirti as being equivalent to in the sutra, he says, “Shakyamuni closed his room, Vimalakirti shut his mouth. Subhuti extolled speechlessness to reveal the Way. Indra and Brahma beyond hearing showered flowers. These are all because the truth is mastered by spiritual knowledge so the mouth is thereby silent. How could you say they had no eloquence?” It is what eloquence cannot speak of. That’s what I spoke a lot of yesterday. That there’s direct immediate seeing, experiencing. That’s what it’s about. That’s what he’s calling spiritual knowledge, that’s what this practice is about. That’s what you get to in your own zazen. And then there is speaking of it.
Now speaking of it can be useful. The Buddha spoke of it, hundreds of masters spoke of it. Today in this hall we speak of it. But those are still, nonetheless, words and ideas that describe the reality. It’s the reality itself that needs to be realized. We use all kinds of skilful techniques, everything that we do is skillful means, bar none, including zazen. And the whole point of those skillful means is one’s own direct realization of the truth. It can happen any time, any place. Something comes along and opens that door for you. It’s different for different people. But always zazen is somewhere at the root of it.
He speaks of a gem, a semi-precious stone, and inside that stone, there’s a story in one of these ancient-Chinese things, that there’s a semi-precious stone which doesn’t seem like it’s very important. When you cut it open, inside it is the real gem. And this is being made an equivalent of Vimalakirti, who outwardly seems dumb, and his speechlessness makes it seem that way, he doesn’t say anything. But that it’s pure and genuine within. The stone conceals the jewel.
Crude without, pure within — who appreciates it?
Forgetting ‘before’ and ‘losing’ after, don’t sigh.
This is another thing from the collections on meditation where the master says, “Now when I speak of knowing, you needn’t know knowing, just know — that’s all. Then before you don’t continue extinction, and after you don’t bring on production. The continuity of before and after broken, in between is solitary and alone.”
In the sutra of the third patriarch, he talks about it again and again and again, how the truth is to be found outside of the words and ideas that describe it. And in the end he talks about, “that the way of words and speech finally comes to an end,” because the way is beyond these things. It’s not the past, it’s not future, it’s not the present.
Struggling to present the gem — the man with his feet cut off in the garden of Chu:
This is such an awful example. This is the story about this guy who comes to the emperor with a gem, and the emperor looks at the gem and says, “That’s not a gem, that’s an ordinary stone.” This is the stone that has the gem inside it. “It’s an ordinary stone, cut his leg off.” So they cut one of his feet off. Then that emperor ends his term and a new emperor comes and the guy comes running back again with the stone. The emperor looks at the stone and says, “That’s a stone not a gem, cut his other foot off.” So this is the guy with two feet cut off, who finally comes to the third emperor. This third emperor summons him and asks him about it, and he said, “I do not resent the amputation of my feet, I do resent that the real jewel is taken to be an ordinary stone. That an act of loyalty is taken to be deception.” The king had the stone split and found it was the real jewel. The king grieved and said, “How lamentable that two former sovereigns found it easy to cut off a man’s feet but found it hard to split a stone. Now it actually turns out to be a gem and a treasure for a nation.” There might be nicer ways of presenting the gem that Vimalakirti was, in that outwardly he was very ordinary, and inwardly he was the embodiment of nonduality of the teachings.
It’s the same with repaying with a jewel shining bright, the cut snake of Sui. The cut snake of Sui is not so bad. It’s the story about this guy who’s walking along and he sees this snake, with a piece of it cut off. So he goes over to the snake and puts a little water on him and tries to heal him and then weeks later he’s at his house and there’s a big flash of lightning, and there’s the snake holding a gem in his mouth. It’s a reward. These are all Tung Dynasty fairy tales that are worked into these koans and used in the verses. Of course if you were living at that time all of this would make immediate sense to you and you’d get it. But for us it seems a little out of the way and it needs explanations.
Stop checking — There are absolutely no flaws:
I don’t know if that needs any interpretation. There are absolutely no flaws. Stop checking, because it is inherently complete of itself. You are inherently complete of yourself. There are absolutely no flaws. Wong Song says, “Go ahead, point one out.” No flaws means there is a continuum. No gaps, no breaks. In birth nothing is added. In death nothing is lost. When the universe is destroyed, it is not destroyed. What is that? The absolute basis of reality? Emptiness? Well form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Form is exactly emptiness, and emptiness exactly form. That’s what the Heart Sutra tells us. That’s what the Identity of Absolute and Relative tells us, just the title tells us. That’s what Mahayana Buddhism tells us. That’s what Vimalakirti has told us. That’s what tens of thousands of koans and masters have told us. So what is it that is not destroyed when the universe is destroyed? What is it, that is neither born nor extinguished? That’s what Vimalakirti is trying to show here. Not just in this one thing but throughout the whole sutra. The message of Vimalakirti is the relationship between form and emptiness. Nonduality is about the interpenetration of dualities. The mutual causalities of dualities, the codependence of dualities. That’s what our practice is about, whether you’re a monk or a lay practitioner. Each of us depend on the other. Whether you’re a man or a woman, each of us depend on the other. Whether you’re in the world or on the mountain, each of us depend on the other. And where it all comes home is on that pillow. And the process that brings it home is zazen.
