The Untold Origins of Zen Buddhism, Part 3....
(Feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2 before proceeding.)
It was mid-winter when Sheng-Guang finally made it back to Hu-Lao. The air was as cold and damp as he imagined Li-Dai’s heart to be. The first thing he did, though, was put out feelers about Li-Dai’s fate, and soon learned that Ying-Han had continued to work his way up the administrative hierarchy, and had recently gotten promoted from Constable of the prefect to Diplomat for the western region. He and Li-Dai had been moved to Sichuan province, where Ying-Han would have opportunities to mingle with the Turks and Uyghurs for the benefit of the empire.
In short, Li-Dai was long gone.
After receiving the news, Sheng-Guang made haste to Mount Song. It had begun to snow when he reached Ta-Mo’s cave two days later. The flakes were thick and lazy, and the air was full of them fluttering like infinite white butterflies, and through them he saw Ta-Mo, in his cave, seated in the lotus position, thick red robe and hood on, his red beard protruding like flames from his chin, staring at the wall, a small fire burning behind him.
Sheng-Guang sprinted up to the cave, and said, through gasps of air, “Master, I have come to receive Dharma instruction, with the intent to liberate all beings through the Buddha’s endless compassion.”
But Ta-Mo didn’t move an inch. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even shiver.
“Master,” Sheng-Guang said again. “I have come to receive Dharma instruction, with the intent to liberate all beings through the Buddha’s endless compassion.”
Again, Ta-Mo did nothing to acknowledge Sheng-Guang’s presence.
“Master,” Sheng-Guang said once more. “I have come to receive Dharma instruction, with the intent to liberate all beings through the Buddha’s endless compassion.”
Nevertheless, the third time wasn’t the charm. Ta-Mo simply sat in stillness, gazing into the rock wall. Sheng-Guang looked and saw that there did indeed appear to be two indentations in the rock, where Ta-Mo’s vision would have landed.
Well, Sheng-Guang thought to himself, if the master sees it fit not to move, then I too will not move.
And for the rest of the evening and through the night, Sheng-Guang stood outside of the cave, as it continued to snow with such fury that by morning, Sheng-Guang was standing in snow up to his waist. He shivered with such force that, it was said, the chattering of his teeth could be heard by some of the monks at the monastery.
Ta-Mo, who had moved only to tend to his fire, and who had secretly slept most of the night in lotus position, finally looked up at Sheng-Guang.
“What the hell do you want?” he snarled.
“I need a teacher,” Sheng-Guang said. “I need someone with access to the elixir of universal compassion to liberate my mind, so that I may open the gate of liberation to all beings.”
Ta-Mo scoffed. He had already tried to share the elixir of universal compassion with these brainless Chinese idiots, and none of them could shut up long enough to drink it.
“I know your kind,” Ta-Mo said. “How can you hope to drink the elixir of universal compassion when you have such little virtue, even less wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? The elixir of universal compassion doesn’t exist. If you don’t understand that much, how can you hope to ever drink from it? Be gone, knucklehead.”
Sheng-Guang understood now, with an understanding that he had never experienced before, that Ta-Mo was a genuine Buddha. That he had knowledge of things only Buddhas and Immortals have knowledge of. And this understanding only increased Sheng-Guang’s resoluteness, though, now, he knew that mere words wouldn’t do the trick. Ta-Mo can see through words. If his vision can pierce through solid stone, how could it not pierce through language? It would take, instead, some kind of drastic action to get the master’s attention.
Sheng-Guang struggled through the snow and headed toward the monastery. Ta-Mo was relieved to be alone again. Little irritated him more than the presence of some Chinese Buddhist imbecile. He had wasted his life walking all the way to China to try to teach the true essence of Buddhism, of the Dharma. And here he was now, going on his 9th year is this cold, drab, stupid fucking cave, thousands of miles away from home and away from anyone who might have forgotten the words well enough to have an actual conversation with.
Sheng-Guang, meanwhile, had made his way to the monastery kitchen. There, he met the monastery cook — the monastery cook generally being the least respected monk in the entire temple, and oftentimes not even a monk at all — and asked for “something sharp.”
The cook, not recognizing Sheng-Guang, but noticing Sheng-Guang’s monastic robes, felt obligated to oblige and asked “How sharp?”
“The sharpest sharp you have,” replied Sheng-Guang.
The cook held up one finger and disappeared out of the kitchen for several moments.
When he returned, he had returned with a dao sword that one of the other monks had brought with him when he took his monastic vows. Sheng-Guang, throughout his travels, had seen many a sword, many more than he would have liked, up close. He could tell that this one was one of fine craftsmanship, and, even on a cloudy day such as that one, its metal glistened like river water under the sun.
“Will this work?” asked the cook.
“Indeed,” said Sheng-Guang, eyes wider than his smile.
Sheng-Guang took the sword and returned to Ta-Mo’s cave. Ta-Mo was bent over, tending to his fire when he stood up and began to ask:
“Now what do you want, you g — ”
But before he could finish, Sheng-Guang hacked at his right arm with the dao. He hacked right below the shoulder joint. It took three hard swipes of the sword before his arm fell to the snow, and blood gushed like a red monsoon from the stump where his arm used to be.
“Holy Siddharta!” Ta-Mo hollered, and removed his outer hood and wrapped it around Sheng-Guang and dragged him through the snow back to the monastery, where they had something that vaguely approximated an infirmary.
Days later, Ta-Mo still had doubts about Sheng-Guang’s ability to attain the sudden flash of insight needed for enlightenment, but he could no longer doubt his resolve, which is the most important ingredient for recognizing the Buddha Nature in all beings. Also, the man had just lopped off his own arm in dramatically violent fashion, so…there was no real way to justify not taking him on as a disciple.
He stood over Sheng-Guang, who was in bed healing from his self-inflicted catastrophic injury. He shooed away a small cadre of monks who had been tending to Sheng-Guang’s injuries by chanting Buddhist mantras on their wooden rosaries.
“I accept you as a disciple, Huike. It is my duty to grant you access to the gateless gate of infinite wisdom and boundless compassion, so that you may, in turn, through boundless compassion, do the same for all sentient beings.”
“Thank you, master, but who is Huike?”
“That is your Dharma name. I never got your born name before you, you know, so savagely and unceremoniously maimed yourself, so I had to call you something.”
“Oh.”
Two years had gone by. Huike had fully healed, or at least as fully healed as someone who has cut off their own arm and who lacks the ability of regeneration can be. He and Ta-Mo had now moved fully into the monastery and both were, by then, treated by the other monks with a mixture of respect, admiration and abject deferment. They were both recognized as enlightened, and both had become the primary masters of the institution. The other monks began to recognize that the Buddhism now being practiced in their monastery was unlike anything any of them had seen or read about before. It seemed to focus almost entirely on meditation and on bad taste jokes, with occasional, but infrequent, scripture study. They began to refer to this type of Buddhism as Chan buddhism, Chan being the specific type of meditation that was practiced by Ta-Mo and Huike.
Ta-Mo had been pleased with Huike’s progress. He was wise, insightful, compassionate, and far more patient than Ta-Mo had ever been. Huike recognized the limitations of language, but Ta-Mo knew there was some kind of obstacle preventing Huike’s full awakening. There was a crag somewhere in Huike’s mind that he had been unable to scale.
One evening, when there was just enough sunlight teetering over the horizon to allow for reading, Ta-Mo had gone outside in an attempt to read his Lankavatara Sutra in blissful solitude, but instead spotted Huike just outside the monastery kitchen, sitting on a rock, chanting.
At first Ta-Mo assumed Huike had been chanting the Heart Sutra or one of the myriad other Buddhist mantras he knew. Through all of Huike’s travels and studies, though not as enlightened as Ta-Mo, Huike actually had developed a broader knowledge and understanding of the Buddhist literary canon. Ta-Mo didn’t immediately recognize the chant, so he listened more closely, and soon realized that it hadn’t been a mantra or a sutra Huike was reciting at all. It had been a poem.
A poem? And a love poem at that. What the —
“What the hell is that?” asked Ta-Mo.
Startled by the sudden presence of his master, Huike wasn’t sure how to respond.
He stumbled and bumbled over his initial attempts at a response.
“Is that a poem?” asked Ta-Mo.
“Uh…”
“And a love poem at that,” Ta-Mo audibly gagged. “What is the matter with you, Huike?”
What was the matter with Huike, obviously, was that he was still lovesick over some broad he hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Huike himself knew this was indefensible and inexplicable, but he had never been able to still his thumping heart. Huike still grieved the life with Li-Dai he had not been able to live, and, deep down, knew that, given the choice between the two, he would have preferred that life with Li-Dai over his own enlightenment.
“My heart is anxious. I can’t still it,” replied Huike. “I have never been able to still it.”
“Show me your heart, so I can still it.”
Huike looked upon Ta-Mo with sheer skepticism.
“I mean it, Huike, you brute” said Ta-Mo. “Bring me your heart, and I’ll still it for you.”
But Huike’s heart was with Li-Dai, and he knew not where that damned woman was.
“I’ve searched all over for my heart, but I cannot find it,” he said, the first mists of tears accumulating in his eyes.
“There,” said Ta-Mo, and, to Huike, the entire Universe seemed to quake, ever so slightly. “I have stilled it for you.”
Huike was then suddenly drenched in existential terror. Spiritually sick. Standing there, next to Ta-Mo outside of the monastery, he couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe. He shivered with the anticipation of The Unknown. There’s no real way to describe the moment Huike was experiencing. It was a moment that wasn’t a moment. Or maybe it was a moment — a supra-moment. All of eternity converged on that one, singular instant. There was no concept of time. The entirety of The Cosmos, all of Eternity, folded into Itself and Huike realized the Illusion of his life, of all life. The dream of separation. The mirage of isolation and alienation. The cruel, cruel lie of Spacetime — a lie that makes the fib of aloneness possible. All of History existed with Huike in that non-moment, except he wasn’t really “him.” He was all of “History” — Past, Future and Present, which weren’t really three separate entities at all. They were all “him” — which also didn’t really exist. All of the Buddhas and non-Buddhas alike, every being that has ever existed and will ever exist, all existed with Huike in that moment. The same…non-thing…that sees through your eyes, saw through Huike’s eyes, and there was never any separation between the two. There is only one non-thing that exists and doesn’t exist at all times and all non-times.
The Whole Kit and Caboodle.
When Huike came to, it was mid-evening. He was back in the realm of human consciousness. The illusion of human awareness created by the Human Central Nervous System was intact, but Huike was still drunk off his visit to The Void. He saw the unfolding of time as a simple overflowing of The Universe’s Creative Impulse as expressed through the human being.
It was a dark evening and the stars burned extra hot, and he could feel the fire of humanity. Its collective pain and sadness and disappointment. But also its collective joy and triumph and love. It was more than that though. He could feel the Love of Existence as a whole. The Love which is the entire reason for Existing.
He felt woozy with sensitivity. He looked up at the stars and at that moment he could sense their gravity. It was tugging at him from infinite directions, but it was the Earth’s gravity that won out. An enveloping force field of acceptance and contentment and belonging. At that moment he KNEW the interconnectedness of everything. He couldn’t tell where the stars ended and where “he” began, or where “he” ended and where the stars began. He could feel the consciousness of the grass under his feet, the calm resolve and splendor of every tree within his sight. Every animal within his immediate radius shared with him their primordial fears and pleasures.
None of this occurred on an intellectual level, mind you. Everything I’ve just written is an attempt to convey something Huike had no means of conveying. First came the experience, which was of and by itself. And now is my attempt to conceptualize or capture in language something that was/is beyond the grasp of words.
Anyhow, after basking in the terrible, harmonic vibrations of The Universe for several minutes, Huike remembered that Ta-Mo had also been present. He turned back toward Ta-Mo, and Ta-Mo was smiling, for the first time that Huike could remember. It was such an unusual and unnatural occurrence, that Huike felt vaguely disquieted by it. But it was an honest smile, for Ta-Mo had immediately recognized what had happened.
Still, Ta-Mo had to confirm it, somehow.
Ta-Mo wiped the smile from his face, and assumed his usual gnarled grimace, which was the look of a man who was fully conscious while having his spleen ripped out by a bear and who was sort of appalled by such a turn of events.
“Huike!” He hollered. “Where are you going?!”
Huike smiled, understanding that he was being tested, and said, “Go right ahead.”
“If you go right ahead, you cannot move a step.”
Huike skipped once in place.
“You goon!” Ta-Mo growled. “Kicking the shuttlecock outside of the bear’s den!”
Huike approached Ta-Mo and tugged on his beard, forcing Ta-Mo to bend 90-degrees at the waist.
“Have you lost your heart, Huike?”
Huike released Ta-Mo’s beard. Ta-Mo stood straight and looked directly at Huike, who was looking directly back at Ta-Mo, smiling knowingly.
“On the contrary,” Ta-Mo said. “Huike, the Great Buddha, has pierced the veil, and has probed into The Heart itself.”
Huike hacked and spit at Ta-Mo’s feet.
“You pervert,” Ta-Mo continued, “You have forgotten the words. And now I can finally talk with you. And so it is that I bestow onto you the elixir of universal compassion, the flavor of which must be tasted by the tongue directly. The flavor of which can only be sensed if the heart is free of the smudge of language. It is a direct, experiential taste of reality that exists outside of words, outside of scriptures, and beyond conceptual thought. As a living buddha, you must vow to liberate all sentient beings by pointing through all The Ruckus and directly to their heart.”
Huike vowed to do so.
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