Authors: Toni Bernhard,Sylvia Boorstein
How to Be Sick (17 page)
Koans are stories or dialogues from the Zen tradition. They are great mind-shockers because they can’t be understood by using conventional thinking skills. The most famous commentator on koans, Mumon (as he is called in Japanese; or in Chinese, Wumen), said that in investigating Zen, we must “cut off the mind road.” The mind road is like a groove we’ve worn into our consciousness. That groove consists of the endless stream of thoughts and stories we repeatedly spin that cloud our ability to experience the world with a fresh mind or, as Shunryu Suzuki famously said, a beginner’s mind.
Take this koan:
A monk asked Ummon, “What is Buddha?”Ummon replied, “A dried shit-stick.”
Yes, a dried shit-stick. By way of explanation, I’ll just say we now use toilet paper instead of sticks for this purpose
.
There are dozens of commentaries on this one koan. Katsuki Sekida writes this about it:
.
There are dozens of commentaries on this one koan. Katsuki Sekida writes this about it:
The student asks seriously, “What is Buddha?” Perhaps he is imagining the glorious image of the Buddha pervading the whole universe. The answer comes like a blow to smash such an image. This kind of answer is called “breaking the thinking stream of consciousness.”
Sekida’s reference to the Buddha as a shit-stick smashing our glorious image of him cuts our mind road right off. It takes us out of our conventional way of thinking into a fresh awareness of the way things are. Because a shit-stick brings to mind something permeated with bacteria and viruses, I interpret this koan as meaning that my diseased, aching body is none other than the Buddha and so this body itself can be a vehicle for liberation, for freedom, for awakening. In his commentary on this koan, Robert Aitken invokes a similar image. He recalls a poem he wrote while a prisoner in a Japanese internment camp during World War II:
In fermenting night soil
fat white maggots
steam with Buddhahood.
Reading Aitken’s poem, I think of my chronically ill, “fermenting” body, just
steaming
with Buddhahood. With images of shit-sticks and maggots, Zen shocks my mind into seeing that this diseased body can be a vehicle for awakening.
steaming
with Buddhahood. With images of shit-sticks and maggots, Zen shocks my mind into seeing that this diseased body can be a vehicle for awakening.
Oh, and this shit-stick koan gives me a good belly laugh!
Robert Aitken’s teacher in the Zen path was Koun Yamada, one of the great Zen masters of the twentieth century. His commentary on Zen koans is called
The Gateless Gate.
In his discussion of a koan called “Tozan’s Sixty Blows,” Yamada tells the story of the ancient Zen master Bokushi, who was known for his severe approach. If a student wasn’t ready to receive the teachings, Bokushi would shove him out the door and slam it. One day, Bokushi was pushing his student Unmon out the door and Unmon’s leg got caught and broke. Yamada writes:
The Gateless Gate.
In his discussion of a koan called “Tozan’s Sixty Blows,” Yamada tells the story of the ancient Zen master Bokushi, who was known for his severe approach. If a student wasn’t ready to receive the teachings, Bokushi would shove him out the door and slam it. One day, Bokushi was pushing his student Unmon out the door and Unmon’s leg got caught and broke. Yamada writes:
“Ouch!” he cried, and in that instant Unmon suddenly attained great enlightenment. Just “Ouch!,” nothing else, no subject or object, neither relative nor absolute, just “Ouch!” This was Unmon’s great enlightenment.
This story is so inspiring to me! It’s a vivid reminder that bringing undivided attention to the physical sensation of pain or to our aching body just might shock the mind into awakening—or at least give us a taste of it. No object. Just life as it is, sickness and all.
Many Zen koans begin by posing a question:
“If you say there is no self, who is saying that?”
“Does a dog have Buddha nature?”
“What is the self?”
These koans used to frustrate me. Now I treat them as questions without answers. To put a different spin on “No self, no problem,” I respond to these koans with “No answer, no problem.” I used to react with anxiety and with anger at the world to the question of whether I’ll ever get over this mysterious illness. Now, I try to treat it as a koan. “Will I get well?”—four words and a question mark, arising in the mind, with no answer. Treating it as a koan changes my relationship to this question, which arises periodically whether I want it to or not. It allows me to hold it more lightly and wait for it to pass on through the mind.
“Will this antiviral cure me?” When I’d start a new treatment, attachment to the outcome came right along with popping the new pill. Now I try to treat the question of whether a treatment will cure or even help me as a koan—a question without an answer. The Korean Zen master Seung Sahn called this keeping a “Don’t-Know Mind.”
Don’t-Know Mind is a great survival tool for me. During that period of several sleepless nights, when I began to spin out stressful stories of a life without ever sleeping again, I’d stop and remember Seung Sahn’s Don’t-Know Mind. As I approached bedtime, I’d silently say, “I don’t know if I’ll sleep or not, so I won’t make an assumption one way or the other.” That thought would calm me and soon after beginning to practice with it, I again started to sleep. I got through those difficult days by keeping a Don’t-Know Mind and by using the practice described in chapter 10—consciously moving the mind from the unpleasant physical sensation that accompanies a body deprived of sleep to the cultivation of one of the sublime states.
Thich Nhat Hanh comes at this Zen view of life from a different angle. He encourages us to examine each thought or precede each action with the reflection “Am I Sure?” This is a powerful teaching since attachment to views and opinions is such a source of suffering. I discovered the value of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching many years before becoming sick. It started in the most mundane of settings—in front of a counter at a department store along with several other people, waiting to buy a pair of pants. The clerk looked up and said, “Who’s next?” A woman next to me stepped forward. I was about to say politely, “Excuse me, but I was here first,” when Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Am I Sure?” popped into my mind and so I let the other woman go ahead of me. I was 99% sure I was first, but allowing the other woman to check out before me had the most wonderful effect. It became an act of generosity to her, not just because she’d get out of the store before I would, but because I may have saved her from the embarrassment of mistakenly thinking it was her turn to go to the register. And of course, in the end, was I 100% sure I was there first? No. Just 99% sure.
That mundane setting planted the seed for a practice that is central to my life as a chronically ill person.
“This doctor doesn’t want to treat me.” Am I sure? Maybe he’s just badly overbooked today.
“This friend doesn’t care about me anymore.” Am I sure? Maybe she’s caught up in family or work problems.
“I’ll never get better.” Am I sure?
“I’m not leading a productive life anymore.” Am I sure?
I have used Thich Nhat Hanh’s three short words hundreds of times to let go of assumptions and opinions, an act that allows the world to unfold as it will. I find this practice works particularly well in conjunction with Byron Katie’s method for investigating the validity of our thoughts.
Zen teachings tend to be short and to the point. In addition to koans, they often take the form of
gathas—
short verses reminding us of our practice—and haiku. The distinctive style and rhythms of these writing forms are poetic to the ear. They can be insightful, they can be soothing, and they too can make us chuckle.
gathas—
short verses reminding us of our practice—and haiku. The distinctive style and rhythms of these writing forms are poetic to the ear. They can be insightful, they can be soothing, and they too can make us chuckle.
Gathas help us dwell in the present moment as we engage in tasks of everyday living. In his book of gathas
Present Moment Wonderful Moment
, Thich Nhat Hanh says that gathas are “exercises in both meditation and poetry.” Here’s his gatha for washing our feet:
and his gatha for throwing out the garbage:
Present Moment Wonderful Moment
, Thich Nhat Hanh says that gathas are “exercises in both meditation and poetry.” Here’s his gatha for washing our feet:
Peace and joy in each toe—
my own peace and joy.
In the garbage I see a rose.
In the rose, I see the garbage.
Everything is in transformation
Even permanence is impermanent.
In my early years of Buddhist practice, when mindfulness of the present moment was new to me, I carried this little gem of a book everywhere.
I also love a book of gathas called
The Dragon Never Sleeps
by Robert Aitken. His gathas are indeed exercises in meditation and poetry. Many of them also make me laugh. Poetic mindfulness plus a laugh—great medicine for the chronically ill.
The Dragon Never Sleeps
by Robert Aitken. His gathas are indeed exercises in meditation and poetry. Many of them also make me laugh. Poetic mindfulness plus a laugh—great medicine for the chronically ill.
Here’s a sampling of Aitken’s gathas:
When wayward thoughts are persistent
I vow with all beings
To imagine that even the Buddha
Had silly ideas sometimes.When traffic is bumper to bumper
I vow with all beings
To move when the world starts moving
and rest when it pauses again.Raking the leaves from my yard
I vow with all beings
To compost extraneous thoughts
And cultivate beans of the Tao.
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that follows a set structure. They are a favorite form of expression for Zen masters and Zen students. My favorite haiku master is the eighteenth-century poet Kobayashi Issa. Issa his lost mother at the tender age of two and lost three of his own children when they were infants. And yet the haiku he wrote—especially about little creatures—never fail to make me smile:
Climb Mount Fuji,
O snail,
but slowly, slowly.Mosquito at my ear,
does it think
I’m deaf?I’m going out,
flies, so relax—
make love.
I am so moved by how this man, whose life was filled with personal tragedy, could write poems of such careful observation, such creativity, and often of such unbridled joy. I’ll close with a haiku from Issa that illustrates all three ways in which “Zen helps”:
The world of dew
is the world of dew
And yet, and yet . . .
Issa’s poetic use of words enables me to see the world through new eyes—eyes that keep a Don’t-Know Mind. “Dew is dew,” he appears to assert, but the last line of the haiku tells me that nothing is certain. The fleeting nature of dew is such that almost as soon as we see it, it changes into something else. Finally, the last line of the haiku shocks me out of the mind groove that’s worn into my consciousness, that groove of the seemingly fixed identity: sick person. And so I could change Issa’s words to:
A sick person
is a sick person
And yet, and yet . . .
Yes, Zen helps.
From Isolation to Solitude
16
Communicating with Care
Take care not to: talk too much talk too fast speak grandly of enlightenment speak in an obnoxious manner yell at children ignore the people to whom you are speaking speak of things of which you have no knowledge
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