About Zen — The Zen of Ikkyu
The Zen Master Offers a Powerful Teaching
Author and translator, R.H. Blyth (Zen and Zen Classics), called Ikkyu Sojun (1394–1481) “the most remarkable monk in the history of Japanese Buddhism, the only Japanese comparable to the great Chinese Zen masters.”
Labeled an eccentric and renegade Rinzai Zen priest, Ikkyu was a devout Zen practitioner. He ultimately became abbot of Daitokuji, a major Zen temple in Kyoto.
While Ikkyu showed disdain for some of the Zen practices that surrounded him, he was a serious teacher. In 1457, he wrote Skeletons, in which he presented clear, straightforward and powerful Zen teachings.
from Skeletons:
The myriad Laws are seen written in thin India ink. But the beginner must do zazen earnestly. Then he will realize that there is nothing born into this world which will not eventually become “empty.” Oneself and the original face of heaven and earth and all the world are equally empty. All things emerge from the “emptiness.” Being formless, it is called “Buddha.” The Mind of Buddha, the Buddhahood, the Buddha in our minds, Buddhas, [Ancestors], and Gods are different names of this “emptiness,” and should you not realize this you have fallen into the Hell of ignorance and false imagination. According to the teaching of an enlightened man, the way of no return is the separation from Hell and rebirth, and the thought of so many people, whether related to me or not, passing through reincarnations one after another, made me so melancholy, I my native place and wandered off at random. I came to a small, lonely temple. It was evening, when dew and tears wet one’s sleeves, and I was looking here and there for a place to sleep, but there was none. It was far from the highway, at the foot of a mountain, what seemed a Samadhi Plain. Graves were many, and from behind the Buddha Hall, there appeared a most miserable-looking skeleton, which uttered the following words:
The autumn wind
Has begun to blow in this world;
Should the pampas grass invite me,
I will go to the moor,
I will go to the mountain.
What to do
With the mind of a man
Who should purify himself
Within the black garment,
But simply passes life by.
All things must at some time become nought, that is, return to their original reality. When we sit facing the wall doing zazen, we realize that none of the thoughts that arise in our minds, as a result of karma, are real. The Buddha’s fifty years of teaching are meaningless. The mistake comes from not knowing what the mind is.
Musing that few indeed experience this agony, I entered the Buddha Hall and spent the night there, feeling more lonely than usual, and being unable to sleep. Towards dawn, I dozed off, and in my dream I went to the back of the temple, where many skeletons were assembled, each moving in his own special way just as they did in life. While I marveled at the sight, one of the skeletons approached me and said:
Memories
There are none:
When they depart,
All is a dream;
My life — how sad!
If Buddhism
Is divided into Gods
And Buddhas;
How can one enter
The Way of Truth?
For as long as you breathe
A mere breath of air,
A dead body
At the side of the road
Seems something apart from you.
Well, we enjoyed ourselves together, the skeleton and I, and that illusive mind which generally separates us from others gradually left me. The skeleton that had accompanied me all this while possessed the mind that renounces the world and seeks for truth. Dwelling on the watershed of things, he passed from shallow to deep, and made me realize the origin of my own mind. What was in my ears was the sighing of the wind in the pine trees; what shone in my eyes was the moon that enlightened my pillow. But when is it not a dream? Who is not a skeleton? It is just because human beings are covered with skins of varying colors that sexual passion between men and women comes to exist. When the breathing stops and the skin of the body is broken, there is no more form, no higher and lower. You must realize that what we now have and touch as we stand here is the skin covering our skeleton. Think deeply about this fact. High and low, young and old — there is no difference whatever between them. When we are enlightened concerning the One Great Causality, we understand the meaning of unborn, undying.
If a stone
Can be the memento
Of the dead,
Then the tombstone
Would be better as a lavatory.
How dangerously foolish is the mind of man!
We have
One moon,
Clear and unclouded,
Yet are lost in the darkness
Of this fleeting world.
Think now, when your breath stops and the skin of your body breaks, you will also become like me. How long do you think you will live in this fleeting world?
To prove
His reign
Is eternal,
The Emperor has planted
The pine trees of Sumiyoshi.
Give up the idea “I exist.” Just let your body be blown along by the wind of the floating clouds; rely on this. To want to live forever is to wish for the impossible, the unreal, like the idea “I exist.”
This world
Is a dream
Seen while awake;
How pitiful those
Who see it and are shocked!
It is useless to pray to the gods about your destiny. Think only of the One Great Matter. Human beings are mortal; there is nothing to be shocked about.
If they can serve
To bring us to loathe them,
The troubles of this world
Are most welcome.
Why on earth
Do people decorate
This temporary manifestation,
When from the first they know
It will be like this?
The body of a thing
Will return
To the Original Place.
Do not search,
Unnecessarily, elsewhere.
Not a single soul
Knows why he is born,
Or his real dwelling place;
We go back to our origin,
We become earth again.
Many indeed
The ways to climb
From the mountain foot,
But it is the same moon
That we see o’er the peak.
If I do not decide
The dwelling place
Of my future,
How is it possible
That I should lose my way?
Our real mind
Has no beginning,
No end;
Do not fancy
That we are born and die.
If you give rein to it,
The mind goes rampant!
It must be mastered
And the world itself rejected.
Rain, hail and snow,
Ice too, are set apart,
But when they fall,
The same water
Of the valley stream.
The ways of preaching
The Eternal Mind
May be different,
But all see the same
Heavenly truth.
Fill the path
With the fallen needles
Of the pine tree,
So that no one knows
If anyone lives there.
How vain
The funeral rites
At Mount Toribe!
Those who speed the parting ghost
Can they themselves remain here forever?
Melancholy indeed
The burning smoke
Of Mount Toribe!
How long shall I think of it
As another’s pathos?
Vanity of vanities
The form of one
I saw this morning
Has become the smoky cloud
Of the evening sky.
Look, alas,
At the evening smoke
Of Mount Toribe!
Even it falls back and billows
With the rising of the wind.
It becomes ash when burned,
And earth when buried —
Could anything
Remain as evil?
With the sins
That I committed
Until I was three years old,
At last I also
Disappeared.
This is the way of the world. Realizing how foolish they are who, not knowing that all things are and must be temporary and transient, are baffled, someone this very day asked how we should live in this fleeting world. A certain man answered: “Quite different from past times, priests nowadays leave their temples. Formerly those who were religiously inclined entered the temples, but now they all shun them. The priests are devoid of wisdom; they find zazen boring. They don’t concentrate on their kōan and are interested only in temple furniture. Their Zen meditation is a mere matter of appearance; they are smug and wear their robes proudly but are only ordinary people in priestly garments. Indeed, their robes are merely ropes binding them, their surplices like rods torturing them.”
When we think about recurrent life and death, we know that we fall into Hell by taking life; by being greedy we turn into hungry devils; ignorance causes us to be reborn as animals; anger makes us demons. By obeying the Five Commandments, we come back to earth as men, and by performing the Ten Good Deeds, we are resurrected in Heaven. Above these are the Four Wise Ones; together, they are called the Ten Worlds. When we see this One Thought, there is no form, no dwelling place, no loathing, no rejecting. Like the clouds of the great sky, the foam on the water. As no thoughts arise there is no mind to create the myriad phenomena. The mind and things are one and the same. They do not know men’s doubts. Parents may be compared to the flint and the steel used for making fire. The steel is the father, the stone is the mother, and the fire is the child. The fire is ignited with tinder material, and it will die out when the contributing causes of the fire, the wood and the oil, are exhausted. It is similar to this with the production of “fire” when father and mother make love together.
Since father and mother are beginningless too, they decline finally to a mind of burnt-out passion. In vain are all things of this world brought up from emptiness and manifested into all forms. Since it is freed of all forms, it is called the “Original Field.” All the forms of plants and grasses, states and lands, issue invariably from emptiness, so we use a metaphorical figure and speak of the Original Field.
If you break open
The cherry tree,
There is not a single flower.
But the skies of spring
Bring forth the blossoms!
Though it has no bridge,
The cloud climbs up to heaven;
It does not seek the aid
Of Gautama’s sutras.
When you listen to Gautama’s preaching of more than fifty years, and practice exactly as Gautama preached, it is just as he taught at his last preaching when he said, “From beginning to end I have preached not a single word,” and held out a flower, bringing a faint smile to Kasyapa’s lips. At that time he told Kasyapa: “I have the exquisite mind of the right Dharma, and with it I acknowledge your understanding of the flower.” When asked what he meant, Gautama said, “My preaching of the Dharma for more than fifty years may be likened to saying there is something in your hand in order to bring near a small child you want to take in your arms. My fifty years and more of Dharma-preaching have been like a beckoning to Kasyapa. That is why the Dharma I transmit is like the taking up of a child to
my breast.”
Yet this flower is not to be known by bodily means. Nor is it in the mind. It cannot be known even though we speak of it. We must fully understand this present mind and body. Even though one may be called knowledgeable, he cannot therefore be called a man of the Buddhist Dharma. The Dharma Flower of the One Vehicle, in which all Buddhas of past, present, and future have appeared in this world, is this flower. Since the time of the twenty-eight Indian and six Chinese [Ancestors], there has never been anything in the world apart from the Original Field. As all things of the world are beginningless, they are said to be Great. All of the eight consciousnesses appear from emptiness. Yet the flowers of spring and the plants and grasses of summer, autumn, and winter come from emptiness too. Again, there are Four Great Elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind (Air), though people are ignorant of this fact. Breath is wind; fire is what makes us hot; water a vital liquid that makes us wet; when we are buried or burned, we become earth Because these too are beginningless, none of them ever abides.
In this world
Where everything, without exception,
Is unreal,
Death also
Is devoid of reality.
To the eye of illusion, it appears that though the body dies, the soul does not. This is a terrible mistake. The enlightened man declares that both perish together. Buddha also is an emptiness. Sky and earth all return to the Original Field. All the sutras and the eighty thousand dharmas are to be chucked away. Become enlightened by these words of mine and become a [person] of ease and leisure!
But:
To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake, we know
There is not even anyone to read it.
[Originally published as “Ikkyu’s Skeletons,” trans. R.H. Blyth & N.A Waddell, The Eastern Buddhist, N.S. Vol. VI, №1 (May 1973).]
