Mumonkan Case 13: Te Shan Holds His Bowl
Te Shan went to the dining room from the meditation hall holding his bowl. Hsueh Feng was on duty cooking. When he met Te Shan he said: “The dinner drum is not yet beaten. Where are you going with your bowl?”
Te Shan turned around and went back to his room.
Hsueh Feng told Yan T’ou about this. Yan T’ou said: “Old Te Shan does not understand the last word of the truth.”
Te Shan heard of this remark and asked Yan T’ou to come to him. “I have heard,” he said, “you are not approving my Zen.” Yan T’ou whispered something into Te Shan’s ear. Te Shan said nothing.
The next day Te Shan delivered an entirely different kind of lecture to the monks. Yan T’ou laughed and clapped his hands, saying, “I see our old man finally understands the last word of the truth. None in China can surpass him.”
Mumon’s Comment
Speaking about the last word of the truth, both Yan T’ou and Te Shan did not even dream it. After all, they are nothing but puppets on a shelf.
Mumon’s Poem:
If you understand the first truth
You understand the last.
Last, first,
What are we talking about anyway?
Norman Fischer’s Commentary
This is a wonderful type of story, the type that involves not one master showing the way to a disciple or group of disciples, but a group of Zen adepts sharing the dharma together, teaching each other through their interaction and therefore teaching us. This is something beautiful to me-the relationships we can have in the dharma when we’re no longer jockeying for position, no longer wary of each other, but having a beautiful trust together so we can help each other to bring up the truth.
There is a long apprenticeship in practice. It takes a while of sitting and walking, listening to talks and hanging around with teachers and dharma friends, and applying the practice to your life-all of that to orient yourself to the teachings, to the way of life. Practice, as I see it, isn’t something we understand or even something we do. It’s something we are, something we become saturated in.
I always think of Suzuki Roshi’s very famous line: walking in the mist you can’t tell that you are getting wet, but when you get inside you see that your robe is soaked through. Practice is getting soaked through with the way until you don’t even notice anymore that it’s the way. You can’t hurry it; it just takes time. No matter how smart or non-smart you are, or how talented or non-talented you are, it just takes a certain amount of time.
This is a form of learning we are not used to these days, the apprenticeship way. Now we think of certifications and programs. Modern education is like modern business; it goes by numbers and spreadsheets. But for these ancients-and us Zen students too today-it’s not like that. We just live the life, hang around together, and by and by we find ourselves soaking wet with the dharma.
When we are soaking wet with the dharma it means we are fully committed to it. But not exactly that. Fully committed implies there is something you are committed to. More accurately you could say that you are fully committed to the dharma because it is clear to you that there is nothing but the dharma; there is no other way to live. To say there is another possibility, another choice, is a kind of absurdity, like a winged horse or a chicken with lips.
So it does take a while, but then there is the next stage-the one we find in this story. Here are three monks whose joy and occupation is the continual exploration of the truth. And of course the joke in the story is that there is no truth. When I say there is no truth, this doesn’t mean there is no truth. It only means that the truth will never be possessable, will never be graspable, will never be known by us.
This being so, you might think that there’s no point in searching for the truth. Why bother? But for these old monks, and for all seasoned Zen students, it is clear that even though you will never grasp the truth (because the truth is simply not that sort of thing) you will always seek for it-with all your heart and with all your might and with all your soul. This is the way to live a human life. This is what the human heart yearns for-to know the truth. And once you are willing to dwell within that search, then compassion surrounds it because you see that you are joined in the search by everyone and everything. This is the Zen style of compassion: love is identical with the search for truth.
The three characters in this story are all famous masters. All three are quite pungent characters well known in the tradition. They all appear in many other stories, so we know quite a bit about them.
Te Shan started out as a scholar of the Diamond Sutra, an arrogant fellow who came south to challenge the Zen guys he had heard about who claimed to need no sutras but to see the truth directly through everyday experience. His story is well known, particularly how he met his Master Lung T’an, who blew his light out. After that he became a fierce master famous for teaching using very few words, as in this story. He is the one who used to say, if you are wrong I give you 30 blows and if you are right I give you 30 blows.
The other two always remind me of the Marx brothers because their names in Japanese pronunciation are Seppo (Hsueh Feng) and Ganto (Yan T’ou). Hsueh Feng is the sad sack who always struggles but can never get anywhere. He practices hard, even has many insights, but they are never enough. In this story too he is the one who is not quite getting it. The whole story in this case is actually a kind of joke on him-not a malicious joke but a rather elaborate joke-a little piece of Zen theater designed to help him get over his problem, which is Zen problem #236, the problem of trying too hard to do it right, as if there were a way to do it right. Zen problem #235 is goofing off and not trying because you think there is no way to do it right, being too casual. Zen problem #237 is making just the right effort without worrying because you think there is no way to do it right. In Zen there are only problems, no solutions. Actually, there are solutions but they are all identical to the problems.
In any case, H’sueh Feng’s problem is he tries too hard. His enlightenment story, which comes after this story by some years, also involves his relationship with Yan T’ou. The two of them are stranded in a hut in a snowstorm on their way to enroll in a mountain monastery. Hsueh Feng is meditating day and night, while Yan T’ou is relaxing and cooking meals and cleaning up, and maybe doing a little sitting practice now and then.
Yan T’ou finally says to Hsueh Feng, What’s up with you? What is your problem? And Hsueh Feng reveals that his heart is uneasy. He feels a compulsion to practice. He’s desperate. Yan T’ou then asks him to explain, and Hsueh Feng oddly goes on to describe his many enlightenment experiences and moments of great insight under his various masters. Yan T’ou listens patiently through this whole story and finally says to him, All of that is fine and good but it’s all stuff you have brought in from the outside. Don’t you know that the family treasure doesn’t come in the front gate? It’s inside all along. At this Hsueh Feng is finally unburdened.
But at the time of this story he is not yet unburdened. As this story goes:
Te Shan went to the dining room from the meditation hall holding his bowl. Hsueh Feng was on duty cooking. When he met Te Shan he said, “The dinner drum is not yet beaten. Where are you going with your bowl?”
Te Shan turned around and went back to his room.
***
Hsueh Feng is well known to have been an expert tenzo (chef). He is thorough, serious, energetic, dedicated, probably picky about details, so he was always asked to be tenzo. It is said that he always traveled with his own knife and rice bucket, figuring he’d need them at the next monastery. Anyway he is tenzo, and the abbot, Te Shan, probably walks through the kitchen to get to the refectory. Te Shan is a little spaced out that day and he comes in early for the meal, carrying his bowl.
This would have been an embarrassment. Ordinarily a monk like Hsueh Feng would be very apologetic here, saying to the master, Oh sorry sir, but the meal isn’t ready yet. Some accounts say the meal was late-even more reason to be apologizing. But even if it weren’t late, even if the matter were entirely Te Shan’s mistake, you’d apologize. In the monastic mandala the teacher is the buddha at the center. That’s how the system works. The teacher’s actions are always ultimate truth, so you always bow, even if the teacher messes up.
This is not the way to do it in ordinary life, but it is how the monastic mandala works. Everyone knows, or should know anyway, that on the relative level the teacher isn’t actually a buddha, but also everyone knows that the way the system works to liberate everyone is to imagine that that teacher is the buddha. This enables the teacher to do his or her job, and it enables the student to realize that he or she is identical to the teacher and therefore also a buddha, and free of the personal self that is so seductive and burdensome. Or let’s say, free within the personal self. At any rate, you would bow.
Hsueh Feng is being arrogant, though. He is a senior student, has been around a long time, is after all a very capable practitioner, and Te Shan is at this point rather an old man. So Hsueh Feng says, You made a mistake old man. You’re wrong.
You can see that this might be a pretty tense moment. The other kitchen workers are looking on shocked at this remark, waiting to see how the old guy will react. Is he going to rear up and bite Hsueh Feng’s head off? Is he going to register shock or chagrin?
No, none of that. Te Shan shows his profound peacefulness. Like all good practitioners, he is always ready for anything, expecting nothing. He is very simple. He has no ax to grind, no reputation to protect. As far as he is concerned, he is not the abbot, he is not the teacher, he is just a simple monk, as the Dalai Lama always says of himself. Corrected by the tenzo, he simply turns around and goes back to his room. Robert Aitken Roshi, in his commentary on this koan, brings up the symbolic sense of the abbot’s room, the hojo. It is a ceremonial room, a sacred room. It’s the room where the deepest and most intimate of all ceremonies take place, the abbot’s home, his dharma heart. So Te Shan’s going back to his room also has this symbolic dimension.
Then, as the story goes,
Hsueh Feng told Yan T’ou about this. Yan T’ou said, “Old Te Shan does not understand the last word of the truth.”
Hsueh Feng is swaggering here: I guess I showed the old guy. I must be getting pretty good. I was able to stand up to him easily, without blinking an eye. How did I do? We might think, Why doesn’t Yan T’ou just let him know what a fool he’s being? Why doesn’t he tell him, Jesus, you were arrogant to do that? What’s the difference whether the teacher is late or early? The whole idea is that the teacher always arrives at exactly the right moment.
But no, it doesn’t work like this. When it comes to the most intimate things, I have found you can’t tell anyone anything. It can be plain as day but you can’t tell anyone, because if you tell them they’ll misunderstand. You can’t point out people’s blind spots to them. If they weren’t blind spots you could, but since they are blind spots they won’t see them. Even if they see them they’ll see them in a distorted way. So it’s better to just be loving. When they are ready to see through the blind spot they will.
This is what Yan T’ou does. He goes along with Hsueh Feng’s view of the situation and says, Yes, yes, you certainly showed that the old man is lacking. He couldn’t say anything to you. He just turned tail and ran away. Surely you bested him in dharma combat. We know he’s a good teacher but you must have poked him just at the spot where he is weak.
Then, as it says,
Te Shan heard of this remark and asked Yan T’ou to come to him. “I have heard,” he said, “you are not approving my Zen.” Yan T’ou whispered something into Te Shan’s ear. Te Shan said nothing.
This is interesting. What did Yan T’ou whisper into Te Shan’s ear? We have been reducing this profound koan to a little New Yorker short story, so maybe continuing in that way we would say that he told Te Shan what was going on with Hsueh Feng.
But that’s too easy, I think, and would not do honor to the intensity of the lives these old guys were living. Of course it must have been that Te Shan knew that Yan T’ou did not disapprove of him and even if he did, the old man would not have cared at all. Whatever someone thinks of you-good or bad-really has nothing to do with you, just as whatever you think about another person has nothing to do with the other person. It is always about you. Te Shan knew this of course; he is not worried that Yan T’ou disapproves. He is just following circumstances, poking around to see where he can be helpful.
This reminds me of a conversation I had the other day with a friend who works in a large company. There is some sort of business deal going on that is very secret and he is doing all of this dealing on e-mail. One of the other employees broke into his e-mail account. He was shocked. I said to him, “Don’t be shocked. Change your password and love everyone anyway. What do you expect? That’s how people are. Naturally, we are all motivated by fear and desire. No surprise or disappointment in this. It’s normal. But you love them anyway.” So this is his new motto: change your password but love them anyway.
That’s what Te Shan is doing. He’s changing the password and loving them anyway. Yan T’ou knows all about this and when he whispers in Te Shan’s ear it is the whisper of a co-conspirator in the truth. So I do not think he is saying anything discursive. Usually this whispered word is a key koan point: what did Yan T’ou whisper?
The story continues:
The next day Te Shan delivered an entirely different kind of lecture to the monks. Yan T’ou laughed and clapped his hands, saying: “I see our old man finally understands the last word of the truth. None in China can surpass him.”
Here the joke is completed, leaving Hsueh Feng and the other monks in open-mouthed wonder. What kind of lecture did Te Shan give this day? We don’t know, but it must have been something that had to do with the incident in the kitchen, directly or indirectly. Maybe he said, “Whenever you are accused, you are already guilty.” Maybe he said, “Whatever happens to you neither accept it nor reject it.” Maybe he told everyone that the dharma is vast and wide and that he did not understand it but hoped that he would someday. In any case, whatever he said he must have taken away any doubt about his understanding or not understanding the last word-or perhaps he created more doubt about it, made it seem as if indeed he did not understand the last word.
That’s why Yan T’ou got up and clapped his hands the way he did. Anyway, Hsueh Feng never did get the point-not until much later on, in the snowstorm. He continued to think that the dharma was something, some standard outside of his own mind that he was supposed to master. But it isn’t like that. It seems so hard for us to appreciate that the practice isn’t about something. It’s about nothing. It’s not about building ourselves up; it’s about letting ourselves go. Once we do that, it becomes clear that we’re O.K. and that whatever happens is O.K. We can work with it. This is not a matter of morality. What happens might be bad. It might be terrible. We might protest it mightily. But what happens happens. What is is. Everything unfolds in the dark. You can’t see it and you don’t know what it is.
Mumon’s comment: Speaking about the last word of the truth, both Yan T’ou and Te Shan did not even dream it. After all, they are nothing but puppets on a shelf.
Yes, puppets on a shelf. Like us too. The winds of karma blow us this way and that way. Nothing to be done. Of course, our actions are part of karma, so we act. We know that good actions will have good results and bad actions bad results, but we can’t say how it will look in the scope of this small lifetime. Buddha understands the truth; he is the only one who does. None of us has even a dream of the last word; only Buddha does. Of course we are Buddha. But also we are not Buddha. Living on the razor’s edge of this koan happily is the effort of our practice.
Mumon poem: If you understand the first truth / You understand the last. / Last, first, / What are we talking about anyway? /
Now it couldn’t be clearer. These days I don’t go to the San Francisco Zen Center much, but I do go once in a while to collect some food from the kitchen. I go into the walk-in refrigerator and get some lettuce and tofu to take home for meals. When I do this I often encounter a new student, someone who arrived maybe a few weeks earlier. Sometimes these new students look at me, this old guy rooting around among the veggies, and especially if I am a little unshaven they wonder if I am some homeless person stealing food. Some of them give me a dirty look. They think, “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here.”
I suppose I could think, “What the hell, I used to be the boss around here! How could they not know who I am?” But to tell you the truth, I think it is really wonderful that they don’t know who I am. Then they can be free and so can I. When I think I know who I am, then I am in trouble. And anyway, the new student has something to teach me for sure. He is my teacher. He is the dharma master and I really am just some old homeless guy rooting around for food. First truth, last truth. How about truth of this moment, truth that arises fresh in the meeting of this moment? But let’s not talk about it.