The World as Just So, Part 3: Direct Pointing

When an inquirer about Zen came to a master, often—you know—they approach a Zen master with a kind of key question. What is the fundamental principle of Buddhism? Or, Why did the bearded barbarian come from the West? Because Zen is supposed to have been brought into China by a Hindu named Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma is always represented as having a huge bushy beard and very fierce eyes. Now, Bodhidharma always insisted that he had nothing to teach. And so, why did he come? That’s one of the fundamental questions.

You might say to me—I’ve often said when I’m giving a lecture—I’m not trying to improve you, I’m not trying to persuade you to a certain point of view; that is to say like a preacher would convert somebody. In fact, I have nothing to tell you at all. Because were I to presume that I had something to tell you, I would be like a person who picked your pocket and sold you your own watch. So you might say, then, why do I talk? You might ask the sky, Why are you blue? The clouds, Why do you float around? Birds, Why do you sing? And we’ve been busy trying to invent explanations for all this. And so there’s this great Zen saying; one of the old masters said, When I was a young man and knew nothing of Buddhism, mountains were mountains and waters were waters. But when I began to understand a little Buddhism, mountains were no longer mountains and waters no longer waters. In other words, when one starts scientific and philosophical inquiries, everything gets explained away in terms of its causes or other things that go with it. Or one sees that all the things in the world—what we think are separate things—are, as ‘things,’ illusions; there is nothing separate. So—but he said at the end, But when I had thoroughly understood, mountains are mountains and waters are waters. So this is what’s called direct pointing.

A Zen master was once talking with me, and he said, When water goes out of the wash basin down the drain, does it go clockwise or anti-clockwise? And this was all phrased in the middle of a very ordinary conversation and, you know, it just seemed like a speculative question. And I said, Oh, it might go either. He said, NO! Like this! Now he said, Which came first, egg or hen? I said, Bwock bwock bwock bwock bwkeeeeeeek! Yeah, he said, that’s the point.

Now, it is saying too much—I warn you—to say that Zen is trying to point to the physical universe so that you could look at it without forming ideas about it. That is saying too much, but it is the general idea. It’s in the direction of being the right idea. Zen people speak of the virtue of what they call mushin, which means ‘no mind,’ or munen, ‘no thought.’ That red lantern says munen on it. No thought. This is not an anti-intellectual attitude. The ordinary simple person is just as bamboozled by thinking as a university professor. You can think intellectually in a ‘no think’ way; that’s the art. It doesn’t mean not to have any thoughts at all, it means not to be fooled by thoughts; not to be hypnotized by the forms of speech and images that we have for the world. Not to be hypnotized by them into thinking that that is the way the world really is. So, if I say, This is a fan, it isn’t. To begin with, ‘fan’ is a noise, and this doesn’t make the noise ‘fan,’ but just ‘whoosh.’ But it can be many other things than a fan. It can be a back scratcher, very well. All sorts of things. Don’t let words limit the possibilities of life. Actually, this fan has an inscription on it, written by a Zen Master who is 100 years old, and it says, I don’t understand, I don’t know anything about it.

So that goes back to the story of Bodhidharma: that, when he first came to China sometime a little before 500 A.D., he was interviewed by the Emperor Wu, of Liang. The emperor was a great patron of Buddhism and said, We have caused many monasteries to be built, monks and nuns to be ordained, and the scriptures to be translated into Chinese. What is the merit of this? And Bodhidharma said, No merit whatever. Well, that really set the emperor back, because the popular understanding of Buddhism is that you do good things like that—religious things—and you acquire merit, and this leads you to better and better lives in the future so that you will eventually become liberated.

And so he was completely set back, so he said, What is the first principle of the Holy Doctrine? And Bodhidharma said, Vast emptiness and nothing holy. Or, In vast emptiness there is nothing holy. So the emperor said, Who is it, then, that stands before us? The implication being: aren’t you supposed to be a holy man? And Bodhidharma said, I don’t know.

So the poem says:

Plucking flowers to which the butterflies come,
Bodhidharma says ‘I don’t know.’

And another poem like it:

If you want to know where the flowers come from,
even the God of Spring doesn’t know.

So anybody who says that he knows what Zen is, is a fraud. Nobody knows. Just like you don’t know who you are. All this business about your name, and your accomplishments, your certificates, what your friends say about you—you know very well that’s not you. But the problem to know who you are is the problem of smelling your own nose.

When the great Japanese master Dōgen came back from China in about the year 1,200 A.D. to bring his school of Zen into Japan, they asked him, What did you learn in China? He said, The eyes are horizontal, the nose is perpendicular. This man went on to write a tremendous book about Zen. They are so contradictory, these people. Don’t expect consistency out of a Zen master. Big, big book called the Shōbōgenzō. I talked with a Zen master about this book—in Japan—and he said, Oooh, that’s a terrible book! It explains everything so clearly! It gives the show away. He said, You don’t need any book for Zen.

So, you see, it is this kind of way of going about things, this method of Zen, that has so fascinated the West. And everybody who reads about Zen wonders if somehow, you see, this understanding is right under your nose. You know how it is: sometimes, you get a crowd of people to come into a room, and you put something in the room that’s absurd—like, suppose there was a balloon floating on the ceiling—people could come in and not notice it at all. Or, you know, somebody puts on something weird—some kind of a funny necktie, or something—and you say to a person, Well, haven’t you noticed? A woman in a new dress. You know? Haven’t you noticed? You say, Well, no. Wh—what is it? You know? It’s right under your nose. It’s staring you in the face, but you don’t see it. And Zen is exactly like that.

It is very obvious. The master Bokuju was asked, We have to dress and eat every day, and how do we escape from all that? In other words, how do we get out of routine? And he said, We dress, we eat. He said, I don't understand. Bokuju said, If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food.

Another Zen master, in quite recent times, was interviewing a student—you see, all these stories I’m telling you are connected, and what I want you to do is to grasp, intuitively, the connection—was interviewing a student—Western student—and he said, Get up and walk across the room. He got up and walked and came back. He said, Where are your footprints?

Another monk asked Jōshū, What is the Way? Tao, in Chinese. The Tao. He said, Your everyday mind is the way. How do you get in accord with it? He said, When you try to accord, you deviate.