Power for the Way

Kynan Sutherland Sensei

We’ve all been hermits over the past 18 months. And nowhere more so than in Melbourne.

Restricted travel, being housebound, sometimes room-bound, cut off from people — it’s been a very challenging time — and a very revealing time.

In many ways we’ve been forced to create our own grass huts, our own home-hermitages. Each image on this shared Zoom screen is a little window into a hermit’s hut. Some of you are in caravans, some of you are in sheds. There’s even someone who looks like they’re up in the rafters, like a bat!

So I’ve been thinking a lot about hermits during lockdown. I’ve been rereading Hanshan, Stonehouse, Ryokan, savouring their stories, trials and lonely insights. And when I was asked to give this talk I found myself drawn to the Hermit of Lotus Peak, an obscure figure from Case 25 of the Blue Cliff Record who has something very important to tell us about genuine Zen practice in an uncertain world.

The Hermit of Lotus Flower Peak took up his staff before an assembly, and said, “Why didn't the old patriarchs remain here after they reached it?” 

The audience was silent.  He himself answered, “It has no power for the way.”

   Again he said, “After all, what is it?”

   The audience was again silent.  And again he answered for them, “Carrying my staff across the back of my neck, going to the thousand, the ten-thousand peaks.”

 So let’s start with the hermit himself. Apparently he was an early Song recluse who lived on Mount T’ien T’ai, one of the five holy mountains of China. He had no formal position and only a handful of loose followers. In true hermit style he lived “in a thatched hut…boiling the roots of wild greens in broken legged pots, passing the days.”

On this occasion, however, he found himself in a dojo of practicing monks. There’s a wonderful sense of trespass here: the obscure hermit blowing in like a gust of leaves, bringing the whole wild mountain with him.

It’s an image of surprise, of unexpected encounter. I can’t help but feel that covid and lockdown arrived in exactly the same way. One day we were practicing together in a dojo together; the next we were scattered in the ten directions by an unpredictable virus. Even if you anticipated the pandemic, you couldn’t have imagined the implications. All of sudden we found ourselves confronted by a strange being asking strange questions, just like this hermit.

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We’re told that the hermit loved to hold up his staff and ask: “Why didn't the old patriarchs remain here after they reached it?” Indeed, we’re told that he did this for twenty years, with no one being able to respond.

More poignantly, we’re told that these were the last words the hermit spoke before he died. So they come from the threshold of life and death.

The staff in buddhist parlance refers to the buddha’s whole teaching, but particularly that of emptiness. The hermit is thrusting this staff forward and saying, in effect, “When the ancestors realised the truth of emptiness, why didn’t they stay there? Indeed, why didn’t Shakyamuni remain seated beneath the bodhi tree after his enlightenment? Why did he get up and travel the dusty roads of the Ganges for the rest of his life?”

This is a very Mahayana question. What is our practice? Who is it for? And who — and how — does it help? 

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Old Zhaozhou was once asked a similar question by one of the monks in his assembly:

A monk asked, “Whom does the mind of Buddha help?”

   Zhaozhou said, “It helps only the present.”

There’s so much to see here. We’re not just talking about the present moment. We’re talking about who and what is present in this moment – the only moment we have. Who is in the assembly? Is anyone missing? [Truly, is anything missing now?]. Have a look. Even the smallest home-hermitage admits the universe. Stars twinkle there. Seasons come and go. The ancestors gather in confidence. Even the ones you love and can’t be physically with are here.

The monk presses Zhaozhou further:

   The monk said, “How come they are not able to deal with it?”

 ie. How come we can’t see this?

   The master said, “Whose fault is that?”

Indeed, whose fault is it that we’re not all present? Whose fault is it that things are difficult to deal with? Whose fault is the pandemic? Don’t say someone else’s. Don’t say your own. Don’t say “the pandemic’s”. Look deeper, whose fault is it?

The monk presses on:

   The monk said, “How is it to be grasped?”

   The master said, “Right now, there is no one who grasps it.”

 You can’t have it, and you can’t throw it away. It has no name, shape or form. It’s right before your eyes and in your nostrils but it doesn’t belong to you. It is your eyes and nostrils, but it doesn’t belong to you.

This is an image of emptiness. Sunyata. No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. Nothing that can be called permanent. Which leads the monk to say:

   “In that case, there is nothing that can be relied upon.”

   The master said, “However, you cannot do without me.”

Zhaozhou is very aware of the ground opening up beneath this monk’s feet. There is nothing to rely upon, yes, and we can and do rely on this nothing. The true nature of reality is empty. But Zhaozhou is quick to make sure the monk sees the bigger picture. You cannot “remain” in emptiness. It’s not a “thing” or place. On the contrary, emptiness expresses itself in each and every particular: in me-and-you, in the faces of your loved ones, in the anxiety we feel about our planet and the world, in the smell of parsley, in blurred colours of a diving parrot…

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So let’s return to the Hermit of Lotus Peak. Having just asked the assembly, “Why didn't the old patriarchs remain here after they reached it?” and hearing nothing from the assembly, he answers for them:

“It has no power for the Way.”

So what is power for the Way?

One of Robert Aitken’s early translations of this case renders this line as, “Because it has no power for the path of others.”

I find this revealing. Dwelling in emptiness is, to put it bluntly, self-absorbed. It’s what Zen calls making a “nest of emptiness,” or dwelling in a “ghost cave.” Hakuin calls it the “tiara on satori”, a very cheeky way of lamenting the parading of realisation. The problem with remaining in emptiness is that there’s no room for others. It’s a dojo built for one. A barren place indeed.

That said, even Shakyamuni was tempted to remain there for a time. After his enlightenment he sat for another 49 days before standing up and stepping out to find others. He clearly recognised that remaining in emptiness was another form of attachment. Hakuin calls this kind of attachment “Zen sickness.” You can see it in anyone who claims to be safely immune from the troubles of this world.

But genuine practice is fearless and adventurous. It steps up. It’s always open to moving with the world instead of away from it. Of course, this means accepting whatever circumstances we meet – embarrassment, shame, discomfort, pain, joy, laughter, silliness – with curiosity and openness.

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I can’t resist sharing a little staff story with you now with our old mate Ryokan, the 18-19th Century hermit and poet of Japan.

 One day Ryokan was having supper with Hikoemon Hoshi of Takenomori. After supper they both went next door to the neighbour’s house to have a bath. When they returned home, Ryokan picked up a cane that was standing at the entrance of the house and got ready to leave. Hikoemon’s young child said, “Rev. Ryokan, that’s our cane.”

Ryokan said, “No, it’s mine,” and walked off, holding on to the cane. But after some time he returned and said, “I’ve got the wrong cane.”

I love the confusion over whose cane this is. After all, whose is it? Ryokan’s? Hideomon’s? The child’s? Yours? Mine?

It belongs to no one. It’s just a cane. But trust Ryokan to walk it right back into everybody’s lives, where it truly belongs.

Ryokan gave back the cane and turned to leave. His host Hideomon begged him to stay (and to brush a little poetry, of course), but Ryokan refused. However, before leaving he spotted an old funeral money book on the side table and wrote: 

            Whom shall I tell

            how pathetic

            this old body is,

            going home in darkness,

            leaving my cane behind?

And then he stepped out into the darkness, letting the staff go.

This is the darkness of old age, sickness and death. The darkness of uncertainty, of not-knowing.

We are, after all, going home in darkness. None of us know what’s around the next corner, especially these days! Time and again we’ve been asked to leave our familiar walking stick behind and step out into the unknown. We do this every day. There is nothing to rely on, only the darkness itself. But if we’re lucky, with eyes open, we can see that home is discovered with every ginger step, in the darkness itself.

 This is Power for the Way. Ryokan’s dance – from supper to bath to stepping out with a cane in hand to returning said cane and scribbling his poem – exemplifies the wisdom of moving with the world. He’s not perfect. He’s perfectly imperfect. Just like us.

 As Anna Swir says:

Out of suffering, power is born.

Out of power, suffering is born.

Two words for one

indescribable

thing

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All of which brings us back to the Hermit of Lotus Peak and his question: “After all, what is it?” What is it to be here now, inhabiting our absence?

With the assembly unable to respond (again!) the The Hermit of Lotus Peak answers for them (again!):

 Carrying my staff across the back of my neck, going to the thousand, the ten-thousand peaks.

 Notice how naturally he picks up his staff of emptiness. It rests across the back of his neck – a place we never see – a place that is vulnerable, tender, naked to the elements.

This vulnerability is essential. It highlights the human sensitivity of practice, the increasingly subtle absorption of the world, accepted in the dark.

There’s also a sense of unifying body and mind here – the neck is so often associated with joining the two. But here the staff bridges both, healing the rift, resting gently at the dissolving point. After all, where does the neck start? Where does it end? Perhaps you could say that we are neck all the way down.

Then off he goes to the thousand, the ten thousand peaks. He doesn’t stay in the monastery with the assembly. He doesn’t stay in the mountains. If you go out looking for him, you won’t find him. As Xuedou’s the verse to this case says: 

Dust and sand in his eyes, dirt in his ears,

He won’t stay in the myriad peaks.

The falling flowers and flowing waters are very extensive —

Take a quick look – who knows where he’s gone?

We go the thousand, the ten thousand peaks every day. It’s a messy business. There’s dust in our eyes, dirt in our ears. There are changes to lockdown rules and the noise of information and misinformation. We’re never one hundred percent sure what to do. But we do it. We keep on going. And if someone asks us to retrace our steps, we can’t.

As Hakuin Zenji says, the ancestors did “did not stay in the realms of buddhas or in the realms of demons either.” So where did they go? Where do you go? Where am I?

Take a quick look – no one knows! But here we are.

In a comment to this case Hakuin Zenji says, “If you climb a mountain you should go to the top; when you dive into the ocean you should reach the bottom.” He’s asking us to commit to our life – the present, the assembly, the person sitting beside you, the upheavals we face on a daily basis. And discover in that very commitment just how committed each of these things are to you.

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So what does this mean for our practice right now, in a troubled and uncertain world?

 Commenting about another staff, Wumen says:

It helps you to cross when the bridge as broken down.

It guides you back to the village on a moonless night.

If you call it a staff, you enter hell like an arrow.

It seems that so many bridges are broken down right now. Politically, environmentally, socially, educationally. The rate of change over the last two years alone has been dizzying. Instead of crossing the water in familiar ways, relying on existing structures of thought and habit, we find ourselves wading knee-deep, perhaps even neck-deep, in the rapids. We’re pushed and tugged by the current, slipping on unfamiliar stones. Sometimes we fall in. Sometimes we get hurt. But we keep going, relying on the fact that there is no other place to cross but here.

And even though there’s no moon – it’s pitch black, remember, with little or no light at the end of the tunnel, just like Ryokan’s night – our willingness to wobble with circumstances is what brings us back into contact with the village: the village of each other.

“You cannot do without me,” says Zhaozhou. We need each other. Just sitting here together this morning is an expression of the village. It’s me and you – not a nice idea to get around to one day. Remember: genuine practice reveals genuine people.  Not just in the immediate sangha, but in the world at large.

But don’t call it a staff or you’ll enter hell like an arrow. In fact, don’t call it anything. Then, when names are forgotten and reality reasserts itself directly, we can enter the hell of names without fear. Indeed, don’t call it hell and you can enter hell without fear. Just trust the intelligence of meeting what is. You will find your Way.

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The old teachers were fond of washing away the stink of enlightenment. They were forever keen to reveal the naked truth beyond words or phrases. To finish, let’s touch on another case with old Zhaozhou, this time with his brother in dharma, Zhuyu. This comes from the Record of Empty Hall:

Zhaozhou went up to Zhuyu’s dharma hall, peered to the east, and peered to the west.

   Zhuyu said, “What are you doing?”

   “Searching for water.”

   “Inside, I don’t have a single drop! What are you searching for?”

   Zhaozhou leaned his staff against the wall and went out.

 Zhaozhou steps into the hall of his dharma brother (they were both dharma heirs of Nanquan) just like the Hermit of Lotus Peak. He sniffs around – “Is there any enlightenment here? Is there any delusion? What can you give me?”

Zhuyu replies, “I don’t have a single drop! What are you searching for!”

Zhaozhou leaned his staff against the wall and went out. What was his intention? How you see this staff tells you everything about your own practice.

After all, what is it?

This article was first offered as a talk to the Melbourne Zen Group in September 2021