A student of the intimate asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Zhaozhou replied, “No.”
Gateless Gate, case 1
A few years ago Melissa Blacker and I compiled a collection of talks ancient and contemporary on engagement with this koan as the Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan. The scholar Stephen Heine reviewed it for one of the dharma-oriented magazines, Lion’s Roar. He said it was a good book. He also said it missed a critical reference. The professor was referring to a case collected as case 18 in the Book of Serenity, the Cóngrónglù.
A student of the intimate asked, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Zhaozhou replied, “Yes.” The student pushed, “If so, how did it get tangled into that hairy bag?” Zhaozhou responded, “He did so willingly.”
Later, another student of the intimate asked the same question, “Does a dog have Buddha nature? Zhaozhou replied, “No.” The student responded, “But from Buddhas to bugs under rocks, all have Buddha nature! So why not the dog?” Zhazhou said, “Because, his nature is caught up with karmic delusion.”
In fact, that case and that yes is addressed in the Book of Mu by the roshi John Daido Loori in his essay on the unfolding mystery of this koan. Okay, a small bit of defensiveness. Yeah, we noted that. And Professor Heine in fact offers an important point.
There are quite a number of ways this case and the whole of the koan literature can be addressed, and fruitfully. I have no argument with that range of engagement. Actually, some of these ways are important beyond the direct project of awakening. The koan literature is in itself a literary project. Some collections such as the Blue Cliff Record, the Biyán Lù and the Book of Serenity are literary masterpieces. They can be read as literature and poetry. They are also worthy subjects for academic investigation from several angles. Heine’s work is a very good example of comparative academic study. His is a most worthy project. Certainly he has been important for me.
We actually see this range of ways to deal with koans in contemporary dharma talks. Sometimes these talks investigate aspects of our lives that any given koan may touch on. I’ve done that. And I’ve heard and read similar talks that have been useful to me. Our lives are complex and there are many things we need to attend to. I feel especially the practical matters of a spiritually informed life are worth thousands of dharma talks. And if a koan kicks such a reflection off, all for the good.
And. Here we’re dealing with something else. Something more focused. Here we’re being invited into the most important parts of our lives, that place of understanding, of wisdom. You know, setting heart at ease.
The case itself is most famously encountered as the first koan in the great thirteenth century anthology of koans the Wúménguān, the Gateless Gate compiled by Wumen Huikai. He collected it from the Record of Zhaozhou, the Zhaozhou Zhenji Chanshi Yulu.
A student of the intimate asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Zhaozhou replied, “No.”
The character in Chinese is Wu. In Japanese, and Korean, and I’ve been told in some older version of Chinese it’s pronounced Mu. It means no. Not. Without. Lack.
Here in this version of the case there’s no confusing quandaries of yes and no. And once the story is told it’s tossed, leaving only Wu. Mu. No. Not. Without. Lack.
Some communities in the West who practice koan introspection use the word no. There are good reasons to do so. It fronts us right to the project. But it also carries all the baggage of our human lives. The defiant no of a two year old learning to differentiate out. The ten thousand nos we’ve been told in our lives. It carries a lot of wounds. To use no invites a lot of side trips on the path. It can be worthy, as I said, some English speaking practitioners go for it. No.
And, because the matter is so intimate, and the complexities of our English no are so messy, more commonly we take it up as Mu. We let no hang in the air along with the yes and the stories of how we can better ourselves in our messy lives. With no hanging in the back of it all we use Mu.
The heart of the koan project is to help the spiritual pilgrim resolve the mystery of the two worlds. The two worlds are the phenomenal, where we usually live, of birth and death and all that goes along in between. It is the world of insects and stars, of love and hate. This is the world of causes and conditions, of success and failure. It is the world where we fear and long and sometimes find joy.
The other world is a place where all these categories burn away.
The resolution iss something different than intellectual. I was tempted to say than merely intellectual. But that’s not quite it. Our intellects are wonderful things. And reason is maybe the most distinguishing feature of our humanity. But intellect belongs to one world only. And so, this is a different kind of resolution.
The empty world is a great mystery, one that may visit our dreams, but for most of us is not part of our consciousness. In Buddhism the technical term is Śunyatā in Sanskrit and Suññatā in Pali.
The Theravada use of this term tends to emphasize our radical lack of an abiding substance, anattā (anātman in Sanskrit), in a very loose translation, no-soul, that is no animating principle in the sense of continuing beyond the conditions that give rise to its existence. It, as in you or me. And along with you and me everything else in this lovely, terrible, passing world. With the emphasis on passing.
In the Mahayana there’s a more dynamic use of śunyatā. It absolutely includes that lack of substance, svbhava, where everything’s existence is contingent upon those moving causes and conditions. With a heavy emphasis on contingent. But here śunyatā has another sense, as well.
Here we find the mysterious reality that in Zen is called Buddha nature.
I find it helpful to look at that line in the Taoist classic the Tao de Ching, the nameless is before heaven and earth/the named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Empty is perhaps the best of our English attempts at translating śunyatā. But the Empty is pregnant. Actually, the Empty is constantly birthing. This is Buddha nature.
We can think of the Empty as completely other. Although even that attempt at putting words to the matter invites misunderstanding. As one Zen teacher observed, we open our mouth and we’ve made our first mistake.
So, two worlds.
But, and this is so, so important. The Zen way asserts that these two worlds are in fact not two.
Here is the project of koan work, here we find where Mu leads us.
The Zen project, the work of the koan way, is to see through our original naivete, our simplistic understanding where we live in a world of high and low, of goods and evils, of all those dualities and separations; into our intimate encounter with the Empty.
The project doesn’t end there. For Zen this is not the end of the path. Finding the Empty as ourselves, you, me; takes us toward what I guess we can call as second naivete. This is a restored world, a healed world. Here we live in history, but we also find a certain freedom within it. It is the saving project of the Zen way.
But first is our full-on meeting of the Empty.
Mu.
Koans are human devices. Tools, if you will. Not unlike hammers and saws. The word comes from the Chinese gōng’àn, meaning “public document” As in a legal document. We can see how on the one hand it is, well, public. But on the other it can affect our individual lives in the most intimate ways.
The scholar and Zen priest Victor Sogen Hori calls koan work the “identity of opposites.” That is, it is the way of intimate resolution. My grand teacher on the koan way, Robert Aitken says a koan is a matter to be made clear. My own experience suggests koans are direct pointing wrapped up with an invitation. It’s always our individual encounter with that greatest matters to be made clear. Our own meeting of the other, the other where all ideas of self and another wash away.
And then on to the nuances of all this and that second and more blessed naivete.
But that first. Knowing the Empty. Or, dropping our idea of the Empty. Finding that place of no place.
There are a number of different kinds of koan. They serve different purposes within that journey. But there is a small category of first koans. Hakuin Ekaku’s famous question “What is the sound of the single hand?” is one such first koan.
But the one perhaps most commonly used in formal koan introspection practice, that is koan practice under the guidance of a koan teacher is this one called the Dog koan or the Mu koan.
A student of the intimate asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Zhaozhou replied, “No.”
Mu.
Robert Aitken tells us how “This single syllable turns out to be a mine of endless riches. The monk’s question is about Buddha nature, and Zhazhou’s ‘Mu’ in response is a presentation of Buddha nature.” In the original that word presentation is given in italics.
How do we know Buddha nature for ourselves? Like that famous line which runs a current through the Zen literature, how do I taste it for myself like drinking a sip of water and knowing intimately whether it is cool or warm?
It’s all about intimacy. The presentation we’re being invited into is really just presence. We’re moving away from the world of separation into a place of no separation.
Traditionally people take this case up and start murmuring, repeating, chanting, even yelling Mu. I tend to suggest we keep it subvocal unless in a place where that yelling and shouting isn’t going to disturb neighbors. Then, well, go for it.
I encourage people to “wash” everything inMu, that is to gaze at any object in front of you and mentally wash it with Mu.
Think about what it means, if you want. Read about it.
After that. Well, as my koan teacher John Tarrant repeated in the long line of teaching advice for meeting this case, we’re given insufficient instructions.
So, Mu.
Just Mu.
Really, Mu.
Mu.
And marinade. Allow it to seep into your pores, taste it with every meal, let if pour over you in the shower, feel it in the gurgling of your stomach. And if you’re my age notice it in the soreness of the knuckles of your hands or back.
Anywhere. Everywhere. In a glance. In a touch.
In a kiss.
Maybe you might recall the dharma talks and the scholarly articles. How are those words Mu?
Every moment with every breath the worlds open up. Simply step between the one of form into the vast empty.
Is it even really two? What about when even one seems a bit too much?
Mu.
Illustration is a landscape by Wang Hui, 17th century, Qing Dynasty