Finding Tracks

“Finding the Tracks

With the aid of the sutras, he gains understanding; through the study of the teaching, he finds the traces. The many vessels are clearly all of one gold; and he himself is the embodiment of the ten thousand things. But unable to recognize correct from incorrect, how is he to distinguish true from false? Since he has yet to pass through the gate, only tentatively has he seen the traces.

By the water and under the trees, there are tracks thick and fast. In the sweet grasses thick with growth, did he see it or not? But even in the depths of the deepest mountains, how could it hide from others its snout turned up at the sky?

Deep in the mountains, his efforts bear fruit. Tracks! How grateful to see a sign. After seeking and seeking, something that finally looks something like a track is found. As in the picture here, the traces can be seen. It’s written in the preface, “With the aid of the sutras, he gains understanding; through study of the teaching, he finds the traces.” This essence cannot yet be affirmed from one’s own experience, but from reading and from listening to others it seems this must be it. This is what I was looking for.

People always want to read as many books as possible and find out things, even if only secondhand, by listening to and reading the words of others. But if you are going to learn about Buddhism through books, it’s best to read original texts. For Bodhidharma, it was a sutra called the Ryogon Sutra.For the Fifth and Sixth Patriarchs, it was the Diamond Sutra. For Rinzai, it was the Flower Garland Sutra. And for Hakuin, it was in the Lotus Sutra that he found the true substance of Buddhism. The more layers of interpretation we have to go through, the further and further away we are from the deepest meaning. We have to be able to find these traces to find the source, but we have to be clear about what the best traces are.

For our whole life, we think of this physical body as what we are, as our self, and we think that others are exterior to what we are. That which is inside this bag of skin is what we are, is how we think it is, and anything that is outside this bag of skin is something separate. But that is amistaken way of looking at it. If we think of how many things we depend on just to stay alive, we can see how different the reality is. “The many vessels are clearly all of one gold; and he himself is the embodiment of the ten thousand things.” We cannot live alone and independently, but if we are not careful, we often make the mistake of believing that we can. If you close off your nose and mouth, you can see this easily. We need oxygen to stay alive. We must have water to live. Without it, we would die after one week. If we go without food for too long, we can die. The life energy of animals and plants is always supporting us. There is no way we can live disconnected from all other beings.

Scientists tell us that 350 million years ago, in that one moment when life came forth, every single person was born, because from that one spark, that one instant, all of our ancestors have lived in sequence, down to our grandparents, and then to us: we all came forth from one moment. Without that, without that continuation of life energy that has come down through today, we would not be alive here. Our life energy is not a separate thing. A baby is born, and perhaps it has a certain purity and clarity at that time, but it’s influenced from then on by its parents, its teachers, its family, and the society in which it lives. This conditioning–all the ways of looking at the world that are taught by everyone the child comes in contact with–becomes a child’s base for perceiving this world.

In all these ways, one single existence is an impossibility. There has to be a connection. And to discover that connection we need to realize and directly encounter our Clear Mind, that which unifies all beings. It’s said that we exist as the world, and the world exists as us. Or that all of the ten thousand things come forth from me and I become all of those ten thousand things. Everything consists of atoms, and according to the ways in which these atoms gather and separate, according to karmic conditions, we have causes that become effects, which then become further causes. In this, the essence of all of us can be seen. The sixty billion cells of each person’s human body separate into the functions of skin cells and brain cells and lymph system cells, eye cells and ear cells, but all of these originally came forth from one single cell, and that one single cell came forth from one single original atom. When we see this we can see clearly that among human beings there is no differentiation.

“But unable to recognize correct from incorrect, how is he to distinguish true from false? Since he has yet to pass through the gate, only tentatively has he seen the traces.” But even if we know in our heads how it works, that does not satisfy us or our true craving to understand from experience. We have seen traces, but do not yet know the real thing. We have not yet sat until we can pierce through and the bottom falls out and we shine radiantly. We have to keep going, even though we do not yet know what exactly it is that we have to do. We know we have to sit, but we have not yet done the sitting. We know where the traces are, but we have not yet grasped the actual animal.

“Since he has yet to pass through the gate, only tentatively has he seen the traces.” When you have only taken a bite, but not yet actually chewed it, there is no way to keep the essence going in daily life. We sort of know what it is when we are on the cushion, but when we stand up from the cushion it dissipates in every direction and we don’t know how to keep it going.

A verse is then given: “By the water and under the trees, there are tracks thick and fast. In the sweet grasses thick with growth, did he see it or not?” There are tracks. Where the grass has been trampled we can see them. We can see them in the green willow leaves, which look like Kanzeon Bodhisattva, and hear them in the wind passing through the green pines. This is not a metaphor; rather, as we listen openly, the sound made by the pines is a sermon of the Buddha. “In the sweet grasses thick with growth, did he see it or not?” A swift bird taking off unseen from the grasses is a teaching as well, and all of these teachings are in harmony at the same time. A white bird taking flight, the lively manifestation of life energy, in harmony, is the truth being spoken in every moment. In every single sense we can feel and experience this truth.

The Heart Sutra says, “All dharmas are marked with emptiness, they are without birth or death, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase nor decrease . . . no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no world of eyes, through to no world of mind consciousness.” If we look at this quietly, we see that if we forget these senses as we use them, forgetting our eyes, forgetting our ears, forgetting our nose, our tongue, our body, our mind, as we perceive things, those things themselves–the eyes, the ears, the body–disappear. Our mind does not decrease or increase, it is not stained or pure, it reflects things exactly as they come to us. We see a fire, but our mind does not burn. The mind, just as it is, is that clarity of the true nature.

As Rinzai has said, the true Dharma has no fixed form, and yet it extends throughout the ten directions. Science gives us laws that say one plus one is two, or two plus two is four. Science tells us that these are rules, facts, fixed phenomenon. They are not something that only people of a certain religion can understand, that only Christians can understand and Buddhists cannot, that only Muslims can understand and Hindus cannot. All beings can understand. Seeing the sun, we become the sun. Seeing a bird, we become the bird. Everything is embraced, every single bit of it. The whole universe is the ox of our own clear mind.

The Buddha when he was awakened at the sight of the morning star said, “How wondrous, how wondrous, all beings are endowed with this very same clear mind to which I have just been awakened. Everything is shining.” Because his mind became zero at this time and free of any traces of anything at all, he could become the river, the mountain, the flowers–he could become all things. And this wondrous wisdom to which he was awakened, which all beings are endowed with, does not come to us from practice. We are all already within this wisdom. But because we hold on to an idea of who we are, what our status is, what our position is, we are always a small self that gets stuck. But that small self is not the true ox. It is only a small-self idea of what an ox might be like.

“But even in the depths of the deepest mountains, how could it hide from others its snout turned up at the sky?” Yet no matter how much we explain it, we have found the traces after all. Whether we are sleeping, walking, sitting, we have to keep that essence going, without a trace of our small self, without a gap from morning until evening. Doing this we experience a place where, while we still perceive a small self there, we also sense the presence of some other huge, great, enormous energy.”

~ Shodo Harada, Commentary on Ten Oxherding Pictures

Image ~ Lion's Roar