MU

“A monk asked Chao-chou, “Has the dog Buddha nature or not?” Chao-chou said, “Mu.”

WU-MEN’S COMMENT: For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers. For subtle realization it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road. If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors, if you do not cut off the mind road, then you are a ghost clinging to bushes and grasses. What is the barrier of the Ancestral Teachers? It is just this one word “Mu”—the one barrier of our faith. We call it the Gateless Barrier of the Zen tradition. When you pass through this barrier, you will not only interview Chao-chou intimately. You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers in the successive generations of our lineage—the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears. Won’t that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?..

Here at the outset of The Gateless Barrier we meet Chao-chou (Jōshū), whose kōan “Mu” is the foundation of our kōan study. He had the longest and one of the most unusual careers of any Zen master. Born in 778, he came to study with Nan-ch’üan (Nansen) when he was only eighteen years old and remained until his old teacher died forty years later. After two years of mourning he set out on a pilgrimage to visit the many eminent teachers of his time. On his departure he is said to have vowed: “If I meet a hundred-year-old person who seeks my guidance I will offer the best teaching I can to that venerable person. If I meet a seven-year-old child who can teach me I will become an ardent disciple of that child.”

At age sixty he had freed himself of cultural constrictions as much as anyone can, and had regained his beginner’s mind. Chao-chou maintained his vow for the next twenty years. Wandering from teacher to teacher, he invited them to probe his mind, checking them as well, deepening and clarifying understanding throughout the Zen world. Finally, at eighty, he settled down in a small temple and for the next forty years guided disciples from his wonderfully seasoned understanding, passing away in his hundred and twentieth year.

Throughout his long career Chao-chou taught in a simple manner with just a few quiet words. It is said that a light seemed to play about his mouth as he spoke. Dōgen Kigen, who freely criticized many of his ancestors in the Dharma, could only murmur with awe, “Jōshū, the Old Buddha.” Forty generations of Zen students and more since his time, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and now people everywhere, have breathed his one word “Mu,” evoking the living presence of the Old Buddha himself.

Thus Mu is an arcanum—an ancient word or phrase that successive seekers down through the centuries have focused upon and found to be an opening into spiritual understanding. When you join that stream you have joined hands with countless pilgrims, past, present, future. In everyday usage the word “Mu” means “does not have”—but if that were Chao-chou’s entire meaning, there wouldn’t be any Zen. The monk’s question is about Buddha nature, and Chao-chou’s “Mu” in response is a presentation of Buddha nature. Buddha nature is the fundamental subject of Buddhist teaching. It is the nature of our being. Dōgen establishes this at the outset of his essay titled “Buddha Nature”: “All beings without exception have Buddha Nature. The Tathāgata abides without change. This is the lion roar of our great teacher Śākyamuni, turning the Wheel of the Dharma, and it is the head and eyeballs of all Buddhas and all Ancestors.”

“Tathāgata” is another term for Buddha nature, or simply Buddha. This is the essential nature of all beings and, indeed, the universe itself. It is completely empty, yet it is potent with infinitely varied and dynamic possibilities. The monk sitting before Chao-chou cannot acknowledge his own Tathāgata. At a very deep level he is asking, “Do I really have Buddha nature as they say?” Chao-chou presents his affirmation with a single word of a single syllable: “Mu.” In his quiet way Chao-chou is also showing the monk how to practice. He is just saying “Mu.” This you can take as guide, inspiration, and model. This is your path and, breath by breath, you will realize the Buddhahood that has been yours from the beginning. “Muuuuuu.”

Wu-men unpacks Chao-chou’s “Mu” for us most compassionately in his comment, giving one of the few expositions in classic Zen literature of the actual process of zazen up to and including realization. Phrase by phrase it opens the Way. “For the practice of Zen,” he begins, “it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers.” The oldest meaning of “barrier” in English, and in Chinese and Japanese as well, is “checkpoint at a frontier.” There is no line in your essential nature to distinguish insight from ignorance, but in Zen Buddhist practice someone in a little house by the road will say: “Let me see your credentials. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with the world?” You present yourself and are told: “Okay, you may pass” or “No, you may not pass.”

The barrier is an archetypal element of human growth—an obstacle to be surmounted by heroes and heroines from time immemorial. It is said that Bodhidharma, revered as the founder of Zen in China, faced the wall of his cave in zazen for the last nine years of his life, though he had long ago found that wall, that barrier, to be altogether transparent. For his part, the Buddha saw through his barrier when he happened to glance up and notice the morning star. Down through the ages there have been countless Buddhas whose barrier turned out to be wide open after all. You too face that barrier. Confirm it as your own.

“For subtle realization,” Wu-men continues, “it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road.” This is not an injunction to cut off thoughts. As Yasutani Haku’un Rōshi used to say, “It is probably possible to control the brain so that no thoughts arise, but that would be an inert state in which no creativity is possible.” Wu-men’s point is that if you try to cut off thoughts and feelings you might be able to reach a dead space as Yasutani Rōshi suggests. Or, more likely, thoughts and feelings will defeat your efforts and come flooding through, and you’ll be desperately trying to plug the dike. Such an endeavor brings only despair. Inevitably you notice that you are thinking something as you sit there on your cushions in zazen. Remember Mu at such a time. Notice and remember; notice and remember—a very simple, yet very exacting, practice.

Of course, this practice is not intended as a denial of thoughts and feelings. Even anger can be positive and instructive if it is simply a wave that washes through. Thoughts and feelings have a positive role in zazen, too, for they serve as reminders, just like bird song… Pay attention to Mu the way you would to a loved one, letting everything else go…

Wisdom and intimacy are actually the same thing. As a Zen student you are challenged to find this intimacy in the ordinary, workaday, confrontive society you live in. How can you see with another’s eyes, or hear with another’s ears, across space and time or even face to face at the post office? If you steadfastly breathe “Mu” right through all feelings of anxiety when you are on your cushions, and if you ignore distractions and devote yourself to the matter at hand on other occasions, you will be like Pu-tung (Fudō) holding fast in the flames of hell. Those flames are the distressing aspects of your life, and in persevering you will surely enter the original realm. “Won’t that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?” Wu-men is inviting his ponies with a carrot. Be careful. Mu is only the first of the kōans, and passing all the kōans is only a good beginning…

Kenshō, the term used for this experience, simply means “seeing nature”—that is, seeing into essential nature. How you react is your peculiarity. But if your vision is genuine, you are hand in hand with all the ancestors. It is as though you have snatched the great sword of Mañjuśrī, the incarnation of wisdom, who wields an exquisitely sharp sword that cuts off delusions and self-centered tendencies. Now at last the sword of Mañjuśrī is your own sword, and you are mounted on his lion… Swing Mañjuśrī’s sword and cut off the mind road, he is saying, even it is occupied with the Buddha himself. Cut off the Three Poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance. What remains? Only the beautiful song of the thrush singing to the overcast sky.

“In the Six Worlds and the Four Modes of Birth, you enjoy a samādhi of frolic and play.” The Six Worlds are those of devils, hungry ghosts, animals, titans, human beings, and angels—realms through which we migrate every day. The Four Modes of Birth are the womb, the egg, the water, and the metamorphosis. Samādhi means “absorption” or “oneness.” In short, wherever you are and whatever you are, you are not just yourself anymore. You include all.

This is the great life of the Sambhogakāya, the Body of Bliss. You are immersed in frolic and play because children, lambs, and birds are frolicking in your own blood. “How, then, should you work with it? Exhaust all your life energy on this one word ‘Mu.’ If you do not falter, then it’s done!” Wu-men recaps his comment with this line. Give yourself to Mu. Let Mu breathe Mu. Don’t give energy to anything except Mu. Don’t feel that you are faltering because you don’t realize it. When you do falter, come back to Mu at your first chance. With all your faltering, don’t falter. “A single spark lights your Dharma candle.”

Let the buzzing fly put an end to “has” and “has not.” Let the cry of the gecko put an end to birth and death. Let somebody’s cough put an end to ignorance and realization. That’s Wu-men’s comment. Yamada Rōshi used to say that he read it constantly, and each time found something new. This is a hint about Mu as well, for this kōan is not a raft you discard when you finally make it your own…

In his comment he cautions us: “Don’t consider it to be nothingness. Don’t think in terms of ‘has’ or ‘has not.’” Be diligent with your total being—don’t let yourself be confined by your skull. If, however, you are preoccupied with “has” and “has not,” that is, if you cultivate thoughts about attaining something, you cut off your head, or rather you cut off your body. You cut off the whole world. Preoccupied with brooding, fantasy, memory, or whatever, you are unable to hear the thrush in the avocado tree or smell the kahili ti in the early evening. What a loss!

~Wu-men (Mumon) Hui-k’ai was a Sung period master of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school who lived from 1183 to 1260. He worked on the kōan “Mu” ardently for six years, sometimes, it is said, pacing the corridors at night and knocking his head intentionally against the pillars. One day he heard the drum announcing the noon meal—and suddenly, like the Buddha seeing the morning star, he had a profound experience of understanding. His poem on that occasion reads: “A thunderclap under the clear blue sky; all beings on earth open their eyes; everything under heaven bows together; Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances. After receiving transmission from his master, Yüeh-lin (Gatsurin), Wu-men wandered as a teacher from temple to temple, never settling long in one place. Toward the end of his life, he retired to a hermitage but was regularly disturbed by visitors seeking guidance. An unconventional Zen master in many respects, Wu-men let his hair and beard grow and wore old soiled robes. He worked in the fields and carried his own slops. Called “Hui-k’ai the Lay Monk,” he is a wonderful archetype for us monkish lay people in the West.”

~ Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan.                          Robert Aitken was, without doubt, one of the most truly venerable elders of the Western Zen way.