DONGSHAN IS ILL

I delivered this talk more than a year before my son Christopher committed suicide. Maybe I had a premonition. Maybe I was responding to the recent deaths of my parents and to my own near demise after surgery in 1998. Whatever guided me, I chose to focus on one of the most fundamental questions in life and in Zen – the problem of suffering and illness, with the closely related question of dying and death. Little did I know it would all be preparation for coping with Christopher’s death.

But so it was, and powerful preparation at that. Preparation to cope with what I now realize intimately lies in store for us all – fear of our own illness and death and grief over the inevitable loss of those we love.

Dongshan became my teacher for awhile, beginning with this story of a brief interchange in 9^th Century Tang China, a time often called the Golden Age of Zen. This Dongshan is none other than Tozan Ryokai (his Japanese name), co-founder of Soto Zen long before that lineage had reached Japan.

In the world of Zen Dongshan holds a prominent place. He studied with both Nanquan (Nansen) and Yun Yen (Ungan Donjo), both of whom inspired "cases" or koans still studied in such Zen classics as the Blue Cliff Record. The famed Lin-Chi (Rinzai), founder of one of today’s main branches of Zen, was Dongshan’s contemporary. Along with various koans attributed to Dongshan found in contemporary classics, Dongshan is also remembered by his formulation of "The Five Ranks of Master Tozan," a sophisticated formulation of stages of insight on the way to full realization.

Going back ten generations in Dongshan’s lineage, we find the famed Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China. Going ahead thirteen generations later than Dongshan we come to Dogen Zenji, founder of Eihei-ji Monastery in Japan, and the master credited with bringing Zen to Japan in the 13^th Century. I and my own teachers trace our own Dharma lineage back to all of these masters.

So let us listen to the teaching of Dongshan’s story, reaching us almost twelve hundred years later. Perhaps we can imagine Dongshan very sick in bed, when a relatively senior monk approaches to attend him.

THE MAIN CASE

When Dongshan was unwell, a monk asked, "You are ill, teacher, but is there anyone who does not get ill?"

Dongshan said, "There is."

The monk said, "Does the one who is not ill look after you?"

Dongshan said, "I have the opportunity to look after him."

The monk said, "How is it when you look after him?"

Dongshan said, "Then I don’t see that he has any illness.

The setting is illness, something we all experience and that takes many of us to the grave. And the illness, of course, involves suffering. We are dealing with a universal experience.

Then along comes this insightful monk who asks what seems an odd question, "..is there anyone who does not get ill?" We can expand the question to include all suffering, including the ravages of old age and death. Although we may live for years in America with the illusion that we are not part of that painful scene, by middle-age most of us know it for the illusion it is. By then we know about too many family deaths, drug overdoses, suicides, auto crash fatalities, cancer cases, depressions, addictions, war-time massacres, and deaths by mass starvation to maintain our innocence. The Buddha’s First Noble Truth that human suffering is inevitable as a consequence of impermanence, is manifestly correct.

Dongshan answers, "Yes, there is." What? Someone who has sipped from the fountain of eternal life and never gets sick? Given the First Noble Truth, how can Dongshan suggest there is anyone who doesn’t get ill? Doesn’t seem likely. Yet, most of us have met that person without recognizing them. S/he is the one who just gets up at 3 a.m. to catch a plane, even though they generally feel it’s impossible to arise and function before seven. It’s the person who one day intuitively realizes there is something profoundly more than the conventional life we’ve lived for years. It’s the one who, with faith and determination, accomplishes the enlightened way, who learns to dwell in vast emptiness, "far beyond deluded thought," as the Heart Sutra says.

The monk then asks, "Does the one who is not ill look after you?" Nice idea. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guardian angel to look after us and ease our pain? But this is still the conventional view. The monk seems to have reached his limit, for the question implies the separation of the angel from me, of the healthy from the sick, of health from illness. These are the dualisms of attachment that the Buddha teaches are the cause of our suffering, not it’s medicine.

Dongshan comes to the monk’s rescue. The master says, "no, it is I that have the opportunity to look after him." But who is this "I" that Dongshan refers to? And what does he mean by "opportunity?" Many would not view caring of the sick as an "opportunity," but rather, as a task or duty, and possibly a very unpleasant one. Rather than embracing such an "opportunity," many of us hand over responsibility to professional care-givers. And even if one does accept taking care of oneself or others, just what kind a action or attitude is involved?

Possibly complicating our understanding of Dongshan’s answer is his casual use of the word "I." Does he mean the ordinary Dongshan most others knew? No, and this is perhaps the key. This "I" of Dongshan’s is the Zen "I," the "I" of that fundamental Zen question, "Who am I?" "What is my fundamental nature?" It is the "I" of the enlightened one, the "I" of "no-self."

As for the Dongshan’s "opportunity," it refers to the barrier or difficulty that Zen teachers so often tell us to address, to experience, to become. It is the opportunity to which Pema Chodron refers when encouraging us that "This very moment is the perfect teacher," including the moments of pain, illness, or suffering. Indeed, it is especially these moments that are out most powerful teachers.

But the monk is still in the running. He replies, "How is it when you look after him?" That is, what goes on? What’s involved? What are you and he (the one who isn’t ill) doing? Maybe the monk is back on track. He smells an important teaching in the wind. It’s a good leading question, setting Dongshan up for the final stroke, the key line.

"Then I don’t see that he has any illness," Dongshan concludes. But if he’s looking after the one who is ill, how can he not see the illness? Do you want a doctor like that? You probably don’t want a doctor like that, but hopefully you will find a teacher with that wisdom. There is only one way to not see the illness, in this story, and that is to become the one who is ill, to be the illness. When the boundary distinguishing health from illness, between pleasure from pain, illness and suffering dissolves, suffering is transcended. We may have pain, as my teacher once noted, but we don’t suffer. We may be sick, but we are not ill.

Well, this is all very well, we may respond, but just how does one accomplish this exalted state of transcendence and no self?. The answer is clear – through continuing practice, before, during and after one’s illness. Dongshan even alludes subtly to such practice when he says he has ‘the opportunity to look after him." "Looking after" is practice. When we sit, we are looking after both our deluded and our true selves, just as when we mindfully serve others. Some relief can come from occasional meditation, especially if one is naturally disposed. But most of us have to devote ourselves to Zen practice for many years.

And what a gutsy koan! There we are, suffering, in pain, miserable, consumed and exhausted. How on earth does one practice in the midst of such difficulty, such samsara? How does one practice in the midst of serious cancer, or in the midst of the shock and grief of one’s child’s death? Perhaps our practice has slipped; we haven’t been to retreat in a long time; we never took that step of finding a teacher; and now we are exhausted or depressed, hardly able to take on the rigors of Zen training. What is one to do? How can one be enough of a lotus in the fire to find the "I" who is not ill, who does not suffer?

Once again, the answer is practice. In our context, Zen Practice. The time-keeper’s admonition after evening meditation reminds us that "time passes swiftly by and opportunity is lost." (The same "opportunity" to which Dongshan refers.) "Each of us should strive to awaken," the gatha intones. (Awaken means to see there is no illness.) The chant concludes by urging us to "…Strive to awaken! Do not waste your time by night or day!" Life is short. Illness and suffering can come upon us suddenly before our practice is strong enough to cope. It takes time to deepen. Start now! In the meantime, also address present suffering through practice. Like thoughts in meditation, let it arise and let it go, again and again. Invite the demon in for tea. After all, it’s your demon. Your illness. In time, as boundaries dissolve, as you enter a vast, empty space that easily contains your pain (and everything else). The demon wanders off, and you may be able to say, with Dongshan, that you are taking care of the one who is ill and you no longer see any illness.

THE QUESTION OF LIFE AND DEATH:

The story about Dongshan’s illness goes even deeper, for by extension he is also teaching about death. Serious illness raises the specter of death; our fears arise especially when we feel the end draw near. The suffering of illness is sibling to the fear of death. Dongshan is teaching that if we can resolve the one (illness), we can also resolve the other (death). Including, not only our own, but the deaths of those we love and cannot imagine losing. Wansong confirms the extension by commenting, shortly after the main case, that "this is where everyday practice empowers you when you’re dying."

What is death? Most would agree it is the end of something we call "life." The one cannot exist conceptually without the other. They co-arise. But to what does "life" refer? What dies? Who dies? These are classic questions in Buddhism. The body dies. In an ordinary sense, that’s easy to see. But there is more to our ordinary "self" than the body. The ordinary "self" can die without the body doing so. The masters write about "the great death," meaning the complete release of our ordinary self from the bonds of attachment. There can also be "little deaths," in which parts of the self are let go.

But to talk conceptually about different kinds of death is still to invite the possibility of suffering from illness and death because we so profoundly distinguish death as a painful, undesirable state, in contrast the happy, felicitous state of being "alive." We profoundly fear our own death and the deaths of those we love. But Dongshan teaches that if we follow his example, we can transcend this suffering. If we practice diligently, like them, we will not know when we die. Life and death are not separate. To better understand, let us rephrase the story about Dongshan.

MONK: Master, your are DYING, but is there anybody who does not DIE?

DONGSHAN: Yes, there is.

MONK: Does the one who DOES NOT DIE look after you?

DONGSHAN: I have the opportunity to look after him.

MONK: How is it when you look after him?

DONGSHAN: Then I don’t see that he’s DYING.

He is not aware of death.

Just as illness and pain are ongoing processes, so too is death. To use the Tibetan phrase, it is a major "Bardo" of existence – a time of profound change and transformation. We need not address here, as either skeptics or believers, the Tibetan belief in reincarnation. For our purposes, it suffices to say dying is a process and that our concept of a clear boundary between life and death does not fit what we know. As many have reported regarding their "near-death" experiences, it is a transition.

Wansong offers Dongshan’s own death as an example. As death approached, Dongshan asked a monk, "When I leave this leaking husk, where will you go to meet me?" Responding to the monk’s failure to answer, Dongshan recites a verse that ends with the admotion to " ‘Work hard to diligently walk in the void’." When he finished the verse he …bade farewell to the assembly and appeared to die. They wailed with grief. Dongshan opened his eyes, had a meal for stupidity prepared, and extended his life for seven days, after which he again bade farewell…and passed away as he sat there."

An extremely important question for us is whether the monks were "stupid" to wail. Are we stupid with we grieve a loved one who dies? Our parent? Our child? Is the universal human response of grieving "stupid," as Dongshan implied by having prepared a "meal for stupidity"? Perhaps not entirely, since he did respect their grief enough to stay on for a week. Such compassion! But he was still instructing his monks. Perhaps he was raising the question for them of "who dies?" Is this the same "person" the monks thought had died? For which one is it "stupid" to wail, Dongshan’s true self, or the person they thought they knew? Only the latter.

Wansong offers another example of the transition with the story of Master Faqing’s death. Master Faqing tells his attendant, "When I die you can call to me; if I can return, it will be because of the power of the Way" (that is, the power of Practice). At a later time, after leaving his cloths and belongings for the monks, upon hearing the first sound of the night bell, he passed away. His attended shouted, "According to our old pact, you would have me call you: Master! Master! Master!" "What?!, " answered Faqing (somewhat annoyed, we might presume). "Why are you going naked and barefoot?" asked the attendant. "What did I have when I came?" retorted Faqing. The attendant then tried to dress his Master. "Stop!" shouted Faqing, "Leave … (the clothes) for later people!" The attendant, evidently having considerable insight himself, asked, "What about just such a time as this?" Faqing answers, " It is still ‘just thus,’ " and expires. Death is not a mere instant, but a transition which, these masters are teaching us, can be met by practicing "the power of the way," even to the point of briefly returning. Dongshan urged, "if you want to be able to forget physical form and obliterate tracks, work hard to diligently walk in the void."

But returning from what? Transition to what? What void? Here the teaching of Zen is profound, yet little can be said. Caoshan, a forerunner of Dongshan, said "When joy and consciousness are both exhausted, happenings end." This fits our ordinary idea of the transition from life to death, but says little about the nature of the "end." When a student asked Taizan Maezumi Roshi about the hereafter by asking Roshi to tell about his supposed earlier lives, Roshi just scratched his head and answered, "Gosh, I just don’t remember." Zen people don’t talk much about reincarnation, other than to say that we strive to be reborn from moment to moment. Dongshan tried to give a clue by asking a monk, "When I leave this leaking husk, where will you go to meet me?" Reflecting where most of us are (or have been), the monk’s couldn’t answer. Faquing’s answer, a little more concrete, was "just this."

These masters are not referring to the physicists’ "vacuum," or the astronomers’ empty "space." They are not even referring to something we might call "void, " for doing so suggests the word refers to or represents something. Faqing makes this clear in his last verse in which he – an "iron bull" during his master years -- says:

The iron bull leaps past Korea, and

Bumping into the void,

Smashes it to bits.

How can nothing, or void, be smashed to smithereens? And where is one then left? A master might say Parinirvana. This concept is sometime translated as the "void," where the transition of death ends. But a better definition may be the Sanscrit translation "total extinction."

But even while we still live there is little to say, for our fears of death and our grief over the death of those we love is conceptual. The Buddha put it well in his "Sutra of the Lion’s Roar." He explains to the assembly:

…(T)here is the concept of death because there is the concept

of birth. These wrong views are based on a false view of the self….

..(S)uffering exists because of the presence of birth and death.

What gives rise to birth and death? Ignorance. Birth and death

are first of all mental notions…., the product of ignorance….

Once you overcome ignorance, you will transcend all thoughts

of birth and death… (and thereby)… overcome all anxieties

and sorrows.

Possibly the most eloquent poetic description of birth and death comes to us from Eihei Dogen Zenji, who brought Zen from China to Japan in the first half of the 13^th Century and who founded Eihei-ji, one of the two head temples of Soto Zen in Japan. Dogen wrote in his famous Shobogenzo Genjo Koan:

Firewood turns into ask, and does not turn into firewood again.

But do not suppose that the ash is after and the firewood before.

We must realize that firewood is in the state of being firewood,

and that it has its’ before and after. Yet, despite this past

and future, its present is independent of them.

Ash is in the state of being ash, and it has its’ before and after.

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash,

so, after one’s death, one does not return to life again.

Thus, that life does not become death is an unqualified fact of

the Buddha-Dharma; for this reason,

life is called the non-born.

That death does not become life is the Buddha’s revolving of the

confirmed Dharma-Wheel; therefore

death is called the non-extinguished.

Life is a period of itself.

Death is a period of itself.

But alas, despite our exposure to these teachings, talk of illness, old age and death, and their ravages among ourselves and those we love, often and leaves us in a state of fear, pain and grief, unable to enjoy the joy and beauty of our life that are possible when we are free. When unencumbered, grief dissolves, is forgotten, not forever, but again and again, so we can return to joy, again and again. How sad (and how wonderful), for life and death, joy and sorrow, co-arise. We cannot experience joy in life without the unencumbered reality of sorrow and death. As the Bible wisely teaches, each thing must have its season. So let us conclude with summer, with an appreciation of our life, and of the lives of those we have lost.

In the 9^th Century, a monk asked Ziangyan, "What is the Path?" How can we live the joy and immediacy of life even in the face of suffering and death? Ziangyan answered, "A dragon howling in a dead tree." The monk didn’t understand, even though he was striving to be born a dragon. But later another monk continued the interchange. He asked Shishuang "What is a dragon howling in a dead tree?" This second monk had an advantage over the first, for he no doubt knew that Shishuang was Abbot of a monastery where reputedly students never lay down to sleep, and were therefore were known as the "assembly of dead trees." So, what or who didn’t lie down at Shushuang’s monastery? Why, the students’ bodies, of course, or (at an older age), what Dongshan called "this leaking husk." But what is the howling? Could it be Rinzai’s shout? But only the living can physically shout, and so too only they can howl with joy, as Shishuang declared.

I still cry from the deaths in my family, but in between, isn’t it wonderful to watch the birds and gaze at the stars?

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