This Extremely Marvelous Tail
A teisho on Case 38 of the Mumonkan
Paul Gerstein · Living Dharma Center · Northampton, Massachusetts
May 3, 2016
Transcribed from audio recording. Edited for readability with light footnotes; the spoken text is preserved as faithfully as the transcription permits.
So, I’m going to say a few words about what this practice is about. It’s funny — these teisho, which are somewhat formal talks by the teacher and often come from a spontaneous place (there might be a little preparation, but not too much), over a long period of time appear to be saying the same thing. Just different approaches to the same one thing, which is really what this practice is: different approaches, unique to each person, to the same one thing.
Now, what is this thing we’re approaching through our practice? One thing I can tell you is that this practice — which has been called Zen Buddhism, though I try to avoid naming it, because naming it sets it apart from everything else — this Zen practice is not a self-improvement exercise. It’s not about turning yourself into a better person, or something different from what you are right now, or getting rid of something that’s holding you back. Some of that may happen as a byproduct of being alive — of your everyday life, your work, the people you meet, your experiences, perhaps psychotherapy, reading, philosophizing. We’re always changing, always hopefully growing. But this practice is not about achieving some particular improved me. This is really important.
And related to that: it’s not about adopting a set of beliefs, or a set of rituals — things done for the sake of something else. A lot of religion involves that: ritualistic behaviors, underlain by superstitious beliefs that performing the rituals will somehow lead you to the happy place — call it heaven, call it enlightenment. Ritualistic behavior is not part of this Zen practice. Nor is belief — accumulating a set of thoughts about yourself and the world, about what’s important and what isn’t, and then holding to those thoughts, not just as a direction we want to move in but as the very embodiment of what we’re doing. That’s a key part of religions: belief in events that occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago, belief in things no one’s ever seen but that are taught in a book written by who-knows-who, maybe God. It’s not that at all.
All of those things — beliefs, rituals, practices — are in the service of changing yourself from something inadequate, less than perfect, defective in some way, into some perfected being who will then be allowed to pass through some lattice — call it the pearly gates, whatever you want. So what is this about, then?
There was a contemporary student — I read this in one of the books by Philip Kapleau1, and it stuck in my mind. She was writing about her awakening experience as a result of long, intensive zazen practice. She had a particularly profound awakening, and this is what she wrote: “Just to be is a supremely total act.” Perhaps that says it all.
Another Zen student — this was many years ago, probably just about a hundred years ago — a young woman I quote quite often. Her name was Yaeko Iwasaki2. She had a series of profound awakenings on her deathbed while dying of TB and wrote several letters about her experiences and insights to her teacher, Harada Roshi, a famous Zen master in Japan in the early 1900s. After one of these particularly profound awakenings while lying in bed doing zazen, she wrote: “What a relief to discover that just as I am, I lack nothing.”
These two comments — by devoted practitioners of this thing we do here called zazen — point so directly at what this is about, more than any book, ritual, or belief. Nowhere in them is even the slightest indication of an attempt to change who they were, to become something they weren’t before, to achieve something they didn’t already have.
This harkens back to one of the Buddha’s statements that I particularly love — the final statement he made to his disciples on his deathbed3: “All component things are subject to decay. Work out your own salvation with diligence.” Work out your own salvation with diligence. Salvation from what? From thoughts about yourself, ideas about yourself, ideas about the world, judgments about the world — all these component things, none of which last. Even if you got them all set up perfectly, all the ducks lined up in a row, they can’t last. They never do. Look to your own past experience to confirm it: times when everything seemed so perfect, and sometime later it wasn’t like that at all. Nothing stays with us for very long.
Another thing the Buddha said, and this is important: “Truly, I gained nothing from complete, unexcelled enlightenment.”4 What a profound statement. Truly, I gained nothing. Nothing was gained. What happened is that he awoke to some original condition, always there; he didn’t newly achieve something not already there. And if anything needed to be gotten rid of to uncover it, it was nothing more than mere ideas and thoughts.
So it’s very important — not just starting out, but all the way through this practice, and particularly for advanced practitioners who’ve had some experience, answered some koan, had whatever awakenings they may have had — to continually remind ourselves that this is not a self-improvement project, and that just to be is a supremely total act, exactly as you are. Zazen is not the method of getting there; it is the act of doing that. True zazen, correct zazen — which is what we’re all working on here — is the very act of being. It’s the act of non-attainment. The act of non-perfection. The act of being precisely what you are in each moment. The act of putting down the effort to change yourself — letting go of ideas, beliefs, thoughts — so that it’s not a ritual aimed at something that will come down the pike later as a result of hours and hours of ritualized zazen. What a remarkable, precious, rare thing.
Now, what is the very opposite of this? Something I’ve noticed lately. Some of you know I’m a cyclist — I spend a lot of time on the road on my road bike, and lately I’ve gotten into mountain biking, just to get away from the most horrible part of cycling, which is drivers. Over the past couple of months, drivers — particularly drivers of pickup trucks — have become particularly aggressive and hostile, in a scary way: yelling out the windows, gunning it and buzzing you, coming in close and then flooring it so the exhaust blows in your face and you’re coughing (called “coal rolling”). This happens almost every time I’m out. Now, I haven’t changed anything — same clothing, same bicycle, same way of riding — but something has changed.
I thought about it a couple of days ago, when a pickup truck did this, and I realized we’re all immersed in a current political environment in which some people — perhaps selected out by those who drive big pickup trucks, I don’t know; I’m not impugning anyone who owns a pickup truck — but some politicians are dividing us, pointing at others who are different and casting them as the enemy: something to be blocked by a wall, ejected from the country, prevented from entering, prevented from carrying out their everyday activities — like using the bathroom of their choice, if they happen to be transgender; or people who have committed the crime of being female, having an XX rather than an XY, and the disparaging remarks made about them because of their genetic composition. This, I think, has given people permission to see anyone different from them as the enemy — even when the difference is just something in their own mind, and not real. If the person in the pickup truck stopped and talked with me, they might realize we knew each other, or were friends of friends, or had similar interests. But just the notion that someone might be different is enough to give them permission to express hostility.
Now, what is this? It’s no different from trying to improve yourself. Honestly. Trying to improve yourself is pointing at some part of yourself that shouldn’t be there, that isn’t right, that isn’t who you really are — that doesn’t match your idea of what an enlightened person should be like, of how someone ought to be — and therefore should be gotten rid of. There’s a subtle internal violence to that, a self-criticism. And it can get very embedded in our practice of Zen, as in any religion — and in politics, and in many other endeavors. In everyday life we make attempts to improve our circumstances, get an education, be a better person, and all of that is important. But in those endeavors we begin to forget that just to be is a supremely total act.
So this is the core issue — what we always have to remind ourselves of. We work on it in our zazen, in the way we deal with thinking. All of this — rejecting, hostility, judgment, shoulds and shouldn’ts, attempts to be better — all of it involves thinking: making a comparison to an idea in the mind that is the template of perfection, and either trying to match it or trying to get rid of whatever prevents you from matching it. All founded on thinking. So in our zazen we learn how not to get rid of our thinking. Getting rid of it is just more of the same — saying thinking isn’t good, I have to do battle with it, only when I stop thinking will I really be doing mindfulness. No. Mindfulness is the recognition that anything, being, is a totality. A thought is — that’s its totality. A sensation in your legs is — that’s its totality. You are — that’s your totality.
So we enter this world of totality, fully. We have a method to do it, and we learn it, and it involves continual refinement — but it never involves getting rid of anything, checking yourself, standing apart and criticizing. It’s about letting go of all those activities by simply seeing them, observing their sensation. Rather than getting involved with the ideas that beset and torment us, we observe the sensation of the ideas themselves — the sensation of thinking, the sensation of judging. What does that feel like? How do I know I’m judging right now? How did I detect it? What was the actual sensation of that idea? And then we notice that the sensation, like any other, is there because of causes and conditions. If in that moment things were different, something else might have appeared — but it was just that. That had to be. There’s no point in doing battle with it. And as the Buddha said, all component things are subject to decay: it’s not going to last. A moment later it’ll be completely forgotten, and something else will take its place.
So in our zazen we develop this dispassionate, flowing attentiveness to something you might call now-ness. We leave behind comparisons and names and judgments, and we begin to enter a glistening, alive, present, ever-changing, flowing world of sensation. We peer deeply into this now-ness — and we might do it through a method such as counting or following the breath, or shikantaza (bare sitting); koan is another such approach — but it is essentially this: waking up to things as they are. Not making them into something better or different, not getting rid of things. Not being the person in the pickup truck gunning past a cyclist — because that cyclist is you too. This person inside, who you feel doesn’t measure up or lacks something, is you too. It’s part of your big self. It can’t be cut off. It has reasons for being there, and if you embrace it, it becomes part of the whole — expressing this beingness, this now-ness, rather than blocking your path.
We have a little extra time, so I’m going to read a koan. It’s from the Mumonkan5. I probably won’t say too much about it, but I think it reflects some of what we’ve been talking about. This is Case 38, titled, in this translation, “An Ox Goes Through a Window” — also translated “A Buffalo Goes Through a Window.” The giant cow or water buffalo is often viewed as the symbol of awakening in Zen; but you don’t even need to know that to get something from this koan. The case goes like this. Goso6 was a Zen master.
Goso said:
To give an example: it is like a buffalo passing through a window. Its head, its horns, and all four legs pass through. Why can’t its tail pass through too?
Here I’ve been sitting for all these years, feeling more free, more in the present moment, more compassionate — see how we begin to step back and judge our progress — and yet, and yet, this thing always hangs me up. Why won’t it go through? Why do I have this issue, this problem? Why is the world this way? Why is that person treating me this way? All these tails, blocking us from getting through the window.
Let me give you a little history. Back in that day and age — I don’t know if this was Japan or China — there were abattoirs where cows were killed for meat, and the cow would be placed in a pen, actually like a little house, with a lattice window and a locked door. And just to be extra safe, in case the cow escaped and then couldn’t be brought to the abattoir, they’d dig a moat, a ditch, around it, so an escaping cow would get trapped in the ditch. So it’s a bit of a play on words — the case is often translated “going through the lattice”: like a cow going through a lattice, its head, its horns, and all four legs pass through — but why does its tail get stuck?
Here’s the commentary by Mumon7:
If you can penetrate to the point of this koan, open your Zen eye to it, and give a turning word, you will then be able to repay the four obligations above and help the three existences below.8 If you still cannot do so, reflect on the tail single-heartedly until you can really grasp it as your own.
This is so critical: reflect on the tail single-heartedly. What tail is this? What tail is it for you, right now? Single-heartedly, until you can really grasp it as your own. And the verse is wonderful — remember the story of the cow and the moat surrounding the pen. It goes:
If it passes through, it falls into a ditch.
If it turns back, it is destroyed.
This tiny little tail —
how extremely marvelous!
Remember what that student said after an awakening experience: Just to be is a supremely total act. Just exactly with this tail holding you back from passing through a lattice of perfection.
So if you don’t appreciate the tail, you get the idea that you’re better than everyone else — more awakened, more enlightened, you’ve got your act together. What kind of a ditch is that to fall into? We don’t let that happen in this practice; it’s constantly refining, refining, refining — you never reach the end of it. But turning back — giving up, giving in to identification with a little limited self with characteristics, “that’s all I really am, just this little self, and, as they say, life sucks and then you die” — if you turn back from this rare practice we’ve luckily stumbled upon, you (your awareness of your intrinsic freedom) will be destroyed. So this little bit of a tail — this thing we tend to do battle with, but that really is part of our whole self — how extremely, he said, how extremely marvelous.
So we’ll end there today.
Notes
1 Philip Kapleau (1912–2004), founder of the Rochester Zen Center and author/editor of The Three Pillars of Zen (1965). The line “just to be is a supremely total act” comes from one of the contemporary awakening accounts collected in that book.
2 Yaeko Iwasaki (d. 1935), a lay student who wrote a series of enlightenment letters from her deathbed to her teacher, Daiun Sōgaku Harada Roshi (1871–1961). The letters, with Harada’s comments, appear in Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen.
3 From the Buddha’s final exhortation in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta. In T. W. Rhys Davids’ familiar rendering: “Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!” (The Pali appamāda means diligence or heedfulness; the word “salvation” is a translator’s gloss.)
4 An allusion to the Diamond Sutra, in which the Buddha tells Subhūti that in unexcelled, complete, perfect enlightenment there was “not even the least thing” to be attained — and that this is precisely what it is.
5 Mumonkan Case 38, “A Buffalo (or Cow) Passes Through the Window.” The saying is by Goso Hoen (Chinese Wuzu Fayan, d. 1104), a Song-dynasty Rinzai master — the teacher of Engo (Yuanwu Keqin), who compiled the Blue Cliff Record.
6 Mumonkan Case 38, “A Buffalo (or Cow) Passes Through the Window.” The saying is by Goso Hoen (Chinese Wuzu Fayan, d. 1104), a Song-dynasty Rinzai master — the teacher of Engo (Yuanwu Keqin), who compiled the Blue Cliff Record.
7 Mumon Ekai (Wumen Huikai, 1183–1260), compiler of the Mumonkan, whose prose commentary and capping verse accompany each case.
8 A traditional Buddhist formula: to “repay the four obligations” (the debts of gratitude owed — variously listed as to parents, all beings, one’s ruler/country, and the Three Treasures) and to “help the three existences” (beings throughout the three worlds, or the three times — past, present, and future).