A Ring of Fire: A Zen Koan

Fire Monks is very much about ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation, and in particular, five monastics at a rural Zen training center, who after everyone else has been evacuated, put their all into protecting the monastery from a gigantic encroaching fire. A good read.

Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler makes an eloquent case for the monastic stance where, as he tells from an experience working in a monastic kitchen, how an elder once commented “in my general direction,” how “the kitchen doesn’t need any heroes.” It struck a chord, reminding me of my ordination teacher’s anecdote of her time in Japanese monastic training where everything was done together. Indeed, stories of teachers past and present speaking of the monastic discipline are all wary of the hero-mind. The special me mind. The special mind.

Jiryu, as in my experience, pretty much always, holds up various sides of the question. He is fair minded. More than fair minded, he seeks an authentic way of heart and mind. I admire him. And in conclusion pretty much falls on the side of this isn’t really a good thing, this hero-mind, this standing out.

As an aside, pretty much, he expresses disdain for the hoopla around the publication of the book. This part I have little sympathy with. I’m a writer. I wish any of my books had been given the attention from the publisher this one has. (Said knowing I write in a very different genre and my publisher has a different agenda & spends its money in different ways…) Still… I’d like it…

But that’s not the deal, the deal is how special can one be and be an authentic follower of the way? Or, at least that’s the part of what Jiryu raises that catches my imagination.

Moving away from a fire, I found my thinking going to an old koan. I first ran across it, I’m pretty sure, in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. I was both shocked and taken with it. Since then I’ve not run across it very much in my formal Zen training. Master Seung Sahn treats it briefly in his anthology of koans with comments, The Whole World is a Single Flower.” Otherwise I wasn’t even sure it was properly a koan as it isn’t anthologized in the three “big” twelfth century collections, the Gateless Gate, the Blue Cliff Record or the Book of Serenity.

Then Thomas Yuho Kirchner released his wonderful translation of the Shumon Kattoshu, the Entangling Vines, first published at the end of the Seventeenth Century, and one of the major koan collections in orthodox Japanese Rinzai.

And there it is, case one hundred, sixty-two.

Master Seung Sahn’s version of the verse goes,

Actually, it is treated elsewhere, as well. Although for whatever reason, didn’t particularly catch me at the time I read it. There were other illustrations that I found in the reading of the American Zen master Robert Aitken’s classic study of Zen ethics, Mind of Clover. But, he cites the case, as well. He pulls it, as well from the Shumon Kattoshu. It’s not clear to me if this is the roshi’s own translation. But, the verse here, reads,

In any case, the result is another fire, entirely, from the one that nearly consumed Tassjara Zen monastery.

Or, perhaps not.

What I’m sure of there is as little as intimate and personal, and special, as sexual infatuation. Or, quite as heroic as the efforts of those in quest of it.

Now there are just any number of ways we can distract ourselves from the heart of the matter. In our contemporary culture we can make much, should we wish, of the relationship between the old woman and the young woman she sends out to test the monk. In Master Seung Sahn’s version she’s a daughter. In Aitken Roshi’s version, a neice. And I notice the Venerable Kirchner avoids any reference to the women’s relationship.

Good. An issue, but for a different conversation.

And, an important point. How easily we can be distracted from the real point.

Here the question is how do we find our authentic selves?

No doubt the traditional monastic way is to bow. In fact within the Soto transmission documents as I received them there is a “secret” teaching, which in short says the Zen way will last so long as people bow.

It is very important to learn how to bow.

And we learn it in any number of ways. The monastic community’s action together is authentic.

And not the only way to burn the forest.

And not even, necessarily the best way to burn. Or, where to put our attention regarding that burning.

There’s another Zen question, a koan. “The Buddha of wood won’t pass through the fire. If he does, he will surely be burnt.”

To answer this question is to understand the meaning of fire. And, of wood. And, of Buddha.

In an authentic spiritual life we must encounter the ordinary as it is. To fully engage is to present ourselves to the matter.

And that is the way of the open mind and heart.

Really, really, just this.

We need to learn to bow to the community, to be willing to not be special.

And, when the time comes, when circumstances present, and the situation calls for someone to be special, well, then grab the hoe and turn toward the fire.

With passion.

With compassion.

Like on 9/11 when, as people poured out of the Twin Towers, policemen and firemen rushed in.

Just this.

Taking the moment.

Special.

Nothing special.

I’ve looked around and I can’t find it, but in my mind, either Master Hakuin or Ikkyu made a comment on the case of the old woman and the hermit.

He said, were he confronted with that situation, the kiss, the hug, the log would spring to life.

A tad crude, maybe.

But, very much to the point.

Very much to our calling as people on the way.

And a hint at what to do with the great fire.

And how to meet it.