Just Go Straight Ahead Sesshin

The koan goes like this: a monk was walking on pilgrimage, steadfastly walking. And as he was walking he was looking for Mt. Manjusri, the Mountain of Wisdom, which is an actual place in China, one of the five sacred mountains in China. This monk was looking for the sacred mountain where Manjusri was believed (and some people in China today still believe) to reside. The bodhisattva being the personification of Wisdom, the monk was on this pilgrimage in search for Wisdom.

As he’s on this pilgrimage, steadfastly walking, come hell or high water, he happens to see on the side of the road an old woman selling tea. He’s relieved because he’s a little confused about where to go with his practice. The monk asks, “What is the way to Mt. Manjusri?”

And she says “Just go straight ahead!”

The monk immediately turns and walks straight ahead. The old woman observes it and says “A fine monk, but he goes off that way too.”

The monk later goes to the monastery and reports this to Zen master Chao-chou. Chao-chou says: “Wait a minute. Stay here. I’ll go and investigate this old woman for you.”

Chao-chou goes and asks the woman the same question, “What is the way to Mt. Manjusri?”

She gives the same answer, “Just go straight ahead!”

He returns that evening and calls the assembly together and says “I have thoroughly investigated that old woman for you.”

The monk and all the figures of this koan are none other that each of us. They are representations of a split psyche as we enter the spiritual journey. The seeker and the wisdom figure’s functions are separate. We begin with a sense of the seeker in this koan undertaking to stabilize the mind to see what’s real, aware that precious human life is moving along so quickly.

There’s no time to waste. Each day is really an urgent situation in clarifying and realizing this great matter of life and death. The monk has really already come far, not intoxicated by what he’s been told he should do or shouldn’t do, of what’s valuable and what’s not.

She sees for herself how fleeting this human life is, how precious it is. And yet a lingering sense of dissatisfaction remains. Because when just hearing about what your life is either from your own wagging tongue or your own wiggling mind it’s just hearing and thinking about it and it’s not really living it.

It’s unfulfilling and the practitioner determines with great determination to undertake this heroic journey of stabilizing the mind and seeing what’s really true, seeing through, come hell or high water, with whole-devotion engagement comes back to the present moment again and again, no matter how long it takes. Not being tricked by the laziness of attachment to comfort. Not being tricked by attachment to sense pleasures. Nor even being tricked by what’s regarded as the laziness of the thought “I can’t do it.”

Imagine a person just like you, on a pilgrimage in an ancient time, walking with straw sandals on a mountain with all sorts of terrain, Lions and Tigers and Bears.

No web site to call up and find out where the best inns are, where the softest aafus are, where the most ideal climate for the zendo is. Come hell or high water, steadfastly returning, not wavering, sitting steadfastly like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree.

When they walk by with the boom boxes in the forest where the Buddha sat, do you suppose the Buddha would have gotten up and called the police; “There’s ruffians in my forest! Get them out of here!”

To the extent that we indulge that kind of mind, the swirl is endless. The conditions are never ideal according to our preferences. The judgments of ourselves that we make in our process – do you notice that our yardstick that we use to measure shifts? It shifts exactly in proportion to our experience so that if we are having a very nice, clear, quiet experience the yardstick shifts and it still doesn’t quite measure up.

Somehow giving us about the same level more or less of negative feedback: “Not quite it.”

Not being swayed or rocked by these myriad conditions. These are the first two of these nine stages of setting the mind. The first one is called “Setting the Mind” and the second is “Continuous Setting” because it’s continuously coming back to this moment. Working through the various lazinesses and not being tricked or swayed. Just going straight ahead!

But then within “just going straight ahead” suddenly there’s a moment of seeing how you thought you were going straight but really you weren’t going straight at all. This is the third stage, “Resetting the Mind.” It’s a moment of really living. A wonderful refreshing moment of really being alive in the present moment that blooms through great determination.

And then mindfulness guides the process. Mindfulness gently guides the process closer and closer, closer and closer. The mind still wandering off, gently coming back. This also is where the monk gets a glimpse of the old woman standing at the side of the road and the monk sees himself illumined there and sees also his anxiety in facing that great clear mirror. The old woman illuminates the practitioner completely and at this point it’s too much to take.

Fortunately, the practitioner puts himself in the monastery. He goes to see old Chao-chou and puts himself into thorough training.

From “Setting” to “Continuous Setting”, to the third stage “Resetting the Mind” and fourth, “Close Setting,” the process continues becoming more and more subtle.

Arriving at “Close Setting,” most people think, “This is it! This is the final abode of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas!”

Then we drift off into a drunken stupor.

There’s more work to do but it’s very subtle work. Great Determination becomes more in the background and in the foreground comes the very subtle, minute work of mindfulness and introspection as the minds quiets down through disciplining and pacifying the mind. Our tendencies to sink too low or rise up too high. A little bit of deprecation, a little bit of grandiosity; a little bit of laxity, a little bit of excitement.

Coming closer and closer to the moment. Seeing how it is that when the mind is even slightly disturbed, when the pool of the water of our mind is even slightly disturbed, there are a lot of particles there and we can’t really see through to the bottom.

If at the fourth stage you remain quietly determined, then intoxication won’t knock you off your seat, at least for long periods of drunkenness. When knocked off the seat, then back up! Seven times knocked off, eight times up. That’s Sesshin except it’s more like ten thousand times knocked off, ten thousand and one times up.

Hopefully ten thousand and one, please don’t stop at nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine times up.

The process continues through thorough “Pacifying” and “One-Pointedness” and finally in the ninth state, sitting in “Equipoise,” subject and object dropped off.

But sitting in equipoise is still not liberation, it’s still not clear seeing. It’s simply sitting in equipoise.

We begin the Heart Sutra, for instance, with Avalokiteshvara the bodhisattva of compassion coursing “…in the deep course of wisdom beyond wisdom.”

The practitioner sitting in one-pointed equipoise is none other than the hands and eyes of great compassion. The path of unsurpassed, complete, perfect awakening is really just the skillful means of great compassion functioning. Compassion and Avalokiteshvara are not some idols we worship. They are brought to life, specifically and very practically through our own blood, sweat, and tears. Tears of joy and sadness.

At this point in the koan, just like in a dream, the monk goes to the monastery and trains. Then suddenly we no longer have the monk being the investigator but Chao-chou appears.

Chao-chou was a Zen master in ancient China who is a representative of this kind of active wisdom, the subtle balance of stability and clarity. His teaching is very gentle and stable, what’s called “lip Zen” because he didn’t use rough talk or shouts or big sticks or anything. He just simply guided people with very gentle words.

Chao-chou had the opportunity of becoming a practitioner at an early age. He
met his teacher when he was eighteen. Early on after he met his teacher he went to his teacher and said “What is the Way? I hear you talking about the Way being perfect and all pervading, but hey, what is it?!”

His teacher said, “Ordinary Mind is the Way.”

And Chao-chou said “Well, should I turn toward it?”

His teacher said “Turning towards is turning away.”

This is just like the old woman in the koan when the monk goes straight ahead, she says “A fine monk, but she goes off that way too.”

You can’t do other than go straight, and at the same time, “going straight” is going wrong, it’s going off when there’s even a subtle touch, a subtle dregs of “going straight,” it’s missing it.

Chao-chou’s teacher says “Turning towards is turning away.”

Very compassionate talk here. Almost blather, they go on so much. Chao-chou doesn’t just take that on face value. He probes more closely, more deeply. Which is a wonderful practice, a demonstration of practice, testing the teaching.

Chao-chou says “When I make no effort that doesn’t seem right.”

His teacher says “Indeed, young buckaroo, it is like vast space, like an empty hall. Who would insist on affirming or denying it?”

What talk, what word could fit? And with that Chao-chou had some insight. And then he continued for forty years to train under his teacher. When his teacher died he did a three-year memorial sesshin at his gravesite. Then went on pilgrimage for twenty years around China and finally settled down to teach. He settled down to teach in a dilapidated old monastery. So he was eighty years old and he lived for another forty years teaching.

The temple was dilapidated but he didn’t fix it. When it snowed he just let the snow come in. When his old chair broke after forty years of this old man sitting on this chair, he wouldn’t let the practitioners fix it. He would just take sticks of wood that he saw on the path and and strap up the chair with that.

Just like this in sesshin we don’t spend a lot of time on our appearance. It’s not the point to please others by looking good or even smelling good. So generally we don’t take showers or shave during sesshin. It’s one way to carry this ancient energy of really focusing on what’s important. Minimal time for buff and fuss.

And in Soto Zen, we have all these dignified ways that we set up the dharma container. Really all that dignified stuff is to hold and support this very UN-dignified work that is splattered with mud and dripping wet. There’s no dignity to it at all! Just dragging yourself up again and again. Getting knocked down and getting up. Getting knocked down and getting up.

Finally having some peace, not being satisfied with some peace. Not being tricked by some transient peace. Like falling in love and then thinking “Oh, that’s all I needed was falling in love!” And then the lover dies or doesn’t brush her teeth in the way that you want or whatever it is and suddenly that great love, that great thing that made you happy according to conditions is gone. It’s the same with these initial stages of peace – they must be practiced thoroughly!

Especially when we experience those first moments of quieting down, isn’t it like that? We become just like a ghost, clinging to that sweet experience. Gets a bit haunted after awhile.

It’s necessary to climb this mountain, to do the work that’s necessary. To be willing to do the work that’s necessary. And not just willing, but given skillful information, to employ that information and continue walking this path.

Let’s continue walking this path through and through, digesting our whole life.

A Zen ancestor said: “Now you have a robe and a seat. According to your insight, you get but this one mystery. After that, see on your own!”