Henry Peters
1846
“Why are perfectly accomplished saints and bodhisattvas still attached to the vermillion thread?”
Harada Yasutani Zen tradition, Miscellaneous koans
Songyuan Chongyue, who lived through much of the twelfth century and almost a decade into the thirteenth, liked to rub our noses in things. He posits this question about the vermillion thread, the red thread, and it has been gathered as an important early koan in my Zen school. It’s wrapped up with a couple of other questions, one of which is also collected in the Wumenguan collection, the Gateless Gate, “Why is it that a person of great strength cannot lift her leg?” Perhaps we can see how it is that he would be a direct lineage ancestor to Hakuin Ekaku.
Now the red thread, or the vermillion thread, is the current of blood, the tie of generations. It is about the messiness of life, and about life itself. Most commentaries on it dwell more on the fact it is one of only two cases in the vast koan literature to dwell in any degree, even implicitly with sexuality. And, that’s a worthy point.
It points us to our conditioned existences, the fact we are composed of multiplicity of events coming together in a great shuffle of the deck into a moment. And in the next moment there’s a new shuffling of the deck and something new occurs. It’s all unstable. And, even more important, that fragile moment is itself insubstantial. Not so much a noun as a verb. We can call it a moment.
And within that moment there is little more than uncertainty. Uncertainty is the nature of that “what is” we’re being called to notice. Humility rises within this realization as naturally as an exhalation follows and inhalation.
And. There’s another Zen trope. See the tail and know the snake. That is the whole is known, and can only be known in the particular, in any given particular, dark glass, conditioned reality, slicing and dicing mind, passing moment.
So, that moment we find as we attend is it. Yes, it is mediated and incomplete. But, there is nothing that is not mediated. Nothing is complete. That is the it we find. And in addition to the things we are, our words, and our ideas fall into the same place. None are true. But, also, none are false.
We are called by our way into noticing, then noticing, then noticing.
We present ourselves and the universe presents. It turns out the slicing and dicing mind is itself it. Like every other blessed moment. That little corner of it which is like through a glass darkly, that little corner of it which is like an unexpected gift from an unknown source.
And that’s a really important point here. Nothing is earned. We don’t analyze our way to it. It comes more like a gift. It comes to us. Like a child’s kiss. Passed on down in our mammillian blood. A blessing from our ancestors.
Like grace. Someone in fact called it amazing grace. Works for me.
To encounter this moment should birth humility.
And, along with that, gratitude.
Endless bows for this passing strange, sad, and beautiful life.
The mysterious presentation of God.
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