You Have To Do It On Your Own: The Keyword Instruction of Dàhuì

Some years ago, a Zen teacher was leading a sesshin for Catholic monastics. In the thick of third day, within the challenges of waking up early, sitting after sitting, rounds of the awakening stick, and vigorous face-to-face meetings, one of the brothers said, “Roshi, in our tradition, we rest in the silence of prayer, and let God work in us. Why is Zen so difficult?”

The Roshi responded, “In our tradition, we believe that God has already done the work.”

This is the spirit of all the ancient teachers in the Zen tradition: you have to do it on your own.

In the recent translation of The Letters of Chan Master Dàhuì Pujue, translators Jeffrey L. Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe offer nine themes, motifs that emerge in the letters about how to do keyword practice (話頭 huàtóu, Japanese, watō).

I recently began sharing these with Vine of Obstacles Zen students, particularly for students working on their first, break-through keyword. (This, by the way, is the second in the series on the teaching of Dàhuì; see The Most Revered and Most Reviled Zen Master Ever for the first post).

In this post, I’ll share the first theme that Broughton and Watanabe identify in Dàhuì’s Letters, offer their examples of the theme in excerpts from Dàhuì‘s Letters, and add a couple comments. Specifically, I’ll address what it is that must be done on your own, and then look at what on your own means.

Theme 1: You Have To Do It On Your Own

Broughton and Watanabe summarize: “The practitioner cannot get awakening from anybody else. It must be accomplished on one’s own. Letters of Dàhuì speaks often of self-confidence, awakening on one’s own, and so forth.”

Letter #31.2: “The buddhas and [ancestors] have not a single teaching to give to people. All that is necessary is for the person on duty to have confidence on their own, give assent on their own, see on their own, awaken on their own.”

Letter #14.5: “The hilt of this sword lies only in the hand of the person on duty. You can’t have someone else do it for you. You must do it yourself. If you stake your life on it, you’ll be ready to set about doing it. If you’re not yet capable of staking your life on it, just keep pressing hard at the point where the uncertainty [aka doubt] is not yet smashed. Suddenly you’ll be ready to stake your life on one throw—done!” (1)

Do what?

The it that Dàhuì refers to here is to break birth-death mind. It isn’t primarily about stillness, or to sit in a specific pose. (2) The birth-death mind is the mind of dualism, the mind of gain and loss, I and thou. To break the birth-death mind is to see true nature (kenshō), to realize that there is truly nothing to get.

Doing it on your own will probably require an existential crisis. You might not feel good about your separate self while in the thick of the work. Keyword practice might illuminate and temporarily exacerbate your desperation, competition, and self-judgement. And there is no guarantee. So some Zen teachers these days discourage students from aiming at breaking the birth-death mind.

Dàhuì might say that this is like “jumping into the water to preempt the boat’s capsizing!” (3)

Importantly, it is not getting some special experience. Breaking the birth-death mind breaks the mind of having something to attain. “The person on duty right now,” wrote Dàhuì, “is naked, neat and tidy—there is nothing for them to grasp at.” (4)

God has already done the work.

On your own?

The keyboard is under your fingertips. The hilt of the sword of wisdom is in your hands.

Perhaps it seems obvious – you have to do it on your own – but you might investigate that sense that it is obvious. Is it really? This is especially important for those who’ve long struggled with a keyword without breaking the birth-death mind. Investigating the possibility that you are deferring responsibility in some clever way just might be crucial to your process.

One way to defer responsibility, to hide behind other-power, is to believe that someone (Buddha, God, the teacher) will magically do it for you. “If I could only be closer to the teacher! Then I’d break the birth-death mind! But now, I just do not have enough energy.”

Another way to defer responsibility for breaking the birth-death mind, also common these days, is to believe that the method will save you. As a student recently put it, “If I just return to the keyword again and again, isn’t that enough?” With this attitude, the practitioner may well do the method in a rote kind of way, full of faith in other-power, rather than taking full responsibility and applying energy with due diligence.

Dàhuì challenges these deferrals of responsibility. Now is the time. Here is the place.

A related issue is about where this practice takes place. Dàhuì’s medium for communication is letters, of course, not in-person work. In our time, I bet he’d be all over online platforms. In his many letters to householders he encourages diligent practice, and although the householders sometime mention wanting to practice directly with Dàhuì, he seldom suggests that this is necessary. Instead, he focuses on guiding people right where they are. Right in the lives that people have, without over emphasizing his role, or the monastery, and thereby encourages “you have to do it on your own.”

On your own and together

Working with your teacher, the ancestral teachers, the community near and far, all the many irksome beings, etc, doing it on your own does not negate them. After all, it is in supportive letters to students that Dàhuì tells them to do it on their own. Standing on your two feet also means realizing true connection.

Next up

Theme 2: You must generate a singular sensation of uncertainty.

(1) The Letters of Chan Master Dàhuì Pujue, “Introduction: Recurring Motifs in Huatou Practice,” translators Jeffrey L. Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe.

(2) “Breaking birth-death mind” (生死心破) is rendered by Broughton and Watanabe as “smashing the mind of samsara.”

(3) Op. cit., “2.4: Intellectual brilliance is an obstruction to one’s attaining realization.”

(4) Op. cit., “2.6: Also quotes an ancient worthy’s words to cut off intellectual understanding and kudzu-verbiage.”

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, an internet-based Zen community. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, is now available (Shambhala). He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi.