{"id":2104,"date":"2013-11-10T15:20:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T21:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=2104"},"modified":"2013-11-11T18:48:40","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T00:48:40","slug":"do-words-have-buddha-nature-fighting-over-and-gnawing-at-rotting-bones-crunch-snap-howl-bark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2013\/11\/do-words-have-buddha-nature-fighting-over-and-gnawing-at-rotting-bones-crunch-snap-howl-bark.html","title":{"rendered":"Do Words Have Buddha Nature? Fighting Over and Gnawing at Rotting Bones – Crunch! Snap! Howl! Bark!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>What is the role of words in Zen practice?<\/p>\n

It has become a cliche in American Zen that \u201cwords can\u2019t reach it.\u201d For example, when asked, \u201cWhat is mu?\u201d beginning mu students will often utter such a defense.<\/p>\n

So I sometimes continue, \u201cDo words have buddha nature? Or is buddha nature somewhere above and beyond stinky, lowly words? Are words even further from the buddha nature than the mu dog?\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter Dr. Steven Heine\u2019s new book, Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Koan in Zen Buddhism<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

My short-cut review is that he\u2019s done it again \u2013 produced a fine piece of scholarship on a really important topic for Zen practice, provided many juicy historical tidbits and context, a fine sampling of original sources (this time including some material from the Korean tradition \u2013 often overlooked in Zen studies, it seems to me) some translated here for the first time, and advanced a provocative revisionist theory of the history of Zen while also rolling some inspired Dogen study into the mix.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re working on the mu koan and concerned that you might get the answer by reading this book, no worries. In terms of koan work, Heine, like Buddhist<\/a> scholars generally, ain\u2019t nothing but a hound dog barking up the wrong tree. The whole bunch is good at providing context for koan work but have no buddha nature (my first draft title was \u201cDo Buddhist Scholars Have Buddha Nature?\u201d) and are lacking when it comes to pointing to the koan point. That isn\u2019t, after all, their specialty. The koan bone can only be seen through what Dogen calls \u201cidentity action\u201d \u2013 becoming the koan (\u201cbe the bone\u201d) itself through one-pointed introspection.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve gnawed that rotting bone before (see \u201cSatisfying Hunger with Koan: A Critical Review of Foulk\u2019s Scholarly Perspective\u201d<\/a>), so I\u2019ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n

How does Heine\u2019s work here support dharma<\/a> inquiry?<\/p>\n

The main point of the book seems to be that for the last 1,000 years, there have been two main styles of Zen practice and teaching \u2013 wato (key phrase) and katto (entangling vines).<\/p>\n

The wato\u00a0approach (sometimes translated as \u201chead word\u201d), \u201c\u2026captures in a single word [mu] the heart of Zen functioning as an ineffable transmission that eliminates cogitation and rhetoric at the root by not relying on any particular manner of deliberation or phrasing.\u201d This is also called a bilateral approach because it presents itself as distinct from katto.<\/p>\n

The katto (entangling vines) approach is to fully enter the play of words as the expression of the ineffable. In this approach there\u2019s also multiple layers of rich meaning, thick interpretation, and creativity. That\u2019s Dogen\u2019s approach and a bunch of other important teachers like Daito, Hongzhi, and Yuanwu. This is called a multilateral approach because it throws everything into the mix. It\u2019s also referred to as panoramic.<\/p>\n

For example, \u201cHow is your hand like a Buddha\u2019s hand?\u201d In the wato method, the focus is just on this question. Dogen, in his katto-ish way, brings up this koan and then says he also asks, \u201cHow is your hand like your hand?\u201d And \u201cHow is Buddha\u2019s hand like Buddha\u2019s hand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Wato was invented by Dahui (1089\u20131163), Yuanwu\u2019s successor. It seems that Zen had become entangled in beautiful, powerful, panoramic word play \u2013 katto \u2013 and Dahui, even though his own teacher, Yuanwu, was fantastic at it (or perhaps because<\/em> his teacher was fantastic at it), reacted against the entangling vine way, even to the point of burning the wood blocks for the Blue Cliff Record<\/em> \u2013 his master\u2019s master work.<\/p>\n

My explanation for Dahui\u2019s flip is that he was, in my professional opinion, an asshole. Really. Certifiable. That\u2019s my theory, anyway. And an enlightened asshole at that who wantonly spoke his mind. So he was exiled from the big posh monasteries for being an asshole and he had to find a way to work with lay people, mostly really well educated lay people who were already attached to fine verbal expression (anything here sound familiar?).<\/p>\n

Because excessive verbal erudition didn\u2019t seem to help people break through, Dahui invented the wato method. He found that by focusing on just the key word, mostly mu, many more people realized what is to be realized than through study of multiple levels of commentary and counter commentary.<\/p>\n

Dahui\u2019s key-word innovation swept through the Zen world and was carried to Korea and Japan so that mu realization is the essence of practice 1,000 years later. Well, except for that ragged, erudite bunch who call themselves Soto Zen practitioners of the last couple hundred years or so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shift took place so quickly,\u201d says Heine, \u201cand was then affirmed so radically that historiographical accounts of the period easily get blurred or distorted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heine puts a lot of emphasis to make his point on what he calls the Emphatic Mu (wato) presentation of the Gateless Barrier<\/em>, where Zhaozhou is asked if a dog has buddha nature and he says, \u201cNo\u201d (or \u201cwu\u201d in Chinese; \u201cmu\u201d in Japanese; and \u201cbu\u201d in Korean). This is contrasted with the so-called Dual Version (katto) of the Book of Serenity\u00a0<\/em>which has Zhaozhou saying both no and yes or yes and no, depending on the version. By the way, \u201cFighting Over and Gnawing at Rotting Bones \u2013 Crunch! Snap! Howl! Bark!\u201d is Heine\u2019s translation of Wanson\u2019s comment to the poem by Hongzhi on Zhaozhou\u2019s dual dog in the Book of Serenity<\/em> (see how it can get kinda exhausting?).<\/p>\n

Heine also presents a convincing case that if anybody ever had the mu dialogue about the buddha nature, it wasn\u2019t Zhaozhou. The whole mess in either version wasn\u2019t attributed to him for a couple hundred years, doesn\u2019t appear in the earliest records of Zhaozhou, etc. This is an interesting historical\u00a0 point that to credential the mu koan, somebody put it in Zhaozhou\u2019s mouth, but for koan work it totally doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

The monk could have been asking Daffy Duck and Daffy could have said \u201cNo\u201d or \u201cYes\u201d or \u201cHuh?\u201d Although it might not have sparked the mu explosion in quite the same way because people would be giggling too much to focus.<\/p>\n

Now like most \u201cthere\u2019s two types of people\u201d theories, Heine goes too far with wato and katto. Maybe it was once a telling difference but as time has past, each approach has eaten the other. That seems to happen a lot.<\/p>\n

In the koan curriculum, for example, the student starts with mu as a key word. It is important to shut up for once. Then in subsequent koans \u2013 hundreds of them \u2013 the mu realization is applied in multiple settings, across time and space, including dealing with the Dual Version. There are also checking questions for almost all the koans that tease out a multitude of perspectives and presentations. Now that\u2019s pretty darn much like multilateral entanglement.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Dogen, a katto type, also uses the key word approach. He just uses lots of them. In the example above, for double example, Dogen isn\u2019t done playing when he hears how your hand is like a Buddha\u2019s hand. He wants to know how your hand is like your hand, etc.<\/p>\n

What about me? In the work I do with people, I pull in that ol\u2019 dog Dogen both in the Gateless Barrier<\/em> as a source for additional checking questions and also by teasing out the koans in Genjokoan<\/em> and other Shobogenzo<\/em> fascicles and working with them in a wato-katto way.<\/p>\n

Like Heine says, \u201c\u2026the wato and katto standpoints in the end tend to agree on the need to maintain a lofty silence or \u2013 more crudely put \u2013 to shut their yaps for a change. Otherwise, that ol\u2019 dog of a special transmission outside the scriptures just won\u2019t hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the role of words in Zen practice? It has become a cliche in American Zen that \u201cwords can\u2019t reach it.\u201d For example, when asked, \u201cWhat is mu?\u201d beginning mu students will often utter such a defense. So I sometimes continue, \u201cDo words have buddha nature? Or is buddha nature somewhere above and beyond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,79],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-like-cats-and-dogs-contesting-the-mu-koan-in-zen-buddhism","tag-steven-heine"],"yoast_head":"\nDo Words Have Buddha Nature? Fighting Over and Gnawing at Rotting Bones - Crunch! Snap! Howl! Bark!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the role of words in Zen practice? 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