In one sense this may be naturalism, but no one was ever natural who tried to be natural nor even anyone who tried not to try. As soon as we set up a technique of trying, we miss Rinzai’s meaning, for Zen is no sort of cult or “ism,” and the moment we make it into one we fall straight into the vicious circle. But Rinzai’s meaning is “clear as the vastness of the sky,” though to see it we have to see it directly, as if it were a joke. Again and again he admonishes his disciples to see themselves as they are at this moment, for “what you are making use of at this moment, is just what makes a Buddha.”
More than the old Mahayana, more even than Taoism, Zen concentrates on the importance of seeing into one’s own nature now at this moment—not in five minutes when you have had time to “accept” yourself, nor ten years ahead when you have had time to retire to the mountains and meditate. The Zen masters resort to every possible means to direct your attention to yourself, your experience, your state of consciousness as it is now, for, as we have said before, there is no greater freedom than freedom to be what you are now. In our pride we are loath to accept freedom from an experience so apparently humble and prosaic. But there is another factor in the Zen realization. For as soon as you allow yourself that freedom, you realize that, after all, it is not a question of allowing; you see that there was never a time when you did not have that freedom. When understood, the full acceptance of what you are now, of your present state of mind, whatever its nature, shows you that you have been making that full acceptance all along, though you never knew it; it shows you that whatever your experience may have been in the past and whatever it will be in the future, nothing in yourself or in the whole universe has deprived or can ever deprive you of that freedom. Before this realization you seem to be confronted by a barrier standing across the path and dividing the road of freedom from the road of bondage; but as you pass through that barrier it vanishes, for it never existed and the whole road was free.
There is a Zen book called the No-Gate-Barrier (Mumon-kwan) which Nyogen Senzaki translates as “The Gateless Gate.”20 Its author introduces it with this verse:
No gate stands on the public road.
Those who pass this barrier
Walk freely throughout the universe.
A master was once asked by his disciple, “Pray show me the way to deliverance.” The master replied, “Who has ever put you in bondage?” “Nobody.” “If so,” concluded the master, “why should you ask for deliverance?” Another, when asked the same question, answered simply, “Where do you stand now?” Yet another, who was asked a question to the same effect, replied, “There are no byroads, no crossroads here; the hills all the year round are fresh and green; east or west, in whichever direction, you may have a fine walk.” This is indeed straight talking, so clear that it is hard to see, but we shall always think we are blind while we go round looking for sight with open eyes. On one occasion the great master Ummon said:
“In Zen there is absolute freedom; sometimes it negates and at other times it affirms; it does either way at pleasure.” A monk asked, “How does it negate?” “With the passing of winter there cometh spring.” “What happens when spring cometh?” “Carrying a staff across his shoulders, let him ramble about in the fields, east or west, north or south, and beat the old stumps to his heart’s content.”
Joshu said, “The Great Way is right before your eye, but difficult to see.” A monk asked, “What form does it take so that we can see it before us?” “To the south of the river or to the north of it, just as you please.”
The literature of Zen is full of such instances, but the Catholic sinologue Wieger could see in it no more than “a collection of folios filled with incoherent, crazy answers.…These are not, as one might have supposed, allusions to esoteric matters which one would have to know in order to understand. They are mere exclamations escaping from the mouths of morons, momentarily awakened from their coma.”21 Needless to say, the accomplished master of Zen is hardly ever found in anything remotely resembling a coma except when he sleeps at night, and although they occasionally refer to themselves as morons Zen masters have been responsible for some of the most superb works of art that China and Japan have produced. It is difficult to see how Wieger could have missed the feeling of freedom in so many of these sayings; for in the man who carries a staff across his shoulders and rambles in the fields, east or west, north or south, beating the old stumps to his heart’s content, do we not find the same state of soul as in the wind that “bloweth where it listeth” and which is likened to everyone that is born of the Spirit?
His thatched cottage gate is closed, and even the wisest know him not. No glimpses of his inner life are to be caught; for he goes on his own way without following the steps of the ancient sages.…He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas.
—Kakuan22
Perhaps one of the best ways to catch a glimpse of the Zen experience of freedom is to read its poetry. Thus Hokoji says:
How wondrous and how miraculous, this—
I draw water and I carry fuel.
Then we have this from Mumon:
Hundreds of spring flowers; the autumnal moon;
A refreshing summer breeze; winter snow:
Free thy mind of idle thoughts,
And for thee how enjoyable is every season!
The free man walks straight ahead; he has no hesitations and never looks behind, for he knows that there is nothing in the future and nothing in the past that can shake his freedom. Freedom does not belong to him; it is no more his property than the wind, and as he does not possess it he is not possessed by it. And because he never looks behind his actions are said to leave no trace, like the passage of a bird through the air.
Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs
But stir no dust;
Moonlight reaches the depths
But leaves no trace in the pool.
Here is the verse of one who has suddenly seen the truth and goes forward into life a free man:
For this one rare event
Gladly would I give ten thousand coins of gold!
With a hat on my head and a bundle at my side,
On my staff I carry the breeze and the full moon!
There was one who became enlightened at the sudden playing of a flute, whereat he wrote these lines:
In the days when I had no insight
My heart was sad at the playing of the flute;
But now I have no idle dream—
I let the flute-man play on as he wills.
Do not mistake these poems for the sentimental feelings of untrammeled nature lovers, living far from cities and modern drudgery. The surface of sentiment covers thunder and lightning. Here is the reaction of a Zen poet in the face of sudden death:
Neither earth nor heaven give me refuge;
Body and soul melt to nothingness.