Book of Serenity, Case 90
The Preface
To say, “I alone am sober,” is indeed to be stumbling drunk. Kyozan speaks of a dream as if he were awake. Bansho talks thus, and all of you listen thus. Tell me: Is this waking or is it dreaming?
The Case
Kyozan had a dream in which he went to Maitreya’s place and sat in the second seat. The Venerable One said, “Today it is time for the one in the second seat to speak.” At that Kyozan stood up, struck the sounding post, and said, “The Dharma of the Mahayana is beyond all words. I respectfully declare it.”
The Verse
In a dream, wearing robes, and meeting the elders,
A forest of saints stretches away to his right.
To be appointed and not give way, strike the sounding post.
Speak the Dharma without fear – a roaring lion,
a heart peaceful as the ocean,
a liver capacious as a pint or a bushel.
From a mermaid’s eye, tears flow,
A clam's guts make a pearl.
Sleep-talking, who knows my activity leaks away?
Those with splendid eyebrows should laugh at family skeletons so present.
Separate from the propositions, transcending a hundred negations,
Master Baso and his disciples stopped using medicine for illness.
We speak of waking to a dream within a dream, and here we have a story that seemingly unfolds within a dream and yet within the dream the dharma is revealed. What is the relationship of dreams to reality? Is reality itself a dream? The preface says “To say I alone am sober” is to be stumbling drunk. There, sobriety and drunkenness are juxtaposed like dreaming and awakening. To say that I alone am sober, is to say something like, I’m awake. I see reality just as it is. Is that enlightenment? Or is that delusion?
To see reality as it is, is to see that the insubstantial nature of reality is impermanence, is empty, is interdependence. To see it as it is is to see it as dreamlike. But here Kyozan in a dream, is called upon to speak in front of Maitreya and all the assembled arhats and bodhisattvas. I suppose a lot of people have had anxiety dreams, versions of this, when they dream they’re suddenly called upon to speak in public or take a test that they haven’t prepared for. What does he do? First he hits the sounding board. We could say it’s something like a han and just gives it a big whack. And then he says the dharma of the Mahayana is beyond all words.
You could say that hitting the sounding board announces that someone is about to speak, but here, we could say it’s the hitting of the sounding board that is his expression of the dharma. And then he follows with the sentence, “I respectfully declare it,” which is like This is the closed-caption translation for those who are hearing impaired. The dharma is beyond words. I’ve demonstrated it by hitting the board. But for those of you who don’t get it, I will spell it out. The dharma is beyond all words. So I say to you, and this is a nice little paradox of saying in words, that this is beyond words.
The hitting of the board, the han, is how he announces his presence, and I think that in a way, this is a kind of model or reminder for everybody who is called upon to give a student talk in the zendo. I always try to tell people, prepare what you want to say a little bit in advance, but when the time comes, speak spontaneously. Very, very few people seem to be able to do it, and they all end up writing something out, and reading it, and having something prepared to say. And what they say is often quite fine, a good talk, but it’s like the second half here, where Kyozan says, the dharma of the mahayana is beyond all words. What he’s saying is true, but he's not really illustrating it by his actions. Hitting the board – that’s being present.
In the old days, when we lined up for dokusan, there would often be a little gong or bell at the front of the dokusan line, and when the teacher rang the bell inside the dokusan room, you took up the mallet and hit the bell in the dokusan line to announce you’re coming in, and the traditional idea was that the teacher could tell just from how you hit the bell if you would pass your koan or not. That was the real expression of what you were doing, and what you did when you came in was secondary. That’s like Kyozan hitting the sounding board to announce that he’s about to speak.
In the verse, it says, To be appointed and not give way, strike the sounding post. This is to step up to the moment when you’re called upon to speak, to express the dharma. That’s the time to strike, to act, or to simply stand in confidence in your own place, in your own position. And they compare someone who does that to the roaring lion with a heart as peaceful as the ocean. A capacious liver, I guess, is a sign of bravery. And when you do that, it says, the mermaids will leap and the clams will produce pearls and all this stuff, all this imagery of the effect of the lion’s roar.
It ends with a reference to another koan, where it says, Master Baso and his disciples stopped using medicine for illness. This refers to another case that we’ve discussed many times. The monk comes to Baso and asks, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the west?" Basho says, “I’m tired today, I can’t explain it to you. Go ask Chizo.” And then he goes to Chizo and asks him the same question, and Chizo says “I’m sorry, I’ve got a headache. I can’t tell you. But there’s another monk who might know, brother Kai. What don’t you go ask him?” And he goes and asks Kai, and he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand it at all.”
So the monk gets three responses to his question, none of which he recognizes as an answer. And I think that is the other side of this koan, where in one sense, words cannot explain the dharma adequately. They cannot encompass it. It will not be captured in words. And yet, words act as an utterance, as a speech, they act as something that is happening in the moment, no different from hitting the sounding board.
So when Baso says, I’m tired, I can’t explain it to you, he’s not explaining. He’s showing. What’s being shown? How is that the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the west? Well, it’s a showing of this moment. Just this moment. Regardless of its content. He is the dharma. It is this moment of impermanence and interdependence and perfection. It’s on display. Right here, right now, in whatever I’m talking about. Not because the contents of the words explain it and make sense of it, but even words are themselves an expression of the great reality.
In the Sandokai we have that line, Reading words, you should grasp the great reality. See, it’s as if we hear it at the beginning of this koan, it looks like reading words and the great reality are diametrically opposed. Words can’t express the great reality. But actually they do. They express it. They don’t explain it. And that’s the tension in that line of the Sandoaki, the Identity of Relative and Absolute. We can typically think of the great reality as the absolute that’s beyond words and concepts and it can only be expressed by hitting the sounding board. But speaking words, that too is taking action, is an expression of the great reality. It’s not something secondary. Relative and absolute are one.
If we seek to understand the dharma, to conceptualize or explain it with words, we can never get it right. But if we manifest the dharma, if we express the dharma in each moment of who and what we are, then we can’t miss.