Book of Serenity
Case 83 Daowu’s Nursing
Preface
The whole body is ill. Vimalakirti is hard to cure. This grass is the medicine and Manjusri uses it well. Isn't it wonderful to encounter a transcendent man facing the ultimate and attaining this peaceful ease?
Case
Guishan asked Daowu, “Where have you been?”
Daowu said, “I’ve been nursing.”
Guishan said, “How many people were sick?”
Daowu replied, “Some are sick, some are not.”
Guishan pursued: “Is it you who is not sick?”
Daowu responded, “Sickness and non-sickness have nothing at all to do with it. Speak quickly!
Speak quickly!
Guishan remarked, “Even being able to say it, this is it entirely.”
Verse
Marvelous medicines touched his lips
but the divine doctor never had to take his pulse.
Seeming to exist, he’s not nothing.
Being utterly empty, he’s not something.
Only extinguished, he’s born.
And destroyed, he lives eternally.
He goes utterly before the ancient Buddhas
and walks alone among the empty kalpas.
Being quiet, having covers, there are supports.
Being active, the crow flies, the rabbit runs.
The case sets up an apparent dichotomy between sickness and health, suffering and the end of suffering. And yet, it points to something beyond our usual understanding of these words. The preface refers to the story of Vimalakirti. When he fell ill, none of the Buddhas or Bodhisattvas were able to cure him, and he said, I will be sick as long as all beings are sick. In other words, I will suffer as long as all beings suffer. I’m not separate from all of them.
The other part of the preface that refers to this grass is the medicine and Manjushri uses it well, refers to a story in which a disciple came to Manjushri for instruction. Manjushri sent him out all over the country in search of medicinal herbs, to find just the right herb that would cure his suffering. And he was told, bring back every kind of medicinal herb you can find. Let’s make a complete collection of all of them. Eventually the disciple came back and said, There’s not a single thing that’s not a medicinal herb. Mansushri approved this and he said, Pluck a blade of ordinary grass. This is the most powerful medicinal herb of all: Something ordinary and immediately at hand, not something exotic that you need to go search for.
Now in the Case, Guishan asked Daowu, Where have you been? He says, I’ve been out nursing. Another translation has him saying, I’ve been out nursing the sick, but in a way leaving that off helps make a point. He’s out doing something that he’s calling nursing. What is that? Guishan presses him and says, I guess there are a lot of sick people out there that need your help. This is, you can say, like our great vows, Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. We might say, in the context of this koan: Sentient beings are all sick. I vow to heal them all. Would that mean something different? What does saving them entail? What are we saving them from? What does healing entail? What are we healing the sick from?
So when Guishan says, How many people were sick, Daowu says, Some are sick, some are not. In a way, some people consider themselves sick, some don’t. Some people realize that they’re deluded and do not know how to escape their suffering. Other people are deluded and don’t realize that their suffering has anything to do with their delusion. Everyone, whatever their condition, is no less intrinsically manifesting their Buddha nature at all times. At some level, nobody’s sick. Everybody is just being what they are: Impermanent, interdependent.
Some recognize it, some do not. Some resist it, some do not. Guishan challenges Daowu about the whole idea of sickness. Were you out there nursing people? I guess that means you yourself aren’t sick. Is that right? Daowu’s not going to fall into that trap. He says, Sickness and non-sickness have nothing to do with it, and he turns it back on Guishan. You speak! Speak quickly! What is it? What’s the alternative to this dichotomy to sickness and non-sickness? See, it’s not that we’re sick and we’re trying to get healthy. It’s also we’re trying to get out of this either/or, good or bad, this is not the way it’s supposed to be/ this is the way it’s supposed to be. He’s sick, I’m healthy. He’s deluded, I’m enlightened. We’re not just trying to change sides. We’re trying to step out of the either/or. And Guishan finally replies, Even being able to say it, he misses it entirely. To try to categorize it in any way is already to create a new pitfall.
The verse says, Marvelous medicines never touched his lips, and a fine doctor never had to take his pulse. In a way, it says that being healthy isn’t the state of having your illnesses cured, but it’s not being at all self-conscious about your condition, not taking all the right medicines and supplements or vitamins, not constantly checking on your health and asking, How am I doing? It’s unselfconsciously simply functioning, going about your life without a thought of How am I doing?
When we get together like this for a day of sesshin, engage in this ritual, this discipline, recite these old verses in Japanese and study the old stories collected in China a thousand years ago, it can look like we’re in the business of gathering exotic medicinal herbs. Something is ailing us and we’re trying to hold this really exotic practice to help ourselves, to heal ourselves, to say these magical words in Japanese. Maybe that’s the thing that’s going to finally make me better, heal me. And we can get very wrapped up in our collection of exotic herbs. We can treat these koan collections, the hundred cases in the Book of Serenity, another hundred in the Blue Cliff Record, gather all of them, figure out all their answers. That would be quite the accomplishment! Quite the collection of exotic medicinal herbs. Right? That should do it!
But what’s the blade of grass? What’s that simple, immediate, ordinary directness that is our everyday life? That in some sense is the ultimate medicinal herb. This moment, life as it is, is the only medicine. But we never quite trust the brand or the dosage or think we’re taking it right. We don't think it’s working. We’ll run out and try all other sorts of things. Really, we don’t have to do any of this. We could just live our lives, but there’s a simplicity and obviousness about that that eludes us. And there’s a way in which we have to, like Daowu, somehow make this exotic practice part of our ordinary lives, which has to do with being able to engage in it in a way that exposes and then wears down all our curative fantasies and gaining ideas, that we have to gather all these exotic herbs to test them against a blade of grass, to test them against the ordinary.
What we do in sesshin is a very exotic and ritualized discipline that we engage in to simply be present and to simply be ourselves. It’s a sort of strange thing that we have to go to all that trouble and yet we seem to have to do that. If we keep doing it for long enough, decades even, not years, all the things that we’re doing start to become second nature. Sitting is just something we’re doing. It’s part of who we are. It becomes part of our natural functioning, the ordinary fabric of our daily lives, which is just stopping, being still, paying attention, but we do it in this particular way that honors the moment.
It is really us learning to be ourselves. The end of the verse says, Being active, the crow flies, the rabbit runs. They’re just expressing their nature. For Daowu, nursing is expressing his nature, going out and interacting with people in a way that is both perfectly ordinary, and on another level it’s saving all beings. What is he doing?
If someone were to ask me, What do you do when you’re out nursing? When you’re out helping and curing? I might say, With some I discuss Wittgenstein, with others I watch the Mets.