Shaolin Chan (Zen)

Shi De Ru

Chan is the way of conveying the principle of the origin of nothingness. Nothingness is the originator of something. Everything comes from nothing that contains everything. Chan cannot be said. That which can be named or said is not real Chan.  Chan does not think but act; Chan does not symbolize, but produce realities.  Chan does not signify or lead one thing or another.  Chan is like water that becomes nothing when it evaporates.  Nothingness is the very origin of Chan. 

For many years, people have asked me: “Are you a Shaolin priest or a monk?”  My answer is, “No.”  I do not plan to be one.  I am just an ordinary Shaolin disciple who happened, since childhood, to have been traveling in Chan, the Dao of Shaolin, experiencing the reality of life, and seeking the wisdom of Chan and the truth of the universe of which we are part.  I am living in Chan (Zen).

Many people are curious about Chan.  Some came to me wishing to learn about Chan, the core principle and philosophy of the Shaolin Temple.  They often asked many questions: “What is Chan? What good can Chan do for me?  Why should I learn Chan?  What does Chan have to do with Kung Fu?” Many of these questions wait to be answered, and will always remain to be answered. 

Here I am in silence.  Neither can I tell nor teach anything about Chan just as the great Master, Ma Zhu Dao Yi said: Because the teacher does not have anything to say, neither can he show you anything. So the listener does not have anything to listen to, neither can he get anything.  Therefore, the teacher cannot explain anything; neither can he show you anything.  It is best for him not to say anything. And if the listener can neither hear anything, nor can he get anything, he had better not listen at all.

Now many of you are still waiting to listen to me speak.  In fact talking is the same as not to say anything. Those questions that some of you have asked me seem to be the same ones that I have asked my teacher numerous times.  My teacher, the great Master Shi Su Xi always, tells me, “that which can be explained is not Chan.  Chan is not on the right or the left; nor is it up or down; nor is it in the middle.” I had always wondered what it is and where it is, for I had tried so hard so many times.  My effort was always in vain.  Do you see what the great Master Su Xi is conveying? Do you have any bit of enlightenment of Chan? 

Chan cannot be explained. That which can be explained is not Chan. It is like eating a peach.  You must do the actual eating to feel and taste what it is. To explain or not to explain does not make any difference. One of the great Chan masters, Seng Bi says: “Emptiness, which can be said, is not real emptiness; color, which can be named, is not original color. The universe is infinite; everything comes from nothing; real ‘empty’ is formless; original color does not have a name.  The space of the universe is formless.  The ‘formless/nameless’ is the origin of everything.” 

To grasp the very essence of Chan, you must see the reality of the Chan experience. You cannot begin to understand how the Chan experience is manifested and communicated between the master and the disciple unless you realize what is communicated.  As Thomas Merton sees: “If you do not know what is supposed to be signified, the unknown method of signification will leave you totally disconcerted, and more in the dark than when you started.”

In the following series, I will not teach you anything or explain anything to you in any words but rather will serve you as a tour guide leading you on the path of the Chan experience. This is not because I do not know anything about Chan but because I cannot teach you Chan by any verbal means, nor have I reached or understood the Dao of Chan.  For in Chan, from the moment a fact is transferred to a statement, it is falsified.  One ceases to grasp the naked reality of experience, and grasps a form of words instead. 

In comparison with western thought, Chan is not kerygma but realization, not revelation but consciousness, not news from God or the Father who sends his Son to the world, but awareness of the ontological ground of our own being here and now, right in the midst of the world we live in.  In this sense, Chan leads us to experience the reality of the world. The Chan experience is a direct grasp of the unity of the invisible and the visible, the normal and the phenomenal.  From this, we can logically see: the “Chan Master teaches nothing,” but evokes in the student the direct experience of what is already there before the brain dissects and distorts it by superimposing the grid of verbal formula on it.

In this sense, Chan is an “anti-language” or radical reversal of western philosophical logic.  But in reality the human dilemma of communication is that we cannot communicate ordinarily without words or signs, but even ordinary experience tends to be falsified by our habits of verbalization and rationalization.  Convenient words mean and tempt us all too easily to see things only in the way that fits our logical preconceptions and our verbal thinking.  Instead of seeing things and realities as they are, we see them as reflections and verifications of the sentences we have previously made up in our minds.  We quickly forget the things themselves, manipulating facts so that we see only what fits our convenient prejudices. Chan uses language against itself to blast out these preconceptions and to destroy the specious “reality” in our minds so that we can see directly.  As a Chan saying goes: “Do not think. Look!”

The whole statement of Chan is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come directly to grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalization. This is the sense of  “Chan teaches nothing”; it simply enables you to wake up and become aware.  It does not teach, but point.  The acts and gestures of a Chan master are no more statements than is the ring of a temple bell.

Chan meditation, seeks not to explain but to focus, to become aware, to be mindful, that is, to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above and beyond deception by any form of verbal thinking.  Deception in its grasp of itself is “deception” as it really is.  This deception comes upon us due to diversion and distraction from what is right there—consciousness itself. So the purpose of Chan Buddhism is to refine the consciousness until this kind of insight is attained

A real Chan master simply presents realities, which the disciple either sees or does not see. Chan anecdotes, which are often incomprehensible to modern people especially in rational terms, are simply like a ringing of bell (a teaching), and the reaction of the sleeping monk (the student).  Very often the misguided sleeping monk makes a response which in effect turns and covers his ears with a quilt so that he can go back to sleep.  Sometimes he jumps out of bed with a shout of astonishment: “the sun is up in the sky.”  Sometimes he just sleeps and does not hear the temple bell at all.

Part II

Chan is not to make you think, but to make you pay attention and see.  Chan deals in life with the obscure and tantalizing realities, and does not promote mysterious thinking or fantasies.  In the western world, almost every one lives, as Thomas Merton noted,  in ego-centered necessity and practicality, geared entirely for the use and manipulation of everything, always passing from one thing to another, from cause to effect, from one to the next and to the last and then back.

Is it the fact of life that we never stop anywhere today?  Just like riding on the subway, we immediately find another train as soon as we have to get off one when reaching the end of the ride.  Nothing is allowed just to be and mean itself; everything must mysteriously signify something else.  Chan is especially meant to frustrate that way of thinking.  In Chan “reality” is like a falling tree that, whatever it may be, lands across our road beyond which we cannot pass.

In many years of my sharing with Chan students, I see the most often encountered reality is the students’ frustration, their inabilities to get somewhere by the use of their own will and their own reasoning.  It is very common that many students have fundamentally misleading experiences of themselves and of their capacities.  In the relation between a master and his student, mondõ-questions and answers are often used as a direct pointing:

A monk asks his Master, “Who is the Buddha?”

The master answers: “Who are you?”

The monk wants to know prajñã, the metaphysical wisdom-intuition of Chan, and Mahãprajñã, Great or Absolute Wisdom.  The master answers without concern:

“The snow is falling fast and all is mingled in mist.”

The monk remains silent.  The master asks, “Do you understand?”

“No master, I do not.”

Thereupon the master composed a verse for him:

Mahãprajñã,

It is neither taking in nor giving up.

If one understands it or not,

The wind is cold; the snow is falling.

Here the monk is trying to understand, as any of our western students would do.  In fact he needs to see.  Chan is much simpler than most people think.  It simply points to you to be aware and mindful.  The most elementary form of Chan consists of nothing more than awareness or bare attention.   In Chan you simply see what it is right there without comment, without any interpretation, without any judgment or without any conclusion.  It just sees.  Learning to see in this manner is the basic exercise of Chan Buddhist meditation.  Clouds are flowing over the sky; the sun rises from the east horizon.  

As one of the greatest and the last accepted Patriarch, Hui Neng, from the seventh century AD during the Chinese Dang dynasty, was asked a leading question by a disciple: “Who has inherited the spirit of the Fifth Patriarch?”  Hui Neng replied: “One who understands Buddhism.”

The Monk pressed his point: “Have you then inherited it?”

Hui Neng said: “No.”

“Why not?” the monk asked.

“Because I do not understand Buddhism.”

This story precisely gives the illustration of Chan teaching to the best.  Hui Neng’s non-knowing gives him the authority to transmit the enlightenment of the Buddha himself to disciples.  If he had claimed to have an authoritative teaching that made this enlightenment understandable to those who did not posses it, then he would have been teaching something else, or a doctrine about enlightenment.  He would be disseminating the message of his own understanding of Chan, and in that case he would not be able to awaken others to Chan in them, but would impose on them the imprint of his own understanding and teaching.  That would be incompatible with the true purpose of Chan: awakening a deep ontological awareness, a wisdom, which in Chan is entirely positive. 

Chan aims to grasp the central reality of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect.  To grasp the central fact of life, Chan is forced to propose a series of negations.  A real Chan master neither affirms nor negates, he simply acts or speaks in such a way that the action or speech itself is plain reality bursting with Chan intuition (prajñã).

When the spirit of Chan is grasped in its purity, it will be seen what a real thing (in this case a Kung fu strike) is.  For there is neither negation, nor affirmation, but reality, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being. The experience of life is the experience of motion in reflection of time.  Kung fu is a form of experience.  Both the forms and the combat fighting motions are simple forms of human experience.  The movements in various situations and the contents of movements applied in the reality of life are a pure form of human experience, no comments, just natural instincts of motions.

The natural motions of Kung Fu are the reflection of natural motions of the universe.  Man, in Dao of Chan, is microcosm of he universe.  Man like any natural being is originated from nothingness because nothingness is the origin of everything.  When man travels back that nothingness, man is said back to the origin and sees himself as he really is.