UnMind 16. Zazen Quartet 4: Teacher/Student

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Zazen for others:
neither your concern nor mine —
Just do it yourself.

Beyond practicing zazen there is the logical extension of sharing it with others, which enters into the territory of teaching that which cannot be taught, while assuming that it can be learned. After all, those doing the teaching learned it from their teachers.

Like many other subjects, Zen, and its meditation, zazen, is not in essence a step-by-step process, as Master Dogen points out, but of course it must be broken down into steps in order to teach it, or even just to talk about it. Music and the performing arts, painting and the plastic arts, similarly are holistic endeavors, but in order to teach art and music to your students, you have to start somewhere. You have to decide what comes first, what comes next, and what follows. In all cases of one-on-one modes of training, we find the same kinds of patterns, from apprentice to journeyman to master, to name one familiar tripartite approach. Undergraduate and graduate programs posit a similar schema, from Bachelor to Master degrees to the PhD.

As in these other areas of endeavor, including higher realms of math and science, teachers recognize that the part of Zen that can be taught is the how — the method. The what and the why have to be discovered, or intuited innately, by the student. We can teach classical versus improvisational methods of playing the piano, ballet versus modern choreography, i.e. how music or dance is traditionally structured, notated and performed. But we cannot teach music itself, nor dance. There comes a turning point at which the rehearsal transforms into the real thing. Same with Zen.

Two broad, parallel tracks emerge from the history of Zen (as well as in the arts and sciences), known as experience versus expression. In Zen, the former is primary and takes precedence over the latter, which has distant second priority. Intellectual analysis, or scholarship, a distant third.

Authority in Zen is a matter of authenticity of experience, more than facility of expression, or peer review. In the formal path to priesthood, the latter comes to the fore, in the tradition that transmitted priests are transmitted by other transmitted priests. We want to avoid the all-too-American proclivity toward self-anointed spiritual leaders.

The worst-case scenario is a surfeit of expression in lieu of a modicum of experience — forever rushing into print, or these days, into podcast; while the most revered is the presence of deep experience, with a reticence toward casual expression. “Those who speak don’t know; those who know don’t speak,” as the saying goes. Notably Buddha’s “golden silence,” which he sometimes employed in response to certain inquiring minds. He would explain to his fellow monks that if he had responded in the affirmative, the seeker would have misunderstood in a certain way; whereas if he had answered in the negative, the listener would still have misunderstood, if in a different way. So his “middle way” was to remain silent, which conveyed the truth beyond language and concepts.

These days we are justified in complaining that there is way too much expression going on in all fields, including Zen, often with woefully insufficient experience underpinning it. Our society is geared toward glitz, a convincing and forceful expression, where the underlying depth may be razor thin.

Our default position in Zen is to continue our own practice, regardless of the success or failure of our attempt to share the dharma assets with others. Progressing to the PhD of Zen — transmission, in Japanese “Shiho,” the ceremony of entrusting the Dharma to a student — is recognized as entirely dependent — 100% plus — upon the sincerity and effort of the student, and not upon some magical ability or mystical power of the teacher. Of course, there has to be a pretty powerful affinity between the two, and the teacher has to have at least a rudimentary grasp of skillful means, in dealing with the different traits and personalities of his students. I have always maintained that I simply need a better class of student.

Many of the ancestors in the official so-called “unbroken,” face-to-face transmission of the lineage of Zen, from master to student, Shakyamuni and Mahakasyapa down to the present day, actually did not “get” it; they failed to penetrate their first and perhaps most formative teacher’s message, and so were sent to practice under another. Whereafter, in some cases, they had a revelatory insight that clarified the Great Matter for them, simultaneously revealing their prior teacher’s “grandmotherly kindness.” Hindsight is sometimes 20/20, even in Zen.

In continuing to follow the method of Zen, as Shakyamuni did after his great insight, we confirm the principle of “practice after enlightenment.” Not that any legitimate Dharma heir would claim to be enlightened. As Okumura Roshi once said, we are the “no enlightenment” school. We do not pursue any such chimera, but only look to our direct experience, both on and off the cushion, for any true understanding. In doing so, we encourage others to “do thou likewise,” but our practice does not depend on their accepting or acknowledging the admonition. Zen is stubborn in that way, like a donkey.

In attempting to teach Zen to others, or to teach them how to access it, one has to have the flexibility of mind to imitate your teacher, as you did when first stepping onto the Zen path. But eventually you recognize that you are not your teacher, and your students are not you. Neither do the present circumstances align exactly with those of your early practice, any more than they do with those of the ancient masters. The basic issues, or problems of the existence, origin, the potential cessation, and prescribed Path of practice remain the same, of course, or at least very similar. But the surrounding causes and conditions evolve with time, and are affected by the developments of humankind’s situation on the planet. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were afoot in Buddha’s time, for instance, but nothing like the worldwide calamities we are witness to today.

So the question of skillful or expedient means is still germane, perhaps more than ever. Matsuoka Roshi considered Soto Zen’s simplicity — and its emphasis upon the practice of “just sitting” upright in “Self-fulfilling Samadhi,” as Master Dogen instructed nearly a millennium ago — to be the most appropriate and applicable skillful means, or upaya, for this age. He develops a convincing argument for this assertion in the second collection of his recorded talks, Mokurai, laid out in the first chapter, “Dhyanayana,” or “Way Amongst the Ways.” For westerners, he felt the more laid-back, simple and direct method of “quiet illumination” — Soto Zen’s zazen — to be the best, compared to others such as the Rinzai approach, using meditation to contemplate koans. We are already driven to adopt an overly intense, intellectually driven method to wake up to reality. We don’t need no stinking koans. And we are already sitting in the koan of everyday life, the “Genjokoan.”

In Soto Zen, as in most professional disciplines, we teach mostly by our own example. Sensei would often say, “I can tell more by the way you sweep the floor than what you have to say.” And, “You can talk all day and never make them understand.” So the way forward is very clear, whether you are a priest or a novice. Practice what you preach.