Go Straight On: Seeing Through Illusion | Mumonkan Case 31

So we often talk about some elusive qualities in practice that can be cultivated if we develop a certain level of consistency and place our attention with intention. They're known as the four Brahma Vihāras, or divine abodes: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and the last one—the one that we talk about a lot in Zen practice. We call it equanimity, but the original word in Sanskrit would be upekkhā.

Upekkhā is a difficult one because we think of it at first as detachment in the sense of cold indifference or being dispassionate, and that's not it at all. Upekkhā is more or less a kind of deep understanding that all things arise and pass away due to causes and conditions. In Zen and Mahāyāna thought, along those lines, we're seeing reality as it is. We refer to it as the Dharmakaya—without grasping, without aversion. It would be the still center or the source within the ever-turning wheel of samsara.

The etymology of the word points directly to its meaning. Upekkhā can be broken down to upa, which is near or over or toward, ekkhā, which would be to see or observe, and ā, the ending, is an intensifier. It means thoroughly or completely. So when we put the word together, we're talking about looking over, seeing clearly, or observing thoroughly. And so that's a lot different than dispassion, yeah?

It's a seemingly easy task just to see things as they are, and it often seems like there's something in the way when we're doing this. On my first meeting with a student, I usually talk to them about the labels and judgments that arise as part of the first encounter. It's gotta be a strange thing. I can remember my first time going to dokusan. It was outside, I had to walk through a little garden path and up to sit across from my teacher on the front porch. I remember I was shaking a little. And here at One River Zen, it's not all that much different, right? You have to get up from your cushion, walk up a couple of flights of stairs, past a whole bunch of burning candles and smoldering incense, and sit across from some guy you don't know.

And there's bowing that's done, and there are all kinds of formalities that are observed, and you have to wonder about the circumstances. But when we get there or even when we sit here, a lot of times we're in a position where we're clinging to our labels.

So if we sit here, we see Hōen, yeah? Or maybe we see Genpō or Sensei for that matter. And then thoughts begin to arise, yeah? "He looks well." "She looks well." "Oh, she looks like she might be getting a little bit under the weather." "Boy, he got old fast." These judgments, as subtle as we think they are, create a kind of mental static, and they begin to obscure our direct experience. So I often tell them when they're sitting across from me for the first time, "You're meeting your true self." That statement seldom lands, right? More often than not, I'm met with a blank stare of disbelief. "I know what I see." And that becomes the problem. We know what we see. Do you? Do you?

We sit across from one another and we think we're seeing the other person, but what we're actually seeing is our idea of the other person—an overlay of past impressions, past hurts or wants, assumptions, projections. We often start by talking about the first grave precept in training, and that first grave precept is not to kill. But what is it to kill? The most common form of killing is not with our hands. It's with our mind or with our heart-mind. Every time we fix someone in a place with a label, every time we reduce a person to an idea or a judgment, we have already killed something that was actually alive.

Sometimes a student will bristle at a kōan I give them. "Who is he to give me this kōan? He's not the boss of me." You may think that, but in that very moment, the trap is sprung. If I truly weren't the boss of them, there'd be no need to assert it. In resisting, we wind up making them the boss. The refusal itself is an attachment—an attachment to separateness or some idea of supremacy in one direction or another. "He's no enlightened sage." If you say so.

The same is true for the things that we obsess over in daily life. "Oh, she loved me." "What does that mean?" "How can I go on?" These mind traps are real—if we actually allow them to be real. But how do we escape from them? Upekkhā.

Mumonkan Case 31: Jōshū Sees Through an Old Woman
A monk once asked an old woman, “What is the way to Mount Taizan?”

The old woman said, “Go straight on.”

After the monk had gone a few steps, she said, “This good honest priest goes off that way too.”

Later, that monk related the story to Jōshū. Jōshū said, “Wait a bit, wait a bit. I'll go see through this old woman for you.”

The next day Jōshū went and asked the same question, and the old woman made the same reply.

Jōshū returned, and upon returning, he said to his disciples, “I've seen through the old woman of Mount Taizan for you.”

Difficult case. The monk had an expectation, and when it wasn’t met, it confused him. The old woman gave him something that shook up all the mud at the bottom of his karmic pool. He drank very deeply of it, yeah, very deeply. And then went to go show Jōshū the contents of his spleen. But if he had looked carefully, the robe was already at his feet.

Jōshū, in looking for nothing, saw everything. This is the difficulty. The Dharmakaya is present in every moment, in every thing. And yet when we seek for it, we put our hands in our sleeves and miss what’s already there. We do this constantly. We seek confirmation. We want to know that we’re on the right path. But this very seeking is what blinds us to what’s right in front of us. We get caught in our own cleverness, our own ideas about what things mean, and in doing so, we step right past the truth.

And this is where we lose the thread. We think about all of this, and we say, "Ah, I get it." But what is there to get? Just because you can say the words doesn't mean you've seen through it. Just because you understand what’s being pointed at doesn’t mean you’ve actually stepped into it. You can hold the map all day, but that doesn’t mean you’ve walked the path.

This is why I say: you have to be willing to stay with it. You have to sit with the not-knowing. You have to resist the urge to grab the nearest explanation and say, "There, now I have it." Because as soon as you do, you don’t.

The old woman isn’t playing games. Jōshū isn’t playing games. The teaching is always direct, always clear. But we cloud it over with all of our baggage—our doubts, our hopes, our expectations. And in doing so, we miss what is right in front of us.

So when you come to practice, when you sit, when you listen, when you engage with these teachings, don’t rush to "figure it out." Instead, let it be there. Let it work on you. Stop trying to get somewhere, and you might just find yourself already arrived.

Somebody asks you, what do you see in this case?

Go straight on.

Go straight on.