Zen, Compassion & Koans: Sensei Michael Brunner on Ungan's Great Compassionate One | Shōyōroku 54
For those of you who are practicing here in person at retreat or online, it is such a joy to be with you this morning. And for those of you listening on the podcast, welcome. I'm Sensei Sōen Michael Brunner, a Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest in the lineage of Dainin Katagiri Roshi through my teacher, Reverend Dr. Sojun Diane Martin Roshi. I serve as the founding teacher of One River Zen here in Ottawa, Illinois.
We’re a community grounded in the ordinary, everyday expression of presence and compassion, and it’s good to be practicing that this morning, as we did in service. Ultimately, Zen practice has never been confined to the zendo. Many of you have seen some of our outreach programs like Karuna Pantry, and a few of you have heard about David’s Clubhouse, which is about to open at the new One River Zen Community Center. And so the question naturally arises: What is it with these service missions that we keep elevating, missions that seem to have nothing to do with Buddhism? After all, we are here to practice Buddhism. Isn’t that what we do?
This practice isn’t about cultivating an ideological notion of “being”—some perfected image of a Buddhist or of an enlightened person. Real practice is about being a true person, which only manifests when we show up as our authentic selves. When we allow that, the story we tell ourselves about “I” becomes very tenuous. We can see ourselves reflected in every aspect of our experience, not just in the dusty annals of our storehouse consciousness—the internal records of what has gone well or poorly, the elaborate naughty-and-nice lists we maintain. Dōgen puts this very succinctly:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the ten thousand things.”
We can cut to the chase on “the ten thousand things”: it means to be actualized by everything—everything we encounter, everyone we meet.
These are beautiful, profound words, but they are still just words. How do we actually practice this? How do we live this? There is a koan in the Shōyōroku, Case 54, called “Ungan’s Great Compassionate One,” that points to this clearly. It begins like this:
Attention.
Ungan asked Dōgo, “What does the Great Compassionate Bodhisattva do when she uses her manifold hands and eyes?”
Dōgo said, “It’s like a man who reaches behind him at night to search for his pillow.”
Ungan said, “I understand.”
Dōgo asked, “What do you understand?”
Ungan replied, “All over the body are hands and eyes.”
Dōgo said, “You’ve really said it—you’ve got eighty percent of it.”
Ungan asked, “Elder brother, how about you?”
Dōgo replied, “Throughout the body are hands and eyes.”
Who is this Great Compassionate Bodhisattva with manifold hands and eyes? Many of you will recognize her immediately as Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion. Her name means “the one who hears the cries of the world,” or “the one who looks upon the cries of the world”—not in a way that suggests she is somehow separate from them, nor as someone who thinks about compassion or has a good idea about compassion. She is the one who hears, the one who responds.
There is a story about Avalokiteśvara. She vowed never to rest until every being was freed from suffering. But as she worked and saw the magnitude of pain in the world, her body literally shattered from the strain. Seeing this, Amida Buddha gathered the pieces and refashioned her with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes so she could see suffering wherever it appeared and respond instantly. Another variation says that when she saw the magnitude of the task at hand, she herself, through sheer force of will, manifested those thousand arms so she could be available.
This story is more than just mythical ornamentation. Whenever we speak of devas and bodhisattvas, they are not outside of us. Nothing is outside. The story points directly back to us. When we open to the cries of the world, it is very easy to feel a sense of impossibility or insufficiency—to imagine that we cannot possibly help everyone. But compassion is not about a cosmic scale or weight. It is not about magnitude or quantity. It is a qualitative act of intention. Compassion simply asks us to show up—whatever hand, whatever eye is needed in that moment.
Dōgo likens compassion to reaching for your pillow at night. It’s a strange pointer, but if you sit with it, you see what he means. You don’t strategize. You don’t create a plan or think, “Time to find my pillow—execute pillow protocol.” You just reach, naturally, intuitively. Without hesitation, you respond to discomfort by bringing comfort.
Compassion is like this. It is not an idea of heroism, and yet that is how it becomes heroic. It is not conceptual. It is not even moral in the way we normally think about morality. It is intimate. We could call it reflexive, but even that suggests a separation between self and other acting in unison. Compassion arises from the unity of the spheres that has always been present. It arises from a body recognized as boundless and vast, including everything.
I can tell you one place it never arises from: the story your mind is telling you. It is so tempting to collapse into narrative—to imagine that if we can just get the story right, pin the right badges on our lapel, get the right initials after our name, then everything will be fine. But ultimately, our actions are our continuance.
Ungan says, “I understand,” and he does have a deep penetration. “All over the body are hands and eyes.” Dōgo responds, “Eighty percent.” Ungan is still imagining a self—a self who possesses hands and eyes and uses compassion as a kind of spiritual toolset. Dōgo hears that nuance clearly. When Ungan asks him how he understands it, Dōgo replies, “Throughout the body are hands and eyes.” The difference is subtle, but everything turns on it. “All over the body” means compassion as something we do or apply when we choose. “Throughout the body” means compassion as the unobstructed functioning of our original nature—what we already are when inside and outside disappear. It is not applied or added. It is not a technique. It is simply how life functions when nothing is in the way.
There is a preface to the assembly in every case of the Shōyōroku, and this one deepens things:
“The eight compass points, bright and clear. The ten directions unobstructed everywhere. Bright light shakes the earth. All the time there is marvelous functioning and the supernatural. Tell me, how can this occur?”
When the eight directions are bright and clear and unobstructed, it means nothing is hidden. Nothing is outside the field of awareness. When we are no longer tangled up in the story of “I,” the whole world becomes transparent. Everywhere we look, there is nothing but the activity of awakening. Every person we meet is the Buddha—not outside, but within.
“Bright light shakes the earth” doesn’t mean cosmic fireworks—though sometimes it can feel that way. It means that when we see things as they are, without clinging or aversion, the ground of our life trembles with clarity. Everything we meet becomes an opportunity for compassion. And when we meet our lives this way, the “supernatural” occurs—not in the sense of magic tricks, but in the sense of being freed from the karmic trick-bag we’ve locked ourselves in. It is the natural functioning of reality when we are not distorting it with self-image. It is the spontaneous responsiveness Dōgo is pointing to—the arm reaching for the pillow, the heart responding to suffering before a single thought has formed.
Marvelous functioning is your life—your life when nothing is in the way, especially your idea of you. When the ten directions are open, when the hands and eyes of Avalokiteśvara are simply how your being expresses itself, the appreciatory verse speaks directly:
“One whole penetrates space; eight directions are clear and bright. Without forms, without self, spring follows the rules. Unstopped, unhindered, the moon traverses the sky. Clean, pure, jeweled eyes and virtuous arms. Where is the approval in ‘throughout the body’ instead of ‘all over the body’? Hands and eyes before you manifest complete functioning. The great function is everywhere. How could there be any hindrance?”
When the self drops away, there is no inside or outside. Nothing is sealed off. Everything functions freely. Without form, without self, spring follows the rules—we are not caught in identity, in ideas of how things are supposed to look or feel or be. Life unfolds naturally, and compassion moves without effort. Awakening is not something we pursue or find. It arises naturally from practice and intention. The moon does not consult your small self before crossing the sky.
Clean, pure, jeweled eyes and virtuous arms—each of you has these. When nothing is in the way, when you see and appear and step into your life, compassion manifests. So where is the approval? Why is “throughout the body” emphasized rather than “all over the body”? Because compassion is not a tool in your toolset. It is your very nature itself before your idea of it obstructs it. The great function is everywhere. There couldn’t be any hindrance even if you wanted one.
When we recognize this, we recognize that we are at home—at home in our lives just as they are, not the life we hope to have someday when we’ve sat enough zazen or finished sewing an okesa. We have it now, when David is stomping around upstairs and we can’t hear ourselves think, or when he lets out that great barbaric yawp as he moves from one activity to the next.
Each of you is a reflection of the whole universe, shining brightly as you are. Each of you reflects the same jewel, yet each of you reflects it in a unique way. The question becomes: What is that way? What are your intentions? How does the universe flow through what you call “you”? How will you spend the very real currency you possess with your next breath—this currency that is your life?
I can give each of you many koans over your training, but ultimately this is your koan. This is the practice. And the question becomes: Will you yield to it?
