Wake Up and Laugh!

On the northern edge of Gyeongsanbuk-do, past the ginseng fields of Punggi, just south of the middle of nowhere, sits Buseoksa, Temple of the Floating Stone.  No matter where you’re traveling from, it’s far away, hence it’s appeal.

The path to the temple is surrounded by terraced gardens and orchards, and lined with cherry trees. As I made my journey up the hill toward the temple, the rain fell intermittently but the dense mist creeping through the hills made it worth the damp clothes and foggy camera lens. The only sounds were the drips of condensation falling from the branches and the distant chants of Mahayana’s Greatest Hits being played in the temples sound system. From a distance, it sounded less like a recording and the echoes of the mokteok and sutras added to the environment.

Like most country temples, the gate is still a ways from the rest of the complex, creating a nice space between the temple, the car park and everything before it. It’s a nice time to thumb through my yeomju  and whisper 108 Namo Amitabuls, Gwan Sae Eum Bosals, or whichever other Bodhisattva is with me at that moment. I followed a small side road and admired the cherry blossoms, then returned on my way to the temple.

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Buseoksa dates back to 676 CE (1220 BE – Buddhist Era) and was founded by Venerable UiSang. UiSang Daesa, along with his friend WonHyo Daesa, were the first truly influential monks in Korean Zen history. Uisang Daesa studied the Mind Only and Buddha Nature teachings at Hwangbok temple in GyungJu, during the reign of  Silla’s  SeonDeok YeoWang (Lady King). Eventually he made his way to Tang Dynasty China to study the doctrine of  the Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Garland Sutra), which Buseoksa became a center of. He is also known for doing away with social hierarchies and indiscriminately gave positions to all classes of people within the Buddhist community.

Given the soggy and chilly weather, there were only a few other people visiting, which maintained the silent atmosphere. I climbed a short flight of stairs, passed beneath the first roof and greeted the ubiquitous guardians of the four corners, who stand before most temple complexes in Korea.  Once through, you are in the complex. In Buseoksa, you are immediately confronted by an impressive and massive two storey pavilion that houses the temple’s drum. The wooden dragon-headed fish, carved from a log, hung beside the drum, the belly hollowed out to be used as a percussion. The grounds are surrounded by a short, horse-shoe slope that wrapped the temple with the first buds of Spring. Muryangsujeon, the main hall, remains one of Korea’s oldest wooden structures. Within, there lingers an air of clarity, the scent of that which was never born, never dies, and cannot be named.

Beside the main hall sits, or rather floats, the stone Buseoksa owes its name to. When UiSang arrived in China he was exhausted from the long trip across the sea. He was invited by a local Buddhist lay-family to stay in their home. The daughter, SeonMyo, immediately fell deeply in love with UiSang. But, since he was a monk, who took his precepts seriously, he could not accept her love. She became his faithful disciple and made a vow of eternal devotion to him as her mentor. When he attained Buddhahood in China and  returned to Silla, she followed. That’s history’s version of the story, but legend tells it differently. When he left China, SeonMyo was distraught. Running out to the pier after his ship, she threw herself into the waters and became a dragon, protecting UiSang’s ship on his return to the peninsula. Later, when UiSang was threatened by a group of locals while building his temple, SeonMyo flew into the sky with a large boulder to protect UiSang. In the 17th century, it was documented in the official text of the Joseon Dynasty that a string could be pulled beneath the entire length of the stone, proving that it is indeed floating.

I followed a path up the slope, behind the ridge, to a small hermitage, exactly the kind of place I’d love to live in, plant a garden, and practice meditation. The path continued further and I discover two small shrines. The first was firmly closed, but I was able to jar the doors of the second one open. Inside were three carved Buddhas, more impressive for their age than their over all aesthetic, but still interesting enough to me. I was able to spend a few minutes alone before finally being caught-up with by the first tour group of the day. That’s usually a good sign that it’s time to go, so I gathered myself and began my way back down.  A small portion of the group was in front of  me and I was behind a young woman and her mother. Being slightly quieter than the average Korean tourist, the mom must not have known I was behind her. As she walked, talking loudly to her daughter, she let out a fart like a penny whistle caught in a bullfrog. I, in turn, let out a bit of a giggle, and she turned her head to see the foreigner behind her. They both burst out laughing and sped up their way down the hill, and I was left struck with the epiphany; If you’re not going to look behind you before you fart, don’t bother looking after!

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For all those who bear the secret sign of the woodcarvers’ guild (scars on the thumbs and index fingers from slips with the knife 😉 ), here’s a photo essay on how a wooden Buddha statue is carved. This display is at the Mok-A Museum in Korea, with the finished statue about 10 inches high. The founder is officially designated as what can best be described as National Living Treasure #108. Here’s a link to his site, and here’s a link to some photos of his work. (Click on the images here to see them up close.)

  o o o o o o o o i p p   o

This is one of my favorite Dharma talks by Daehaeng Kun Sunim, where she talks about spiritual practice and the importance of “dying.” She isn’t talking about the death of the body, but rather letting go of this sense of “me” and what “I” want. There are many aspects to this, but one question often asked is, “If I let go like this, won’t I become a fool or taken advantage of by others?” The short answer is “no.” As you let go of both sides, both good and bad, likes and dislikes, you see things more clearly, and discover the courage to do what needs to be done, whether it’s confrontation, accepting, or running away! 

One of the other incredibly huge things about this practice is that the beginning and the end are both the same. Whether you don’t know anything or are completely enlightened, the letting go and entrusting is done exactly the same.

 
You should entrust everything that comes up in your life – solitude, poverty, loneliness, anxiety, and illness – to your foundation and live freely. Entrusting everything is letting go of everything. This is the way to die. The phrase “First, you must die!” means unconditionally releasing everything, without any excuses or reasons, including both what you understand and what you don’t understand. When things go well, you should release them with gratitude. When things don’t go well, you should also release them with the faith that “My foundation can solve this and lead me in the right direction. Because nothing is fixed, this too can change.” You should keep letting go like this. For it is only by dying unconditionally that you can discover your true self, your eternal root.

Second, you must die again. While studying here, some of you have discovered yourself. Yet you still have not discarded your habits and your thoughts of “I,” “me,” and “mine.” So you’re happy if you see a Buddha in your dreams, but you’re scared if you see a ghost. When you feel or experience something extraordinary, you carelessly talk to others about what you experienced. What you see and hear is just an illusion, but nevertheless you still tend to cling to it. This is why you must die again.

Now do you understand why first you must die and keep what you experience to yourself, and why you must die yet again, keeping what you experience secret? Even though you are able to see or hear certain things after you discover your true self, those powers are not the Way. Even though you have obtained the five subtle powers – the abilities to know others’ thoughts and feelings, to know past lives, to hear anything, to see anything at any place, and to appear anywhere without moving your body – this is still not the Way. You can truly master the five subtle powers only when you are free from them. If you reveal what you hear, see, or know, it will only bring trouble. First, it will cause trouble for the Buddha-dharma, second, for sunims and the Seon center, and third, it will cause trouble for you.

Once you discover yourself, you enter the stage of experimenting. Don’t regard what you learn in your dreams as different from what you learn while awake. And keep everything you learn secret. Although you are able to see, hear, and know things that others are unaware of, do it without clinging to any thought of “I see,” “I hear,” “I know,” and do not reveal to others what you experience. This is a very powerful stage of practice in which you experiment with what you have learned. Your experiments result in experiences, and then you put those experiences into action. This is the meaning of dying a second time and keeping what you experience to yourself.

 
 
 
 
 Daehaeng Kun Sunim goes on to talk about the need for also dying a third time. There are a couple of very advanced aspects to that, but the main point is the need to continuously keep letting go, and to not dwell on what we experience.  (This talk has been excerpted from the book, Wake Up and Laugh.)

In this next section of Admonitions to Myself, the Venerable Ya-un warns us to settle our bodies and be careful with our words. On the surface, this section seems to be written for monastics, yet it also applies quite well to our modern form of laziness: Busyness. 

Refrain from unnecessary speech and movement:

If your body is settled, then confusion will cease and samadhi will be attained. If you speak little, foolishness will be transformed into wisdom. The true foundation is devoid of words and the ultimate principle is unmoving. The mouth is the door of calamity and so must be guarded carefully. The body is the root of disaster, so do not travel around unnecessarily. A bird that often flies back and forth is in danger of being caught in a net; an animal that roams around will have the misfortune of being struck by an arrow.

Thus the Buddha sat without moving for six years and Bodhidharma spent nine years in the Shaolin cave without saying a word. How then can later practitioners not follow these examples?

 
Enter meditation while holding mind and body still,
sit by yourself in a hermitage,
without leaving and returning.
Observing your own mind,
return to and rely on the Buddha
that is within.

This report of one of our regular Bangkok Seon Club meetings was first published on the now-deleted “Marcus’ Journal” in January of this year. I’m re-posting it now as I think it gives a nice picture of the kind of useful discussions we have at Seon Club, and the lovely people I meet there.

“The ability of our fundamental mind is the most profound and mysterious thing in the entire universe.”
– Zen Master Daehaeng Sunim

The Bangkok English-language Seon Club is really finding its feet. Thanks to the direction provided by the seonwon, everyone is comfortable with the structure of the meetings, starting with the refuges and some sitting meditation, and with the format of the discussion. Young, who does the translating, is simply amazing, and I think everyone gets a chance to speak and to ask anything they like of our wonderful teacher Hyaedan Sunim.

This month we returned to our study of No River to Cross and looked at chapter three, “Mind and Science.” I’ll admit that when I first read this two or three years ago I was dismissive. “Mars is crowded with lives” I thought, “what is this nonsense?” Hyaedan Sunim asked me on Saturday night if my reaction would be any different now, and I can honestly say that it is. Not only is Mars crowded with lives, but my body is too, there is nothing that is not crowded with lives.

We talked about how the universe functions as one life, about how material is actually energy, and how there is no difference between the particles within and outside of us. Pedro, a Seon Club regular, explained some of the latest thinking in science, and what little I understood was fascinating. Hyaedan Sunim agreed and then talked about how Buddhist teachings have never contradicted science but, rather, how science has evolved towards Buddhism.

Young talked about the energy between people, using the example of Pedro’s smile, which everyone thought was lovely, and about the limitations of language in expressing scientific discoveries. Sunim offered the example of how there were no Chinese characters for negative numbers, and then she brought us back to the relationship between fundamental truth and our developing understanding of it. “But how” Kirsten asked, “do we put this into practice?”

We came into being, Sunim said, because of this Fundamental Mind. It put us here, and after we are gone it will still be here; everything is a reflection of it, and our practice is to return everything to it. I talked about my limited understanding of this, how the theory often confuses me but how, basically, I believe that I and everything else shares this Mind, or Buddha-nature, and my job is to live from that, which is best done by entrusting everything to it.

Kirsten, her first visit to Seon Club, was keen to know more and asked lots of great questions, and Sunim talked about entrusting to Buddha-nature as a practice that cuts through trying to figure things out and Young gave some wonderful personal examples of how this works in her life. Then Joe, a fine poet and a regular here and at the San Fransisco Zen Center, quoted from the poetry of Huang Po on awakening to One Mind, True Self, or Fundamental Mind.

And, talking about what happens when you live not from what obscures it but from your original Buddha-nature, Joe told the story of King Mongkut, the great-grandfather of today’s highly revered King Bhumibol. King Mongkut became a monk at Wat Bowonniwet and then, to the great concern of all those around him, found himself more interested in staying in robes than in becoming King, so much so that he eventually became abbot of the temple.

“There is no manual” Hyaedan Sunim said, “just keep sending everything back to Buddha-nature, again and again.” And in a lovely phrase that raised a smile and gets to the heart of the matter, she said one should “use less and less your head, and more and more your Mind”. We finished by reciting the Four Bodhisattva Vows, bowing in gratitude to our wonderful Sunim and to each other, and left the Dharma Hall inspired and confident in this beautiful practice.

An Eyebrow Hair
Here’s one of my favorite stories about Korea, which also involves a tiger.

Long ago, a young man was traveling through the mountains, when he ran across an old monk struggling to repair a tiny shrine. At a glance he saw what needed to be done, and after asking the monk to take a rest, he set about fixing the shrine.  For him it would only take a couple of hours, whereas it would have taken days for the monk, who seemed quite clumsy with his hands. While the man was working, the monk was silent, and seemed to be watching him closely. But then, mountain monks always did tend to be a bit strange, so he didn’t think much about it.   

 At last, he finished and, sweating, sat down next to the monk, who continued to stare at him. Finally, the monk spoke, “It must have been tough growing up without parents or family. I too, lost my mother at a young age. Looking at you, I think a wife and family of your own is what you want more than anything else in the world. Am I right?” The young man shivered despite the heat, for it was as if the monk had seen into the very depths of his heart. How had he known those things?   

 The monk spoke again, “Well, if marriage and a family are what you have your heart set on, it won’t do to marry just any woman. You have to see clearly. Here.” With that, the monk plucked out one of his long, white eyebrow hairs, and handed it to the young man. “Now,” said the monk, “hold it in front of your eye and look at me.” The young man did this, and almost died of fright! For where he had been talking to an old man, he now saw a huge mountain tiger!   

 The young man quickly lowered the eyebrow hair, and there was the old monk again. He raised the hair to his eye again, and the monk had become a tiger again. The man thought he was either crazy or about to die, or both! The monk smirked at him, and then said, “Don’t worry, I don’t eat humans.” Well, this seemed like a lie, for the tigers in those mountains were notorious man-eaters.  The monk seemed to read the man’s thoughts, and said again, “We’re actually quite spiritual, so we don’t eat humans. Only pigs and dogs, and maybe a donkey or fox, once in a while.”    

The old monk sighed in response to the dubious stare he was getting, “Take that hair with you and use it to look at the people you meet. You’ll see what I mean.” With this they parted, and the man made his way back down to his village. It was still hard to believe what had happened, but he was dying to try out the hair on other people.   
   

So early the next morning, he found a nice spot near the main road into the village and sat there waiting. Before long, the proud village mayor came by. Everyone treated him with much respect, but when the young man looked at him, he saw a great slobbering pig wearing clothes! Well, this was a shock! He next saw a line of woodcutters returning from the mountains, so he held up the hair, and to his amazement, most of them were dogs or pigs! Only two were actually human beings. This went on for a while, until he saw a beautiful young woman and her mother approaching. Just sight of the woman made his heart race, but when he held up the hair, he saw that she was really a fox-spirit!   

This went on all day, and he was amazed at how few human beings he was seeing. Neither fine silk, Confucian hats, or monks robes were any guarantee of finding a human being. Finally, he looked through the hair at a plain-looking woman who was walking by, and discovered that she was a radiant human being. They were eventually married, and became the joyful family the young man had always wanted.   

Well, the moral of this story isn’t about finding a spouse! (Though that is a topic that does tend to get young people to pay attention.)  The heart of this story is the importance of seeing beyond appearances and learning to become a true human being. 
  
In this story, the eyebrow hair of the tiger can become compared to our true nature, our foundation and Buddha-essence. When we can get in touch with this, and learn to see through it, then we’ll be able to truly see what is going on, and we’ll be able to respond in ways that go right to the heart of the situation.

It’s one thing to be born as a human being, but we still have to become true human beings. For while many are born with human bodies, many are still controled by the habits developed during animal incarnations.  So a lot of spiritual practice is simply working on letting go of animal habits, and learning the ways of a true human being. Let’s all become great beings who can see clearly and respond appropriately with infinite power of our Buddha-nature.

One of the interesting things about Korea are the tigers.  Where I grew up, team mascots were always fierce and realistic. Perhaps it’s about balance: we, who knew basically nothing of real violence, chose mascots that had a threat of violence. Yet in Korea, where every man serves in the army, where there are tank traps and massive artillery bases north of Seoul, this was the mascot they chose for the 1988 Seoul olympics:     

  

 
   

 
 

 

 
 
 
Often tigers were used as comic relief, according to David Mason. With their fierce pride and dignity, they resembled the yangban, or aristocratic class. In images like this tiger, you can see the puffed out chest and aggressive expression, filled with pride about its noble heritage and superiority to all, but, where did those spots come from?    

It seems the tiger’s mother had an affair with a lowly leopard!  Here the tiger is used to mock the arrogance and unearned pride of the yangban.  

 
   

 
 
 
 
 On the other hand,  in mountain-spirit portraits, images of tigers often served to symbolize the power of the mountains and nature, as well as the power of spiritual practice to help us become one with this.     

More tomorrow about tigers and spiritual practice.  

    

In his post a few days ago, Joseph relayed the story of a monk who died in the Jiri Mountains (A glimpse). It highlighted two critical truths, namely, that we are not our bodies, and the importance of how we use our minds. 

In Chapter 2 of No River to Cross, Daehaeng Kun Sunim also covers these points: 

Even after your body falls away, your consciousness remains. It often happens that people do not understand that their body does not exist anymore, and they do not realize that living people cannot see or hear them. So, sometimes, in their confusion and desire, they cause other people to suffer. If you sincerely cultivate mind while you have a body, then you can leave without having any attachments. However, if you don’t practice, then even though you’re dead, you’ll be caught up in all of your old relationships, and won’t be able to freely leave. Instead, you may just wander around, stuck in that state for a very long time. When people die, if they have never practiced spiritual cultivation, their consciousness cannot see and cannot hear. In the middle of the darkness, their consciousness cannot correctly perceive things, so those people may (accidently) enter the womb of a pig or a magpie. However, people who have cultivated mind give off a great light and thoroughly illuminate their surroundings. Even their families tend to live brightly, although individually they may not know anything about spiritual practice. (p 20-21)  

Have you ever gotten caught up in a dream about walking through a building that no longer exists? Those steps you were walking up are now only empty sky a hundred feet off the ground. After we die, we no longer have physical senses, so with what are we seeing and hearing? If we haven’t practiced while alive, then we’re only experiencing the arising of karmic states of consciousness. However, we think those things are really happening, and so chase or flee them. In essence, we’re running outdoors at full speed, while blindfolded.  

Thus, how we use our minds while alive is critically important to us.  

In order to be born as a human being, it may have taken a thousand years of accumulated virtue and merit. It’s so hard to become a human being. Nevertheless, if you don’t let go of the habits you developed prior to becoming a human being, and if you think of only yourself, your suffering will be endless. If you live this way, you may live like this for many, many lives, stuck like a hamster on a wheel, unable to evolve. Or you may devolve and be reborn as an animal. Once you are reborn as an animal, you will suffer a lot, having to eat others or be eaten. There will be very little opportunity to reflect upon your state, and if you develop the habits of an animal, it will be even more difficult to free yourself from that state, even over billions of eons. (p 19)  

We go where we look. Or in this case, where we think.  

Once the level of mind changes, the body also changes accordingly. Evolution is the process of the mind becoming brighter, while creation is the outward manifestation of the minds design. Thus, while this process is evolution, it is also creation.  

Mind is the basis of both evolution and devolution; they aren’t separate forces. Devolution is also done by mind. All of this is the manifestation of our fundamental mind (and how we use it.) (p 22)