In this episode I read and reflect on Chapter One of Keizan’s Denkoroku: Record of the Transmission of Illumination. In it, Shakyamuni Buddha holds up a flower and blinks. Keizan says, “No one knew his intention, and they were silent.” Then Mahakashyapa gives a slight smile, and the Buddha acknowledges him as his Dharma heir. What is going on in this koan? Keizan challenges our ideas about awakening, time, causation, and the nature of self.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Root Case: Shakyamuni Holds Up a Flower
Pivotal Circumstances: Mahakashyapa Was a Peculiar Fellow
Investigation: What About this “Held Up a Flower?”
Investigation: Shakyamuni’s Blinking and Mahakashyapa’s Smiling
Investigation: Becoming Conscious of That Lord Master
Investigation: Old Guy Shakya Is Always with You
In Episode 291 I read and reflected on the opening chapter of the book and talked about Keizan and the Denkoroku. Once again, I will be reading from a translation of the Denkoroku edited by T. Griffith Foulk.[i] I don’t include the text in the script of this episode on the Zen Studies Podcast website but there is a pdf version of the text with footnotes available on the Soto Shu website (Japanese Soto School). As I go through the text, I indicate which pages numbers and sections I’m referring to.
Root Case: Shakyamuni Holds Up a Flower
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 10, Root Case is read aloud in the podcast]
Mahakashyapa is the Buddha’s first and foremost student, his Dharma heir. The Buddha is teaching the Dharma to the assembly and holds up a flower and blinks. Only Mahakashyapa “gets it,” and responds with a knowing smile while the rest of the assembly is clueless.
What is “it?” “The treasury of the true dharma eye, the sublime mind of nirvana.” This sounds like some pretty special stuff. The dharma is the truth, and to have the dharma eye means to see Reality-with-a-Capital-R instead of being stuck in delusion. The sublime mind of nirvana is a mind completely liberated and at peace. Everyone knows the Buddha had these things, and now he is telling everyone that Mahakashyapa has them, too.
The story of Mahakashyapa’s smile tells us there is something to understand beyond our usual understanding. There is something important to discover, something essential to awaken to. Whatever it is, it’s subtle. So subtle that we may miss it when it’s right in front of us. It’s also intimate, because we can communicate about it with a slight smile at an opportune moment.
Pivotal Circumstances: Mahakashyapa Was a Peculiar Fellow
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 10-11, Pivotal Circumstances is read aloud in the podcast]
This Mahakashyapa was a special guy. It’s almost enough to make you give up. If the Buddha’s first disciple had such enormous spiritual potential from birth, what chance is there for us? A golden light filled the room when he was born and he absorbed it. He had almost all the makings of a fully awakened being before he put forth any effort into practice. Wouldn’t you rather hear about a Dharma ancestor who had to struggle like you do? What do we have to learn from Mahakashyapa?
Maybe it’s exactly that he had everything he needed from the beginning. Maybe we do too. There may not have been any supernatural occurrences at your birth, and you may not have a golden-hued body, but the teachings say nothing is stopping you.
When the Buddha first met Mahakashyapa, he immediately recognized him as a practitioner and welcomed him as a monk, or bhikshu. His hair instantly fell out (presumably he already had no hair on the top of his head) and a monk’s robe, or kashaya, appeared out of nowhere to cloth him. According to the traditional stories, Mahakashyapa was already living the renunciate life of full-time spiritual seeker, so the Buddha simply acknowledged this was the case and Mahakashyapa continued his practice. The twelve austerities included things like eating only one meal a day, wearing robes made from discarded rags, and dwelling among graves.
It may be tempting to think of a before-and-after in our practice. There’s before we came to Buddhism and after. There’s before we took any formal vows as a Buddhist, and after. There’s before we received any acknowledgment of our practice from a teacher, and after.
What if our practice has been continuous since our birth, like Mahakashyapa’s? We may have only a few marks of a Buddha, and we may not practice any of the twelve austerities. But have we always sought the truth in our own way? Have we done our best? Learned from our mistakes? Tried to renounce that which causes suffering for self and other?
Okay, now we get a bit of a sense of Mahakashyapa as a human being. He had a shabby appearance and worn-out robes, and all the other monks were suspicious of him. I picture a guy who is obsessed with ascetic practices, dressed in rags, dirty and stinky, used to spending his time in forests and graveyards. Shakyamuni Buddha, in contrast, is generally described as having been attractive to people. They naturally gravitated toward him.
Imagine being one of the Buddha’s monks or nuns, striving to realize what the Buddha realized, longing to be close to the master teacher, the World-Honored One. Then who should the Buddha acknowledge as the foremost student, who should he invite to sit right next to him? That creepy Mahakashyapa guy who probably thinks he’s better than everyone else because he’s such a hardcore ascetic.
Clearly, fulfillment of the Buddha Way does not depend on having an appearance or manifestation that is naturally pleasing to people. What matters is the sincerity and diligence of our practice, and whether we have awakened to what all the Dharma ancestors have awakened to. Apparently, in the Buddha’s time, few people around were more diligent than Mahakashyapa, but his ascetic way doesn’t have to be ours. Other disciples of the Buddha, who are covered in later chapters of the Denkoroku, weren’t as hardcore as Mahakashyapa. Shakyamuni taught the Middle Way, and didn’t require his monastics to practice the twelve austerities. What is your form of diligence? Working to support your family without complaint? Trying to be patient and fully present for your children? Enduring physical pain and illness with as much equanimity as you can muster?
Investigation: What About this “Held Up a Flower?”
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 13, Pivotal Circumstances is read aloud in the podcast]
We should investigate the timing of “held up a flower,” and investigate the act of holding up a flower. What about the timing? Did Shakyamuni know when Mahakashyapa was ready? According to the footnotes of this translation, different Buddhist and Zen texts disagree on when exactly this pivotal exchange between the Buddha and his disciple took place – it might have been the first time they met, or later on at Vulture Peak, where the Buddha gave sermons to the assembly. This adds a curious twist to the question of timing, making it tricky to grasp.
Imagine your own turning moment – the moment when a teacher says or does something, or some other being says or does something, or something random happens – and you also “get it.” When such an event occurs, is it about the trigger, or is it simply that something comes to the surface that has been brewing all along? Or maybe Mahakashyapa didn’t awaken at the moment Shakyamuni held up a flower and blinked, and that was just a sweet moment of mutual confirmation? We inevitably have many dualistic ideas about the mechanics of enlightenment, and Keizan is challenging them.
Then there’s the holding up of the flower itself. Is this a secret message? We’re smart Zen students so we know the Buddha could have held up a stick or a rock or a begging bowl, there was probably nothing special about a flower. Although a flower is delicate and impermanent… maybe there is something significant there? In any case, what would the secret message have been? More likely, the holding up of the flower is a test, asking, “Do you see?”
Keizan also tells us to know what is “Kashyapa about Kashyapa,” and “understand what is Shakya about Shakya.” My mind gets twisted into knots with this instruction unless I ask myself, “What is Domyo about Domyo?” Such a question orients us toward the central koan of Zen: Who are you? If you’re a good Zen student, you know you’re not your body, emotions, job, house, or personality. But Zen doesn’t let us stop there. You may indeed be empty of any inherent self-nature, but who would respond to the Buddha if he asked you for your understanding? Who would hold up a flower and blink when a sentient being needed you to?
Investigation: Shakyamuni’s Blinking and Mahakashyapa’s Smiling
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 14, Pivotal Circumstances is read aloud in the podcast]
Now we need to set aside all our ideas about practice and enlightenment. It’s not that there was some special piece of knowledge possessed by Mahakashyapa and no one else. It’s not that Shakyamuni offered up a secret message or tested his disciple’s understanding with a signal that pointed at something else.
Instead, it sounds like Mahakashyapa and Shakyamuni were recognizing the true nature of their situation. That true nature wasn’t hidden from the rest of the assembly in any way, it was just easily overlooked.
Keizan says there’s absolutely no difference between you routinely blinking your eyes and the Buddha’s blinking his eyes in this koan. Absolutely no difference between the half smile you might make without thinking while talking to someone, and the response Mahakashyapa gave to the Buddha’s flower, causing Shakyamuni to publicly declare him a Dharma heir. How can this be? Our mindless, everyday, habitual motions are the same as the activities in this koan which has been passed down and pondered deeply for 1,000 years?
Surely the Buddha’s holding up a flower and blinking were special. Surely Mahakashyapa’s smile was special. We want that special. We have long been searching for that special, that meaning and context and justification lying underneath everything. Where is it? Where is it? If the Buddha were to hold up a flower for us, we would spend the next year pondering what it meant. Keizan describes this situation, saying that “if you are not clear about who it is that raises the eyebrows and blink the eyes, then Shakyamuni and Kashyapa will be in Western Lands.” The Western Lands means ancient India, and when we imagine the true nature of things is hidden from us, we project the Dharma outside of our direct experience.
Could it be that the Buddha’s holding up a flower was just that and nothing else? Could it be that only Mahakashyapa in all the assembly was able to see that holding up a flower in all of its raw, unadorned significance? Can you hold up a flower without reference to anything else whatsoever? If you could, the whole universe would be present in the flower, would be holding up the flower, and would naturally smile in response.
Investigation: Becoming Conscious of That Lord Master
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 15, Pivotal Circumstances is read aloud in the podcast]
The footnotes say “that lord master” refers back to “who it is that raises the eyebrows and blinks the eyes.” Again, we are pointed toward the matter of our true nature. What would it mean for Mahakashyapa to be in your shoes and wiggle your toes? That’s a startlingly intimate image. From a dualistic standpoint, it would be quite a shock if Mahakashyapa were suddenly able to wiggle your toes. But the situation opens up when you investigate: Who usually wiggles your toes? Who wiggles them right now? Do you really know? Apparently, when we truly clarify our true nature, the separation created by space and time and individuality collapses.
“In the place where Gautama raised his eyebrows and blinked his eyes, Gautama is utterly extinguished and done with.” We can only guess what Keizan meant by this, but we can investigate through our own direct experience what it might be like for our sense of separateness to fall away in a moment of complete activity.
“In the place where Kashyapa cracked a slight smile, Kashyapa comes to have an attainment of awakening. Is this not precisely [what is meant by] ‘I have’?” How strange to speak about having or attaining anything in this context. Yet Shakyamuni spoke of “having” the treasury of the true dharma eye and spoke of “giving” it to Mahakashyapa. What is being referred to if it isn’t special knowledge, if it isn’t a special attainment that I can hold on to and carry away with me? What is the nature of awakening? If it wasn’t real, that would mean an awful lot of wasted texts and teachings. We’re not allowed to blow off the idea of awakening, but we’re also given nothing to grasp. It is something to be explored within as we wiggle our toes, not something to be understood intellectually.
“The treasury of the true dharma eye, on the contrary, was entrusted to one’s own self, and that was all there was to it. Thus, you should not proclaim that it involved Kashyapa, and should not proclaim that it involved Shakya.” The word translated as “one’s own self” is jiko, a term Uchiyama Roshi translates as “universal self.”[ii] Again we’re being reminded not to project the activities in this koan outside of our own direct experience. Again we’re being instructed to clarify the true nature of the self. What does it mean that the Dharma was transmitted 2,500 years ago to our “universal self?” Maybe anyone awakening to just this, any time, anywhere, enacts this koan.
Investigation: Old Guy Shakya Is Always with You
[Denkoroku Chapter One, Page 19-20, Pivotal Circumstances is read aloud in the podcast]
Skipping ahead in the interest of time (there is much material and richness in this chapter)…
There seems to be a contradiction here. On the one hand, if we are vigorous in our practice and thoroughly understand the way, Shakyamuni is still in the world. Cool! But if we are unclear about our own self, Shakyamuni long ago entered extinction. Although we are the Buddha’s children, we kill him with our lack of clarity. This makes it sound like the Buddhadharma depends entirely on our conscious realization, which is depressing.
But then Keizan says that “Old Guy Shakya walks, stands, sits, and reclines along with all of [us], engages in conversation and socializing along with all of [us], and is never apart from [us] at any time.” How sweet to refer to the Buddha in such an affectionate and informal way, “Old Guy Shakya.” Whatever Buddha is, Buddha is never apart from us, no matter what we’re doing – even when we’re just socializing. What does this mean? I like to think that in any moment where we appreciate the holding up of a flower without reference to anything else, Shakyamuni appears. And that whenever we feel Mahakashyapa wiggle our toes, we fully honor the Buddha.
Endnotes
[i] Foulk, T. Griffith, Editor-in-Chief. Record of the Transmission of Illumination, Volume I: An Annotated Translation of Zen Master Keizan’s Denkoroku. Translated by T. Griffith Foulk with William M. Bodiford, Sarah J. Horton, Carl Bielefeldt, and John R. McCrae. Tokyo, Sotoshu Shumucho and Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2021.
[ii] Uchiyama, Kosho. Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Tom Wright (Translator), Jisho Warner (Translator), Shohaku Okumura (Translator). Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004.
Photo Credit
Image by Carlotta Silvestrini from Pixabay
