Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel

       by

       Albert Low, LLD.,

       Director and Teacher, Montreal Zen Center

      According to the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of.” The stories that follow in this book address those reasons of the heart. For thousands of years human beings have used stories to convey a message that the intellect can neither grasp nor communicate. Perhaps the earliest of these was the story of Gilgamesh. Since then the Hindus (through the Mahabharata, of which the Bhagavad Gita forms a part), the Sufis (through the stories of Mullah Nasrudin), Jesus (through his many parables), the Hassidic Jews, and the Chinese (through koans and mondo), and countless others have taught the wisdom of the heart to an ever receptive humanity.

      Why should stories be able to do what even the keenest intellect is unable to achieve? Why do spiritual teachers of all kinds resort to stories to get across subtle yet vitally important teachings?

      It is a matter of common knowledge that the mind operates on at least two different levels, a so-called “conscious” level and an “unconscious” level. In the West this is a comparatively recent discovery made popular by Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytical school of psychology. But in the East the idea of a Higher Self, an Over Self, or a True Self that presides over and gives direction to a lower self has been present since the beginning of civilization.

      Generally speaking, for the Westerner, the unconscious is considered to be inferior to the conscious mind. As Freud would have it, “Where there is id there shall be ego.” The picture that Freud drew of the client’s ego absorbing or reclaiming the unconscious was similar to the one we have of the Dutch with their system of dikes and dams reclaiming the land from the Zuider Zee. Jung drew a radically different picture of the unconscious that was more favorably inclined towards it. The unconscious, according to Freud, was a sea of dark, uncontrolled passions ready to erupt into consciousness with dire results. But Jung saw it more as a repository of ancient wisdom in the form of Archetypes. Nevertheless, he was still inclined to put the conscious mind in the role of the director whose function it was to interpret and make sense of the messages received from the unconscious.

      For the East the roles of conscious and unconscious are reversed. The “unconscious” mind was the real mind or true self, and the conscious mind, in a well regulated individual, was the servant carrying out the dictates of the real self. Unfortunately, in most people the real self has fallen asleep and the conscious mind has abandoned its role as servant and elevated itself into the role of master and director, to the detriment of the individual.

      Our task in life is to awaken as the true self and reclaim our rightful heritage. But how can this be accomplished? The rational intellectual mind is a product of consciousness. It is dependent upon forms coming from the senses and upon symbols—words, numbers, and signs—by which to organize the forms. It is at home with abstractions, distillations of experience into the barest essentials, and only knows a linear form of reasoning. On the other hand, true self is at home with direct experience, unmediated or filtered by thoughts and ideas. It deals with wholes and with what is present in a concrete, real way. When awake, instead of operating in the dream world of the intellect, it is at home in the real, concrete world and can act accordingly.

      To try to communicate with true self via reason alone is doomed to failure, as true self does not understand the language of reason. This is where stories as well as symbols, rituals, images in the form of icons, and ceremonies come in. By their means the obstructions of the rational mind are bypassed and the message arrives unfiltered.

      The Chinese and Persians were particularly adept at converting ordinary, entertaining, and simple stories into profound spiritual statements. An example is the use the Sufis make of the exploits of Mullah Nasrudin, a wise fool. On one occasion the mullah, coveting his neighbor’s pears that were growing on a tree in a garden surrounded by a high wall, decided to scale the wall and help himself to a few of the choicest pears. To accomplish this he moved a ladder up against the wall, climbed the ladder, and, while sitting on top of the wall, hauled the ladder up and placed it securely on the other side of the wall. He then climbed down the ladder into the neighbor’s garden, and, turning to go to the tree, collided with the irate neighbor. “What are you doing?” yelled the neighbor. “Selling ladders,” replied the mullah. “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t sell ladders here,” spluttered the neighbor. “It’s you that is being ridiculous. You can sell ladders anywhere” was the mullah’s response. Across Asia, and down the centuries, stories about the mullah’s adventures have been passed on from mouth to mouth, challenging people to no longer take for granted their fixed opinions, beliefs, and theories and to awaken to a more reality-based awareness.

      The stories told by the Chinese and Sufis have much in common with jokes, and some are indistinguishable from them. The surest way to ruin a joke is to try to explain why it is funny, and the surest way to obscure the teaching in these stories is also to try to explain them. Most jokes are funny because the words describing the situation can be interpreted in two quite contradictory ways. For example, the following notice appeared on a church bulletin board: “Thursday at 5:00 p.m. there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All wishing to become Little Mothers, please see the minister in his study.” But this is true of the stories also. The mullah is right: you can sell ladders anywhere. The neighbor is right: he could not sell ladders in an orchard. The conscious mind is baffled, and the only way out of the impasse is for the higher consciousness to intervene. The intervention of higher consciousness to resolve the impasse of two contradictory situations is the basis of creativity, humor, scientific discovery; it is also the basis of spiritual awakening.

      The Chinese, however, have taken to the highest level the art of using storytelling as a spiritual way. One sees this in what are called mondo and koan, and much of the following book is devoted to these two forms. Mondo are questions and answers. The questioner and the one answering may be a novice, or he or she may be a person advanced on the Way, and when one is reading the mondo this must be firmly kept in mind, as the meaning will change depending on the level of the protagonists.

      Sometimes the mondo will take the form of a dharma duel. A dharma duel takes place between two people who are well advanced along the Way. Each is asking the other to show the workings of the higher mind. For example, someone asked Zen Master Zhao zhou Congshen, “What is my essence?” Zhaozhou said, “The tree sways, the bird flies about, the fish leaps, the water is muddy.” The questioner is asking, “What is the higher mind?” and Zhaozhou