Nothing to Do Nowhere to Go
Waking Up to Who You Are
 Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Parallax Press, Berkeley, California Master Linji taught in order to shake things up. He wanted to smash obstacles, heal sickness, and undo fetters. Reading his words is like taking a very strong medicine. Most of us tend to think that if we take vitamins or tonics, we’ll feel healthier. But sometimes, rather than taking anything more into our bodies, we need to clean them out. That’s when we need a good dose of the teachings of Master Linji. They aren’t vitamins, they’re laxatives.
When we’ve accumulated so much knowledge inside, ,we don’t have the capacity to digest it. It’s like when we eat too much food, we can’t digest it and we become constipated. When we don’t understand what we’ve learned and can’t apply it in our practice, in our daily life, then our knowledge can block our bodies and minds. But you don’t have to wait until you’re constipated to benefit from Master Linji’s teachings; prevention is better than cure.
Master Linji didn’t want to present deep and wonderful ideas for us to study and debate. We don’t come to the teachings of Master Linji looking for some absolute truth or hoping to discover difficult concepts and mystical ideas. All teaching devices are first and foremost words, mere designations. Master Linji calls them ‘empty terms’ or ‘-isms.’ They aren’t objective realities. Master Linji doesn’t want us to see his words as a golden framework or a jade ruler to study and worship. He tells us his words are only drawings made in empty space.
The purpose of Master Linji’s work is to help us cease all our seeking and come back to ourselves in the present moment. That’s where we can find everything we’re looking for, whether it’s Buddha, perfect understanding, peace, or liberation/
Begin by reading the teachings themselves before reading the commentary or the practices. On the first reading, you don’t need a guide. It will be like walking into a museum for the first time and responding to the paintings before reading the catalog or taking the tour. Simply read the teachings as stories and observe what you see and feel; allow them to wash out your old notions of what a true person is, who the Buddha is, and what are the teachings are. When we learn the works of Master Linji, we should imagine a teacher standing in front of us, and shouting: ‘Don’t come to me seeking something. The enlightenment, happiness, stability, and freedom you seek are already inside you.’
It may work best to think of these teachings as poems. If we don’t understand them at first, it’s okay. These words, in and of themselves, aren’t wisdom. Master Linji offered them as a tool to open and begin to probe the wisdom in our own hearts. The teachings are like a shovel that helps us dig for a buried treasure.
The Record of Master Linji is divided into two parts: Zen Battles and Evening Talks. The teachings that Master Linji gave in the morning, the Zen Battles, were given in the form of questions and answers. In the afternoon or evening, he would give explanation teachings, sharing the Dharma and telling stories. I recommend you read the Evening Talks (Teaching 10-23) first, even though they’re presented second, because the Evening Talks give principal ideas that can guide your practice. These teachings will also help you better understand the Zen Battles, which often read like riddles.
The Zen Battles are skits. One role is the teacher, the ‘host.’ The other role is the student, the ‘guest.’ The host is the one who knows what’s going on and the guest is the one who comes to learn. Sometimes they switch roles: the guest plays the role of the host, and the host plays the role of the guest. Sometimes both play the guest or the host.
In the time of Master Linji, a Zen student would step up and face the Zen Master in order to ask a question and to find out from the master if his understanding was ripe yet. This required a certain bravery on the part of the student. Sometimes there would be victory, sometimes defeat. Sometimes the battles would lead to destruction. Sometimes both guest and host would be victorious.
Master Linji wasn’t trying to defeat his student in these battles; he was trying to defeat their tendency to engage in excessive thinking and rationalizing. For Master Linji, thinking was not awakened understanding. So these weren’t long battles. The Zen master didn’t need to sit and talk for a long time. The student had to say only thing and the Zen master would know his mind. The student needed to give rise to only one thought to go in the wrong direction. Whether or not he understood would be determined in that very instant. If he went in the wrong direction and then made an effort, he would lose.
In school, when we want to ask a question, we remain seated and put up our hand. We use our head, our intellect, to ask a question in order to get a bit of knowledge in return. But Zen isn’t like that. Here our aim isn’t to find out and store up knowledge about Buddhism; it’s to ask the right question, the question that has the capacity to destroy our obstacles. If we don’t have that question, it’s better not to come forward. Our question should be something that can tear apart the veil of ignorance and liberate us. May be it can teach our teacher and the whole community, too. This is what Master Linji is looking for when he asks, ‘is there any warrior who is wiling to step out onto the battlefield?’
After reading the Evening Talks and the Zen Battles, look at the commentary and the complementary material in the back that offers concrete methods for practice. The commentaries will give you a second opportunity to see something in the teachings. The practices will give you ways to apply the teachings in your daily life. Even though the true person is the person with nothing to do and nowhere to go, doing nothing and going nowhere takes a lot of joyful practice!
This book is available for sale in
Buddhist Philosophy Bookshop, Hong Kong. |
