A Commentary on Thich Nhat Hanh’s Nothing to Do No Where to Go Waking Up to Who You are

By K.Wong

Introduction

Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh is a currently highly celebrated Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Monk . He is the 42nd generation of the Lin Chi Zen tradition . He is a prolific Buddhist writer and an active exponent of Zen Buddhism in the west and other parts of the globe . He is a teacher, writer and activist in peace movement . He has helped in  the establishment of  many Buddhist monasteries in many places in  the world . Currently, he is residing and preaching Zen Buddhism  in the Plum Village Monastery  in France . He was once nominated by the Vietnamese King  to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 for actively engaging in peace movement to restore a lasting  peace in Vietnam .  Before he settles permanently in France, he was a Buddhist lecturer teaching  Buddhist Psychology and Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras in Van Han Buddhist University in 1957 . Subsequently in 1960, he taught Buddhist Studies  in Columbia University in U.S.A .

The Buddhist text ‘Nothing to Do No Where to Go Waking Up to Who You Are’ is fundamentally a commentary on the Teaching of Chinese Chan patriarch, Linji  of the Tang Dynasty . Linji i was the founder of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism known as Rinzai School in Japan . Linji’s teaching of Chan was characterized by the abrupt, harsh pedagogy of shouting and striking the disciples to awaken their taneous enlightenment .

This article is a commentary on the key expressions found in the aforementioned text of Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh . Hence, this exegesis is also a sub-commentary of the Discourses of Linji . Some of key expressions in the text are quoted and a brief corresponding  sub-commentary is  furnished to further elucidate the Discourses of Linji . Linji  expounded the Doctrine of Chan or Zen wisdom through which the ‘True Man without Rank’ emerges as the Dharmabody of a Perfect Man. This sub-commentary is presented so that the abstruse Chan message  expounded by Thich Nhat Hanh is make crystal clear to the readers .

Sub-commentary:

1. All teaching devices are first and foremost words, mere designations . Master Linji  calls them ‘Empty terms’ or ‘-isms’.They are not objective realities . Words are merely drawing made in empty space .

 All Dharma teachings can only be communicated  through linguistic expressions . But linguistic expressions or words are signs constructed on the basis of substantial or non-empty view . Substantial view contradicts with the Right View of Insubstantiality or Emptiness in terms of Dependent Co-arising  . They are illusive and unreal because the ultimate Truth or Reality is ineffable .Succintly put, the Ultimate Truth or Reality can no be expressed with words . That, which can be expressed with word orwords is not the Ultimate Truth or Reality . Words are signs which are illusive like drawings in the sky or like dreams  or magics which illusive and only apparently real  .

2. Cease all our seeking and come back to ourselves  in the present moment. That’s where we find everything we’re looking for, whether it’s Buddha, perfect understanding, peace or liberation .

 The ordinary worldlings  seek happiness externally or exoterically . But true, eternal happiness is to be sought internally or esoterically . It is found within our minds . The Origin of Buddhahood, perfect knowledge of wisdom or insight  , tranquility or quietude and  mental deliverance or Nirvāṇa is to be found within the inner mind or in the Heart of heart . It can not,of course, be found in any ordinary mind or consciousness . It is found only in  a released or liberated consciousness in which the Perfection of Wisdom has arisen through self-awakening . Self-redemption is the home of permanent bliss in which the Buddha or the True Man without rank resides .  

3. Don’t come to me seeking something . The enlightenment, happiness, stability and freedom you seek are already inside you .

The wise do not seek the formulae or devices of happiness from their teachers . The innate Buddhahood, existing originally in all sentient beings, is the Origin of self-awakening or self-realization, bliss, unperturbility and Nirvāṇa  .

4. He was trying to defeat their tendency to engage in excessive thinking and rationalizing. For master Linji, thinking was not awakened understanding .

 Master Linji taught his disciples not to intellectualize or conceptualize excessively because intellectualization or conceptualization  creates mental diffusions and obsessions . Self-awakening or wisdom is impaired or obstructed by mental obsessions .

5. The student needed to give arise to only one thought  to go in the wrong direction .Whether  or not he understood would  be determined  in that very instant . 

Any first thought, derived from substantial view,  will give rise to the second substantial view. The first wrong view leads to the second wrong view and so on . The first instance of the view or thought of an individual reflects whether he or she has intuitively discerned the profound message of enlightenment  of the Buddha . For instance dogmatic exertion of Iness or Mineness mirrors the veil of ignorance which impairs the development of wisdom .  

6. Even though the true person is the person with nothing to do and going nowhere takes a lot of joyful practice .

The true person refers to ‘True Man without rank’ – the Self-Enlightened One or the Perfect Man’ . When it  is said that a true person has nothing to do, it connotes that the Awakened One or the wise has self-actualized non-actions of all actions . Non-actions connote that all actions  are unconditioned by the external stimuli . The liberated Ones   are liberated from the illusive self or ego superimposed by the ordinary worldlings . The Self-awakened One or the wise has totally relinquished the four signs, namely the sign of self, the sign of being, the sign of sentient beings and the sign of life span or tri-temporal existence expounded in the Diamond Sūtra  . He has transcended the pair of extreme view of either coming or going . Therefore, it is said there is  nowhere to go . This is the Right Vision of Insubstantiality or  Emptiness in terms  of Dependent Co-arising . Joyful practice ensues naturally from the arising of Dhamma eye . Dhamma eye arises when one does not dwell on anything and produces the pure consciousness in the midst of all mundane daily activities. 

Conclusion

Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh is not just Zen Buddhist monk devoted entirely to preaching of Buddhadharma . He is also benevolently concerned about other humane issues,such as world peace, human rights, environment, vegetarianism, survival of the mother earth and others pertaining to the sufferings of the world. His various involvements in world issues ought not be construed as a political monk with  political ambitions. All his concerns for the world  are the natural outflow of his great compassion to annihilate suffering of mankind  . Since he has emerged as the 42nd generation of Zen master, certainly he does not even reify monkhood . Of course he does not reify politics, peace, human rights, environment, mother earth . sufferings and others . If he still reifies wealth, power, good  reputation, position and so forth, he is not a genuine Zen master or a True Man without rank like Master Linji . He has already nothing to do even though he is  an altruistically compassionately active Bodhisattva with many assignments and tasks to do everyday  . He has nowhere to go  and yet he go to many places daily and to many parts of the world annually  to expound the Dhamma . He has awakened to be what he originally is – Buddha-nature . If one can apprehend intuitively these paradoxes, one will equal Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh in terms of the self-actualization of  the True person without rank . The mind, sentient beings and Buddahs are originally are identical.