In a dream, all things are possible
Some time ago at Koko An, we played the game of shosan. This is a way of opening up the dokusan procedure - people come forward for public, rather than private, confrontation with the roshi. This time Chen Yu-hsi came forward and began his presentation with the famous haiku by Moritake: "The fallen flower/ Has returned to the branch;/ No, it was a butterfly."
Then he said: "Ten years ago I met you and did zazen at this training center. Then for a long time I thought that I could never come back. Now, like a fallen flower, I have returned to the branch. How is this possible?"
I said: "In a dream, all things are possible."
This story is made especially poignant when we understand that Chen Yu-hsi was forcibly returned to the Republic of China from Japan, where he had been studying on a grant from the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii. He was imprisoned in Taiwan for four years, then severely restricted for another four years before diplomatic pressure from the United States opened the way for him to return to Hawaii and resume his studies.
With empty hands, Marcel Marceau dreams he flies a kite. Basho dreams he is a Noh player, miming with a fan. In a dream fulfilled, Chen Yu-hsi dreams he does zazen at Koko An. Is Chen Yu-hsi a Zen student at Koko An who dreamt he was a prisoner, or a prisoner who is dreaming that he is sitting here with us?
--
Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Every act is a rite. Does the word 'rite' seem too solemn? I use that word in order to jolt you into the realization of the life-and-death matter of awareness."
Some people are very suspicious of ceremony - the rite of a Noh drama under the cherry trees, the rite of flying a kite without a string, the rite of Peter Rabbit, the rite of zazen in prison, or in a conventional dojo - but such suspicion is an unwillingness to invest the self, the worst prison of all. What is more free than the transformation of Chuang-tzu to a butterfly and back, of a Zen teacher to a gardener, of a prisoner to a graduate student? When each act is a rite, each role is sacred. There is nothign to fear, nothing to protect, and self-ceteredness has vanished completely.
"I'm a fire engine!" shouts the child, "RRRrrr!" We hold ears and smile patronizingly, imprisoned in our plans for the future and our memories of the past. Another time, we perhaps scold the child for dawdling over breakfast, when actually she is noticing carefully the difference each bite makes upon a brown island of cereal in a sea of white milk.
- Robert Aitken Roshi, A Zen Wave
No comments:
Post a Comment