What they do realise or are awakened to is that there is after all no-thing. They will then be able to see, experience and live the true reality beyond the phenomena that we are ordinarily confronted with. I will contrast this notion of true reality with Kant’s transcendental idealism, which definitively explains why it is not possible to go beyond the phenomenal realm to the noumenal, and why Rinzai Zen Buddhism’s radical shift might suggest a way to do so.
Making a Mirror with the Wrong Materials The Rinzai school is named after ninth-century Zen Master Linji, Rinzai being his name in Japanese. It emphasises sudden awakening, and its methods include shouts, blows, question and answer sessions (mondo), and answering paradoxical statements (koan).[5] Linji writes: “The more you chase him the farther away he goes, and the more you seek him the more he turns away.”[6] He was speaking about realising our inner Buddha and how it is not about seeking and striving. Instead we need to make a profound realisation that all is emptiness. He continues,
This emptiness is not the Lockean tabula rasa, a blank slate. It is instead a non-dualistic realisation that nothing matters. Even the goal of satori, nirvana, of becoming Buddha is itself empty;[8] finally, there is really nowhere to go and nothing to achieve. This differs from the traditional Buddhist conception of a state of eternal bliss, achieved once and for all, in a kind of out-of-this-world transcendent movement. Instead, according to Hershock, Zen Buddhism is about opening ourselves fully into the world and living in it:
Chan [Chinese for Zen] directs us into an unending process of cultivating and demonstrating both appreciative and contributory virtuosity – a horizonless capacity for according with our situation and responding as needed. This is not freedom from the world and its relationships but tirelessly within them.[9] Upon attaining satori, we continue living in the world, but in a complete and full way.
He admonished Mazu for not understanding the essence of Zen.
If you’re training for sitting Chan meditation, [know that] Chan meditation is not a matter of either sitting or reclining. If you’re training to sit as Buddha, [know that] Buddha has no fixed form. According to the teaching of nonabiding, you shouldn’t respond [to things] with grasping or rejecting. […] If you hold onto the sitting form, then that is not penetrating his [naturally fluid] pattern of relating.[11]
Hershock describes Huairang’s teaching as a rain soaking into Mazu’s mind, causing the seeds of awakening that were already there to sprout. Mazu wanted to know how to see the path (the way or dao). Huairang explains that the path is not an object to go to. Instead, the true dharma eye “sees from the path.” Upon hearing this, Mazu was awakened.
A key takeaway from this account is that Zen is not a quietist doctrine of retreat from the world but is a religion “to be practised in all situations and all postures.”[12] Reminiscent of how Marx understood the task of philosophy, writing “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it,”[13] Hershock writes: “The point is to conduct oneself as a buddha, not to sit in silent contemplation of a way to become an awakened one.”[14] This pragmatic turn is also reflected in Zen Buddhism’s use of language, not as a way to refer to things through words corresponding to objects in the world but as a performance in the form of a koan.
Koan, literally meaning public case, are standard problems used to judge a student’s understanding of Zen. While they may be based on stories from the tradition, truth or falsity is irrelevant; they are not used to convey truth. Neither are they works of art, since most do not have literary beauty, so they are not meant for aesthetic admiration. Instead the task is to uncover the meaning that is being conveyed through the riddle,[15] so as to “shock the students out of their conceptual schema.”[16] As with many aspects of Zen Buddhism, it is best to explain what koan means through demonstration.
A famous brief koan goes: “A monk asked Ting-shan, “Who is the Buddha?” “Three chin [pounds] of flax.”[17] What could this possibly mean? Rosemont explains that there are at least two ways language is used. Often, language conveys information, but in the koan, the Zen Master is performing perlocutionary speech acts, where the speech is “made with intentions only indirectly related to the content of the utterances.”[18] The content of what is said is less important than the response of the student. A defining characteristic of the koan and its point of confusion is the “immense and incorrect category leap.”[19]
In the case of the question on the identity of the Buddha, a typical respondent may for instance describe his characteristics, such as his physical beauty or his wisdom. Instead, the answer “three pounds of flax” strikes the reader as a peculiar response since it does not describe people. Rosemont clarifies:
By attempting to render these sentences intelligible or in any way to interpret them cognitively, the mediating Zen student is led slowly up the ladder of abstraction, which at the optimum culminates in a blurring (and perhaps a vanishing) of the several concepts being entertained. This blurring (or vanishing) is a decided psychological and undoubtedly physiological event in the life of the student. […] it has a pronounced effect on his subsequent attitudes and responses to his environment, as the whole of Zen literature attests; it changes his way of looking at the world […] and it is to bring about this unusual event, satori.[20]
Because of his training and experience, the student has been accustomed to expect that “all syntactically correct interrogative sentences must have cognitively significant answers.”[21] To achieve breakthrough, his understanding of language needs to be disrupted. Such encounters with questions that do not correspond to such a norm are meant to disrupt his perspective, helping him understand how words are empty, leading him to non-dualism and finally to the realisation that everything is empty. Koan training is a unique and unusual way of achieving satori but it will seem mild in comparison to another novel practice of the Rinzai school.
Whacks and Blows
Hershock relates how Linji was awakened. He came as a young monk to Huangbo’s monastery steeped in the sutras, its commentaries and the practice of meditation, in keeping with what is expected of a learned Buddhist supplicant. He was given an opportunity to meet with the Master, Huangbo. Linji entered Huangbo’s chambers, and began to ask: What is the cardinal principle of the buddhadharma? Before he could even complete his question, Huangbo struck him with his staff and chased him away.
This happened twice more, enough to drive Linji to despair. Disappointed, he wanted to leave, believing a karmic blockage had caused him not to understand what was happening. Huangbo instructed that he should go to Dayu, another master. Linji obeyed, going to Dayu and relating his encounter to him. Dayu responded: “Huangbo, like an old grandmother, succeeded in exhausting himself on your behalf. And you still have the nerve to come here asking where you went wrong!”[22]
Upon hearing this, Linji had a great awakening. “’Hah!’ he exclaimed, “so there really isn’t so much to Huangbo’s buddha-dharma!’”[23] He returned to Huangbo’s monastery only to be greeted by Huangbo mocking him for coming and going. In response to Huangbo’s question, Linji related what happened with Dayu. “When he finished, Huangbo said, ‘How I’d love to get a hold of this fellow. I’m aching to give him a taste of my stick.’ ‘Why say you’re waiting?’ Linji asked. ‘Eat right now!’ With this, he slapped Huangbo.”[24] Considering the student-teacher, novice-master relationship in China then and even today, such violence from a student to a teacher is unthinkable, which makes this tale deeply puzzling. Hershock adds:
Buddhism is renowned as a tradition espousing nonviolence, equanimity, and compassion. How is it that Linji’s awakening came as the result of reflecting on being beaten with a two-inch-thick wooden staff? How can it be that his awakening was confirmed when he treated his teachers to punches and slaps?[25]
When Linji first met Huangbo, Huangbo did not allow Linji to even finish his question. He did this so as to disrupt Linji’s role as the novice student, who has come to seek answers from his betters. When Dayu commented on Huangbo’s grandmotherly exertions for Linji’s sake, Linji had a shattering realisation – the blows were not meant “to prove his unworthiness but to prevent him from stating – and effectively establishing – his own lack of worth.”[26] Upon returning, Linji literally beat Huangbo to the punch for hesitating to strike him, giving Huangbo a taste of his own medicine, which was a slap to wake him up since Huangbo himself had fallen into the “trap of wanting and waiting.”[27]
Linji exemplifies the “true person of no rank,”[28] a term he devised to describe someone who is able to help others become awakened. According to Hershock, “in the context of a society largely organised along Confucian lines, it is imperative to know one’s place or rank within a situation and to act accordingly. It is not the place of a student to correct a teacher.”[29] Since a true person of no rank has no fixed status or position in society to act according to, there is no fixed way which he has to respond in any given situation. He is free to respond with immediacy, without hesitation or doubts, and in ways suitable to the situation. In that way, he can free others also.
Linji admonishes his students to become such true persons of no rank: “Do you want to discern the patriarchs and buddhas? They are just you who stand before me […]”[30] By this he means that within us, we already have all that we need to attain enlightenment, similar to how Mazu already had the readiness to awaken when he met Huairang. However, because we have no confidence in ourselves, we run around frantically trying to find answers. Linji continues, “Even if your seeking is successful, you’ll only end up with the victorious forms of cultural precedents and written words and never the living spirit of the patriarchs,”[31] calling Buddha and nirvana nothing but “hitching posts for donkeys.” Instead, he explains that “the buddha-dharma is not hard work. Just be ordinary and have no worries. I shit, piss, put on clothes, eat food, and when fatigue sets in, I lie down.”[32] There is nothing to find, nothing special to do and nowhere in particular to go, to be awakened.
Take what is given by the karma focused in the present moment and revise it. Turn things around. Change their meaning. […] The task is to make yourself the master of any situation. Doing so, everywhere you stand is real – the bodhimandala, or place of awakening.[35]
We need not despair because we are in the world; it is through samsara that we can attain nirvana. As Linji articulates: “Even if in previous lives you had the bad habit of making the five gateless karmas, by themselves they become the great ocean of liberation.”[36]
Breaking Through to the True Reality
Zen Buddhism speaks of awakening to the true reality of the world, seeing things as they are instead of as the samsaric phenomena presented to us through our senses and cognition. Kant came to a contrary conclusion in the 18th century when he analysed the metaphysics of our reality. According to his transcendental philosophy, we cannot in principle know the true reality, the noumena, because we have no access to the world except through our cognition, which is framed by the “pure concepts of the understanding” comprised of 12 categories,[37] space and time.[38] All we can understand is the phenomenal realm, which still leaves a lot to be understood, but never the true underlying reality that causes and supports the phenomena. Russell explained Kant’s transcendental idealism with a metaphor of blue-tinted spectacles which we can never take off – the world will appear bluish as all colours that we see will be modified by the blue-tinting of the spectacles.[39]
Zen Buddhism provides a way to remove the spectacles. Bodhidharma had explained that the study of the sutras and its commentaries is not the way to be awakened:
The true Way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the Way, even if he can’t read a word. Someone who sees his nature is a buddha. And since a buddha’s body is intrinsically pure and unsullied, and everything he says is an expression of his mind, being basically empty, a buddha can’t be found in words or anywhere in the Twelvefold Canon.[40]
If we use our intellect as the vehicle to understand reality, then certainly we cannot escape the frame of our cognition which is the Kantian pure concepts of the understanding plus space and time. Texts such as sutras and commentaries are the feedstock of the intellect and hence cannot be the way to get to true reality. As Linji had explained and Mazu’s encounter with Huairang had demonstrated, we already have the potential for awakening within us. Hakuin writes: “If one wants to find buddha, one must look into one’s own mind, because it is there, and nowhere else, that buddha exists.” [41] On how to be awakened, Hakuin writes:
In Linji’s words: “Just be ordinary.”[43]
The Rinzai school uses blows and koans, to knock the Kantian blue-tinted spectacles off the faces of its adherents so that they can finally see the true reality. The method behind these methods is to disrupt the frames in our minds so that we can achieve a breakthrough and awaken to how things really are. If knowledge is about understanding reality, Rinzai Zen Buddhism presents a radical way to learn what that reality is. Kant has made it clear that if we try to learn of reality through our intellect, it will always be conditioned by our mental frames. To bypass this mental frame, we need to approach the world “crosswise.”
Blumenau, Ralph. “Kant and the Thing in Itself.” Philosophy Now, Issue 31, 2001. https://philosophynow.org/issues/31/Kant_and_the_Thing_in_Itself.
Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Rinzai | Buddhist Sect,” 2003. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rinzai. ———. “Satori | Zen Buddhism,” 1998. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Satori.
Heisig, James W., Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, eds. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011.
Hershock, Peter D. Chan Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. doi: 10.1515/9780824845810.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” In Early Writings. 1845, Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1975.
Nagatomo, Shigenori. “Linji (810/15–67).” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2016. doi: 10.4324/9780415249126-G038-1.
Pine, Red, trans. The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. New York: North Point Press, 1987.
Rosemont, Henry. “The Meaning Is the Use: Koan and Mondo as Linguistic Tools of the Zen Masters.” Philosophy East and West 20, no. 2 (1970): 109.
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Essays in Zen Buddhism: Second Series. 2en. impr. of American ed. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1976.
Yixuan. The Record of Linji. Edited by Thomas Yūhō Kirchner. Translated by Ruth Fuller Sasaki. Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009.
[1] Yixuan, The Record of Linji, ed. Thomas Yūhō Kirchner, trans. Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), Discourse 14, 14.
[2] Shigenori Nagatomo, “Linji (810/15–67),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2016), doi: 10.4324/9780415249126-G038-1.
[3] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Satori | Zen Buddhism,” 1998, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Satori.
[4] James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, eds., Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011), 202.
[5] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Rinzai | Buddhist Sect,” 2003, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rinzai.
[6] Yixuan, Record of Linji, Discourse 14, 14.
[7] Ibid..
[8] Nagatomo, “Linji (810/15–67).”
[9] Peter D. Hershock, Chan Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 1, doi: 10.1515/9780824845810.
[10] Ibid., 111.
[11] Ibid., 112.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Early Writings (1845, Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1975), Thesis 11.
[14] Hershock, Chan Buddhism, 112.
[15] Henry Rosemont, “The Meaning Is the Use: Koan and Mondo as Linguistic Tools of the Zen Masters,” Philosophy East and West 20, no. 2 (1970): 114–15.
[16] Ibid., 117.
[17] Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: Second Series, 2en. impr. of American ed. (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1976), 84.
[18] Rosemont, “Meaning Is Use,” 117.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid., 119.
[22] Hershock, Chan Buddhism, 120.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., 121
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., 122
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., 123
[29] Ibid., 124.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid., 125.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] These 12 categories are unity, plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation, substance, cause, community, possibility, existence and necessity.
[38] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
[39] Ralph Blumenau, “Kant and the Thing in Itself,” Philosophy Now, Issue 31, 2001, https://philosophynow.org/issues/31/Kant_and_the_Thing_in_Itself.
[40] Red Pine, trans., The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma (New York: North Point Press, 1987), 29.
[41] Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo, Japanese Philosophy, 202.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Hershock, Chan Buddhism, 125.
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